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57,730 | I'm at a library, and all of the computers are Windows based. I'm sshing into my Ubuntu box somewhere else. The terms of service says "You may not make any changes to system files." However, when I ssh into my Ubuntu box, it might "look" like I'm hacking, since I've had a few people (including I presume the library supervisor) look at my computer funny when I opened a website where the text was a monospaced font and the website background was black. Running Command Prompt will certainly be considered to be hacking if looking at a website was.
If I'm sshing into my box it appears as though I'm "hacking" into the computer. I'd like to somehow do it in a web browser with nice happy looking text, so that it actually represents what I'm doing; I'm not going to hack into the computer, I'm only using a computer somewhere else. | 2011/08/18 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/57730",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/23272/"
] | Disclaimer: I'm the primary developer for Shellvault.
Another option is [Shellvault](https://www.shellvault.io), a web-based cloud SSH client that you don't have to download or set up yourself. It has terminal multiplexing, it looks nice by default, and since it's cloud-based, you can administer your servers from any computer without setting up SSH on a new machine.
[](https://www.shellvault.io)
Shellvault is a Software-as-a-Service, so it's not free, but it has free trial so you can see if you like using it. After the 7-day trial, a subscription costs $5/month. | I recommend [Serfish Console](https://www.serfish.com/console/), as it uses ssh and requires no installation. You could also try Chrome Remote Desktop, as it works from any internet-connected computer, as long as you install the software on the computer you want to connect to. Chrome Remote Desktop also lets you use the desktop on the computer you are connecting to, and does not require port forwarding. If you just want basic SSH, then try Serfish Console. |
57,730 | I'm at a library, and all of the computers are Windows based. I'm sshing into my Ubuntu box somewhere else. The terms of service says "You may not make any changes to system files." However, when I ssh into my Ubuntu box, it might "look" like I'm hacking, since I've had a few people (including I presume the library supervisor) look at my computer funny when I opened a website where the text was a monospaced font and the website background was black. Running Command Prompt will certainly be considered to be hacking if looking at a website was.
If I'm sshing into my box it appears as though I'm "hacking" into the computer. I'd like to somehow do it in a web browser with nice happy looking text, so that it actually represents what I'm doing; I'm not going to hack into the computer, I'm only using a computer somewhere else. | 2011/08/18 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/57730",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/23272/"
] | What you'll probably want to do, is to install a HTML-based terminal emulator. There are several (many) to choose from. That will give you a text field in a webpage (such as the one I'm currently typing into) and that will run on your system.
This is a list of such applications, in no particular order. I have little or no experience with these:
* <http://anyterm.org/>
* <http://scott.yang.id.au/2006/04/ajaxterm-terminal-emulation/>
* <http://code.google.com/p/shellinabox/>
You can see live demos of the three at the bottom of this page: <http://anyterm.org/demos.html>
All of these will work in any browser. Probably even IE4 :) | I recommend [Serfish Console](https://www.serfish.com/console/), as it uses ssh and requires no installation. You could also try Chrome Remote Desktop, as it works from any internet-connected computer, as long as you install the software on the computer you want to connect to. Chrome Remote Desktop also lets you use the desktop on the computer you are connecting to, and does not require port forwarding. If you just want basic SSH, then try Serfish Console. |
57,730 | I'm at a library, and all of the computers are Windows based. I'm sshing into my Ubuntu box somewhere else. The terms of service says "You may not make any changes to system files." However, when I ssh into my Ubuntu box, it might "look" like I'm hacking, since I've had a few people (including I presume the library supervisor) look at my computer funny when I opened a website where the text was a monospaced font and the website background was black. Running Command Prompt will certainly be considered to be hacking if looking at a website was.
If I'm sshing into my box it appears as though I'm "hacking" into the computer. I'd like to somehow do it in a web browser with nice happy looking text, so that it actually represents what I'm doing; I'm not going to hack into the computer, I'm only using a computer somewhere else. | 2011/08/18 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/57730",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/23272/"
] | What you'll probably want to do, is to install a HTML-based terminal emulator. There are several (many) to choose from. That will give you a text field in a webpage (such as the one I'm currently typing into) and that will run on your system.
This is a list of such applications, in no particular order. I have little or no experience with these:
* <http://anyterm.org/>
* <http://scott.yang.id.au/2006/04/ajaxterm-terminal-emulation/>
* <http://code.google.com/p/shellinabox/>
You can see live demos of the three at the bottom of this page: <http://anyterm.org/demos.html>
All of these will work in any browser. Probably even IE4 :) | I use ShellInAbox to access my pc from behind very restrictive firewall using just my browser. I also configure it to go over https like I've wrote here:
[ShellInAbox with https using your browser](http://www.techytalk.info/remote-cli-access-to-ubuntu-pc-using-web-browser-through-authenticated-https/)
Also you needed to use dynamic dns service provider like dyndns to be able to pinpoint your PC. |
57,730 | I'm at a library, and all of the computers are Windows based. I'm sshing into my Ubuntu box somewhere else. The terms of service says "You may not make any changes to system files." However, when I ssh into my Ubuntu box, it might "look" like I'm hacking, since I've had a few people (including I presume the library supervisor) look at my computer funny when I opened a website where the text was a monospaced font and the website background was black. Running Command Prompt will certainly be considered to be hacking if looking at a website was.
If I'm sshing into my box it appears as though I'm "hacking" into the computer. I'd like to somehow do it in a web browser with nice happy looking text, so that it actually represents what I'm doing; I'm not going to hack into the computer, I'm only using a computer somewhere else. | 2011/08/18 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/57730",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/23272/"
] | If the Library is using Firefox and has the ability to install add-ons, try [FireSSH](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firessh/) - its a javascript based SSH client.
 | Disclaimer: I'm the primary developer for Shellvault.
Another option is [Shellvault](https://www.shellvault.io), a web-based cloud SSH client that you don't have to download or set up yourself. It has terminal multiplexing, it looks nice by default, and since it's cloud-based, you can administer your servers from any computer without setting up SSH on a new machine.
[](https://www.shellvault.io)
Shellvault is a Software-as-a-Service, so it's not free, but it has free trial so you can see if you like using it. After the 7-day trial, a subscription costs $5/month. |
57,730 | I'm at a library, and all of the computers are Windows based. I'm sshing into my Ubuntu box somewhere else. The terms of service says "You may not make any changes to system files." However, when I ssh into my Ubuntu box, it might "look" like I'm hacking, since I've had a few people (including I presume the library supervisor) look at my computer funny when I opened a website where the text was a monospaced font and the website background was black. Running Command Prompt will certainly be considered to be hacking if looking at a website was.
If I'm sshing into my box it appears as though I'm "hacking" into the computer. I'd like to somehow do it in a web browser with nice happy looking text, so that it actually represents what I'm doing; I'm not going to hack into the computer, I'm only using a computer somewhere else. | 2011/08/18 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/57730",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/23272/"
] | What you'll probably want to do, is to install a HTML-based terminal emulator. There are several (many) to choose from. That will give you a text field in a webpage (such as the one I'm currently typing into) and that will run on your system.
This is a list of such applications, in no particular order. I have little or no experience with these:
* <http://anyterm.org/>
* <http://scott.yang.id.au/2006/04/ajaxterm-terminal-emulation/>
* <http://code.google.com/p/shellinabox/>
You can see live demos of the three at the bottom of this page: <http://anyterm.org/demos.html>
All of these will work in any browser. Probably even IE4 :) | I would like to recommend [GateOne](https://github.com/liftoff/GateOne), powerful and snappy. Author has Docker image as well for easy setup. |
57,730 | I'm at a library, and all of the computers are Windows based. I'm sshing into my Ubuntu box somewhere else. The terms of service says "You may not make any changes to system files." However, when I ssh into my Ubuntu box, it might "look" like I'm hacking, since I've had a few people (including I presume the library supervisor) look at my computer funny when I opened a website where the text was a monospaced font and the website background was black. Running Command Prompt will certainly be considered to be hacking if looking at a website was.
If I'm sshing into my box it appears as though I'm "hacking" into the computer. I'd like to somehow do it in a web browser with nice happy looking text, so that it actually represents what I'm doing; I'm not going to hack into the computer, I'm only using a computer somewhere else. | 2011/08/18 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/57730",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/23272/"
] | Try this: [**tty.js**](https://github.com/chjj/tty.js) --- A terminal for your browser, using node/express/socket.io
Features:
* Tabs, Stacking Windows, Maximizable Terminals
* Screen/Tmux-like keys (optional)
* Ability to efficiently render programs: vim, mc, irssi, vifm, etc.
* Support for xterm mouse events
* 256 color support
* Persistent sessions | You should try Bastillion - <https://www.bastillion.io> You can use multiple terminals simultaneously (like tmux). |
57,730 | I'm at a library, and all of the computers are Windows based. I'm sshing into my Ubuntu box somewhere else. The terms of service says "You may not make any changes to system files." However, when I ssh into my Ubuntu box, it might "look" like I'm hacking, since I've had a few people (including I presume the library supervisor) look at my computer funny when I opened a website where the text was a monospaced font and the website background was black. Running Command Prompt will certainly be considered to be hacking if looking at a website was.
If I'm sshing into my box it appears as though I'm "hacking" into the computer. I'd like to somehow do it in a web browser with nice happy looking text, so that it actually represents what I'm doing; I'm not going to hack into the computer, I'm only using a computer somewhere else. | 2011/08/18 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/57730",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/23272/"
] | What you'll probably want to do, is to install a HTML-based terminal emulator. There are several (many) to choose from. That will give you a text field in a webpage (such as the one I'm currently typing into) and that will run on your system.
This is a list of such applications, in no particular order. I have little or no experience with these:
* <http://anyterm.org/>
* <http://scott.yang.id.au/2006/04/ajaxterm-terminal-emulation/>
* <http://code.google.com/p/shellinabox/>
You can see live demos of the three at the bottom of this page: <http://anyterm.org/demos.html>
All of these will work in any browser. Probably even IE4 :) | This project is no longer available, but another option was: [https://bashify.io](https://web.archive.org/web/20211230143942/https://bashify.io/ "see archived web page on Way Back Machine") [the current website is an unrelated image sharing and link shortener].
It was a Software as a Service. It used to run an SSH in the web browser completely installation free.
Disclaimer: I'm the developer. |
137,583 | I love books,
This love brought me to gather hundreds of books of all different types. When I disappear, like all old men's belongings, these will be scattered, thrown away, sold, burnt.
Let's imagine a vault with a modest technology, that could keep these books safe for the next 500 years, up to the point where it will be considered of an archeological and cultural value, so that they will form a collection.
There is a long list of items to be taken care of:
Buying the property? Avoiding looting? Make sure great great grand children not looking after their "gran'pa treasure"? Preserve from humidity and light, ground movements? Keeping the secrecy?
Books last for centuries in the dry areas. Shall I prefer a lost cave in an arid region? Or the cold summits of some isolated Canadian mountains? | 2019/01/24 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/137583",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/27540/"
] | The easiest solution to this is put them in the vault, use an oil absorbing rag, wipe all of the books down, vacuum seal the rooms, and then use vacuums to pump the room empty of all existing air.
In the absence of air, acids cannot Oxidize. I would also recommend removing all light, as light can also cause damage to books, paper, paintings, color, and parchments.
This is how the Vatican handles the most rare and valuable artifacts it possesses. | There is this method - to store the information on glass. Although I am not sure you can call that book.
Although it sounds impossible, I am sure it will easily last 500 years.
>
> A standard-sized disc can store around 360 terabytes of data, with an estimated lifespan of up to 13.8 billion years even at temperatures of 190°C.
>
>
>
<https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/16/11018018/5d-data-storage-glass>
Paper books will most probably disappear in a hundred years and will be seen as relics. For that reason, it makes sense to preserve them as paper books, but if you want the information, check the link. |
137,583 | I love books,
This love brought me to gather hundreds of books of all different types. When I disappear, like all old men's belongings, these will be scattered, thrown away, sold, burnt.
Let's imagine a vault with a modest technology, that could keep these books safe for the next 500 years, up to the point where it will be considered of an archeological and cultural value, so that they will form a collection.
There is a long list of items to be taken care of:
Buying the property? Avoiding looting? Make sure great great grand children not looking after their "gran'pa treasure"? Preserve from humidity and light, ground movements? Keeping the secrecy?
Books last for centuries in the dry areas. Shall I prefer a lost cave in an arid region? Or the cold summits of some isolated Canadian mountains? | 2019/01/24 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/137583",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/27540/"
] | Your biggest problem is the books themselves.
Unless the books are made of an acid free paper, they will deteriorate anyway.
See [The Deterioration and Preservation of Paper](https://www.loc.gov/preservation/care/deterioratebrochure.html)
Now the next question, does anyone need to read it during the next 500 years? If nobody has to read them, you could seal them away in a nitrogen atmosphere inside sealed barrels and they should last but if they are being handled, not so much. | Put a few of these:
Into one of these:
This is a time capsule from MIT that is supposed to be opened only in 2957.
This way you can store billions of books using very little money and space. You wish to extract the batteries from the eReaders before putting them in the capsule.
To keep it away safe from harm such as floods, animals, kids and luddites, you can add a protective casing against radiation and send the whole thing to orbit. Before anyone says that this is too expensive: [convince a space agency that this is a school project and they might do it for you for free](https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/home/CubeSats_initiative). |
137,583 | I love books,
This love brought me to gather hundreds of books of all different types. When I disappear, like all old men's belongings, these will be scattered, thrown away, sold, burnt.
Let's imagine a vault with a modest technology, that could keep these books safe for the next 500 years, up to the point where it will be considered of an archeological and cultural value, so that they will form a collection.
There is a long list of items to be taken care of:
Buying the property? Avoiding looting? Make sure great great grand children not looking after their "gran'pa treasure"? Preserve from humidity and light, ground movements? Keeping the secrecy?
Books last for centuries in the dry areas. Shall I prefer a lost cave in an arid region? Or the cold summits of some isolated Canadian mountains? | 2019/01/24 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/137583",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/27540/"
] | Your biggest problem is the books themselves.
Unless the books are made of an acid free paper, they will deteriorate anyway.
See [The Deterioration and Preservation of Paper](https://www.loc.gov/preservation/care/deterioratebrochure.html)
Now the next question, does anyone need to read it during the next 500 years? If nobody has to read them, you could seal them away in a nitrogen atmosphere inside sealed barrels and they should last but if they are being handled, not so much. | There is this method - to store the information on glass. Although I am not sure you can call that book.
Although it sounds impossible, I am sure it will easily last 500 years.
>
> A standard-sized disc can store around 360 terabytes of data, with an estimated lifespan of up to 13.8 billion years even at temperatures of 190°C.
>
>
>
<https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/16/11018018/5d-data-storage-glass>
Paper books will most probably disappear in a hundred years and will be seen as relics. For that reason, it makes sense to preserve them as paper books, but if you want the information, check the link. |
137,583 | I love books,
This love brought me to gather hundreds of books of all different types. When I disappear, like all old men's belongings, these will be scattered, thrown away, sold, burnt.
Let's imagine a vault with a modest technology, that could keep these books safe for the next 500 years, up to the point where it will be considered of an archeological and cultural value, so that they will form a collection.
There is a long list of items to be taken care of:
Buying the property? Avoiding looting? Make sure great great grand children not looking after their "gran'pa treasure"? Preserve from humidity and light, ground movements? Keeping the secrecy?
Books last for centuries in the dry areas. Shall I prefer a lost cave in an arid region? Or the cold summits of some isolated Canadian mountains? | 2019/01/24 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/137583",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/27540/"
] | There are about four solutions that have actually worked in history
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Interestingly, this is not just a hypothetical question. Librarians and archivists already seriously study how they can preserve documents for centuries.
An example of an important case that has received a lot of attention is that of blueprints for major pieces of highly durable infrastructure, which might be expected to interact with the development of a city for centuries. The general conclusion is that there are currently *no* electronic methods that are reliable on anything approaching this time frame, so the first step is always to get digital blueprints transferred to (archival quality) traditional media.
Once you have that, well, there are quite a few examples of libraries of books preserved for 500 years. There are a few examples of much, much older books.
**1. The desert method**
As you already observed, dryness helps to preserve books. There are three main things that destroy books -- although their relative importance depends on the material used for the pages.
a. Some modern papers inherently self-destruct from chemical break down. This was much less of an issue before pulp paper was developed in the nineteenth century, but always has some effect, and may be exacerbated by exposure to light. However, these reactions require the presence of water. Keeping the paper (or papyrus, etc.) extremely dry will slow them down immensely.
b. Insect and vermin attack can rapidly destroy books. A desert environment is not entirely free of these pests but it does help.
c. In humid environments, fungal attack is also a serious issue. It can occur to some degree in drier environments but halts altogether in extremely dry conditions.
The classic example is the [Dead Sea scrolls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls), some of which are as much as 2300 years old. Most people have heard of them; fewer people realise that in total there are over 900 documents found in 11 different caves. The degree of preservation varies. Some of the scrolls that were simply stacked on the bare earth have disintegrated to fragments and have taken decades to partially reconstruct. However many were stored in earthenware jars with loose fitting ceramic lids. This seems to have given them better protection against insects, and traces of moisture in the soil after (the rare) rains. Some of these scrolls could be simply opened and read, millennia after they were placed there.
This is not a unique case. As another example, the [Oxyrhynchus Papyri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri) were documents discarded in rubbish pits by a desert community. With no more protection than shifting desert sands, many are still legible 1400 years after they were simply thrown away.
A potential advantage of this approach is that it is very cheap. Desert land costs pennies an acre, and the only other thing you need is some pots. And no long term personnel tasking.
**2. Give them to an institution which will preserve them**
Many of the most notable examples of well-preserved ancient documents have been in the care of long-lived institutions that intentionally take care of them. Often these are religious institutions; some are academic; and there are a smaller number of examples by governments or long-lived family businesses or estates. A particularly famous example is the [*geniza* of Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Geniza). In Jewish custom, a geniza is a storeroom for revered or sacred documents. In the late nineteenth century this one was discovered to have over 200,000 documents, mainly in excellent preservation, dating back as much as 700 years. Some included hand-written, personally signed letters from famous mediaeval personages.
Of course it helps that Cairo is also arid; but there are equally excellent examples in the Vatican's libraries, and those of ancient universities such as Oxford and Cambridge. The key is that it is not required to try to solve the preservation of the documents once and for all time, because the self-perpetuating institution will monitor and maintain them.
This does, of course, raise the secondary question of what institutions can be relied upon to last 500 years. Sure, any schmuck can found a cult, but most of them don't outlast the founder! Usually, it will be better to donate them to an institution that has already shown it has the chops for the *really* long haul.
**3. The opposite of secrecy: duplicate them extensively**
The great majority of ancient documents that we can still read today do not exist because we have a copy that is millennia old; they are available because they were popular, revered or important, and accessible for copying. If enough copies are made, some will survive to the next generation of duplication. This interacts well with the previous point if the institution has a mission to disseminate documents as well as to preserve them -- such as the *scriptoria* of mediaeval monasteries.
**4. Transcribe them to durable materials**
It is hard to keep books for a really long time because paper, parchment and papyrus are easily destroyed. However books have been produced on much more durable materials. Nowadays a holographic copy can be laser etched into stainless steel. In Sumer, 5300 years ago they pressed them into clay tablets. If the document was important, they fired the clay; otherwise they just let it dry. The fired versions are close to indestructible. | There is this method - to store the information on glass. Although I am not sure you can call that book.
Although it sounds impossible, I am sure it will easily last 500 years.
>
> A standard-sized disc can store around 360 terabytes of data, with an estimated lifespan of up to 13.8 billion years even at temperatures of 190°C.
>
>
>
<https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/16/11018018/5d-data-storage-glass>
Paper books will most probably disappear in a hundred years and will be seen as relics. For that reason, it makes sense to preserve them as paper books, but if you want the information, check the link. |
137,583 | I love books,
This love brought me to gather hundreds of books of all different types. When I disappear, like all old men's belongings, these will be scattered, thrown away, sold, burnt.
Let's imagine a vault with a modest technology, that could keep these books safe for the next 500 years, up to the point where it will be considered of an archeological and cultural value, so that they will form a collection.
There is a long list of items to be taken care of:
Buying the property? Avoiding looting? Make sure great great grand children not looking after their "gran'pa treasure"? Preserve from humidity and light, ground movements? Keeping the secrecy?
Books last for centuries in the dry areas. Shall I prefer a lost cave in an arid region? Or the cold summits of some isolated Canadian mountains? | 2019/01/24 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/137583",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/27540/"
] | Let's assume you don't have the money to reprint the books into a medium that is more stable than wood-pulp paper. Let's also assume you want to be them readily available, so that discards scanning them into tech that will get obsolete faster than writing.
Your main enemies are the natural acidity of the paper: As the lignin decomposes will make the paper dark and brittle, and sunlight will speed the process. There are factors that contribute to the decomposition of the books: these are sunlight(again), which can make inks and pigments fade, and the humidity which can increase the speed of acid release and unbind the adhesives that hold the books together. Finally, there are factors that can contribute to the endangerment of the collection, namely natural disasters and human intervention.
Let's try to address them in order.
* Paper acidity can be neutralized by dipping the books in an alkaline solution. This is a common practice for books made after the introduction of wood pulp paper and will prolong the life of the books as long as it's periodically dipped. As you don't want these books to be regularly attended, we can scratch periodically, but this would be a mandatory step.
* If the content is more important than the form, you can unbind the books and then laminate the pages in plastic. This will prevent humidity to affect the paper and can hold the ink (specially if it's pigment and not tint) even if the paper itself deteriorates. If form is more important or you don't have time/patience to unbind the books, vacuum wrap them individually in PET (that is more stable than PVC and will take longer to decompose).
* To avoid sunlight, you should make your vault subterranean, as you probably already were thinking of that.
* To prevent degradation by natural disasters and human intervention you should built your vault in a place that is remote and a region that is tectonically stable. This will prove difficult as much of the places that would be suitable (for example, the atacama desert is one of the dries places in earth) are also mineral rich and/or tectonically active.
So we're looking at a small two layer concrete coffin, covered in some kind of moisture absorbing salt, with just enough space for the books to be, situated in a rocky, medium-altitude, sparsely populated and mineral depleted place (the bottom of a mineshaft would be a handy place to put the vault).
Let me suggest an easier way, if I may. Assuming you have the money to do all this, you also can have the money to set up a **trust fund** with the purpose of preserving your library. Most museums started this way (and in my city of Barcelona, we have the Frederic Marés museum, which is basically a place where a very rich garbage collector put everything, from cigar rings to stolen gothic sculptures). What is more, if your interest in preserving the books is more like showing what a normal person of your era would collect you can talk with a museum that deals with ethnology (the study of the human cultures) and propose the fund with that purpose: they will be probably more than happy to catalog and preserve your books. If you live in United States your best bet would be the Smithsonian. | Put a few of these:
Into one of these:
This is a time capsule from MIT that is supposed to be opened only in 2957.
This way you can store billions of books using very little money and space. You wish to extract the batteries from the eReaders before putting them in the capsule.
To keep it away safe from harm such as floods, animals, kids and luddites, you can add a protective casing against radiation and send the whole thing to orbit. Before anyone says that this is too expensive: [convince a space agency that this is a school project and they might do it for you for free](https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/home/CubeSats_initiative). |
137,583 | I love books,
This love brought me to gather hundreds of books of all different types. When I disappear, like all old men's belongings, these will be scattered, thrown away, sold, burnt.
Let's imagine a vault with a modest technology, that could keep these books safe for the next 500 years, up to the point where it will be considered of an archeological and cultural value, so that they will form a collection.
There is a long list of items to be taken care of:
Buying the property? Avoiding looting? Make sure great great grand children not looking after their "gran'pa treasure"? Preserve from humidity and light, ground movements? Keeping the secrecy?
Books last for centuries in the dry areas. Shall I prefer a lost cave in an arid region? Or the cold summits of some isolated Canadian mountains? | 2019/01/24 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/137583",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/27540/"
] | Your biggest problem is the books themselves.
Unless the books are made of an acid free paper, they will deteriorate anyway.
See [The Deterioration and Preservation of Paper](https://www.loc.gov/preservation/care/deterioratebrochure.html)
Now the next question, does anyone need to read it during the next 500 years? If nobody has to read them, you could seal them away in a nitrogen atmosphere inside sealed barrels and they should last but if they are being handled, not so much. | Let's assume you don't have the money to reprint the books into a medium that is more stable than wood-pulp paper. Let's also assume you want to be them readily available, so that discards scanning them into tech that will get obsolete faster than writing.
Your main enemies are the natural acidity of the paper: As the lignin decomposes will make the paper dark and brittle, and sunlight will speed the process. There are factors that contribute to the decomposition of the books: these are sunlight(again), which can make inks and pigments fade, and the humidity which can increase the speed of acid release and unbind the adhesives that hold the books together. Finally, there are factors that can contribute to the endangerment of the collection, namely natural disasters and human intervention.
Let's try to address them in order.
* Paper acidity can be neutralized by dipping the books in an alkaline solution. This is a common practice for books made after the introduction of wood pulp paper and will prolong the life of the books as long as it's periodically dipped. As you don't want these books to be regularly attended, we can scratch periodically, but this would be a mandatory step.
* If the content is more important than the form, you can unbind the books and then laminate the pages in plastic. This will prevent humidity to affect the paper and can hold the ink (specially if it's pigment and not tint) even if the paper itself deteriorates. If form is more important or you don't have time/patience to unbind the books, vacuum wrap them individually in PET (that is more stable than PVC and will take longer to decompose).
* To avoid sunlight, you should make your vault subterranean, as you probably already were thinking of that.
* To prevent degradation by natural disasters and human intervention you should built your vault in a place that is remote and a region that is tectonically stable. This will prove difficult as much of the places that would be suitable (for example, the atacama desert is one of the dries places in earth) are also mineral rich and/or tectonically active.
So we're looking at a small two layer concrete coffin, covered in some kind of moisture absorbing salt, with just enough space for the books to be, situated in a rocky, medium-altitude, sparsely populated and mineral depleted place (the bottom of a mineshaft would be a handy place to put the vault).
Let me suggest an easier way, if I may. Assuming you have the money to do all this, you also can have the money to set up a **trust fund** with the purpose of preserving your library. Most museums started this way (and in my city of Barcelona, we have the Frederic Marés museum, which is basically a place where a very rich garbage collector put everything, from cigar rings to stolen gothic sculptures). What is more, if your interest in preserving the books is more like showing what a normal person of your era would collect you can talk with a museum that deals with ethnology (the study of the human cultures) and propose the fund with that purpose: they will be probably more than happy to catalog and preserve your books. If you live in United States your best bet would be the Smithsonian. |
137,583 | I love books,
This love brought me to gather hundreds of books of all different types. When I disappear, like all old men's belongings, these will be scattered, thrown away, sold, burnt.
Let's imagine a vault with a modest technology, that could keep these books safe for the next 500 years, up to the point where it will be considered of an archeological and cultural value, so that they will form a collection.
There is a long list of items to be taken care of:
Buying the property? Avoiding looting? Make sure great great grand children not looking after their "gran'pa treasure"? Preserve from humidity and light, ground movements? Keeping the secrecy?
Books last for centuries in the dry areas. Shall I prefer a lost cave in an arid region? Or the cold summits of some isolated Canadian mountains? | 2019/01/24 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/137583",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/27540/"
] | There are about four solutions that have actually worked in history
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Interestingly, this is not just a hypothetical question. Librarians and archivists already seriously study how they can preserve documents for centuries.
An example of an important case that has received a lot of attention is that of blueprints for major pieces of highly durable infrastructure, which might be expected to interact with the development of a city for centuries. The general conclusion is that there are currently *no* electronic methods that are reliable on anything approaching this time frame, so the first step is always to get digital blueprints transferred to (archival quality) traditional media.
Once you have that, well, there are quite a few examples of libraries of books preserved for 500 years. There are a few examples of much, much older books.
**1. The desert method**
As you already observed, dryness helps to preserve books. There are three main things that destroy books -- although their relative importance depends on the material used for the pages.
a. Some modern papers inherently self-destruct from chemical break down. This was much less of an issue before pulp paper was developed in the nineteenth century, but always has some effect, and may be exacerbated by exposure to light. However, these reactions require the presence of water. Keeping the paper (or papyrus, etc.) extremely dry will slow them down immensely.
b. Insect and vermin attack can rapidly destroy books. A desert environment is not entirely free of these pests but it does help.
c. In humid environments, fungal attack is also a serious issue. It can occur to some degree in drier environments but halts altogether in extremely dry conditions.
The classic example is the [Dead Sea scrolls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls), some of which are as much as 2300 years old. Most people have heard of them; fewer people realise that in total there are over 900 documents found in 11 different caves. The degree of preservation varies. Some of the scrolls that were simply stacked on the bare earth have disintegrated to fragments and have taken decades to partially reconstruct. However many were stored in earthenware jars with loose fitting ceramic lids. This seems to have given them better protection against insects, and traces of moisture in the soil after (the rare) rains. Some of these scrolls could be simply opened and read, millennia after they were placed there.
This is not a unique case. As another example, the [Oxyrhynchus Papyri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri) were documents discarded in rubbish pits by a desert community. With no more protection than shifting desert sands, many are still legible 1400 years after they were simply thrown away.
A potential advantage of this approach is that it is very cheap. Desert land costs pennies an acre, and the only other thing you need is some pots. And no long term personnel tasking.
**2. Give them to an institution which will preserve them**
Many of the most notable examples of well-preserved ancient documents have been in the care of long-lived institutions that intentionally take care of them. Often these are religious institutions; some are academic; and there are a smaller number of examples by governments or long-lived family businesses or estates. A particularly famous example is the [*geniza* of Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Geniza). In Jewish custom, a geniza is a storeroom for revered or sacred documents. In the late nineteenth century this one was discovered to have over 200,000 documents, mainly in excellent preservation, dating back as much as 700 years. Some included hand-written, personally signed letters from famous mediaeval personages.
Of course it helps that Cairo is also arid; but there are equally excellent examples in the Vatican's libraries, and those of ancient universities such as Oxford and Cambridge. The key is that it is not required to try to solve the preservation of the documents once and for all time, because the self-perpetuating institution will monitor and maintain them.
This does, of course, raise the secondary question of what institutions can be relied upon to last 500 years. Sure, any schmuck can found a cult, but most of them don't outlast the founder! Usually, it will be better to donate them to an institution that has already shown it has the chops for the *really* long haul.
**3. The opposite of secrecy: duplicate them extensively**
The great majority of ancient documents that we can still read today do not exist because we have a copy that is millennia old; they are available because they were popular, revered or important, and accessible for copying. If enough copies are made, some will survive to the next generation of duplication. This interacts well with the previous point if the institution has a mission to disseminate documents as well as to preserve them -- such as the *scriptoria* of mediaeval monasteries.
**4. Transcribe them to durable materials**
It is hard to keep books for a really long time because paper, parchment and papyrus are easily destroyed. However books have been produced on much more durable materials. Nowadays a holographic copy can be laser etched into stainless steel. In Sumer, 5300 years ago they pressed them into clay tablets. If the document was important, they fired the clay; otherwise they just let it dry. The fired versions are close to indestructible. | Put a few of these:
Into one of these:
This is a time capsule from MIT that is supposed to be opened only in 2957.
This way you can store billions of books using very little money and space. You wish to extract the batteries from the eReaders before putting them in the capsule.
To keep it away safe from harm such as floods, animals, kids and luddites, you can add a protective casing against radiation and send the whole thing to orbit. Before anyone says that this is too expensive: [convince a space agency that this is a school project and they might do it for you for free](https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/home/CubeSats_initiative). |
137,583 | I love books,
This love brought me to gather hundreds of books of all different types. When I disappear, like all old men's belongings, these will be scattered, thrown away, sold, burnt.
Let's imagine a vault with a modest technology, that could keep these books safe for the next 500 years, up to the point where it will be considered of an archeological and cultural value, so that they will form a collection.
There is a long list of items to be taken care of:
Buying the property? Avoiding looting? Make sure great great grand children not looking after their "gran'pa treasure"? Preserve from humidity and light, ground movements? Keeping the secrecy?
Books last for centuries in the dry areas. Shall I prefer a lost cave in an arid region? Or the cold summits of some isolated Canadian mountains? | 2019/01/24 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/137583",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/27540/"
] | There are about four solutions that have actually worked in history
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Interestingly, this is not just a hypothetical question. Librarians and archivists already seriously study how they can preserve documents for centuries.
An example of an important case that has received a lot of attention is that of blueprints for major pieces of highly durable infrastructure, which might be expected to interact with the development of a city for centuries. The general conclusion is that there are currently *no* electronic methods that are reliable on anything approaching this time frame, so the first step is always to get digital blueprints transferred to (archival quality) traditional media.
Once you have that, well, there are quite a few examples of libraries of books preserved for 500 years. There are a few examples of much, much older books.
**1. The desert method**
As you already observed, dryness helps to preserve books. There are three main things that destroy books -- although their relative importance depends on the material used for the pages.
a. Some modern papers inherently self-destruct from chemical break down. This was much less of an issue before pulp paper was developed in the nineteenth century, but always has some effect, and may be exacerbated by exposure to light. However, these reactions require the presence of water. Keeping the paper (or papyrus, etc.) extremely dry will slow them down immensely.
b. Insect and vermin attack can rapidly destroy books. A desert environment is not entirely free of these pests but it does help.
c. In humid environments, fungal attack is also a serious issue. It can occur to some degree in drier environments but halts altogether in extremely dry conditions.
The classic example is the [Dead Sea scrolls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls), some of which are as much as 2300 years old. Most people have heard of them; fewer people realise that in total there are over 900 documents found in 11 different caves. The degree of preservation varies. Some of the scrolls that were simply stacked on the bare earth have disintegrated to fragments and have taken decades to partially reconstruct. However many were stored in earthenware jars with loose fitting ceramic lids. This seems to have given them better protection against insects, and traces of moisture in the soil after (the rare) rains. Some of these scrolls could be simply opened and read, millennia after they were placed there.
This is not a unique case. As another example, the [Oxyrhynchus Papyri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri) were documents discarded in rubbish pits by a desert community. With no more protection than shifting desert sands, many are still legible 1400 years after they were simply thrown away.
A potential advantage of this approach is that it is very cheap. Desert land costs pennies an acre, and the only other thing you need is some pots. And no long term personnel tasking.
**2. Give them to an institution which will preserve them**
Many of the most notable examples of well-preserved ancient documents have been in the care of long-lived institutions that intentionally take care of them. Often these are religious institutions; some are academic; and there are a smaller number of examples by governments or long-lived family businesses or estates. A particularly famous example is the [*geniza* of Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Geniza). In Jewish custom, a geniza is a storeroom for revered or sacred documents. In the late nineteenth century this one was discovered to have over 200,000 documents, mainly in excellent preservation, dating back as much as 700 years. Some included hand-written, personally signed letters from famous mediaeval personages.
Of course it helps that Cairo is also arid; but there are equally excellent examples in the Vatican's libraries, and those of ancient universities such as Oxford and Cambridge. The key is that it is not required to try to solve the preservation of the documents once and for all time, because the self-perpetuating institution will monitor and maintain them.
This does, of course, raise the secondary question of what institutions can be relied upon to last 500 years. Sure, any schmuck can found a cult, but most of them don't outlast the founder! Usually, it will be better to donate them to an institution that has already shown it has the chops for the *really* long haul.
**3. The opposite of secrecy: duplicate them extensively**
The great majority of ancient documents that we can still read today do not exist because we have a copy that is millennia old; they are available because they were popular, revered or important, and accessible for copying. If enough copies are made, some will survive to the next generation of duplication. This interacts well with the previous point if the institution has a mission to disseminate documents as well as to preserve them -- such as the *scriptoria* of mediaeval monasteries.
**4. Transcribe them to durable materials**
It is hard to keep books for a really long time because paper, parchment and papyrus are easily destroyed. However books have been produced on much more durable materials. Nowadays a holographic copy can be laser etched into stainless steel. In Sumer, 5300 years ago they pressed them into clay tablets. If the document was important, they fired the clay; otherwise they just let it dry. The fired versions are close to indestructible. | Your biggest problem is the books themselves.
Unless the books are made of an acid free paper, they will deteriorate anyway.
See [The Deterioration and Preservation of Paper](https://www.loc.gov/preservation/care/deterioratebrochure.html)
Now the next question, does anyone need to read it during the next 500 years? If nobody has to read them, you could seal them away in a nitrogen atmosphere inside sealed barrels and they should last but if they are being handled, not so much. |
137,583 | I love books,
This love brought me to gather hundreds of books of all different types. When I disappear, like all old men's belongings, these will be scattered, thrown away, sold, burnt.
Let's imagine a vault with a modest technology, that could keep these books safe for the next 500 years, up to the point where it will be considered of an archeological and cultural value, so that they will form a collection.
There is a long list of items to be taken care of:
Buying the property? Avoiding looting? Make sure great great grand children not looking after their "gran'pa treasure"? Preserve from humidity and light, ground movements? Keeping the secrecy?
Books last for centuries in the dry areas. Shall I prefer a lost cave in an arid region? Or the cold summits of some isolated Canadian mountains? | 2019/01/24 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/137583",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/27540/"
] | There are about four solutions that have actually worked in history
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Interestingly, this is not just a hypothetical question. Librarians and archivists already seriously study how they can preserve documents for centuries.
An example of an important case that has received a lot of attention is that of blueprints for major pieces of highly durable infrastructure, which might be expected to interact with the development of a city for centuries. The general conclusion is that there are currently *no* electronic methods that are reliable on anything approaching this time frame, so the first step is always to get digital blueprints transferred to (archival quality) traditional media.
Once you have that, well, there are quite a few examples of libraries of books preserved for 500 years. There are a few examples of much, much older books.
**1. The desert method**
As you already observed, dryness helps to preserve books. There are three main things that destroy books -- although their relative importance depends on the material used for the pages.
a. Some modern papers inherently self-destruct from chemical break down. This was much less of an issue before pulp paper was developed in the nineteenth century, but always has some effect, and may be exacerbated by exposure to light. However, these reactions require the presence of water. Keeping the paper (or papyrus, etc.) extremely dry will slow them down immensely.
b. Insect and vermin attack can rapidly destroy books. A desert environment is not entirely free of these pests but it does help.
c. In humid environments, fungal attack is also a serious issue. It can occur to some degree in drier environments but halts altogether in extremely dry conditions.
The classic example is the [Dead Sea scrolls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls), some of which are as much as 2300 years old. Most people have heard of them; fewer people realise that in total there are over 900 documents found in 11 different caves. The degree of preservation varies. Some of the scrolls that were simply stacked on the bare earth have disintegrated to fragments and have taken decades to partially reconstruct. However many were stored in earthenware jars with loose fitting ceramic lids. This seems to have given them better protection against insects, and traces of moisture in the soil after (the rare) rains. Some of these scrolls could be simply opened and read, millennia after they were placed there.
This is not a unique case. As another example, the [Oxyrhynchus Papyri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri) were documents discarded in rubbish pits by a desert community. With no more protection than shifting desert sands, many are still legible 1400 years after they were simply thrown away.
A potential advantage of this approach is that it is very cheap. Desert land costs pennies an acre, and the only other thing you need is some pots. And no long term personnel tasking.
**2. Give them to an institution which will preserve them**
Many of the most notable examples of well-preserved ancient documents have been in the care of long-lived institutions that intentionally take care of them. Often these are religious institutions; some are academic; and there are a smaller number of examples by governments or long-lived family businesses or estates. A particularly famous example is the [*geniza* of Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Geniza). In Jewish custom, a geniza is a storeroom for revered or sacred documents. In the late nineteenth century this one was discovered to have over 200,000 documents, mainly in excellent preservation, dating back as much as 700 years. Some included hand-written, personally signed letters from famous mediaeval personages.
Of course it helps that Cairo is also arid; but there are equally excellent examples in the Vatican's libraries, and those of ancient universities such as Oxford and Cambridge. The key is that it is not required to try to solve the preservation of the documents once and for all time, because the self-perpetuating institution will monitor and maintain them.
This does, of course, raise the secondary question of what institutions can be relied upon to last 500 years. Sure, any schmuck can found a cult, but most of them don't outlast the founder! Usually, it will be better to donate them to an institution that has already shown it has the chops for the *really* long haul.
**3. The opposite of secrecy: duplicate them extensively**
The great majority of ancient documents that we can still read today do not exist because we have a copy that is millennia old; they are available because they were popular, revered or important, and accessible for copying. If enough copies are made, some will survive to the next generation of duplication. This interacts well with the previous point if the institution has a mission to disseminate documents as well as to preserve them -- such as the *scriptoria* of mediaeval monasteries.
**4. Transcribe them to durable materials**
It is hard to keep books for a really long time because paper, parchment and papyrus are easily destroyed. However books have been produced on much more durable materials. Nowadays a holographic copy can be laser etched into stainless steel. In Sumer, 5300 years ago they pressed them into clay tablets. If the document was important, they fired the clay; otherwise they just let it dry. The fired versions are close to indestructible. | Let's assume you don't have the money to reprint the books into a medium that is more stable than wood-pulp paper. Let's also assume you want to be them readily available, so that discards scanning them into tech that will get obsolete faster than writing.
Your main enemies are the natural acidity of the paper: As the lignin decomposes will make the paper dark and brittle, and sunlight will speed the process. There are factors that contribute to the decomposition of the books: these are sunlight(again), which can make inks and pigments fade, and the humidity which can increase the speed of acid release and unbind the adhesives that hold the books together. Finally, there are factors that can contribute to the endangerment of the collection, namely natural disasters and human intervention.
Let's try to address them in order.
* Paper acidity can be neutralized by dipping the books in an alkaline solution. This is a common practice for books made after the introduction of wood pulp paper and will prolong the life of the books as long as it's periodically dipped. As you don't want these books to be regularly attended, we can scratch periodically, but this would be a mandatory step.
* If the content is more important than the form, you can unbind the books and then laminate the pages in plastic. This will prevent humidity to affect the paper and can hold the ink (specially if it's pigment and not tint) even if the paper itself deteriorates. If form is more important or you don't have time/patience to unbind the books, vacuum wrap them individually in PET (that is more stable than PVC and will take longer to decompose).
* To avoid sunlight, you should make your vault subterranean, as you probably already were thinking of that.
* To prevent degradation by natural disasters and human intervention you should built your vault in a place that is remote and a region that is tectonically stable. This will prove difficult as much of the places that would be suitable (for example, the atacama desert is one of the dries places in earth) are also mineral rich and/or tectonically active.
So we're looking at a small two layer concrete coffin, covered in some kind of moisture absorbing salt, with just enough space for the books to be, situated in a rocky, medium-altitude, sparsely populated and mineral depleted place (the bottom of a mineshaft would be a handy place to put the vault).
Let me suggest an easier way, if I may. Assuming you have the money to do all this, you also can have the money to set up a **trust fund** with the purpose of preserving your library. Most museums started this way (and in my city of Barcelona, we have the Frederic Marés museum, which is basically a place where a very rich garbage collector put everything, from cigar rings to stolen gothic sculptures). What is more, if your interest in preserving the books is more like showing what a normal person of your era would collect you can talk with a museum that deals with ethnology (the study of the human cultures) and propose the fund with that purpose: they will be probably more than happy to catalog and preserve your books. If you live in United States your best bet would be the Smithsonian. |
137,583 | I love books,
This love brought me to gather hundreds of books of all different types. When I disappear, like all old men's belongings, these will be scattered, thrown away, sold, burnt.
Let's imagine a vault with a modest technology, that could keep these books safe for the next 500 years, up to the point where it will be considered of an archeological and cultural value, so that they will form a collection.
There is a long list of items to be taken care of:
Buying the property? Avoiding looting? Make sure great great grand children not looking after their "gran'pa treasure"? Preserve from humidity and light, ground movements? Keeping the secrecy?
Books last for centuries in the dry areas. Shall I prefer a lost cave in an arid region? Or the cold summits of some isolated Canadian mountains? | 2019/01/24 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/137583",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/27540/"
] | Let's assume you don't have the money to reprint the books into a medium that is more stable than wood-pulp paper. Let's also assume you want to be them readily available, so that discards scanning them into tech that will get obsolete faster than writing.
Your main enemies are the natural acidity of the paper: As the lignin decomposes will make the paper dark and brittle, and sunlight will speed the process. There are factors that contribute to the decomposition of the books: these are sunlight(again), which can make inks and pigments fade, and the humidity which can increase the speed of acid release and unbind the adhesives that hold the books together. Finally, there are factors that can contribute to the endangerment of the collection, namely natural disasters and human intervention.
Let's try to address them in order.
* Paper acidity can be neutralized by dipping the books in an alkaline solution. This is a common practice for books made after the introduction of wood pulp paper and will prolong the life of the books as long as it's periodically dipped. As you don't want these books to be regularly attended, we can scratch periodically, but this would be a mandatory step.
* If the content is more important than the form, you can unbind the books and then laminate the pages in plastic. This will prevent humidity to affect the paper and can hold the ink (specially if it's pigment and not tint) even if the paper itself deteriorates. If form is more important or you don't have time/patience to unbind the books, vacuum wrap them individually in PET (that is more stable than PVC and will take longer to decompose).
* To avoid sunlight, you should make your vault subterranean, as you probably already were thinking of that.
* To prevent degradation by natural disasters and human intervention you should built your vault in a place that is remote and a region that is tectonically stable. This will prove difficult as much of the places that would be suitable (for example, the atacama desert is one of the dries places in earth) are also mineral rich and/or tectonically active.
So we're looking at a small two layer concrete coffin, covered in some kind of moisture absorbing salt, with just enough space for the books to be, situated in a rocky, medium-altitude, sparsely populated and mineral depleted place (the bottom of a mineshaft would be a handy place to put the vault).
Let me suggest an easier way, if I may. Assuming you have the money to do all this, you also can have the money to set up a **trust fund** with the purpose of preserving your library. Most museums started this way (and in my city of Barcelona, we have the Frederic Marés museum, which is basically a place where a very rich garbage collector put everything, from cigar rings to stolen gothic sculptures). What is more, if your interest in preserving the books is more like showing what a normal person of your era would collect you can talk with a museum that deals with ethnology (the study of the human cultures) and propose the fund with that purpose: they will be probably more than happy to catalog and preserve your books. If you live in United States your best bet would be the Smithsonian. | There is this method - to store the information on glass. Although I am not sure you can call that book.
Although it sounds impossible, I am sure it will easily last 500 years.
>
> A standard-sized disc can store around 360 terabytes of data, with an estimated lifespan of up to 13.8 billion years even at temperatures of 190°C.
>
>
>
<https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/16/11018018/5d-data-storage-glass>
Paper books will most probably disappear in a hundred years and will be seen as relics. For that reason, it makes sense to preserve them as paper books, but if you want the information, check the link. |
5,880,555 | I need a framework to transfer POJOs between two (or more in a client/server model) Java programs over TCP/IP. I need it to be as simple as possible but it must support several clients per server, and easy implementation of encryption is a plus.
So far I have looked at Java RMI, JRemoting, AltRMI and NinjaRMI. Right now JRemoting looks like the best choice as it is simple and don't require strange and seemingly unnecessary extends and implements as most of the others do. No active development seems to be going on on any of them except a little on Java RMI. I don't know if that is because they are stable and don't need more development, or because these kinds of frameworks are just not "cool" any more.
The POJOs are just bags of properties. I need the server to hold a static list of objects, and the clients must be able to (1) Read the list, (2) Add an object to the list, and (3) Remove an object from the list.
Any suggestions? | 2011/05/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/5880555",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/355942/"
] | You could probably use any serialization technology, for example you could use JSON and add on encryption and compression later in order to cutdown the amount of traffic you are sending. JSON has the advantage of being language agnostic, so you don't restrict the implementation of either side of the connection.
Many JSON libraries are available; see [json.org](http://json.org/). | Do you need to do remote method calls, or are your POJOs just bags of properties? If the latter, it would probably be easiest to just use plain Java serialization. |
5,880,555 | I need a framework to transfer POJOs between two (or more in a client/server model) Java programs over TCP/IP. I need it to be as simple as possible but it must support several clients per server, and easy implementation of encryption is a plus.
So far I have looked at Java RMI, JRemoting, AltRMI and NinjaRMI. Right now JRemoting looks like the best choice as it is simple and don't require strange and seemingly unnecessary extends and implements as most of the others do. No active development seems to be going on on any of them except a little on Java RMI. I don't know if that is because they are stable and don't need more development, or because these kinds of frameworks are just not "cool" any more.
The POJOs are just bags of properties. I need the server to hold a static list of objects, and the clients must be able to (1) Read the list, (2) Add an object to the list, and (3) Remove an object from the list.
Any suggestions? | 2011/05/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/5880555",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/355942/"
] | You could probably use any serialization technology, for example you could use JSON and add on encryption and compression later in order to cutdown the amount of traffic you are sending. JSON has the advantage of being language agnostic, so you don't restrict the implementation of either side of the connection.
Many JSON libraries are available; see [json.org](http://json.org/). | look here: <http://code.google.com/p/google-gson/> |
5,880,555 | I need a framework to transfer POJOs between two (or more in a client/server model) Java programs over TCP/IP. I need it to be as simple as possible but it must support several clients per server, and easy implementation of encryption is a plus.
So far I have looked at Java RMI, JRemoting, AltRMI and NinjaRMI. Right now JRemoting looks like the best choice as it is simple and don't require strange and seemingly unnecessary extends and implements as most of the others do. No active development seems to be going on on any of them except a little on Java RMI. I don't know if that is because they are stable and don't need more development, or because these kinds of frameworks are just not "cool" any more.
The POJOs are just bags of properties. I need the server to hold a static list of objects, and the clients must be able to (1) Read the list, (2) Add an object to the list, and (3) Remove an object from the list.
Any suggestions? | 2011/05/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/5880555",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/355942/"
] | You could probably use any serialization technology, for example you could use JSON and add on encryption and compression later in order to cutdown the amount of traffic you are sending. JSON has the advantage of being language agnostic, so you don't restrict the implementation of either side of the connection.
Many JSON libraries are available; see [json.org](http://json.org/). | You can have a look on [Protocol Buffers](http://code.google.com/p/protobuf/). I think Google uses Protocol Buffers internally. |
364,158 | I want to create a trigger so that when a field is updated it kicks off a local bash script (or python...whatever) to kick off a workflow (emails, work requests, etc). Is it possible to execute local system scripts/executables from mysql SQL? My google searches have been unsuccessful. | 2012/02/27 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/364158",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/87386/"
] | Take a look here: <http://support.google.com/installer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=146164>
That gives you information on configuring GPOs to disable the built-in auto-updating feature of Chrome, etc.
Then take a look here: <http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/chromebrowser.html>
That is the "Chrome for Business" page. There is a link on that page to an MSI installer for Chrome. We enterprise administrators and wielders of GPOs love MSI installers, as they can be pushed out at will and controlled from a centralized location. | If you can get it approved by your admin( if you're the admin, great job) I HIGHLY recommend using Ninite. It's [PRO version](https://ninite.com/pro?utm_campaign=navpro&utm_source=ninite&utm_medium=link) integrates with multiple RMM tools, if you're into that. It also has MSI versions, and an /updateonly switch which allows you to use one installer over and over again to ensure things like Flash and Reader stay up to date as well.
Seriously, a very awesome tool that compliments WSUS very well. |
364,158 | I want to create a trigger so that when a field is updated it kicks off a local bash script (or python...whatever) to kick off a workflow (emails, work requests, etc). Is it possible to execute local system scripts/executables from mysql SQL? My google searches have been unsuccessful. | 2012/02/27 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/364158",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/87386/"
] | Take a look here: <http://support.google.com/installer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=146164>
That gives you information on configuring GPOs to disable the built-in auto-updating feature of Chrome, etc.
Then take a look here: <http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/chromebrowser.html>
That is the "Chrome for Business" page. There is a link on that page to an MSI installer for Chrome. We enterprise administrators and wielders of GPOs love MSI installers, as they can be pushed out at will and controlled from a centralized location. | EminentWare / SolarWinds patch manager is a great method for centrally managing and deploying third party updates. It injects updates and full installs into the wsus scheme. It includes Chrome update, among others.
<http://www.eminentware.com/index.html> |
364,158 | I want to create a trigger so that when a field is updated it kicks off a local bash script (or python...whatever) to kick off a workflow (emails, work requests, etc). Is it possible to execute local system scripts/executables from mysql SQL? My google searches have been unsuccessful. | 2012/02/27 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/364158",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/87386/"
] | EminentWare / SolarWinds patch manager is a great method for centrally managing and deploying third party updates. It injects updates and full installs into the wsus scheme. It includes Chrome update, among others.
<http://www.eminentware.com/index.html> | If you can get it approved by your admin( if you're the admin, great job) I HIGHLY recommend using Ninite. It's [PRO version](https://ninite.com/pro?utm_campaign=navpro&utm_source=ninite&utm_medium=link) integrates with multiple RMM tools, if you're into that. It also has MSI versions, and an /updateonly switch which allows you to use one installer over and over again to ensure things like Flash and Reader stay up to date as well.
Seriously, a very awesome tool that compliments WSUS very well. |
289,000 | Whose public key is used to encrypt email from me@myemailservice.com to you@youremailservice.com? My email client can't have the public key of every person in the world I could possibly write an email to at any moment, but then again if each email service had one public key for more than one account holder, there seems to be the possibility that one account holder could intercept emails intended for another account holder and decrypt them if they're encrypted with the same public key that both account holders use. | 2011/05/26 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/289000",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/23251/"
] | GPG, the only system I'm familiar with, makes you find a user's public key, import it, and mark it as trusted (by signing it). You don't have to share the signature if you don't want to.
Encryption with one of the keys public/private key pair is **always** decrypted with the OTHER key.
So in your example, if the mailserver has everyone's public keys, then anyone can send a message to anyone encrypted with my public key. **Only I** (the user with both the private key *AND* the password) can decrypt that message.
Now if I encrypt something with my private key and password, anyone can decrypt that message with my public key. The idea is that only I could encrypt a message with that key, so it's called a "signature." (Usually you send a copy of the message in plaintext but you don't have to.)
EXAMPLE:
So if I want to send you a message that only you can read and want you to be fairly sure only I could have sent it, I would encrypt my message with my private key/password, and then encrypt it with your public key.
You would decrypt it with your private key & password, so that only you could read it, and then you would decrypt it with my public key, so that you were reasonably sure it came from me.
We would also have to arrange one last step - that you and I had talked before so that you were sure my key was mine and your key was yours. Usually a phone call works for that too, depending on your standards.
(I say "reasonably" sure because someone could steal my key and threaten me with jail/beat me with a rubber hose for not sharing my password, but that's another problem for another question.)
My public key is very easily located by my email address (and you will see "Benanov" in the comment field / username field, I forget which). Feel free to send me a message if you want to test this. | The easiest secure way is to send a signed email to the recipient you want to encrypt a message to asking them to reply with a signed email. Their reply will include their public-key which is what you need to encrypt email *to* them. You will want to verify that it was them who replied and not an intermediary either by having them verify their key or cert fingerprint through an alternative channel (say SMS, phone call, fax). At that point you are done.
Alternatively if your receipient's key is registered with a CA you could look them up by email in the CA's LDAP server (VeriSign allows customers to opt-in to publishing their VeriSign issued email certificats in their public LDAP server) |
194,818 | I keep sending iMessages from my mac before I have finished typing them by accidentally hitting the return key. Is there a way to change the behaviour to send on Cmd-Enter instead? | 2015/07/07 | [
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/194818",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/135255/"
] | To override the default Enter behaviour I used the instructions posted in the question here: <https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/236255/135255> | I think its not possible to change behavior of Cmd-Enter Key you can use ALT + Enter/Return keys to create a New Line/paragraph in a text chat. |
36,336 | I need some help please.
I’m 40, female and 173cm tall
I used to be fit and active but over the last 8 years a combination of back problem, depression and insomnia mean things have slipped quite a bit.
I weighed in at 95kg 2 weeks ago, ideally I’d like to be 67kg or bit less. So I need to lose around 28kg. I’m vegetarian, cook from scratch and have a pretty good grasp on biology, nutrition etc.
I’ve had some success with fasting and keto diets in the past. So I started my diet with a 5 day fast to kick start ketosis.
I do blood tests for ketones and blood sugar each morning.
By day 3 my ketone levels were >1.5 - the so called Optimum Ketosis zone.
I ended my fast on day 5 and moved to a eating primarily fats and a bit of protein, making sure it was all v low carb. I continued intermittent fasting, eating just one very modest meal each evening.
By day 7 I’d lost 4kg, mostly glycogen and water weight I guess.
Days 8 and 9 there was no further weight loss, but my ketone levels were now >3 so I decided to switch to a low carb diet (<20g), still eating just once a day and also trying to restrict calories to 500-800.
I’ve been sticking to this religiously. Today is day 16 and I haven’t lost any further weight at all. I’m stuck at 91kg.
I understand weight loss sometimes stalls, but given I’m on a pretty strict regime, have lots of weight to lose and am just at the start of my diet I’m quite confused about what I’m getting wrong.
I had blood tests last March which checked my Thyroid etc and I am healthy.
Since I started the diet I haven’t been doing any intensive exercise, but I have been keeping active - walking my dog, heavy gardening, helping a friend move house (actually that was quite intensive!)
I find this diet reasonably easy to stick to when I am seeing results, but I am getting really demoralised at the moment.
Ideas please...? | 2017/10/17 | [
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/36336",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/users/26891/"
] | First of all eating under BMR may slow down your metabolism - that is the case we do not want. Some researches have shown that keto diet can cause some problems. If you push your body in a bad way, you will end up with some health problems.
Here are my recommendations that worked for me while burning fat and losing weight:
1. Calculate your TDEE and eat 300-500 less of it. You do not have to pay attention too much about what you eat. Since you are on deficit, your body will not store fat. Losing a lot of weight suddenly is unhealthy. The process will take time.
2. Do exercise moderately. Moderate weightlifting is best to burn fat effectively. 2 or 3 times moderate full body workout and 1 or 2 times cardio like swimming is ok. Cardio should also be moderate.
3. Eat enough carbs, fat and protein. Do not be afraid of carbs. Carbs do not make you fat, caloric surplus does. Eat good carbs and do not limit how much carbs you eat. Have balanced meals.
4. Stay away from garbage food as much as possible.
5. Drink enough water and sleep enough.
At the beginning you can gain a few pounds since you will increase your carb intake. Do not worry about it.
Before doing anything consult several doctors.
Edit: If you are going to increase your caloric intake, do it gradually.
For any question feel free to ask. | There are several factors to weight loss. It all depends on where you are starting, and what your target/goals are.
While calories count, hormones have a far larger influence in terms of what/when/how you absorb/use/store nutrition. Insulin levels and resistance are huge in this. As are other hormones like cortisol are also factors. Not to mention hunger/satiety hormones.
The most effective ways to influence these seems to be based around:
1. Eating frequency
2. Macro nutrient profile
3. Caloric load
### Eating Frequency
In terms of eating frequency, the old adage of eat many small meals may not be the best advice for weight loss. More recent research shows that eating fewer/larger meals is better for weight loss than more frequent eating. Specifically extending fasting periods (days at a time) works very well.
Every time you eat, you get hormone responses to process what you eat, this can have a huge effect. Also, hunger does not correlate so much with caloric need, it tends to be a circadian response to when you eat, and what you last ate.
### Macro Nutrient Profile
If you are diabetic, you *REALLY* want to minimize your carbs. You can make up caloric need with additional fats. Protein needs are based around your lean body mass, and your weight lifting/workout profile.
Fat is not the enemy, you want about 0.5 - 1g of fat per gram of protein. This helps offset insulin response and keeps your macro profile in a great range.
Avoid sugars, when you have them, they should be part of whole fruit and nuts. If you are doing keto, then just don't have them... Under 5g of sugars a day should be your goal on keto. Alcohol sugars also affect different people differently, and depends heavily on your gut flora. Avoid them if you are stalling out, see how they effect you.
Other carbs, on keto, your total carbs (including fiber, hidden carbs, etc) should be well under 30-50g/day or around 5% of your daily calories. Your net carbs (total minus 1/2 alcohol sugars and fiber) should be under 20g/day. Absorption of fiber, alcohol sugars will vary by person. Also, there are fractions of carbs in everything, and they add up. If you aren't insulin resistant, you can have 100-200g carbs on a given day, but may want to minimize anything refined or starchy.
Alcohol, while alcohol doesn't count as a carb completely, you can think of it as a super carb in terms of calories and influence on your body. A little is fine, but should be no more than 4-8 servings a week if you can avoid it.
### Hormone Response
In general carbs will cause insulin response. The breakdown of sugars goes into both unhealthy fats and glucose in the body and can cause insulin resistance alone. Other carbs will have a similar effect, but sugars are particularly bad and should be minimized.
Proteins also cause insulin response, but have a different profile breakdown, there are also other hormone responses that offset the insulin increase. Fats with protein seem to have the best response.
### Caloric load
Calories still count... if you eat 5000g fat/day, you will gain some weight. It won't be the same as 5000g sugar/day, or even carbs/day. The macros have different effects, but in general, you want to target your minimal needs and fill up to your caloric load (BMR + exercise). If you are losing weight, target 75-85% of your caloric load on average, or have extended fasting between meals.
### More on Fasting
As an aside, the effects of an extended water fast are a bit different than just a low calorie intake. Many use a ketogenic diet as a path to make fasting for extended periods (one meal a day, or less). |
36,336 | I need some help please.
I’m 40, female and 173cm tall
I used to be fit and active but over the last 8 years a combination of back problem, depression and insomnia mean things have slipped quite a bit.
I weighed in at 95kg 2 weeks ago, ideally I’d like to be 67kg or bit less. So I need to lose around 28kg. I’m vegetarian, cook from scratch and have a pretty good grasp on biology, nutrition etc.
I’ve had some success with fasting and keto diets in the past. So I started my diet with a 5 day fast to kick start ketosis.
I do blood tests for ketones and blood sugar each morning.
By day 3 my ketone levels were >1.5 - the so called Optimum Ketosis zone.
I ended my fast on day 5 and moved to a eating primarily fats and a bit of protein, making sure it was all v low carb. I continued intermittent fasting, eating just one very modest meal each evening.
By day 7 I’d lost 4kg, mostly glycogen and water weight I guess.
Days 8 and 9 there was no further weight loss, but my ketone levels were now >3 so I decided to switch to a low carb diet (<20g), still eating just once a day and also trying to restrict calories to 500-800.
I’ve been sticking to this religiously. Today is day 16 and I haven’t lost any further weight at all. I’m stuck at 91kg.
I understand weight loss sometimes stalls, but given I’m on a pretty strict regime, have lots of weight to lose and am just at the start of my diet I’m quite confused about what I’m getting wrong.
I had blood tests last March which checked my Thyroid etc and I am healthy.
Since I started the diet I haven’t been doing any intensive exercise, but I have been keeping active - walking my dog, heavy gardening, helping a friend move house (actually that was quite intensive!)
I find this diet reasonably easy to stick to when I am seeing results, but I am getting really demoralised at the moment.
Ideas please...? | 2017/10/17 | [
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/36336",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/users/26891/"
] | Let me share some things I've learned about good health and effective weight loss/control.
**It's a long-term journey:**
Good health (which includes a healthy body fat composition) is a lifelong journey. Don't get impatient or frustrated. It's great that you're looking for ideas and things to try, but remember that you are in this for the long haul, and two weeks is a short time. I haven't tried a ketogenic diet, but I eat a healthy vegetarian diet, and try to keep the carbs a little low, and the fats a little high. It doesn't sound like you are doing anything wrong, but subjectively speaking your approach sounds difficult and complicated. It'll take you months to get to where you want to go, and your strategy has to be something you can keep up for months. If keto works for you and is sustainable, go for it. If not I would suggest mixing intermittent fasting with "eat food, mostly vegetables, not too much" on your non-fasting days, combined with intermittent fasting.
**Fasting is good for you**
Don't believe anyone who tells you that fasting is unhealthy or dangerous. There is a large and growing body of evidence that fasting is both safe and effective, and has a large [body of positive health benefits](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3680567/). If you are going to do longer fasts (over a week say), you may want to take a multivitamin and mineral supplements, but fasting has been a part of the human experience and human culture for millenia. Unless you are malnourished or have some complicating medical condition, fasting isn't just safe, it's good for you.
I recently completed a seven day fast which I intend to repeat years after reviewing the pretty compelling evidence that doing so dramatically reduces your chances of getting cancer. The evidence is growing that fasting reduces the probability of dementia and Alzheimers as well.
For an excellent survey of the health impacts of periodic fasting and its use for weight loss, I would strongly recommend "The Complete Guide to Fasting" by Jason Fung and Jimmy Moore. It's an extremely well researched and data grounded book, while still very approachable to the lay person. I found it informative and motivating. Dr Fung has a pretty large online presence and you might find it helpful to watch some of his videos.
Fasting isn't just an effective weight loss strategy, it's really healthy.
**Listen to your body**
Checking the scale regularly is a good way to measure progress, but it's not the only way, and it shouldn't be your only metric. How are you feeling? If you're in the middle of a fast it's normal to be hungry, and in the first couple of days of a fast it's common to be tired or irritable, but those shouldn't be chronic experiences. In my seven day fast I found the third day really hard, but the fifth through seventh days I felt great. I also notice my skin clear up and soften and my joint aches disappear, both of which were very pleasant surprises.
**There are physiological reasons you plateau**
There seems to be real tendency for the human body to attempt to maintain a ["set-point weight"](http://www.obesityaction.org/educational-resources/resource-articles-2/weight-loss-surgery/body-weight-set-point-what-we-know-and-what-we-dont-know). If your body is used to being 95 kg, it's going to have physiological responses which try to keep it at that weight.
**Okay, so what does that mean about your frustration?**
Well, you lost 4kg and now you're plateauing for a while... I have read that it's typical to shed excess water during a fast. In one 4 day fast, I lost a kg per day, and regained ~3.2 kg when I broke the fast. My seven day fast was similar: 3 days of 1kg per day weight loss, followed by .2 kg per day, and then regaining a couple kilos after breaking the fast.
When fasting you can expect to burn about 200g of fat a day, more or less depending on your metabolism and activity level. It's very likely that you're continuing to burn fat, but it doesn't show up on the scale because you're retaining more water. Feel free to experiment, but don't get discourages. If you lose 1/2 to 1 kg per week, you're doing great. You do have to keep it up though, so adjust your strategy to something you can maintain.
Based on the set-point weight effect, I set myself plateau goals. I maintain a pretty steady workout regime, and then vary the number of fasting days I do to either lose or maintain weight. So for example, this October I'll do 5 days of 21 hour fasting (and eat healthy on the weekends), expecting to lose a few hundred grams of fat each week. Then I'll try to maintain my new weight for a week or two with a number of fast days, and then I'll try the cycle again.
This is a bit of a personal philosophy, but when doing physical training, be it for strength or endurance, it's important to vary your workout, and it's important to plan recovery periods -- typical marathon training involves 3 weeks of training followed by a recovery week (where you still exercise, but less so you can recharge your batteries). Often a recover week helps you avoid or surpass a plateau. I don't see why it should be different for weight loss.
Last week I didn't lose any weight at all, but looking in the mirror and pinching my belly, and looking at the progress along my belt notches, I'm confident my body fat composition moved in the right direction. So while the scale is important, I'm not letting it be my only measure of progress.
If I'm not making my 2 kg goal per month goal that way, I'll try doing a couple 2-day fasts, or maybe another 4 or 7 day fast -- whatever is convenient.
Hopefully some of that helps you. | It does not look like what you are doing is wrong. General approach to problem solving: if what you are doing is not working, do something different.
1: I am curious whether you maintained your ketone levels after your switch on day 9. Did they stay high?
2: There is a difference in opinion in the literature as to whether one needs to count calories with a ketogenic diet. Currently you are, and what you are doing is not working. **So try not counting calories.** Eat when you are hungry (maintaining ketosis / very low carbs). Eat until you are full. Eat at regular times of day. It is not inherently wrong to eat until you are full and it will not be harder than what you are doing now. And it is different, and still a ketogenic diet.
3. **Review meds**. Some medicines including some commonly prescribed to people with your problems can promote weight gain. Mirtazepine is one example - good for sleep, depression, pain and making you hungry. Review your meds and the side effects and then review them with your prescribing physician. DO NOT TAKE THIS TO MEAN GO COLD TURKEY ON YOUR MEDS.
4. I suspect **exogenous hormone changes** (read birth control pill or the like) sabotage some women who are trying to lose weight. Certain progestins have prednisone-like side effects, for example. 40 is a time of life when some people change what they have been doing - stopping something they used to do, or starting something new. If you are one that uses exogenous hormones, consider going back to what you used 8 years ago before you picked up the weight.
5. **Consider exercise**. Some people consider the presence of ketones to be commanding the body to use fats for fuel, as carbs are in short supply (and need to be reserved for synthetic functions). If you are actually eating until you are full you might find that you have a lot of energy. If you exercise during ketosis, calories you burn will be fat calories. The combination of exercise with ketosis can produce impressive weight loss.
6. **Physical therapy.** If you are getting back into exercise it can be good to have guidance. If you have had medical attention for depression / back pain maybe you have been offered physical therapy. If not usually a request will yield a prescription. A nice thing about PT is that insurance will often pay. You can use your therapist like a personal trainer, guiding you to exercises that suit your body as it is now, and preventing you from hurting yourself.
Side note: I must say the idea of a vegetarian ketogenic diet is a little daunting to me. I am sure there is a literature about it. But even a handful of nuts was enough to break ketosis for me. No beans either. With no meat, fish, beans or nuts I don't know where you will get your protein. A lot of cheese, I guess. Maybe those synthetic soysages. |
36,336 | I need some help please.
I’m 40, female and 173cm tall
I used to be fit and active but over the last 8 years a combination of back problem, depression and insomnia mean things have slipped quite a bit.
I weighed in at 95kg 2 weeks ago, ideally I’d like to be 67kg or bit less. So I need to lose around 28kg. I’m vegetarian, cook from scratch and have a pretty good grasp on biology, nutrition etc.
I’ve had some success with fasting and keto diets in the past. So I started my diet with a 5 day fast to kick start ketosis.
I do blood tests for ketones and blood sugar each morning.
By day 3 my ketone levels were >1.5 - the so called Optimum Ketosis zone.
I ended my fast on day 5 and moved to a eating primarily fats and a bit of protein, making sure it was all v low carb. I continued intermittent fasting, eating just one very modest meal each evening.
By day 7 I’d lost 4kg, mostly glycogen and water weight I guess.
Days 8 and 9 there was no further weight loss, but my ketone levels were now >3 so I decided to switch to a low carb diet (<20g), still eating just once a day and also trying to restrict calories to 500-800.
I’ve been sticking to this religiously. Today is day 16 and I haven’t lost any further weight at all. I’m stuck at 91kg.
I understand weight loss sometimes stalls, but given I’m on a pretty strict regime, have lots of weight to lose and am just at the start of my diet I’m quite confused about what I’m getting wrong.
I had blood tests last March which checked my Thyroid etc and I am healthy.
Since I started the diet I haven’t been doing any intensive exercise, but I have been keeping active - walking my dog, heavy gardening, helping a friend move house (actually that was quite intensive!)
I find this diet reasonably easy to stick to when I am seeing results, but I am getting really demoralised at the moment.
Ideas please...? | 2017/10/17 | [
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/36336",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/users/26891/"
] | First of all eating under BMR may slow down your metabolism - that is the case we do not want. Some researches have shown that keto diet can cause some problems. If you push your body in a bad way, you will end up with some health problems.
Here are my recommendations that worked for me while burning fat and losing weight:
1. Calculate your TDEE and eat 300-500 less of it. You do not have to pay attention too much about what you eat. Since you are on deficit, your body will not store fat. Losing a lot of weight suddenly is unhealthy. The process will take time.
2. Do exercise moderately. Moderate weightlifting is best to burn fat effectively. 2 or 3 times moderate full body workout and 1 or 2 times cardio like swimming is ok. Cardio should also be moderate.
3. Eat enough carbs, fat and protein. Do not be afraid of carbs. Carbs do not make you fat, caloric surplus does. Eat good carbs and do not limit how much carbs you eat. Have balanced meals.
4. Stay away from garbage food as much as possible.
5. Drink enough water and sleep enough.
At the beginning you can gain a few pounds since you will increase your carb intake. Do not worry about it.
Before doing anything consult several doctors.
Edit: If you are going to increase your caloric intake, do it gradually.
For any question feel free to ask. | According to conventional wisdom (and some on this forum?) eating 800 kcal per day or less is crazy and dangerous.
However the credible Medical Doctor and BBC science journalist Michael Mosley is promoting exactly this with his "Fast 800 diet".
As I understand it is based on a large study on reversing diabetes by restricting caloric intake done in the UK called DIRECT.
This may potentially be dangerous and I do not know which steps the NHS in UK and Michael Mosley are taking. Patients on the DIRECT study may e.g. have blood tests done frequently.
Daily blood sugar and ketones measurement may be sufficient. This is not to be taken lightly and anyone starting such a diet will have to research this thoroughly and preferably clear it with their MD.
However from what I understand Michael Mosley is advocating a Mediterranean Diet both in general and also within the "Fast 800 diet". The Mediterranean Diet is low in carbs but high in both protein and unsaturated fat.
I would think that you will have a hard time getting both a decent amount of proteins and a low calory count on a vegetarian diet.
The current international Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for protein is 0.8 g per kg of body weight (bw). Which should amount to 76 gram per day in your case.
So you would have to eat e.g. 750 grams of tofu per day which nets 620 kcal.
Which sounds like hard work and not very pleasant at all.
The same protein target could instead be achieved by e.g. 200 grams chicken and 1/2 l milk per day, which sounds more feasible and would only net 512 kcal.
So you would have some room for e.g. olive oil with your salad.
The ketogenic diet on the other hand seem to be characterized by not counting calories and I would therefore think a higher daily caloric intake.
I cannot help wondering if you by combining two somewhat "extreme" diets have created a new bastarded potentially dangerous diet.
Hope you know what you are doing and everything works out fine.
For a thorough (ca. 3 hrs) debate between a credible proponent of the ketogenic diet and a knowledgable critic I would recommend: [Joe Rogan Experience #1176 - Dom D'Agostino & Layne Norton](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u93oh9kC-rU). |
36,336 | I need some help please.
I’m 40, female and 173cm tall
I used to be fit and active but over the last 8 years a combination of back problem, depression and insomnia mean things have slipped quite a bit.
I weighed in at 95kg 2 weeks ago, ideally I’d like to be 67kg or bit less. So I need to lose around 28kg. I’m vegetarian, cook from scratch and have a pretty good grasp on biology, nutrition etc.
I’ve had some success with fasting and keto diets in the past. So I started my diet with a 5 day fast to kick start ketosis.
I do blood tests for ketones and blood sugar each morning.
By day 3 my ketone levels were >1.5 - the so called Optimum Ketosis zone.
I ended my fast on day 5 and moved to a eating primarily fats and a bit of protein, making sure it was all v low carb. I continued intermittent fasting, eating just one very modest meal each evening.
By day 7 I’d lost 4kg, mostly glycogen and water weight I guess.
Days 8 and 9 there was no further weight loss, but my ketone levels were now >3 so I decided to switch to a low carb diet (<20g), still eating just once a day and also trying to restrict calories to 500-800.
I’ve been sticking to this religiously. Today is day 16 and I haven’t lost any further weight at all. I’m stuck at 91kg.
I understand weight loss sometimes stalls, but given I’m on a pretty strict regime, have lots of weight to lose and am just at the start of my diet I’m quite confused about what I’m getting wrong.
I had blood tests last March which checked my Thyroid etc and I am healthy.
Since I started the diet I haven’t been doing any intensive exercise, but I have been keeping active - walking my dog, heavy gardening, helping a friend move house (actually that was quite intensive!)
I find this diet reasonably easy to stick to when I am seeing results, but I am getting really demoralised at the moment.
Ideas please...? | 2017/10/17 | [
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/36336",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/users/26891/"
] | The most successful (pardon the pun) recipe I've seen for weight loss has the same basic ingredients:
**Control your diet.** I think you definitely have the discipline but 500-800 calories is generally pretty dangerous. I'm not being hyperbolic to state that your body will eventually die if you only consume that many calories, but you'll have plenty of serious health complications first to sound the alarms. There are some good [calorie calculators](https://www.cancer.org/healthy/eat-healthy-get-active/take-control-your-weight/calorie-counter-calculator.html) out there that will tell you (a) how many calories you need to sustain your current body and (b) what kind of reductions you can think about with corresponding anticipated fat loss.
I reject the notion of "it doesn't matter what you eat", and I've seen vegetarians and vegans in particular quite guilty of having terrible [macronutrient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macronutrients) profiles but wrapping it up in a banner of "I'm eating vegetarian/vegan so therefore it's healthy."
**Strength training.** Several times over again, [strength training (typically weight training) has shown to be more effective than "cardio" for fat loss](https://fitness.stackexchange.com/a/19117/7091). In short, your metabolism increases as muscle tissue is expensive to maintain from a caloric prospective.
**Systemic positive health choices.** To this I would put in treating any chronic health issues, getting sufficient sleep, and trying to move around rather than sit down throughout the day.
You mentioned that your current weight gain and fitness loss is over a roughly 8 year period. It took a while to get where you are, and it will take a while to get back from it. Fortunately it won't be 8 years though, I think reasonable in-the-mirror-changes can be expected within the first six months if you stick to it.
It's a whole lifestyle change, but arguably the most critical for any of us to make. | Let me share some things I've learned about good health and effective weight loss/control.
**It's a long-term journey:**
Good health (which includes a healthy body fat composition) is a lifelong journey. Don't get impatient or frustrated. It's great that you're looking for ideas and things to try, but remember that you are in this for the long haul, and two weeks is a short time. I haven't tried a ketogenic diet, but I eat a healthy vegetarian diet, and try to keep the carbs a little low, and the fats a little high. It doesn't sound like you are doing anything wrong, but subjectively speaking your approach sounds difficult and complicated. It'll take you months to get to where you want to go, and your strategy has to be something you can keep up for months. If keto works for you and is sustainable, go for it. If not I would suggest mixing intermittent fasting with "eat food, mostly vegetables, not too much" on your non-fasting days, combined with intermittent fasting.
**Fasting is good for you**
Don't believe anyone who tells you that fasting is unhealthy or dangerous. There is a large and growing body of evidence that fasting is both safe and effective, and has a large [body of positive health benefits](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3680567/). If you are going to do longer fasts (over a week say), you may want to take a multivitamin and mineral supplements, but fasting has been a part of the human experience and human culture for millenia. Unless you are malnourished or have some complicating medical condition, fasting isn't just safe, it's good for you.
I recently completed a seven day fast which I intend to repeat years after reviewing the pretty compelling evidence that doing so dramatically reduces your chances of getting cancer. The evidence is growing that fasting reduces the probability of dementia and Alzheimers as well.
For an excellent survey of the health impacts of periodic fasting and its use for weight loss, I would strongly recommend "The Complete Guide to Fasting" by Jason Fung and Jimmy Moore. It's an extremely well researched and data grounded book, while still very approachable to the lay person. I found it informative and motivating. Dr Fung has a pretty large online presence and you might find it helpful to watch some of his videos.
Fasting isn't just an effective weight loss strategy, it's really healthy.
**Listen to your body**
Checking the scale regularly is a good way to measure progress, but it's not the only way, and it shouldn't be your only metric. How are you feeling? If you're in the middle of a fast it's normal to be hungry, and in the first couple of days of a fast it's common to be tired or irritable, but those shouldn't be chronic experiences. In my seven day fast I found the third day really hard, but the fifth through seventh days I felt great. I also notice my skin clear up and soften and my joint aches disappear, both of which were very pleasant surprises.
**There are physiological reasons you plateau**
There seems to be real tendency for the human body to attempt to maintain a ["set-point weight"](http://www.obesityaction.org/educational-resources/resource-articles-2/weight-loss-surgery/body-weight-set-point-what-we-know-and-what-we-dont-know). If your body is used to being 95 kg, it's going to have physiological responses which try to keep it at that weight.
**Okay, so what does that mean about your frustration?**
Well, you lost 4kg and now you're plateauing for a while... I have read that it's typical to shed excess water during a fast. In one 4 day fast, I lost a kg per day, and regained ~3.2 kg when I broke the fast. My seven day fast was similar: 3 days of 1kg per day weight loss, followed by .2 kg per day, and then regaining a couple kilos after breaking the fast.
When fasting you can expect to burn about 200g of fat a day, more or less depending on your metabolism and activity level. It's very likely that you're continuing to burn fat, but it doesn't show up on the scale because you're retaining more water. Feel free to experiment, but don't get discourages. If you lose 1/2 to 1 kg per week, you're doing great. You do have to keep it up though, so adjust your strategy to something you can maintain.
Based on the set-point weight effect, I set myself plateau goals. I maintain a pretty steady workout regime, and then vary the number of fasting days I do to either lose or maintain weight. So for example, this October I'll do 5 days of 21 hour fasting (and eat healthy on the weekends), expecting to lose a few hundred grams of fat each week. Then I'll try to maintain my new weight for a week or two with a number of fast days, and then I'll try the cycle again.
This is a bit of a personal philosophy, but when doing physical training, be it for strength or endurance, it's important to vary your workout, and it's important to plan recovery periods -- typical marathon training involves 3 weeks of training followed by a recovery week (where you still exercise, but less so you can recharge your batteries). Often a recover week helps you avoid or surpass a plateau. I don't see why it should be different for weight loss.
Last week I didn't lose any weight at all, but looking in the mirror and pinching my belly, and looking at the progress along my belt notches, I'm confident my body fat composition moved in the right direction. So while the scale is important, I'm not letting it be my only measure of progress.
If I'm not making my 2 kg goal per month goal that way, I'll try doing a couple 2-day fasts, or maybe another 4 or 7 day fast -- whatever is convenient.
Hopefully some of that helps you. |
36,336 | I need some help please.
I’m 40, female and 173cm tall
I used to be fit and active but over the last 8 years a combination of back problem, depression and insomnia mean things have slipped quite a bit.
I weighed in at 95kg 2 weeks ago, ideally I’d like to be 67kg or bit less. So I need to lose around 28kg. I’m vegetarian, cook from scratch and have a pretty good grasp on biology, nutrition etc.
I’ve had some success with fasting and keto diets in the past. So I started my diet with a 5 day fast to kick start ketosis.
I do blood tests for ketones and blood sugar each morning.
By day 3 my ketone levels were >1.5 - the so called Optimum Ketosis zone.
I ended my fast on day 5 and moved to a eating primarily fats and a bit of protein, making sure it was all v low carb. I continued intermittent fasting, eating just one very modest meal each evening.
By day 7 I’d lost 4kg, mostly glycogen and water weight I guess.
Days 8 and 9 there was no further weight loss, but my ketone levels were now >3 so I decided to switch to a low carb diet (<20g), still eating just once a day and also trying to restrict calories to 500-800.
I’ve been sticking to this religiously. Today is day 16 and I haven’t lost any further weight at all. I’m stuck at 91kg.
I understand weight loss sometimes stalls, but given I’m on a pretty strict regime, have lots of weight to lose and am just at the start of my diet I’m quite confused about what I’m getting wrong.
I had blood tests last March which checked my Thyroid etc and I am healthy.
Since I started the diet I haven’t been doing any intensive exercise, but I have been keeping active - walking my dog, heavy gardening, helping a friend move house (actually that was quite intensive!)
I find this diet reasonably easy to stick to when I am seeing results, but I am getting really demoralised at the moment.
Ideas please...? | 2017/10/17 | [
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/36336",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/users/26891/"
] | The most successful (pardon the pun) recipe I've seen for weight loss has the same basic ingredients:
**Control your diet.** I think you definitely have the discipline but 500-800 calories is generally pretty dangerous. I'm not being hyperbolic to state that your body will eventually die if you only consume that many calories, but you'll have plenty of serious health complications first to sound the alarms. There are some good [calorie calculators](https://www.cancer.org/healthy/eat-healthy-get-active/take-control-your-weight/calorie-counter-calculator.html) out there that will tell you (a) how many calories you need to sustain your current body and (b) what kind of reductions you can think about with corresponding anticipated fat loss.
I reject the notion of "it doesn't matter what you eat", and I've seen vegetarians and vegans in particular quite guilty of having terrible [macronutrient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macronutrients) profiles but wrapping it up in a banner of "I'm eating vegetarian/vegan so therefore it's healthy."
**Strength training.** Several times over again, [strength training (typically weight training) has shown to be more effective than "cardio" for fat loss](https://fitness.stackexchange.com/a/19117/7091). In short, your metabolism increases as muscle tissue is expensive to maintain from a caloric prospective.
**Systemic positive health choices.** To this I would put in treating any chronic health issues, getting sufficient sleep, and trying to move around rather than sit down throughout the day.
You mentioned that your current weight gain and fitness loss is over a roughly 8 year period. It took a while to get where you are, and it will take a while to get back from it. Fortunately it won't be 8 years though, I think reasonable in-the-mirror-changes can be expected within the first six months if you stick to it.
It's a whole lifestyle change, but arguably the most critical for any of us to make. | According to conventional wisdom (and some on this forum?) eating 800 kcal per day or less is crazy and dangerous.
However the credible Medical Doctor and BBC science journalist Michael Mosley is promoting exactly this with his "Fast 800 diet".
As I understand it is based on a large study on reversing diabetes by restricting caloric intake done in the UK called DIRECT.
This may potentially be dangerous and I do not know which steps the NHS in UK and Michael Mosley are taking. Patients on the DIRECT study may e.g. have blood tests done frequently.
Daily blood sugar and ketones measurement may be sufficient. This is not to be taken lightly and anyone starting such a diet will have to research this thoroughly and preferably clear it with their MD.
However from what I understand Michael Mosley is advocating a Mediterranean Diet both in general and also within the "Fast 800 diet". The Mediterranean Diet is low in carbs but high in both protein and unsaturated fat.
I would think that you will have a hard time getting both a decent amount of proteins and a low calory count on a vegetarian diet.
The current international Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for protein is 0.8 g per kg of body weight (bw). Which should amount to 76 gram per day in your case.
So you would have to eat e.g. 750 grams of tofu per day which nets 620 kcal.
Which sounds like hard work and not very pleasant at all.
The same protein target could instead be achieved by e.g. 200 grams chicken and 1/2 l milk per day, which sounds more feasible and would only net 512 kcal.
So you would have some room for e.g. olive oil with your salad.
The ketogenic diet on the other hand seem to be characterized by not counting calories and I would therefore think a higher daily caloric intake.
I cannot help wondering if you by combining two somewhat "extreme" diets have created a new bastarded potentially dangerous diet.
Hope you know what you are doing and everything works out fine.
For a thorough (ca. 3 hrs) debate between a credible proponent of the ketogenic diet and a knowledgable critic I would recommend: [Joe Rogan Experience #1176 - Dom D'Agostino & Layne Norton](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u93oh9kC-rU). |
36,336 | I need some help please.
I’m 40, female and 173cm tall
I used to be fit and active but over the last 8 years a combination of back problem, depression and insomnia mean things have slipped quite a bit.
I weighed in at 95kg 2 weeks ago, ideally I’d like to be 67kg or bit less. So I need to lose around 28kg. I’m vegetarian, cook from scratch and have a pretty good grasp on biology, nutrition etc.
I’ve had some success with fasting and keto diets in the past. So I started my diet with a 5 day fast to kick start ketosis.
I do blood tests for ketones and blood sugar each morning.
By day 3 my ketone levels were >1.5 - the so called Optimum Ketosis zone.
I ended my fast on day 5 and moved to a eating primarily fats and a bit of protein, making sure it was all v low carb. I continued intermittent fasting, eating just one very modest meal each evening.
By day 7 I’d lost 4kg, mostly glycogen and water weight I guess.
Days 8 and 9 there was no further weight loss, but my ketone levels were now >3 so I decided to switch to a low carb diet (<20g), still eating just once a day and also trying to restrict calories to 500-800.
I’ve been sticking to this religiously. Today is day 16 and I haven’t lost any further weight at all. I’m stuck at 91kg.
I understand weight loss sometimes stalls, but given I’m on a pretty strict regime, have lots of weight to lose and am just at the start of my diet I’m quite confused about what I’m getting wrong.
I had blood tests last March which checked my Thyroid etc and I am healthy.
Since I started the diet I haven’t been doing any intensive exercise, but I have been keeping active - walking my dog, heavy gardening, helping a friend move house (actually that was quite intensive!)
I find this diet reasonably easy to stick to when I am seeing results, but I am getting really demoralised at the moment.
Ideas please...? | 2017/10/17 | [
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/36336",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/users/26891/"
] | The most successful (pardon the pun) recipe I've seen for weight loss has the same basic ingredients:
**Control your diet.** I think you definitely have the discipline but 500-800 calories is generally pretty dangerous. I'm not being hyperbolic to state that your body will eventually die if you only consume that many calories, but you'll have plenty of serious health complications first to sound the alarms. There are some good [calorie calculators](https://www.cancer.org/healthy/eat-healthy-get-active/take-control-your-weight/calorie-counter-calculator.html) out there that will tell you (a) how many calories you need to sustain your current body and (b) what kind of reductions you can think about with corresponding anticipated fat loss.
I reject the notion of "it doesn't matter what you eat", and I've seen vegetarians and vegans in particular quite guilty of having terrible [macronutrient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macronutrients) profiles but wrapping it up in a banner of "I'm eating vegetarian/vegan so therefore it's healthy."
**Strength training.** Several times over again, [strength training (typically weight training) has shown to be more effective than "cardio" for fat loss](https://fitness.stackexchange.com/a/19117/7091). In short, your metabolism increases as muscle tissue is expensive to maintain from a caloric prospective.
**Systemic positive health choices.** To this I would put in treating any chronic health issues, getting sufficient sleep, and trying to move around rather than sit down throughout the day.
You mentioned that your current weight gain and fitness loss is over a roughly 8 year period. It took a while to get where you are, and it will take a while to get back from it. Fortunately it won't be 8 years though, I think reasonable in-the-mirror-changes can be expected within the first six months if you stick to it.
It's a whole lifestyle change, but arguably the most critical for any of us to make. | It does not look like what you are doing is wrong. General approach to problem solving: if what you are doing is not working, do something different.
1: I am curious whether you maintained your ketone levels after your switch on day 9. Did they stay high?
2: There is a difference in opinion in the literature as to whether one needs to count calories with a ketogenic diet. Currently you are, and what you are doing is not working. **So try not counting calories.** Eat when you are hungry (maintaining ketosis / very low carbs). Eat until you are full. Eat at regular times of day. It is not inherently wrong to eat until you are full and it will not be harder than what you are doing now. And it is different, and still a ketogenic diet.
3. **Review meds**. Some medicines including some commonly prescribed to people with your problems can promote weight gain. Mirtazepine is one example - good for sleep, depression, pain and making you hungry. Review your meds and the side effects and then review them with your prescribing physician. DO NOT TAKE THIS TO MEAN GO COLD TURKEY ON YOUR MEDS.
4. I suspect **exogenous hormone changes** (read birth control pill or the like) sabotage some women who are trying to lose weight. Certain progestins have prednisone-like side effects, for example. 40 is a time of life when some people change what they have been doing - stopping something they used to do, or starting something new. If you are one that uses exogenous hormones, consider going back to what you used 8 years ago before you picked up the weight.
5. **Consider exercise**. Some people consider the presence of ketones to be commanding the body to use fats for fuel, as carbs are in short supply (and need to be reserved for synthetic functions). If you are actually eating until you are full you might find that you have a lot of energy. If you exercise during ketosis, calories you burn will be fat calories. The combination of exercise with ketosis can produce impressive weight loss.
6. **Physical therapy.** If you are getting back into exercise it can be good to have guidance. If you have had medical attention for depression / back pain maybe you have been offered physical therapy. If not usually a request will yield a prescription. A nice thing about PT is that insurance will often pay. You can use your therapist like a personal trainer, guiding you to exercises that suit your body as it is now, and preventing you from hurting yourself.
Side note: I must say the idea of a vegetarian ketogenic diet is a little daunting to me. I am sure there is a literature about it. But even a handful of nuts was enough to break ketosis for me. No beans either. With no meat, fish, beans or nuts I don't know where you will get your protein. A lot of cheese, I guess. Maybe those synthetic soysages. |
36,336 | I need some help please.
I’m 40, female and 173cm tall
I used to be fit and active but over the last 8 years a combination of back problem, depression and insomnia mean things have slipped quite a bit.
I weighed in at 95kg 2 weeks ago, ideally I’d like to be 67kg or bit less. So I need to lose around 28kg. I’m vegetarian, cook from scratch and have a pretty good grasp on biology, nutrition etc.
I’ve had some success with fasting and keto diets in the past. So I started my diet with a 5 day fast to kick start ketosis.
I do blood tests for ketones and blood sugar each morning.
By day 3 my ketone levels were >1.5 - the so called Optimum Ketosis zone.
I ended my fast on day 5 and moved to a eating primarily fats and a bit of protein, making sure it was all v low carb. I continued intermittent fasting, eating just one very modest meal each evening.
By day 7 I’d lost 4kg, mostly glycogen and water weight I guess.
Days 8 and 9 there was no further weight loss, but my ketone levels were now >3 so I decided to switch to a low carb diet (<20g), still eating just once a day and also trying to restrict calories to 500-800.
I’ve been sticking to this religiously. Today is day 16 and I haven’t lost any further weight at all. I’m stuck at 91kg.
I understand weight loss sometimes stalls, but given I’m on a pretty strict regime, have lots of weight to lose and am just at the start of my diet I’m quite confused about what I’m getting wrong.
I had blood tests last March which checked my Thyroid etc and I am healthy.
Since I started the diet I haven’t been doing any intensive exercise, but I have been keeping active - walking my dog, heavy gardening, helping a friend move house (actually that was quite intensive!)
I find this diet reasonably easy to stick to when I am seeing results, but I am getting really demoralised at the moment.
Ideas please...? | 2017/10/17 | [
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/36336",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/users/26891/"
] | Let me share some things I've learned about good health and effective weight loss/control.
**It's a long-term journey:**
Good health (which includes a healthy body fat composition) is a lifelong journey. Don't get impatient or frustrated. It's great that you're looking for ideas and things to try, but remember that you are in this for the long haul, and two weeks is a short time. I haven't tried a ketogenic diet, but I eat a healthy vegetarian diet, and try to keep the carbs a little low, and the fats a little high. It doesn't sound like you are doing anything wrong, but subjectively speaking your approach sounds difficult and complicated. It'll take you months to get to where you want to go, and your strategy has to be something you can keep up for months. If keto works for you and is sustainable, go for it. If not I would suggest mixing intermittent fasting with "eat food, mostly vegetables, not too much" on your non-fasting days, combined with intermittent fasting.
**Fasting is good for you**
Don't believe anyone who tells you that fasting is unhealthy or dangerous. There is a large and growing body of evidence that fasting is both safe and effective, and has a large [body of positive health benefits](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3680567/). If you are going to do longer fasts (over a week say), you may want to take a multivitamin and mineral supplements, but fasting has been a part of the human experience and human culture for millenia. Unless you are malnourished or have some complicating medical condition, fasting isn't just safe, it's good for you.
I recently completed a seven day fast which I intend to repeat years after reviewing the pretty compelling evidence that doing so dramatically reduces your chances of getting cancer. The evidence is growing that fasting reduces the probability of dementia and Alzheimers as well.
For an excellent survey of the health impacts of periodic fasting and its use for weight loss, I would strongly recommend "The Complete Guide to Fasting" by Jason Fung and Jimmy Moore. It's an extremely well researched and data grounded book, while still very approachable to the lay person. I found it informative and motivating. Dr Fung has a pretty large online presence and you might find it helpful to watch some of his videos.
Fasting isn't just an effective weight loss strategy, it's really healthy.
**Listen to your body**
Checking the scale regularly is a good way to measure progress, but it's not the only way, and it shouldn't be your only metric. How are you feeling? If you're in the middle of a fast it's normal to be hungry, and in the first couple of days of a fast it's common to be tired or irritable, but those shouldn't be chronic experiences. In my seven day fast I found the third day really hard, but the fifth through seventh days I felt great. I also notice my skin clear up and soften and my joint aches disappear, both of which were very pleasant surprises.
**There are physiological reasons you plateau**
There seems to be real tendency for the human body to attempt to maintain a ["set-point weight"](http://www.obesityaction.org/educational-resources/resource-articles-2/weight-loss-surgery/body-weight-set-point-what-we-know-and-what-we-dont-know). If your body is used to being 95 kg, it's going to have physiological responses which try to keep it at that weight.
**Okay, so what does that mean about your frustration?**
Well, you lost 4kg and now you're plateauing for a while... I have read that it's typical to shed excess water during a fast. In one 4 day fast, I lost a kg per day, and regained ~3.2 kg when I broke the fast. My seven day fast was similar: 3 days of 1kg per day weight loss, followed by .2 kg per day, and then regaining a couple kilos after breaking the fast.
When fasting you can expect to burn about 200g of fat a day, more or less depending on your metabolism and activity level. It's very likely that you're continuing to burn fat, but it doesn't show up on the scale because you're retaining more water. Feel free to experiment, but don't get discourages. If you lose 1/2 to 1 kg per week, you're doing great. You do have to keep it up though, so adjust your strategy to something you can maintain.
Based on the set-point weight effect, I set myself plateau goals. I maintain a pretty steady workout regime, and then vary the number of fasting days I do to either lose or maintain weight. So for example, this October I'll do 5 days of 21 hour fasting (and eat healthy on the weekends), expecting to lose a few hundred grams of fat each week. Then I'll try to maintain my new weight for a week or two with a number of fast days, and then I'll try the cycle again.
This is a bit of a personal philosophy, but when doing physical training, be it for strength or endurance, it's important to vary your workout, and it's important to plan recovery periods -- typical marathon training involves 3 weeks of training followed by a recovery week (where you still exercise, but less so you can recharge your batteries). Often a recover week helps you avoid or surpass a plateau. I don't see why it should be different for weight loss.
Last week I didn't lose any weight at all, but looking in the mirror and pinching my belly, and looking at the progress along my belt notches, I'm confident my body fat composition moved in the right direction. So while the scale is important, I'm not letting it be my only measure of progress.
If I'm not making my 2 kg goal per month goal that way, I'll try doing a couple 2-day fasts, or maybe another 4 or 7 day fast -- whatever is convenient.
Hopefully some of that helps you. | According to conventional wisdom (and some on this forum?) eating 800 kcal per day or less is crazy and dangerous.
However the credible Medical Doctor and BBC science journalist Michael Mosley is promoting exactly this with his "Fast 800 diet".
As I understand it is based on a large study on reversing diabetes by restricting caloric intake done in the UK called DIRECT.
This may potentially be dangerous and I do not know which steps the NHS in UK and Michael Mosley are taking. Patients on the DIRECT study may e.g. have blood tests done frequently.
Daily blood sugar and ketones measurement may be sufficient. This is not to be taken lightly and anyone starting such a diet will have to research this thoroughly and preferably clear it with their MD.
However from what I understand Michael Mosley is advocating a Mediterranean Diet both in general and also within the "Fast 800 diet". The Mediterranean Diet is low in carbs but high in both protein and unsaturated fat.
I would think that you will have a hard time getting both a decent amount of proteins and a low calory count on a vegetarian diet.
The current international Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for protein is 0.8 g per kg of body weight (bw). Which should amount to 76 gram per day in your case.
So you would have to eat e.g. 750 grams of tofu per day which nets 620 kcal.
Which sounds like hard work and not very pleasant at all.
The same protein target could instead be achieved by e.g. 200 grams chicken and 1/2 l milk per day, which sounds more feasible and would only net 512 kcal.
So you would have some room for e.g. olive oil with your salad.
The ketogenic diet on the other hand seem to be characterized by not counting calories and I would therefore think a higher daily caloric intake.
I cannot help wondering if you by combining two somewhat "extreme" diets have created a new bastarded potentially dangerous diet.
Hope you know what you are doing and everything works out fine.
For a thorough (ca. 3 hrs) debate between a credible proponent of the ketogenic diet and a knowledgable critic I would recommend: [Joe Rogan Experience #1176 - Dom D'Agostino & Layne Norton](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u93oh9kC-rU). |
36,336 | I need some help please.
I’m 40, female and 173cm tall
I used to be fit and active but over the last 8 years a combination of back problem, depression and insomnia mean things have slipped quite a bit.
I weighed in at 95kg 2 weeks ago, ideally I’d like to be 67kg or bit less. So I need to lose around 28kg. I’m vegetarian, cook from scratch and have a pretty good grasp on biology, nutrition etc.
I’ve had some success with fasting and keto diets in the past. So I started my diet with a 5 day fast to kick start ketosis.
I do blood tests for ketones and blood sugar each morning.
By day 3 my ketone levels were >1.5 - the so called Optimum Ketosis zone.
I ended my fast on day 5 and moved to a eating primarily fats and a bit of protein, making sure it was all v low carb. I continued intermittent fasting, eating just one very modest meal each evening.
By day 7 I’d lost 4kg, mostly glycogen and water weight I guess.
Days 8 and 9 there was no further weight loss, but my ketone levels were now >3 so I decided to switch to a low carb diet (<20g), still eating just once a day and also trying to restrict calories to 500-800.
I’ve been sticking to this religiously. Today is day 16 and I haven’t lost any further weight at all. I’m stuck at 91kg.
I understand weight loss sometimes stalls, but given I’m on a pretty strict regime, have lots of weight to lose and am just at the start of my diet I’m quite confused about what I’m getting wrong.
I had blood tests last March which checked my Thyroid etc and I am healthy.
Since I started the diet I haven’t been doing any intensive exercise, but I have been keeping active - walking my dog, heavy gardening, helping a friend move house (actually that was quite intensive!)
I find this diet reasonably easy to stick to when I am seeing results, but I am getting really demoralised at the moment.
Ideas please...? | 2017/10/17 | [
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/36336",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/users/26891/"
] | It does not look like what you are doing is wrong. General approach to problem solving: if what you are doing is not working, do something different.
1: I am curious whether you maintained your ketone levels after your switch on day 9. Did they stay high?
2: There is a difference in opinion in the literature as to whether one needs to count calories with a ketogenic diet. Currently you are, and what you are doing is not working. **So try not counting calories.** Eat when you are hungry (maintaining ketosis / very low carbs). Eat until you are full. Eat at regular times of day. It is not inherently wrong to eat until you are full and it will not be harder than what you are doing now. And it is different, and still a ketogenic diet.
3. **Review meds**. Some medicines including some commonly prescribed to people with your problems can promote weight gain. Mirtazepine is one example - good for sleep, depression, pain and making you hungry. Review your meds and the side effects and then review them with your prescribing physician. DO NOT TAKE THIS TO MEAN GO COLD TURKEY ON YOUR MEDS.
4. I suspect **exogenous hormone changes** (read birth control pill or the like) sabotage some women who are trying to lose weight. Certain progestins have prednisone-like side effects, for example. 40 is a time of life when some people change what they have been doing - stopping something they used to do, or starting something new. If you are one that uses exogenous hormones, consider going back to what you used 8 years ago before you picked up the weight.
5. **Consider exercise**. Some people consider the presence of ketones to be commanding the body to use fats for fuel, as carbs are in short supply (and need to be reserved for synthetic functions). If you are actually eating until you are full you might find that you have a lot of energy. If you exercise during ketosis, calories you burn will be fat calories. The combination of exercise with ketosis can produce impressive weight loss.
6. **Physical therapy.** If you are getting back into exercise it can be good to have guidance. If you have had medical attention for depression / back pain maybe you have been offered physical therapy. If not usually a request will yield a prescription. A nice thing about PT is that insurance will often pay. You can use your therapist like a personal trainer, guiding you to exercises that suit your body as it is now, and preventing you from hurting yourself.
Side note: I must say the idea of a vegetarian ketogenic diet is a little daunting to me. I am sure there is a literature about it. But even a handful of nuts was enough to break ketosis for me. No beans either. With no meat, fish, beans or nuts I don't know where you will get your protein. A lot of cheese, I guess. Maybe those synthetic soysages. | There are several factors to weight loss. It all depends on where you are starting, and what your target/goals are.
While calories count, hormones have a far larger influence in terms of what/when/how you absorb/use/store nutrition. Insulin levels and resistance are huge in this. As are other hormones like cortisol are also factors. Not to mention hunger/satiety hormones.
The most effective ways to influence these seems to be based around:
1. Eating frequency
2. Macro nutrient profile
3. Caloric load
### Eating Frequency
In terms of eating frequency, the old adage of eat many small meals may not be the best advice for weight loss. More recent research shows that eating fewer/larger meals is better for weight loss than more frequent eating. Specifically extending fasting periods (days at a time) works very well.
Every time you eat, you get hormone responses to process what you eat, this can have a huge effect. Also, hunger does not correlate so much with caloric need, it tends to be a circadian response to when you eat, and what you last ate.
### Macro Nutrient Profile
If you are diabetic, you *REALLY* want to minimize your carbs. You can make up caloric need with additional fats. Protein needs are based around your lean body mass, and your weight lifting/workout profile.
Fat is not the enemy, you want about 0.5 - 1g of fat per gram of protein. This helps offset insulin response and keeps your macro profile in a great range.
Avoid sugars, when you have them, they should be part of whole fruit and nuts. If you are doing keto, then just don't have them... Under 5g of sugars a day should be your goal on keto. Alcohol sugars also affect different people differently, and depends heavily on your gut flora. Avoid them if you are stalling out, see how they effect you.
Other carbs, on keto, your total carbs (including fiber, hidden carbs, etc) should be well under 30-50g/day or around 5% of your daily calories. Your net carbs (total minus 1/2 alcohol sugars and fiber) should be under 20g/day. Absorption of fiber, alcohol sugars will vary by person. Also, there are fractions of carbs in everything, and they add up. If you aren't insulin resistant, you can have 100-200g carbs on a given day, but may want to minimize anything refined or starchy.
Alcohol, while alcohol doesn't count as a carb completely, you can think of it as a super carb in terms of calories and influence on your body. A little is fine, but should be no more than 4-8 servings a week if you can avoid it.
### Hormone Response
In general carbs will cause insulin response. The breakdown of sugars goes into both unhealthy fats and glucose in the body and can cause insulin resistance alone. Other carbs will have a similar effect, but sugars are particularly bad and should be minimized.
Proteins also cause insulin response, but have a different profile breakdown, there are also other hormone responses that offset the insulin increase. Fats with protein seem to have the best response.
### Caloric load
Calories still count... if you eat 5000g fat/day, you will gain some weight. It won't be the same as 5000g sugar/day, or even carbs/day. The macros have different effects, but in general, you want to target your minimal needs and fill up to your caloric load (BMR + exercise). If you are losing weight, target 75-85% of your caloric load on average, or have extended fasting between meals.
### More on Fasting
As an aside, the effects of an extended water fast are a bit different than just a low calorie intake. Many use a ketogenic diet as a path to make fasting for extended periods (one meal a day, or less). |
36,336 | I need some help please.
I’m 40, female and 173cm tall
I used to be fit and active but over the last 8 years a combination of back problem, depression and insomnia mean things have slipped quite a bit.
I weighed in at 95kg 2 weeks ago, ideally I’d like to be 67kg or bit less. So I need to lose around 28kg. I’m vegetarian, cook from scratch and have a pretty good grasp on biology, nutrition etc.
I’ve had some success with fasting and keto diets in the past. So I started my diet with a 5 day fast to kick start ketosis.
I do blood tests for ketones and blood sugar each morning.
By day 3 my ketone levels were >1.5 - the so called Optimum Ketosis zone.
I ended my fast on day 5 and moved to a eating primarily fats and a bit of protein, making sure it was all v low carb. I continued intermittent fasting, eating just one very modest meal each evening.
By day 7 I’d lost 4kg, mostly glycogen and water weight I guess.
Days 8 and 9 there was no further weight loss, but my ketone levels were now >3 so I decided to switch to a low carb diet (<20g), still eating just once a day and also trying to restrict calories to 500-800.
I’ve been sticking to this religiously. Today is day 16 and I haven’t lost any further weight at all. I’m stuck at 91kg.
I understand weight loss sometimes stalls, but given I’m on a pretty strict regime, have lots of weight to lose and am just at the start of my diet I’m quite confused about what I’m getting wrong.
I had blood tests last March which checked my Thyroid etc and I am healthy.
Since I started the diet I haven’t been doing any intensive exercise, but I have been keeping active - walking my dog, heavy gardening, helping a friend move house (actually that was quite intensive!)
I find this diet reasonably easy to stick to when I am seeing results, but I am getting really demoralised at the moment.
Ideas please...? | 2017/10/17 | [
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/36336",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/users/26891/"
] | The most successful (pardon the pun) recipe I've seen for weight loss has the same basic ingredients:
**Control your diet.** I think you definitely have the discipline but 500-800 calories is generally pretty dangerous. I'm not being hyperbolic to state that your body will eventually die if you only consume that many calories, but you'll have plenty of serious health complications first to sound the alarms. There are some good [calorie calculators](https://www.cancer.org/healthy/eat-healthy-get-active/take-control-your-weight/calorie-counter-calculator.html) out there that will tell you (a) how many calories you need to sustain your current body and (b) what kind of reductions you can think about with corresponding anticipated fat loss.
I reject the notion of "it doesn't matter what you eat", and I've seen vegetarians and vegans in particular quite guilty of having terrible [macronutrient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macronutrients) profiles but wrapping it up in a banner of "I'm eating vegetarian/vegan so therefore it's healthy."
**Strength training.** Several times over again, [strength training (typically weight training) has shown to be more effective than "cardio" for fat loss](https://fitness.stackexchange.com/a/19117/7091). In short, your metabolism increases as muscle tissue is expensive to maintain from a caloric prospective.
**Systemic positive health choices.** To this I would put in treating any chronic health issues, getting sufficient sleep, and trying to move around rather than sit down throughout the day.
You mentioned that your current weight gain and fitness loss is over a roughly 8 year period. It took a while to get where you are, and it will take a while to get back from it. Fortunately it won't be 8 years though, I think reasonable in-the-mirror-changes can be expected within the first six months if you stick to it.
It's a whole lifestyle change, but arguably the most critical for any of us to make. | There are several factors to weight loss. It all depends on where you are starting, and what your target/goals are.
While calories count, hormones have a far larger influence in terms of what/when/how you absorb/use/store nutrition. Insulin levels and resistance are huge in this. As are other hormones like cortisol are also factors. Not to mention hunger/satiety hormones.
The most effective ways to influence these seems to be based around:
1. Eating frequency
2. Macro nutrient profile
3. Caloric load
### Eating Frequency
In terms of eating frequency, the old adage of eat many small meals may not be the best advice for weight loss. More recent research shows that eating fewer/larger meals is better for weight loss than more frequent eating. Specifically extending fasting periods (days at a time) works very well.
Every time you eat, you get hormone responses to process what you eat, this can have a huge effect. Also, hunger does not correlate so much with caloric need, it tends to be a circadian response to when you eat, and what you last ate.
### Macro Nutrient Profile
If you are diabetic, you *REALLY* want to minimize your carbs. You can make up caloric need with additional fats. Protein needs are based around your lean body mass, and your weight lifting/workout profile.
Fat is not the enemy, you want about 0.5 - 1g of fat per gram of protein. This helps offset insulin response and keeps your macro profile in a great range.
Avoid sugars, when you have them, they should be part of whole fruit and nuts. If you are doing keto, then just don't have them... Under 5g of sugars a day should be your goal on keto. Alcohol sugars also affect different people differently, and depends heavily on your gut flora. Avoid them if you are stalling out, see how they effect you.
Other carbs, on keto, your total carbs (including fiber, hidden carbs, etc) should be well under 30-50g/day or around 5% of your daily calories. Your net carbs (total minus 1/2 alcohol sugars and fiber) should be under 20g/day. Absorption of fiber, alcohol sugars will vary by person. Also, there are fractions of carbs in everything, and they add up. If you aren't insulin resistant, you can have 100-200g carbs on a given day, but may want to minimize anything refined or starchy.
Alcohol, while alcohol doesn't count as a carb completely, you can think of it as a super carb in terms of calories and influence on your body. A little is fine, but should be no more than 4-8 servings a week if you can avoid it.
### Hormone Response
In general carbs will cause insulin response. The breakdown of sugars goes into both unhealthy fats and glucose in the body and can cause insulin resistance alone. Other carbs will have a similar effect, but sugars are particularly bad and should be minimized.
Proteins also cause insulin response, but have a different profile breakdown, there are also other hormone responses that offset the insulin increase. Fats with protein seem to have the best response.
### Caloric load
Calories still count... if you eat 5000g fat/day, you will gain some weight. It won't be the same as 5000g sugar/day, or even carbs/day. The macros have different effects, but in general, you want to target your minimal needs and fill up to your caloric load (BMR + exercise). If you are losing weight, target 75-85% of your caloric load on average, or have extended fasting between meals.
### More on Fasting
As an aside, the effects of an extended water fast are a bit different than just a low calorie intake. Many use a ketogenic diet as a path to make fasting for extended periods (one meal a day, or less). |
36,336 | I need some help please.
I’m 40, female and 173cm tall
I used to be fit and active but over the last 8 years a combination of back problem, depression and insomnia mean things have slipped quite a bit.
I weighed in at 95kg 2 weeks ago, ideally I’d like to be 67kg or bit less. So I need to lose around 28kg. I’m vegetarian, cook from scratch and have a pretty good grasp on biology, nutrition etc.
I’ve had some success with fasting and keto diets in the past. So I started my diet with a 5 day fast to kick start ketosis.
I do blood tests for ketones and blood sugar each morning.
By day 3 my ketone levels were >1.5 - the so called Optimum Ketosis zone.
I ended my fast on day 5 and moved to a eating primarily fats and a bit of protein, making sure it was all v low carb. I continued intermittent fasting, eating just one very modest meal each evening.
By day 7 I’d lost 4kg, mostly glycogen and water weight I guess.
Days 8 and 9 there was no further weight loss, but my ketone levels were now >3 so I decided to switch to a low carb diet (<20g), still eating just once a day and also trying to restrict calories to 500-800.
I’ve been sticking to this religiously. Today is day 16 and I haven’t lost any further weight at all. I’m stuck at 91kg.
I understand weight loss sometimes stalls, but given I’m on a pretty strict regime, have lots of weight to lose and am just at the start of my diet I’m quite confused about what I’m getting wrong.
I had blood tests last March which checked my Thyroid etc and I am healthy.
Since I started the diet I haven’t been doing any intensive exercise, but I have been keeping active - walking my dog, heavy gardening, helping a friend move house (actually that was quite intensive!)
I find this diet reasonably easy to stick to when I am seeing results, but I am getting really demoralised at the moment.
Ideas please...? | 2017/10/17 | [
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/36336",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com",
"https://fitness.stackexchange.com/users/26891/"
] | First of all eating under BMR may slow down your metabolism - that is the case we do not want. Some researches have shown that keto diet can cause some problems. If you push your body in a bad way, you will end up with some health problems.
Here are my recommendations that worked for me while burning fat and losing weight:
1. Calculate your TDEE and eat 300-500 less of it. You do not have to pay attention too much about what you eat. Since you are on deficit, your body will not store fat. Losing a lot of weight suddenly is unhealthy. The process will take time.
2. Do exercise moderately. Moderate weightlifting is best to burn fat effectively. 2 or 3 times moderate full body workout and 1 or 2 times cardio like swimming is ok. Cardio should also be moderate.
3. Eat enough carbs, fat and protein. Do not be afraid of carbs. Carbs do not make you fat, caloric surplus does. Eat good carbs and do not limit how much carbs you eat. Have balanced meals.
4. Stay away from garbage food as much as possible.
5. Drink enough water and sleep enough.
At the beginning you can gain a few pounds since you will increase your carb intake. Do not worry about it.
Before doing anything consult several doctors.
Edit: If you are going to increase your caloric intake, do it gradually.
For any question feel free to ask. | It does not look like what you are doing is wrong. General approach to problem solving: if what you are doing is not working, do something different.
1: I am curious whether you maintained your ketone levels after your switch on day 9. Did they stay high?
2: There is a difference in opinion in the literature as to whether one needs to count calories with a ketogenic diet. Currently you are, and what you are doing is not working. **So try not counting calories.** Eat when you are hungry (maintaining ketosis / very low carbs). Eat until you are full. Eat at regular times of day. It is not inherently wrong to eat until you are full and it will not be harder than what you are doing now. And it is different, and still a ketogenic diet.
3. **Review meds**. Some medicines including some commonly prescribed to people with your problems can promote weight gain. Mirtazepine is one example - good for sleep, depression, pain and making you hungry. Review your meds and the side effects and then review them with your prescribing physician. DO NOT TAKE THIS TO MEAN GO COLD TURKEY ON YOUR MEDS.
4. I suspect **exogenous hormone changes** (read birth control pill or the like) sabotage some women who are trying to lose weight. Certain progestins have prednisone-like side effects, for example. 40 is a time of life when some people change what they have been doing - stopping something they used to do, or starting something new. If you are one that uses exogenous hormones, consider going back to what you used 8 years ago before you picked up the weight.
5. **Consider exercise**. Some people consider the presence of ketones to be commanding the body to use fats for fuel, as carbs are in short supply (and need to be reserved for synthetic functions). If you are actually eating until you are full you might find that you have a lot of energy. If you exercise during ketosis, calories you burn will be fat calories. The combination of exercise with ketosis can produce impressive weight loss.
6. **Physical therapy.** If you are getting back into exercise it can be good to have guidance. If you have had medical attention for depression / back pain maybe you have been offered physical therapy. If not usually a request will yield a prescription. A nice thing about PT is that insurance will often pay. You can use your therapist like a personal trainer, guiding you to exercises that suit your body as it is now, and preventing you from hurting yourself.
Side note: I must say the idea of a vegetarian ketogenic diet is a little daunting to me. I am sure there is a literature about it. But even a handful of nuts was enough to break ketosis for me. No beans either. With no meat, fish, beans or nuts I don't know where you will get your protein. A lot of cheese, I guess. Maybe those synthetic soysages. |
51,962 | The spellcasting section specifies (emphasis mine):
>
> Area Spells: Area spells can be cast on a specific target
> or a point in space that you can see. Unless noted in
> a spell, the area of the spell is a sphere centered on the
> target with a radius in meters equal to the Force of the
> spell. **All targets in the area of effect that you can see,
> friend and foe alike, are valid targets for the spell. If a potential
> target is outside your vision (behind a screen, for
> example), they’re not affected.**
>
>
>
I don't think it make sense that a fireball would just not explode into places you can't see, especially considering the note on indirect spells:
>
> Indirect spells:
>
> [...]
>
> So you don’t really need to be able to see the target—you can
> cast these spells blindfolded or with artificial image enhancement—
> as long as you’ve got a clear line of fire.
> [...]
>
>
>
So I was wondering if it only applies to direct damage and effects like illusions and such, and indirect spells like fireballs would affect all targets in its area regardless of whether the caster can see them or not? | 2014/12/10 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/51962",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/15711/"
] | I don't think you'll find a definitive answer unless they clarify in the errata, but my impression is this:
Anyone in your line of site can be a target, the focus of the spell; if they are not in your line of site, they cannot be the *target* of the spell.
If you throw a fireball at a guy standing outside a wage-slave's cubicle, chewing him out, then the fireball would effect everything within the radius - walls, papers, computers, the poor unfortunate inside.
If the guy sees you coming, and ducks inside while you're getting ready, then you could no longer target him. But (assuming you're not a dwarf), you could choose the top of the cubicle as the center of your attack, and still hit him with the AoE.
To me, that seems to be the spirit of the rule, even if the wording is ambiguous. | I might be wrong as these rules have a history of being unclear, but I was under the impression that the difference lied mostly between physical (fireball) and mana spell (mana ball).
I understood it that physical area spells could be targeted pretty much anywhere in your line of sight, and since they are actually physical in manifestation, they would hit anybody in its area, whereas mana spells actually required that you can provide the "mystical link" hinted at in the magic section to all targets, that need be in the area. That is for mana spells, all targets in the area must be seen to be affected |
3,923,285 | is it possible to remove Main Domain cookie from Sub Domain ?I am using single sign on .On logout i want to remove the maindomain cookie | 2010/10/13 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3923285",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/-1/"
] | As far as I know, you can't do that.
But couldn't you just point the logout call at the main domain? (presumably you're already doing this for the login call, in order to get the main domain cookie in the first place) | I suspect you would have to navigate to the parent domain, have *it* remove the cookie, and then maybe redirect back to the child site (perhaps passing the return url encoded on the query-string). |
3,923,285 | is it possible to remove Main Domain cookie from Sub Domain ?I am using single sign on .On logout i want to remove the maindomain cookie | 2010/10/13 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3923285",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/-1/"
] | As far as I know, you can't do that.
But couldn't you just point the logout call at the main domain? (presumably you're already doing this for the login call, in order to get the main domain cookie in the first place) | not ideal and not tested / validated, but you might be able to unset the cookie on the client (e.g. using javascript). Not the most elegant solution, but could potentially work. |
180,642 | Could someone please tell me why the editing of questions (mine and others) is disabled in my account?
It has been a very long time since I have been question banned, after your site told me that deleting questions again and again is not a good thing without any logical reason. I was paying attention to the Stack Overflow site very genuinely.
Because I didn't find any other option to ask my question, I asked this question here because you have closed 40% of my posts, which is creating a problem for me. I am unable to ask any questions and also not able to edit any question/answer.
I do realize all the mistakes I've made. But what should I do now? | 2013/05/17 | [
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/180642",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/170522/"
] | Your suggested edit ban is for having too many edits rejected recently; you had quite a few rejected on May 10th. (Have a look through <https://stackoverflow.com/users/889843/varsha?tab=activity&sort=suggestions> ). Note that suggested edits should address multiple substantive problems with a post; suggestions to correct minor grammatical problems are very likely to be rejected as Too Minor. | >
> Why editing of questions(mine and others) is disabled in my account?
>
>
>
Probably you are banned for a week from suggesting edits as you have [13 rejected edits against 10 approved](https://stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits/2087941). I think you should be enabled to edit your own post.
>
> It's a very long time closing of my "Ask Question"...
>
>
>
The asking ban will not be lifted without doing anything. You have to improve your previos posts. As you have deleted your questions, you have to undelete and improve them. For that flag one of your post and ask moderators to undelete your deleted questions. |
180,642 | Could someone please tell me why the editing of questions (mine and others) is disabled in my account?
It has been a very long time since I have been question banned, after your site told me that deleting questions again and again is not a good thing without any logical reason. I was paying attention to the Stack Overflow site very genuinely.
Because I didn't find any other option to ask my question, I asked this question here because you have closed 40% of my posts, which is creating a problem for me. I am unable to ask any questions and also not able to edit any question/answer.
I do realize all the mistakes I've made. But what should I do now? | 2013/05/17 | [
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/180642",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/170522/"
] | >
> Why editing of questions(mine and others) is disabled in my account?
>
>
>
Probably you are banned for a week from suggesting edits as you have [13 rejected edits against 10 approved](https://stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits/2087941). I think you should be enabled to edit your own post.
>
> It's a very long time closing of my "Ask Question"...
>
>
>
The asking ban will not be lifted without doing anything. You have to improve your previos posts. As you have deleted your questions, you have to undelete and improve them. For that flag one of your post and ask moderators to undelete your deleted questions. | Indeed deleting many questions is considered "not a good thing". The system just sees this as vandalism - *"why is this user going around deleting lots of content?!?"*. It is true that sometimes you're actually *trying to do the right thing* but the system still sees your actions as potentially harmful to the community.
As others have already said, the systems here are **automatic** and there really isn't a person who is manually looking at your actions and deciding "ok, you've learnt your lesson". Posting this question here is indeed the correct thing to do in this instance. There is however lots of posts here on [Meta](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/) taking about the different types of bans and peoples recommendations on how to correct your behavior on the site.
In the same way that you've been a member of the site for over a year and *only now* the system has taken action, you'll have to work hard to make the system notice that you've changed your behavior. The *very best* thing that you can do is answer other peoples questions. This is one of the best ways to indicate to the system that you are **contributing to the community**. You've already got some votes and accepts for your existing answers so I trust that you know exactly how to **continue providing good content!** |
180,642 | Could someone please tell me why the editing of questions (mine and others) is disabled in my account?
It has been a very long time since I have been question banned, after your site told me that deleting questions again and again is not a good thing without any logical reason. I was paying attention to the Stack Overflow site very genuinely.
Because I didn't find any other option to ask my question, I asked this question here because you have closed 40% of my posts, which is creating a problem for me. I am unable to ask any questions and also not able to edit any question/answer.
I do realize all the mistakes I've made. But what should I do now? | 2013/05/17 | [
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/180642",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/170522/"
] | The suggested edit block was automatic due to a number of rejected edits, and has subsequently been lifted in the same manner - they expire in a week. It also appears that a few people who noticed your post here also noticed some of the better questions you asked on the main site, and up voted them. You'll be happy to know that the question block has also been lifted.
However - be careful going forward. Make sure your questions are clear, contain the best grammar and spelling you can manage and are formatted properly. You really need some up votes at this point in order to get a safe distance away from the block.
Good luck, and enjoy. | >
> Why editing of questions(mine and others) is disabled in my account?
>
>
>
Probably you are banned for a week from suggesting edits as you have [13 rejected edits against 10 approved](https://stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits/2087941). I think you should be enabled to edit your own post.
>
> It's a very long time closing of my "Ask Question"...
>
>
>
The asking ban will not be lifted without doing anything. You have to improve your previos posts. As you have deleted your questions, you have to undelete and improve them. For that flag one of your post and ask moderators to undelete your deleted questions. |
180,642 | Could someone please tell me why the editing of questions (mine and others) is disabled in my account?
It has been a very long time since I have been question banned, after your site told me that deleting questions again and again is not a good thing without any logical reason. I was paying attention to the Stack Overflow site very genuinely.
Because I didn't find any other option to ask my question, I asked this question here because you have closed 40% of my posts, which is creating a problem for me. I am unable to ask any questions and also not able to edit any question/answer.
I do realize all the mistakes I've made. But what should I do now? | 2013/05/17 | [
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/180642",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/170522/"
] | Your suggested edit ban is for having too many edits rejected recently; you had quite a few rejected on May 10th. (Have a look through <https://stackoverflow.com/users/889843/varsha?tab=activity&sort=suggestions> ). Note that suggested edits should address multiple substantive problems with a post; suggestions to correct minor grammatical problems are very likely to be rejected as Too Minor. | Indeed deleting many questions is considered "not a good thing". The system just sees this as vandalism - *"why is this user going around deleting lots of content?!?"*. It is true that sometimes you're actually *trying to do the right thing* but the system still sees your actions as potentially harmful to the community.
As others have already said, the systems here are **automatic** and there really isn't a person who is manually looking at your actions and deciding "ok, you've learnt your lesson". Posting this question here is indeed the correct thing to do in this instance. There is however lots of posts here on [Meta](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/) taking about the different types of bans and peoples recommendations on how to correct your behavior on the site.
In the same way that you've been a member of the site for over a year and *only now* the system has taken action, you'll have to work hard to make the system notice that you've changed your behavior. The *very best* thing that you can do is answer other peoples questions. This is one of the best ways to indicate to the system that you are **contributing to the community**. You've already got some votes and accepts for your existing answers so I trust that you know exactly how to **continue providing good content!** |
180,642 | Could someone please tell me why the editing of questions (mine and others) is disabled in my account?
It has been a very long time since I have been question banned, after your site told me that deleting questions again and again is not a good thing without any logical reason. I was paying attention to the Stack Overflow site very genuinely.
Because I didn't find any other option to ask my question, I asked this question here because you have closed 40% of my posts, which is creating a problem for me. I am unable to ask any questions and also not able to edit any question/answer.
I do realize all the mistakes I've made. But what should I do now? | 2013/05/17 | [
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/180642",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/170522/"
] | The suggested edit block was automatic due to a number of rejected edits, and has subsequently been lifted in the same manner - they expire in a week. It also appears that a few people who noticed your post here also noticed some of the better questions you asked on the main site, and up voted them. You'll be happy to know that the question block has also been lifted.
However - be careful going forward. Make sure your questions are clear, contain the best grammar and spelling you can manage and are formatted properly. You really need some up votes at this point in order to get a safe distance away from the block.
Good luck, and enjoy. | Indeed deleting many questions is considered "not a good thing". The system just sees this as vandalism - *"why is this user going around deleting lots of content?!?"*. It is true that sometimes you're actually *trying to do the right thing* but the system still sees your actions as potentially harmful to the community.
As others have already said, the systems here are **automatic** and there really isn't a person who is manually looking at your actions and deciding "ok, you've learnt your lesson". Posting this question here is indeed the correct thing to do in this instance. There is however lots of posts here on [Meta](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/) taking about the different types of bans and peoples recommendations on how to correct your behavior on the site.
In the same way that you've been a member of the site for over a year and *only now* the system has taken action, you'll have to work hard to make the system notice that you've changed your behavior. The *very best* thing that you can do is answer other peoples questions. This is one of the best ways to indicate to the system that you are **contributing to the community**. You've already got some votes and accepts for your existing answers so I trust that you know exactly how to **continue providing good content!** |
437,276 | As a way to power-on/-off a circuit load, a MCU is used to drive a relay through two MOSFETs. The problem is, when the MCU GPIO output is measured 0-volt, the relay could stay connected.
Can anybody demonstrate how this could have possibly happened?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xj5II.png)
More details that may or may not be relevant to the problem:
This happens very rarely. We have not got enough chance to troubleshoot the issue.
Usually the process to operate the circuit is: MCU set GPIO 0; human switch the input off; the load circuit is changed; human switch the the input on; MCU set GPIO 1. When the input switch is turned off, the voltage will drain slowly as the schematic can show there are big decoupling capacitors.
We suspected that the relay is bad. Changing to another piece of relay only marginally changed the chance of running into the problem. Multiple boards are showing the same problem, thus it seems to rule out a damaged relay or MOSFET or any other single component. | 2019/05/07 | [
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/437276",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/12133/"
] | If the contacts stick, then this could be a problem of a welding of the metal. Yes, this can happen.
Please check the contact rating in the datasheet. One possible cause:
If the driving voltage /current through the coil is not strong enough to quickly turn on the relay, the armature may move rather slowly and thus a small electrical arc could develop. The arc in turn melts the surface of the contacts and they may weld.
Two ideas to remedy this:
1) Use a higher voltage to drive the coil (or a relay which is rated for a lower coil voltage)
2) Put a ceramic capacitor across the contact side of the relay. | I suspect the load has some capacitance so that the circuit resembles that of a capacitive discharge welder. The charging of the load capacitance (effectively through the 100uF or so you show) causes a very high peak current which pits the contact and can weld them together. In such a case, physically tapping the relay sharply (when de-energized) may allow the contacts to open.
The solution depends a bit on exactly what your load is, but other than using a massive contactor or replacing the relay with a MOSFET it's not necessarily straightforward if you *need* the capacitance on the switched side. You might be able to move your capacitors to the switched side and add an inductor and flyback diode, for example, to lower the peak current. |
8,143 | In Ubuntu 10.04 the os crashes frequently by displaying "Blank screen blinking with white stripes problem". This problem exists fpr Intel 8xx series chipset users. Now i want to know whether this issue is resolved in ubuntu 10.10 or not? | 2010/10/18 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/8143",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/4343/"
] | According to the site below, the issue is largely resolved on Maverick but "sadly there is a kernel-bug, which prevents showing the mouse-cursor on 855GM-based systems". For these there is a quick fix dkms package that you can install.
<http://glasen-hardt.de/?p=959> | There are workarounds for this issue listed on the relevant Launchpad bug reports.
For i845 [Launchpad bug report](https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/lucid/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/541492) and [upstream](http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26345)
For i855: [Launchpad bug report](https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/541511) and [upstream](http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27187) |
70,515 | I am really stuck on this problem, I have only gone one step but I have hit a brick wall. I have created two synthons from breaking the C-C bond between the alkene and carbonyl group, but I am unsure on what to do next> I find retrosynthesis very difficult to understand so any tips/suggestions would be very helpful!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gygAB.png) | 2017/03/14 | [
"https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/70515",
"https://chemistry.stackexchange.com",
"https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/users/25778/"
] | The most obvious disconnection here is to heptan-4-one and a formaldehyde equivalent. Mannich reaction looks a strong contender.
I would form the enolate with LDA and react with Eschenmoser's salt, work up and then quaternise the product with MeI and eliminate with base to give the product. | Clearly, the approaches are going to be around enolate chemistry, but how to introduce the alkene?
My starter for ten would be to start with a conjugated carbonyl. This is either acrolein, an acrylic acid derivative or methyl vinyl ketone. Preferred options would be the latter two. An acrylic ester involves this substrate acting as an electrophile to form the longer chain ketone. Alternatively, methyl vinyl ketone would be the nucleophile to form the longer chain ketone. i. e. As an enolate. This appears to be less problematic.
Maintaining the vinyl ketone in a subsequent step fits nicely with a Morita-Bayliss-Hillmann reaction. However, the electrophile would need to be an alkyl halide as opposed to the traditional aldehyde. This is achievable given the right catalyst. |
7,717,556 | I have need to mock an XMPP server for testing purposes. My current intention is to run a local XMPP server and tie in my test code there, but I wonder if anyone is aware of an XMPP mocking library which already exists? | 2011/10/10 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/7717556",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/314318/"
] | To successfully mock an entire XMPP server you'd basically end up with... an XMPP server. I personally think that's the most reliable way to test overall, though I use smaller more specific tests for self-contained pieces of code.
You may find this book chapter interesting, Remko is probably the most test-obsessed person I know, and it was written out of his own recent experience developing a client: <http://el-tramo.be/blog/beautiful-xmpp-testing> | Only Mock types you own - search for this article by Freeman n co..
The idea is that you should only mock roles that you control. In this case, an XMPP server's interface is not one that you control.. So define a Role (interface) that your app needs & which is satisfied by the XMPP server.
You may end up with a simpler interface - e.g. SendTo(user, message) . You then need to write an adapter which fits the role to the XMPP server. This thing will handle all the quirkiness associated with your choice of an XMPPServer.
This simpler interface is much easier to mock and resilient to change. HTH |
7,717,556 | I have need to mock an XMPP server for testing purposes. My current intention is to run a local XMPP server and tie in my test code there, but I wonder if anyone is aware of an XMPP mocking library which already exists? | 2011/10/10 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/7717556",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/314318/"
] | This may be somewhat dependent on what tools you are using, but in Smack, for example, you can create your own Connection class which will serve as a mock server. This is done within the test cases for Smack.
Basically you feed the reply IQ or Message packets into the connection and then make your calls via the API. The preset packets are then returned as the results. One thing you do have to take into account is the asynchronous nature of XMPP, and make sure your test server will work the same way.
Other XMPP libs may offer some similar approaches to enable unit testing.
If, on the other hand, you are trying to run full blown integration test scenarios, then I think the local server is the right way to go. | To successfully mock an entire XMPP server you'd basically end up with... an XMPP server. I personally think that's the most reliable way to test overall, though I use smaller more specific tests for self-contained pieces of code.
You may find this book chapter interesting, Remko is probably the most test-obsessed person I know, and it was written out of his own recent experience developing a client: <http://el-tramo.be/blog/beautiful-xmpp-testing> |
7,717,556 | I have need to mock an XMPP server for testing purposes. My current intention is to run a local XMPP server and tie in my test code there, but I wonder if anyone is aware of an XMPP mocking library which already exists? | 2011/10/10 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/7717556",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/314318/"
] | This may be somewhat dependent on what tools you are using, but in Smack, for example, you can create your own Connection class which will serve as a mock server. This is done within the test cases for Smack.
Basically you feed the reply IQ or Message packets into the connection and then make your calls via the API. The preset packets are then returned as the results. One thing you do have to take into account is the asynchronous nature of XMPP, and make sure your test server will work the same way.
Other XMPP libs may offer some similar approaches to enable unit testing.
If, on the other hand, you are trying to run full blown integration test scenarios, then I think the local server is the right way to go. | Only Mock types you own - search for this article by Freeman n co..
The idea is that you should only mock roles that you control. In this case, an XMPP server's interface is not one that you control.. So define a Role (interface) that your app needs & which is satisfied by the XMPP server.
You may end up with a simpler interface - e.g. SendTo(user, message) . You then need to write an adapter which fits the role to the XMPP server. This thing will handle all the quirkiness associated with your choice of an XMPPServer.
This simpler interface is much easier to mock and resilient to change. HTH |
107,128 | The [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overmodulation) is very short and doesn't explain the concept very well, and there aren't any other sites that I can find that give a simple explanation. What does it mean by 100% modulation? I understand the basic concepts behind amplitude modulation, frequency modulation, and pulse width modulation, but I have never really understood what is meant by the "amount" of modulation or modulation depth.
Can somebody please shed some light on the subject?
Thanks! | 2014/04/19 | [
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/107128",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/35366/"
] | AM over modulation causes the carrier wave to invert it's phase when the modulating signal has an amplitude that is above a certain level. Broadcast AM typically never does this because the complexity of an accurate demodulator is too great for the thousands and millions of receivers.
AM is just the mathematical multiplication of two signals and regular broadcast AM remains as a 2 quadrant multiplier whereas full modulation uses all four quadrants.
100% modulation is where the modulating signal drives the carrier to zero and is theoretically the maximum modulation that can be successfully demodulator by a regular AM envelope detector.
Over modulation isn't really of any significance to FM systems (unlike AM). If the modulation signal amplitude is too great, any decent frequency modulator will limit the signal so that it can't push the bandwidth of the modulated signal too wide in the frequency spectrum. In effect, the modulating signal becomes clipped. | With amplitude modulation, the carrier signal is alternately driven above and below its resting (unmodulated) value. At 100% modulation, the peaks will be driven to twice the resting power, and the "valleys" will reach zero. If the modulation level is increased beyond this value, the valleys will attempt to go below zero. Since the power level can't go below zero, the signal will "clip" instead, producing distortion. The peaks may clip as well, but that will be dependent on the capability of the power stage.
For frequency modulation, going past the designed deviation value will produce a signal whose bandwidth exceeds that for which the receiver was designed. The receiver will experience distortion because part of the signal has been filtered out, and the excessive bandwidth of the transmitted signal may interfere with stations on adjacent frequencies. |
17,943 | I have been looking into buying some gourmet salt, and several of them are described as being "moist salt". What does that mean? | 2011/09/22 | [
"https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/17943",
"https://cooking.stackexchange.com",
"https://cooking.stackexchange.com/users/4535/"
] | Moist salts are naturally harvested sea salts from which not all the water has been removed. They are noticeably wet, often caking up or forming more of a "slush" than a powder.
Some aficionados only believe that sea salt is "real" and "natural" if it is moist. Me, I have enough humidity in the apartment. | They have some humidity in them. According to [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sel_gris), up to 13% of moisture is acceptable. |
23,707,896 | I have hit past 165 domains entered with pricing, now it wont let me add anymore domains. Whats is a work around for this or what could be the issue? Thanks (Also checked the WHMCS logs and no records of any errors) | 2014/05/17 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/23707896",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/3646836/"
] | WHMCS has no 'limit' to the number of TLDs
If you've reached a level where you cannot add any more then that will be a configuration issue with your server/apache/php - some sort of setting/limit on form submits - check your server logs. | I faced the same issue. The error log showed PHP Warning: Unknown: Input variables exceeded 1000. The solution was to modify the max\_input\_vars value in php.ini. I can now add the TLDs. |
253,864 | I'm faced with similar classes A1, A2, ..., A100. Believe it or not but yeah, there are roughly hundred classes that almost look the same. None of these classes are unit tested (of course ;-) ). Each of theses classes is about 50 lines of code which is not too much by itself. Still this is way too much duplicated code.
I consider the following options:
1. Writing tests for A1, ..., A100. Then refactor by creating an
abstract base class AA.
*Pro*: I'm (near to totally) safe by the tests that nothing goes wrong.
*Con*: Much effort. Duplication of test code.
2. Writing tests for A1, A2. Abstracting the duplicated test code and using the abstraction to create the rest of the tests. Then create AA as in 1.
*Pro*: Less effort than in 1 but maintaining a similar degree of safety.
*Con*: I find generalized test code weird; it often seems ... incoherent (is this the right word?). Normally I prefer specialized test code for specialized classes. But that requires a good design which is my goal of this whole refactoring.
3. Writing AA first, testing it with mock classes. Then inheriting A1, ..., A100 successively.
*Pro*: Fastest way to eliminate duplicates.
*Con*: Most Ax classes look very much the same. But if not, there is the danger of changing the code by inheriting from AA.
4. Other options ...
At first I went for 3. because the Ax classes are really very similar to each other. But now I'm a bit unsure if this is the *right* way (from a unit testing enthusiast's perspective). | 2014/08/19 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/253864",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/80818/"
] | I like some thing that Ian Cooper says "test things you want to preserve". If you don't want to preserve the A's class don't unit test individually, try to move your test one level of abstraction.
An option can test your System via a facade or something similar (i don't understand enough your system), test your system (not your classes) expected behavior and when you have this test that check your system you can change the implementation and refactor this A classes without breaking the test. | It seems covering all classes with unit-tests produce a lot of duplicated code. I would add some analysis stage before start writing unit-tests. Probably, some classes have the idential implementation, it could be detected by some static code analyzer (like [Simian](http://www.harukizaemon.com/simian/) of [PMD Copy-paste detector](http://pmd.sourceforge.net/)). These classes could be removed and the code could be refactored using plain search-replace or simple regexp
After finishing that stage you can start cover with unit test classes which have really different implementation |
253,864 | I'm faced with similar classes A1, A2, ..., A100. Believe it or not but yeah, there are roughly hundred classes that almost look the same. None of these classes are unit tested (of course ;-) ). Each of theses classes is about 50 lines of code which is not too much by itself. Still this is way too much duplicated code.
I consider the following options:
1. Writing tests for A1, ..., A100. Then refactor by creating an
abstract base class AA.
*Pro*: I'm (near to totally) safe by the tests that nothing goes wrong.
*Con*: Much effort. Duplication of test code.
2. Writing tests for A1, A2. Abstracting the duplicated test code and using the abstraction to create the rest of the tests. Then create AA as in 1.
*Pro*: Less effort than in 1 but maintaining a similar degree of safety.
*Con*: I find generalized test code weird; it often seems ... incoherent (is this the right word?). Normally I prefer specialized test code for specialized classes. But that requires a good design which is my goal of this whole refactoring.
3. Writing AA first, testing it with mock classes. Then inheriting A1, ..., A100 successively.
*Pro*: Fastest way to eliminate duplicates.
*Con*: Most Ax classes look very much the same. But if not, there is the danger of changing the code by inheriting from AA.
4. Other options ...
At first I went for 3. because the Ax classes are really very similar to each other. But now I'm a bit unsure if this is the *right* way (from a unit testing enthusiast's perspective). | 2014/08/19 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/253864",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/80818/"
] | I like some thing that Ian Cooper says "test things you want to preserve". If you don't want to preserve the A's class don't unit test individually, try to move your test one level of abstraction.
An option can test your System via a facade or something similar (i don't understand enough your system), test your system (not your classes) expected behavior and when you have this test that check your system you can change the implementation and refactor this A classes without breaking the test. | Unit tests are great for refactoring! Just make sure you write test code in such a way that you don't have to refactor the tests along with the code you are testing. Refactoring the tests would undermine anything that the 100 cut-and-pasted tests would prove.
Write tests one layer removed from the code you are refactoring. Meaning: Test the functionality that should be the same before and after, so that the tests can't tell which version of the underlying code you are testing. That strategy may save you from writing 100 cut-and-pasted tests as well.
With a big refactor, some manual testing is often required. |
262,255 | Taking [shs's question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/262182/why-arent-voting-machines-open-source) a step further... Why isn't all government sponsored software open source? **I can see excluding some for security purposes, but the rest?** Didn't we as tax payers already pay for it? The government has no rights, only the people, so how can the government license something? Who is the licensee? It would be the public since the government is the people.
---
To those of you that think the government has rights, I would urge you to read [The United States Constitution](http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html). | 2008/11/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/262255",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/13930/"
] | Sounds good to me. I - as a non US citizen - then get access to open source software that US taxpayers paid for :) | You really want the targeting and tracking software for a Hellfire missile to be out on the web? Secrecy is part of the equation you know... |
262,255 | Taking [shs's question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/262182/why-arent-voting-machines-open-source) a step further... Why isn't all government sponsored software open source? **I can see excluding some for security purposes, but the rest?** Didn't we as tax payers already pay for it? The government has no rights, only the people, so how can the government license something? Who is the licensee? It would be the public since the government is the people.
---
To those of you that think the government has rights, I would urge you to read [The United States Constitution](http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html). | 2008/11/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/262255",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/13930/"
] | My wishful thinking is that if the software is created by government employees or custom software created for the government by a contractor, it should be automatically in the public domain (as all government published documents are). If the government bought the software from a company, even if it included some customization, it should remain closed-source. You run into a bit of a grey area where it was developed by contractors for the government, but could then be sold as a commercial product (if anyone was stupid enough to buy software created for the government... see The Daily WTF for references)... I don't know how to resolve that, but despite my desire for FOSS, I think it best to err on the side of the business in this case.
I also think the government should be required to use existing open source software if it is a viable competitor to a closed-source solution. It would save some tax dollars and promote government openness (not in the software sense, though that would be good too).
How do we make it happen? :D | Sounds good to me. I - as a non US citizen - then get access to open source software that US taxpayers paid for :) |
262,255 | Taking [shs's question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/262182/why-arent-voting-machines-open-source) a step further... Why isn't all government sponsored software open source? **I can see excluding some for security purposes, but the rest?** Didn't we as tax payers already pay for it? The government has no rights, only the people, so how can the government license something? Who is the licensee? It would be the public since the government is the people.
---
To those of you that think the government has rights, I would urge you to read [The United States Constitution](http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html). | 2008/11/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/262255",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/13930/"
] | You really want the targeting and tracking software for a Hellfire missile to be out on the web? Secrecy is part of the equation you know... | By law, the government cannot copyright any work it has wholy produced. (ie Public Domain) And without a copyright, you can't enforce a software license like the GPL or even BSDL.
However, the government can obtain copyright ownership from a work produced by private entities. And, if they write new code for it, they must follow the licensing restrictions. Technically, the code they write is public domain, but it's generally useless without the copyrighted and licensed code.
This is why, for example, SELinux is GPL'd. Because they are required by the Linux kernel licensing to GPL their work.
It's getting pretty rare these days to see any open source project that is entirely self-contained. Usually they link to some other open source library. |
262,255 | Taking [shs's question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/262182/why-arent-voting-machines-open-source) a step further... Why isn't all government sponsored software open source? **I can see excluding some for security purposes, but the rest?** Didn't we as tax payers already pay for it? The government has no rights, only the people, so how can the government license something? Who is the licensee? It would be the public since the government is the people.
---
To those of you that think the government has rights, I would urge you to read [The United States Constitution](http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html). | 2008/11/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/262255",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/13930/"
] | It's public domain:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_of_the_United_States_Government> | By law, the government cannot copyright any work it has wholy produced. (ie Public Domain) And without a copyright, you can't enforce a software license like the GPL or even BSDL.
However, the government can obtain copyright ownership from a work produced by private entities. And, if they write new code for it, they must follow the licensing restrictions. Technically, the code they write is public domain, but it's generally useless without the copyrighted and licensed code.
This is why, for example, SELinux is GPL'd. Because they are required by the Linux kernel licensing to GPL their work.
It's getting pretty rare these days to see any open source project that is entirely self-contained. Usually they link to some other open source library. |
262,255 | Taking [shs's question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/262182/why-arent-voting-machines-open-source) a step further... Why isn't all government sponsored software open source? **I can see excluding some for security purposes, but the rest?** Didn't we as tax payers already pay for it? The government has no rights, only the people, so how can the government license something? Who is the licensee? It would be the public since the government is the people.
---
To those of you that think the government has rights, I would urge you to read [The United States Constitution](http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html). | 2008/11/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/262255",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/13930/"
] | I work for one part of the government.
First, let me tell you, you DON'T want to see the crap that runs your government.
There are plenty of 'holes' in the code I end up supporting all day long. No need to advertise them to those that would cause havoc with 'em, and never enough time or resources to fix them all.
Gov't agencies ARE concerned about money. IT depts don't generally get enough of it. It is very hard for gov't agencies to compete with private firms for quality people. It is also harder to get rid of bad programmers. If there is a full staff, some are dead weight and no way to hire more or better people.
Requirements are thought up by politicians and are never clear, concise or right.
Deadlines are even worse because now you need to adhere or support a law that impacts thousands or millions of people. Hence, bad code, worse standards, tons of band-aids.
Sorry, no open source.
And yes, I would normally support this initiative looking from the outside in but this would just be begging for maliciousness from outside individuals/groups/governments! | Trust - Plain and simple. A government cannot open itself to anyone modifying it's code.
For example:
A coder could knowingly introduce a buffer overflow into the linux kernal. They know it's location, the payload required and bang instant compromise. This also offers deniability, as it appears as "just another" overflow bug.
**Edit** --
My rebuttal to the comments:
[<http://www.debian.org/News/2006/20060713>](http://www.debian.org/News/2006/20060713)
The debian kernal was compromised via the host being compromised. Yes, code may be reviewed, but we're still spotting new errors even after 20 years of knowing buffer overflows are a problem.
Review is not a perfect catchall. |
262,255 | Taking [shs's question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/262182/why-arent-voting-machines-open-source) a step further... Why isn't all government sponsored software open source? **I can see excluding some for security purposes, but the rest?** Didn't we as tax payers already pay for it? The government has no rights, only the people, so how can the government license something? Who is the licensee? It would be the public since the government is the people.
---
To those of you that think the government has rights, I would urge you to read [The United States Constitution](http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html). | 2008/11/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/262255",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/13930/"
] | There is a lot of government-sponsored open source now, especially stuff coming out of government labs like [Sandia](https://software.sandia.gov/). It's not hard to find.
An argument against open-source software by the government is that tax dollars of folks writing commercial software are being used to make competing products. That's an entirely different thing than if folks did that on their own time or with their own money. Imagine if you had a hotel, then the city bought a neighboring piece of property, put a hotel on it, then started selling rooms at lower rates (oh, actually that sort of thing does [happen](http://www.reason.com/news/show/29576.html)). | The public interests are not necessarily served by doing as you propose. The only interest I see is those of people who espouse open source propaganda. There are, of course, extra costs to be incurred by such a proposal and such costs I don't see as really adding much value to the public. |
262,255 | Taking [shs's question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/262182/why-arent-voting-machines-open-source) a step further... Why isn't all government sponsored software open source? **I can see excluding some for security purposes, but the rest?** Didn't we as tax payers already pay for it? The government has no rights, only the people, so how can the government license something? Who is the licensee? It would be the public since the government is the people.
---
To those of you that think the government has rights, I would urge you to read [The United States Constitution](http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html). | 2008/11/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/262255",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/13930/"
] | I work for one part of the government.
First, let me tell you, you DON'T want to see the crap that runs your government.
There are plenty of 'holes' in the code I end up supporting all day long. No need to advertise them to those that would cause havoc with 'em, and never enough time or resources to fix them all.
Gov't agencies ARE concerned about money. IT depts don't generally get enough of it. It is very hard for gov't agencies to compete with private firms for quality people. It is also harder to get rid of bad programmers. If there is a full staff, some are dead weight and no way to hire more or better people.
Requirements are thought up by politicians and are never clear, concise or right.
Deadlines are even worse because now you need to adhere or support a law that impacts thousands or millions of people. Hence, bad code, worse standards, tons of band-aids.
Sorry, no open source.
And yes, I would normally support this initiative looking from the outside in but this would just be begging for maliciousness from outside individuals/groups/governments! | The question mentions security briefly, but it can be a major reason that government produced or government sponsored software can't be open sourced. As a whole, the military runs a lot of software that is custom and written for a specific purpose and exposure of the source code would expose classified information. Granted you could make and argument that relevant information could be redacted but that isn't always possible as if you know what the software is for, you can derive information about that without having to know the exact name (i.e. actual operation envelops for airframes). |
262,255 | Taking [shs's question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/262182/why-arent-voting-machines-open-source) a step further... Why isn't all government sponsored software open source? **I can see excluding some for security purposes, but the rest?** Didn't we as tax payers already pay for it? The government has no rights, only the people, so how can the government license something? Who is the licensee? It would be the public since the government is the people.
---
To those of you that think the government has rights, I would urge you to read [The United States Constitution](http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html). | 2008/11/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/262255",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/13930/"
] | There is a lot of government-sponsored open source now, especially stuff coming out of government labs like [Sandia](https://software.sandia.gov/). It's not hard to find.
An argument against open-source software by the government is that tax dollars of folks writing commercial software are being used to make competing products. That's an entirely different thing than if folks did that on their own time or with their own money. Imagine if you had a hotel, then the city bought a neighboring piece of property, put a hotel on it, then started selling rooms at lower rates (oh, actually that sort of thing does [happen](http://www.reason.com/news/show/29576.html)). | There seem to be some pretty naive views around here about how much commercial software is not/has not been dependent on funding from government projects. There are very few software products that don't incude government-funded code somewhere, whether enhancements, or patches, or bug fixes, or in many many cases getting from first dev version to first release version.
And it's deeply embedded in most cases - you'd never be able to slice out the govt pieces.
If this proposal were adopted, there'd be very few products left to pay for. At least from U.S. companies. |
92,679 | Users commonly get no feedback on their answers, especially when answering questions by low rep users. I.e. no accepts, upvotes, downvotes or comments. If the question has enough views, other users will upvote your answer, but commonly these questions only have a handful of views.
I find this to be really discouraging. So I was wondering if we could do something about that, such as not allowing a user to post a new question until he's given feedback to all the answers of his previous question.
In addition to this, it would be nice if it were easier to follow up on your old answers, e.g. by providing a visual indication in the list of answers that the OP has given feedback on the answer. | 2011/05/25 | [
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/92679",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/148027/"
] | My limited experience with forcing people to provide feedback is that it leads to generally useless feedback. | When asking a question not every answer or comment is useful or worth providing feedback, so forcing a OP to provide feedback is a poor solution.
Secondly, just because the original asker did not accept or up-vote an answer, doesn't mean it wasn't useful to someone who viewed the question.
If there is a user that doesn't respond to comments asking for clarification then down-vote or vote to close (or both).
If you answer a user repeatedly and get no response and question is one that few others could benefit from, then try to focus on other questions instead. |
92,679 | Users commonly get no feedback on their answers, especially when answering questions by low rep users. I.e. no accepts, upvotes, downvotes or comments. If the question has enough views, other users will upvote your answer, but commonly these questions only have a handful of views.
I find this to be really discouraging. So I was wondering if we could do something about that, such as not allowing a user to post a new question until he's given feedback to all the answers of his previous question.
In addition to this, it would be nice if it were easier to follow up on your old answers, e.g. by providing a visual indication in the list of answers that the OP has given feedback on the answer. | 2011/05/25 | [
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/92679",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/148027/"
] | My limited experience with forcing people to provide feedback is that it leads to generally useless feedback. | I agree with other post. Force feedback is not a great idea.
But maybe if we could make characteristics of a healthy account, we would be able to design a dashboard to evaluate your account.
The accept rate is a first step toward this idea. But it may be improved
Are you posting enough answer?
What is your ratio of given upvotes and received upvotes?
What is the average length of my answer.
How much do I get downvoted ?
Am I not rewardful on some questions?
I guess we can pick good queries from data.stackexchange.com to install them as statistics on the user page? |
92,679 | Users commonly get no feedback on their answers, especially when answering questions by low rep users. I.e. no accepts, upvotes, downvotes or comments. If the question has enough views, other users will upvote your answer, but commonly these questions only have a handful of views.
I find this to be really discouraging. So I was wondering if we could do something about that, such as not allowing a user to post a new question until he's given feedback to all the answers of his previous question.
In addition to this, it would be nice if it were easier to follow up on your old answers, e.g. by providing a visual indication in the list of answers that the OP has given feedback on the answer. | 2011/05/25 | [
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/92679",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/148027/"
] | My limited experience with forcing people to provide feedback is that it leads to generally useless feedback. | Stack Overflow, while having a game-like scoring system, is not a game.
This community exists to ask and answer questions. If you take away a users ability to ask a question, this community then becomes useless to that user. Questions and answers persist for years after creation, and we're here to provide help to the Stack Overflow community, which will eventually turn up on search engine results and help others in the future.
Who cares about score? It sounds like you do.
Obviously it doesn't hurt to gently remind these users that we have a system in place for upvoting and accepting answers, but they shouldn't be punished to the point of censorship simply for wanting answers, and perhaps not wanting to participate in the community to the level that you seem to expect. **Assuming the questions and answers are of decent quality, I don't see this as an issue**. |
208,789 | Our internal application website that is hosted on a LAMP is very slow to load.
With firebug, we get this : 
Most of those files are .js and everything is on the same domain. We can't find why there are so many DNS Lookup, it's insane !
Can you please help us ? Thanks ! | 2010/12/03 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/208789",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/22333/"
] | We found that the **KeepAlive** was at **off** on the Apache conf, this partially solve our issue because now our website isn't working on Chrome/Safari. | Check out [this answer](https://serverfault.com/questions/146052/only-receiving-one-document-at-a-time-from-new-web-server/) where someone had a similar issue, turned out it was iptables causing a bottleneck. Turn off any firewalls and see what you get! |
235,217 | In DC's *New Frontier*, J'onn watches the Marx Brothers on TV. Is it an actual movie or show, and if so, what's the name? I'm trying to match the quote (specifically, who's speaking to Groucho), but finding nothing.
>
> MAN 2: *Well, I don't know, Groucho, that's not really what I meant.*
>
>
> *We keep our farm animals in the farm, not in the house.*
>
>
> *Not in the bedroom, certainly.*
>
>
> | 2020/07/31 | [
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/235217",
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com",
"https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/131336/"
] | I suspect that this was just created for the film. However, what it is clearly trying to sound like is a clip from the television quiz show Groucho’s hosted, *[You Bet Your Life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Bet_Your_Life)*. There are several reasons for coming to this conclusion:
* The person addresses him as “Groucho.” In the Marx Brothers’ movies and other narrative productions, their characters always had names. Only when appearing as “himself,” in an interview or hosting *You Bet Your Life* would someone address Julius Henry Marx by his stage name.
* The voice is clearly not the voice of one of the other Marx Brothers, not even Zeppo.
* No Marx Brothers movie would have a laughter background like that, whereas a television show like *You Bet Your Life* could.
* Part of the appeal of *You Bet Your Life* was that they got rather unusual people on the show. (I remember one episode with a very knowledgeable pickpocket.) Groucho would chat and laugh with his peculiar contestants, riffing on their entertaining oddities and getting them to tell their own strange stories. The quote Martian Manhunter is listening to sounds just like a contestant’s answer to one of Groucho’s silly questions. | The dialogue is meant to mimic an episode of "You Bet Your Life." Groucho was the host. He wasn't called Groucho in any of the movies. But the "reflected" figure has Groucho wearing a fez, which is a nod to A Night In Casablanca.
Notice the Native American Chief at the end of the clip, as the station is signing off for the night. A lot of stations used run an image of a native American in large headdress, with feathers of every color in the spectrum. |
29,823 | A black hole contains a singularity at its center. It is a zero-dimensional point, and it's where all its mass is located. So, my first question is:
*If a singularity contains all a black hole's mass, when a black hole absorbs matter, the matter should collect at the singularity. Then why does the black hole increase in size? The matter it absorbs is all in the singularity, not in the space around it...*
Second, we know that spinning black holes can't have a singularity at the center as a point, because points can't spin, and when they do, they aren't a point. So there is such thing as a ringularity where it is a one-dimensional line bent in a circle that spins, and contains all the black hole's matter.
*However, is a ringularity really a bent one-dimensional line in a circle, or an infinite collection of points that form a circle-looking figure?*
---
(My information on ringularities is from a paper published by Cornell University that compared the one-dimensional line to a bunch of zero-dimensional points, and videos by Kurgesagt.) | 2019/03/02 | [
"https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/29823",
"https://astronomy.stackexchange.com",
"https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/users/25988/"
] | You need to be a bit cautious about statements like: *A black hole contains a singularity at its center. It is a zero-dimensional point, and it's where all its mass is located*. What you are referring to is a mathematical structure called the [Schwarzschild metric](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_metric). This is indeed a solution to the Einstein equations for a static black hole, but this particular solution takes an infinite time to form. So given that the universe is only a shade under 14 billion years old we can be confident that as I type this there are no Schwarzschild black holes in the universe.
Indeed, it is far from clear that a Schwarzschild black hole could ever form, even given infinite time, because black holes evaporate. This point is pursed in the question [Why does Stephen Hawking say black holes don't exist?](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/95366/why-does-stephen-hawking-say-black-holes-dont-exist)
Incidentally, the Schwarzschild black hole doesn't have all its mass at the centre. In fact it is a vacuum solution and contains no matter at all. The *mass* of the Schwarzschild black hole is actually a geometrical property called the [ADM mass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM_formalism#ADM_energy_and_mass).
We run into the same problems with the spinning black hole. The structure with the ring singularity is the [Kerr metric](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerr_metric), and again while it's a perfectly valid solution to Einstein's equations, like the Schwarzschild metric it also takes an infinite time to form. Actually the Kerr metric is more troublesome still, because it is uncertain whether the structure is stable with respect to perturbations. It seems very likely that real collapsing stars would not form a structure resembling the Kerr metric. More precisely the region outside the event horizon would be well described by a Kerr metric, the region near the singularity would be different.
But if we put these doubts aside and return to what you asked, the answer is that in the Kerr metric the ring singularity really is a ring and not a collection of points. | >
> A black hole contains a singularity at its center. It is a zero-dimensional point, and it's where all its mass is located.
>
>
>
This isn't an established fact. A lot of people say they don't think there is a point-singularity at the centre of a black hole. Google on [black hole "no point singularity"](https://www.google.com/search?ei=S556XNXWL5WE1fAP182hyAk&q=black+hole+%22no+point+singularity%22&oq=black+hole+%22no+point+singularity%22&gs_l=psy-ab.3..33i22i29i30.997570.1007608..1007961...0.0..0.90.2180.35......0....1..gws-wiz.......0i71j0i131j0i67j0j35i39j0i7i30j0i7i10i30j0i10j0i13j0i8i7i30j0i30j0i8i30j0i8i13i30j33i10j33i13i21j33i21.JQzCny23pcE)
>
> So, my first question is: If a singularity contains all a black hole's mass, when a black hole absorbs matter, the matter should collect at the singularity. Then why does the black hole increase in size? The matter it absorbs is all in the singularity, not in the space around it...
>
>
>
People typically talk about the extent of the event horizon when talking about the size of a black hole.
>
> Second, we know that spinning black holes can't have a singularity at the center as a point, because points can't spin, and when they do, they aren't a point. So there is such thing as a ringularity where it is a one-dimensional line bent in a circle that spins, and contains all the black hole's matter.
>
>
>
That sounds like a ring singularity. See [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_singularity) for something on that. Note however that a ring singularity is hypothetical, not proven fact.
>
> However, is a ringularity really a bent one-dimensional line in a circle, or an infinite collection of points that form a circle-looking figure?
>
>
>
See the [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_singularity) article. It says this: *"the minimal shape of the singularity that can support these properties is instead a ring with zero thickness but non-zero radius, and this is referred to as a ringularity or Kerr singularity"*. I don't endorse that by the way. I think the original "frozen star" description of a black hole was right. Google on [frozen star and Robert Oppenheimer](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22frozen+star%22+oppenheimer+-farsight+-duffield&*&spf=380&cad=h) and you can find things like the 1971 Physics Today article [introducing the black hole](https://authors.library.caltech.edu/14972/1/Ruffini2009p1645Phys_Today.pdf) by Remo Ruffini and John Wheeler. They said *“in this sense the system is a frozen star”*. |
31,011,140 | Facebook has recently stopped supporting rss feed. Are there any ways to retrieve rss feed from Graph API or some more easy way to retrieve feed from Facebook without much hassel? | 2015/06/23 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/31011140",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4930193/"
] | You can use a free service that work in this moment :
<http://fbrss.com/> | This PHP script converts the Graph API JSON feed to RSS:
<https://github.com/khawkins98/facebook-json-to-rss> |
276,546 | Let's say you have a text file like this one:
<http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17921/17921-8.txt>
Does anyone has a good algorithm, or open-source code, to extract words from a text file?
How to get all the words, while avoiding special characters, and keeping things like "it's", etc...
I'm working in Java.
Thanks | 2008/11/09 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/276546",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/25645/"
] | Basically, you want to match
([A-Za-z])+('([A-Za-z])\*)?
right? | You could try regex, using a pattern you've made, and run a count the number of times that pattern has been found. |
169,873 | On Stack Overflow, there's many times when I've asked a question and it's been "trolled" by another user who seems to have a habit of disliking my activities. I believe this should not be permitted among Stack Overflowians, especially since some of these people have a high reputation in the department I'm commonly working in.
I'm mainly getting aggravated from the sarcasm coming from these users, and I don't know how to deal with it properly without making myself look like an ass. People usually say to just ignore it and brush it off, but this case has slowly worked its way into personal. These users just seem to always want to get the last word in, and make it as sarcastic and degrading as possible.
In the end, how should one on Stack Overflow deal with another person who has a tendency to hate you? | 2013/03/03 | [
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/169873",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/178149/"
] | I've reviewed the account of the user you've cited. Here's what I found:
1. You both work in the Delphi tag. It's not unreasonable that you both would encounter the same questions and answers.
2. He posts comments to other user's posts that are materially similar to the ones he posts on yours.
3. His comments appear to be helpful, informative and polite.
If he responds to one of your posts again, my best advice would be to respond with "Thanks for the advice," and leave it at that. | Just let it be. Remember the [Usenet primer](http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/primer/part1)'s admonition to never forget there is a human at the other end, who might be cross because of a cold and gets offended for no real reason; and [Postel's law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle), *Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others*. |
62,493 | I would like to know if we can get USA adapter for Indian plugs in shops in US airports. As the devices in India are rated for 220v, we need a proper converter as well. Can I get both at an airport? | 2016/02/08 | [
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/62493",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/users/39936/"
] | You are better off buying a plug adapter in India for the USA, rather than the other way around. A lot of what is sold in the USA would be for adapting a US plug to a foreign socket. You can find adapters for foreign plugs, they just aren't common.
Power wise, it depends on your device needs. Most modern electronics (phones, tablets, laptops, etc) have power supplies that can handle voltages from 100 to 220 VAC both 50 & 60 hz. Look at your power source, it is usually stamped into the plastic or written on the label what voltage range it accommodates. If you need a step up transformer for something else, you again may find it easier at home. | I can't recall the last time I bought an electronic device that didn't have a universal power supply; and I am including here laptops, desktops, mobile phones, e-readers, SLR cameras, mirror-less cameras, gaming consoles, hair drier, microwave, refrigerator, washing machine ... and that's all I could think of in terms of recent purchases.
The oldest device I own, a laptop bought 7 years ago - came with a universal power supply.
Therefore, what you most likely need is simply a plug converter; which you can purchase at most airport duty free shops.
These are devices that take the power cord plug, and adapt it to the socket that is in use in the destination country.
I would personally avoid the universal adapters, like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5oeoR.jpg)
These are useful for a short trip but their bulky size means that you need to be careful where you plug it in, as it may take up too much room and block another available socket.
If you are planning to buy one, get one from a reputable brand - there are lots of companies making these and if you get one that's really inexpensive, the locking mechanism (the slider that ejects the right plug) gets loose and doesn't lock very well. Not only is this an annoyance, but it is also a potential safety hazard.
If you are frequently traveling to one country; carry a many-to-one adapter for each device. These are cheaper to buy, and easier to use as you simply plug it in and go; here is an example of a many-to-US adapter:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aXrgh.jpg)
Unfortunately these are difficult to find at airports - you are likely to find these at a hardware or electronics store. Of the airports I frequent, only ONE had a store that offered the many-to-one adapter.
The many-to-many adapter can be found at most airport shops; they can also be found on most airline's on board shopping catalogs. |
62,493 | I would like to know if we can get USA adapter for Indian plugs in shops in US airports. As the devices in India are rated for 220v, we need a proper converter as well. Can I get both at an airport? | 2016/02/08 | [
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/62493",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/users/39936/"
] | I can't recall the last time I bought an electronic device that didn't have a universal power supply; and I am including here laptops, desktops, mobile phones, e-readers, SLR cameras, mirror-less cameras, gaming consoles, hair drier, microwave, refrigerator, washing machine ... and that's all I could think of in terms of recent purchases.
The oldest device I own, a laptop bought 7 years ago - came with a universal power supply.
Therefore, what you most likely need is simply a plug converter; which you can purchase at most airport duty free shops.
These are devices that take the power cord plug, and adapt it to the socket that is in use in the destination country.
I would personally avoid the universal adapters, like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5oeoR.jpg)
These are useful for a short trip but their bulky size means that you need to be careful where you plug it in, as it may take up too much room and block another available socket.
If you are planning to buy one, get one from a reputable brand - there are lots of companies making these and if you get one that's really inexpensive, the locking mechanism (the slider that ejects the right plug) gets loose and doesn't lock very well. Not only is this an annoyance, but it is also a potential safety hazard.
If you are frequently traveling to one country; carry a many-to-one adapter for each device. These are cheaper to buy, and easier to use as you simply plug it in and go; here is an example of a many-to-US adapter:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aXrgh.jpg)
Unfortunately these are difficult to find at airports - you are likely to find these at a hardware or electronics store. Of the airports I frequent, only ONE had a store that offered the many-to-one adapter.
The many-to-many adapter can be found at most airport shops; they can also be found on most airline's on board shopping catalogs. | It's much better to buy your converters at home. I would say that 99% of the converters for sale in this city are to allow US travelers to plug their devices into foreign plugs. I'm aware of only one store that has a few that are for plugging foreign devices into US plugs.
An exception to this general pattern is airports that get a lot of international arrivals sometimes sell converters that international travelers would want--but as with everything in the airport they're way overpriced. |
62,493 | I would like to know if we can get USA adapter for Indian plugs in shops in US airports. As the devices in India are rated for 220v, we need a proper converter as well. Can I get both at an airport? | 2016/02/08 | [
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/62493",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/users/39936/"
] | I can't recall the last time I bought an electronic device that didn't have a universal power supply; and I am including here laptops, desktops, mobile phones, e-readers, SLR cameras, mirror-less cameras, gaming consoles, hair drier, microwave, refrigerator, washing machine ... and that's all I could think of in terms of recent purchases.
The oldest device I own, a laptop bought 7 years ago - came with a universal power supply.
Therefore, what you most likely need is simply a plug converter; which you can purchase at most airport duty free shops.
These are devices that take the power cord plug, and adapt it to the socket that is in use in the destination country.
I would personally avoid the universal adapters, like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5oeoR.jpg)
These are useful for a short trip but their bulky size means that you need to be careful where you plug it in, as it may take up too much room and block another available socket.
If you are planning to buy one, get one from a reputable brand - there are lots of companies making these and if you get one that's really inexpensive, the locking mechanism (the slider that ejects the right plug) gets loose and doesn't lock very well. Not only is this an annoyance, but it is also a potential safety hazard.
If you are frequently traveling to one country; carry a many-to-one adapter for each device. These are cheaper to buy, and easier to use as you simply plug it in and go; here is an example of a many-to-US adapter:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aXrgh.jpg)
Unfortunately these are difficult to find at airports - you are likely to find these at a hardware or electronics store. Of the airports I frequent, only ONE had a store that offered the many-to-one adapter.
The many-to-many adapter can be found at most airport shops; they can also be found on most airline's on board shopping catalogs. | Here's my collected knowledge about power adapters and travel power strips:
1. If you need a three pole travel power strip try the Voltage Valet PS2 Travel Power Strip.
2. The Skross World Adapter PRO is an absolutely unique three prongs (earthed) adapter (family). Yes, Tumi also sells an adapter like that but if you look closely you'll find the Skross logo on it :) OK, that's about three prongs, let's move on to two prongs.
3. The [Kirkland power adapter](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00210MRGC) is a knockoff of this [Japanese product](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B014IP1VIW) not bad but there's better now. It's available from [China](http://www.dx.com/p/mini-worldwide-power-plug-adapter-2238) for even cheaper.
4. The [Wonpro Nano](https://www.110220volts.com/wat-nano.html) is win. Yes it's not flat but it's small enough to be pardoned for it. It's quite probably a Nissyo NP-10 knockoff but since the Nissyo is unavailable outside of Japan I can't be bothered. I had more success with this in the UK than the one above. The one above sometimes failed me with UK sockets but this one didn't. The way the plug unscrews for the EU plugs is just ingenious.
5. If you need to plug in more than two devices, then add a [Road Warrior 47](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00IM0ZFIW).
Either ship a Wonpro Nano to your hotel in the USA or if you still have the time (could be two months) then order the flat one from China. You will be covered wherever you go in the future. |
62,493 | I would like to know if we can get USA adapter for Indian plugs in shops in US airports. As the devices in India are rated for 220v, we need a proper converter as well. Can I get both at an airport? | 2016/02/08 | [
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/62493",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/users/39936/"
] | You are better off buying a plug adapter in India for the USA, rather than the other way around. A lot of what is sold in the USA would be for adapting a US plug to a foreign socket. You can find adapters for foreign plugs, they just aren't common.
Power wise, it depends on your device needs. Most modern electronics (phones, tablets, laptops, etc) have power supplies that can handle voltages from 100 to 220 VAC both 50 & 60 hz. Look at your power source, it is usually stamped into the plastic or written on the label what voltage range it accommodates. If you need a step up transformer for something else, you again may find it easier at home. | It's much better to buy your converters at home. I would say that 99% of the converters for sale in this city are to allow US travelers to plug their devices into foreign plugs. I'm aware of only one store that has a few that are for plugging foreign devices into US plugs.
An exception to this general pattern is airports that get a lot of international arrivals sometimes sell converters that international travelers would want--but as with everything in the airport they're way overpriced. |
62,493 | I would like to know if we can get USA adapter for Indian plugs in shops in US airports. As the devices in India are rated for 220v, we need a proper converter as well. Can I get both at an airport? | 2016/02/08 | [
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/62493",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/users/39936/"
] | You are better off buying a plug adapter in India for the USA, rather than the other way around. A lot of what is sold in the USA would be for adapting a US plug to a foreign socket. You can find adapters for foreign plugs, they just aren't common.
Power wise, it depends on your device needs. Most modern electronics (phones, tablets, laptops, etc) have power supplies that can handle voltages from 100 to 220 VAC both 50 & 60 hz. Look at your power source, it is usually stamped into the plastic or written on the label what voltage range it accommodates. If you need a step up transformer for something else, you again may find it easier at home. | **CAUTION** When using "Voltage Converters" or "Step up Transformers" you need to make absolutely sure that you do not exceed the rated power of the device. If you want to bring devices that consume significant power (iron, hair dryer, etc) you will need a big and heavy transformer. Lightweight devices typically do not have the required power and connecting an iron to a small $20 voltage converter will at best not work or just break and at worst start a fire. |
62,493 | I would like to know if we can get USA adapter for Indian plugs in shops in US airports. As the devices in India are rated for 220v, we need a proper converter as well. Can I get both at an airport? | 2016/02/08 | [
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/62493",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/users/39936/"
] | **CAUTION** When using "Voltage Converters" or "Step up Transformers" you need to make absolutely sure that you do not exceed the rated power of the device. If you want to bring devices that consume significant power (iron, hair dryer, etc) you will need a big and heavy transformer. Lightweight devices typically do not have the required power and connecting an iron to a small $20 voltage converter will at best not work or just break and at worst start a fire. | It's much better to buy your converters at home. I would say that 99% of the converters for sale in this city are to allow US travelers to plug their devices into foreign plugs. I'm aware of only one store that has a few that are for plugging foreign devices into US plugs.
An exception to this general pattern is airports that get a lot of international arrivals sometimes sell converters that international travelers would want--but as with everything in the airport they're way overpriced. |
62,493 | I would like to know if we can get USA adapter for Indian plugs in shops in US airports. As the devices in India are rated for 220v, we need a proper converter as well. Can I get both at an airport? | 2016/02/08 | [
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/62493",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/users/39936/"
] | I can't recall the last time I bought an electronic device that didn't have a universal power supply; and I am including here laptops, desktops, mobile phones, e-readers, SLR cameras, mirror-less cameras, gaming consoles, hair drier, microwave, refrigerator, washing machine ... and that's all I could think of in terms of recent purchases.
The oldest device I own, a laptop bought 7 years ago - came with a universal power supply.
Therefore, what you most likely need is simply a plug converter; which you can purchase at most airport duty free shops.
These are devices that take the power cord plug, and adapt it to the socket that is in use in the destination country.
I would personally avoid the universal adapters, like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5oeoR.jpg)
These are useful for a short trip but their bulky size means that you need to be careful where you plug it in, as it may take up too much room and block another available socket.
If you are planning to buy one, get one from a reputable brand - there are lots of companies making these and if you get one that's really inexpensive, the locking mechanism (the slider that ejects the right plug) gets loose and doesn't lock very well. Not only is this an annoyance, but it is also a potential safety hazard.
If you are frequently traveling to one country; carry a many-to-one adapter for each device. These are cheaper to buy, and easier to use as you simply plug it in and go; here is an example of a many-to-US adapter:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aXrgh.jpg)
Unfortunately these are difficult to find at airports - you are likely to find these at a hardware or electronics store. Of the airports I frequent, only ONE had a store that offered the many-to-one adapter.
The many-to-many adapter can be found at most airport shops; they can also be found on most airline's on board shopping catalogs. | **CAUTION** When using "Voltage Converters" or "Step up Transformers" you need to make absolutely sure that you do not exceed the rated power of the device. If you want to bring devices that consume significant power (iron, hair dryer, etc) you will need a big and heavy transformer. Lightweight devices typically do not have the required power and connecting an iron to a small $20 voltage converter will at best not work or just break and at worst start a fire. |
658,141 | Okay here is my situation, I have a 1tb internal hard drive that is plugged in via USB Dock, and has external power, that I use for weekly backups, but my question is, is it better to leave this hard drive on all the time, or turn it it off manually when it is not being used? What is the best case scenario? | 2013/10/13 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/658141",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/58320/"
] | Turn it off, so the data are less likely to be damaged if you accidentally knock it down. By the way, Debra suggestion on don't move is valid, but aging is actually irrelevant. On modern day electronics. They just have a "designed" life, no matter you used it or not. idea: the drying contacts ink, electronic conduct rubber. | It depends how long it is unused. Both scenarios age the drive. Electronics companies test their products, in part, by "aging" them by turning them on & off repeatedly ... so you might not be doing it any good. On the other hand, keeping it running all the time also, of course, ages it, but it will also be more stable. If you only use it once a week, for perhaps a few hours, then just keep it where it is but turn it off after removing the USB cable from the computer. The worst thing you can do is actually to just take it back and forth, physically, from one place to another, week after week. |
99,299 | Often, reviewers and camera users talk about the 'Color Science' of a particular brand of digital camera, e.g. it is said that Sony digital cameras do not have good skin tones.
Is this 'Color Science' inherent to the sensor or is it due to the camera maker's software? | 2018/06/12 | [
"https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/99299",
"https://photo.stackexchange.com",
"https://photo.stackexchange.com/users/57890/"
] | It can be about either [the sensor's sensitivity to specific portions of the visible spectrum](https://photo.stackexchange.com/q/90501/15871) or about the algorithms used to [create color from the monochromatic luminance information collected by the sensor](https://photo.stackexchange.com/q/86170/15871). But it is almost always about how [both are combined](https://photo.stackexchange.com/q/98368/15871) to produce a [viewable image](https://photo.stackexchange.com/q/76351/15871).
You can take the same raw image data from the same camera and run it through two different processing pipelines and get two different results.
Similarly, you can take the raw data from two different sensors imaging the same scene with the same lens and run each through the same processing pipeline and get two different results.
Images captured using Bayer masked sensors must be extensively processed before we have anything remotely resembling the way we perceive a scene with our eye/brain system. When you open a "raw" image you're looking at an extensively processed interpretation of the information collected by the sensor. Differences in both the camera's sensitivity to various wavelengths of light and differences in how that information is processed both have an impact on the image we see.
>
> I've been curious about the differences in Bayer color filters between different manufacturers - do any of them try to optimize the light transmissivity for low noise at the expense of color accuracy?
>
>
>
They pretty much *all* do that to one degree or another because they all mimic the human vision system that uses multiple types of cones in the retina. Not all of the cones in our retinas respond equally to all wavelengths of light. Each type of cone responds to various wavelengths of light differently than the other types. Our brain then compares the difference in response of the different types of cones to a specific light source to create what we perceive as color.
Cameras that use Bayer masks (or the external applications that interpret the raw data from a camera's sensor) do the same thing: They compare the differences between the signal obtained from pixels masked with different colored filters to the same light source and attempt to create color that mimics what the human eye/brain system creates.
Comparing the spectral response curves of different sensors, such as those included in some of the answers at some of the links above, will reveal the differences you seek. The peak response of each channel will tell where the each filter is tuned to be least restrictive (making that pixel well 'most sensitive" to that wavelength). The flatness or steepness of the slope on either side of the peak will tell how "strong" or "weak" each color filter is (assuming the scales on the axes on the charts being compared are all the same).
But it is hard to say if one profile is more "accurate" than the other, because different humans can also have slightly different color responses to the same stimuli. One camera's profile may, in fact, more closely resemble how one person perceives a particular scene and another camera's ever so slightly different profile may more closely resemble how another person perceives the exact same scene.
---
There's no real thing that equates to what we call "color" until a mind creates color based on stimuli. Light has no intrinsic color. What we call 'visible light' is not intrinsically different from non-visible wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. From a pure physics standpoint the only difference between microwaves, radio waves, visible light, X-rays, etc. are the wavelengths and frequencies at which they vibrate. Those different wavelengths and frequencies *do* affect how they interact with various materials and energy fields, but the fundamental principles of how they work are the same.
The only thing that makes "visible light" *visible* is that our retinas have chemical responses to certain wavelengths of EMR and our brains interpret those chemical responses to create colors.
The colors our brain creates are based on the *differences* in the response that the different types of cones in our retinas have to the same light. There are colors that we perceive that do not equate to a single wavelength of light. Those colors are our brain's perception of certain combinations of multiple wavelengths. Other species can perceive the exact same wavelengths or combinations of wavelengths of visible light differently from humans. Often the range of wavelengths they perceive as visible is different. Many animals can see wavelengths humans can't and vice versa.
If, for example, we wanted to create a camera system that would provide "color accurate' images for dogs we would need to create a sensor that is masked to match the [response of the cones in dogs' retinas](https://www.petmd.com/dog/general-health/what-colors-do-dogs-see), rather than one that matches the cones in human retinas. Due to only two types of cones in dog retinas, they see the "visible spectrum" differently than we do and can differentiate much less between similar wavelengths of light.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hP3Z5.png)
The chart above explains why we think our dog is dumb for running right past that brand new shiny bright red toy we just threw out in the yard: he can barely see the wavelengths of light that we call "red." It looks to a dog like a very dim brown looks to humans. That, combined with the fact dogs don't have the ability to focus at close distances the way humans do - they use their powerful sense of smell for that - leaves him at a distinct disadvantage since he's never smelled the new toy you just pulled out of the packaging it came in.
Back to humans.
It turns out that not all humans have the same number of cone types in their retinas. Some (most) of us have three. A few of us, almost exclusively female, have four. Those whose brains actually use the extra cones to perceive color are known as [tetrachromats](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140905-the-women-with-super-human-vision). The extra sized cone is a slightly different length most sensitive to yellow that lies between the "green" and "red" cones, which are already centered on wavelengths a lot closer to each other than to the wavelengths on which our "blue" cones are centered. This increases the amount of "overlap" between the "green" and "red" cones and allows tetrachromats to perceive smaller differences in slightly different shades of color.
In case you are wondering, the 8-bit sRGB color space is [too limited](https://research.ncl.ac.uk/tetrachromacy/faqs/) to allow tetrachromats to differentiate more shades of colors on sRGB devices than the rest of us mere trichromat mortals. Human tetrachromats don't have a *wider* color gamut than the rest of us, either. They just can perceive more shades of color within the same total range of colors. There is evidence they can perceive variations on color in dimmer light than the rest of us, though. Other animals that are tetrachromatic can have extended ranges of sensitivity on both ends of the "visible" spectrum. It all depends upon the physiology of the cones in the retina. | Nikon and Canon has different color processing workflow due different graphic chips and sensor manufacturers. This is mostly white balance and sensor sensitivity differences. In medium format almost all sensors using 16 bits of color vs. 14 bits on 35mm. Canon or Nikon can not get even close to skin tones of any 16 bit camera, 2001 or 2017 release year, no matter what software you would use. Software works with RAW/etc outputs of the camera after graphic chip finished processing the image, so not that relevant. |
99,299 | Often, reviewers and camera users talk about the 'Color Science' of a particular brand of digital camera, e.g. it is said that Sony digital cameras do not have good skin tones.
Is this 'Color Science' inherent to the sensor or is it due to the camera maker's software? | 2018/06/12 | [
"https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/99299",
"https://photo.stackexchange.com",
"https://photo.stackexchange.com/users/57890/"
] | Yes, both. Some people like 'natural' colours, some prefer 'vivid'. The nominally neutral software preference in a camera (you normally get a choice of 'enhanced' settings these days) may tend in either direction. What you AREN'T going to get, particularly in a consumer-grade camera, is absolute accuracy. And different technologies will be inaccurate in different ways. | Nikon and Canon has different color processing workflow due different graphic chips and sensor manufacturers. This is mostly white balance and sensor sensitivity differences. In medium format almost all sensors using 16 bits of color vs. 14 bits on 35mm. Canon or Nikon can not get even close to skin tones of any 16 bit camera, 2001 or 2017 release year, no matter what software you would use. Software works with RAW/etc outputs of the camera after graphic chip finished processing the image, so not that relevant. |
798 | I'm interested in finding as optimal of a method as I can for determining how many bins I should use in a histogram. My data should range from 30 to 350 objects at most, and in particular I'm trying to apply thresholding (like Otsu's method) where "good" objects, which I should have fewer of and should be more spread out, are separated from "bad" objects, which should be more dense in value. A concrete value would have a score of 1-10 for each object. I'd had 5-10 objects with scores 6-10, and 20-25 objects with scores 1-4. I'd like to find a histogram binning pattern that generally allows something like Otsu's method to threshold off the low scoring objects. However, in the implementation of Otsu's I've seen, the bin size was 256, and often I have many fewer data points that 256, which to me suggests that 256 is not a good bin number. With so few data, what approaches should I take to calculating the number of bins to use? | 2010/07/27 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/798",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/476/"
] | >
> With so few data, what approaches should I take to calculating the number of bins to use?
>
>
>
*FD* or *doane* methods (see below) might be more suitable. Experience tells, this depends on the upstream task as well. If binning changes the inference or results of the upstream task. Then, one should find a stable/robust method that does not change with changing data.
numpy's manual page on [histogram\_bin\_edges](https://numpy.org/doc/stable/reference/generated/numpy.histogram_bin_edges.html#numpy.histogram_bin_edges) provides nice list and pros and cons of each approach. The 'auto' option follows partially [Rob Hyndman's recommendation](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/862) Here is the full list
* ‘auto’
Maximum of the ‘sturges’ and ‘fd’ estimators. Provides good all around performance.
* ‘fd’ (Freedman Diaconis Estimator)
Robust (resilient to outliers) estimator that takes into account data variability and data size.
* ‘doane’
An improved version of Sturges’ estimator that works better with non-normal datasets.
* ‘scott’
Less robust estimator that that takes into account data variability and data size.
* ‘stone’
Estimator based on leave-one-out cross-validation estimate of the integrated squared error. Can be regarded as a generalization of Scott’s rule.
* ‘rice’
Estimator does not take variability into account, only data size. Commonly overestimates number of bins required.
* ‘sturges’
R’s default method, only accounts for data size. Only optimal for gaussian data and underestimates number of bins for large non-gaussian datasets.
* ‘sqrt’
Square root (of data size) estimator, used by Excel and other programs for its speed and simplicity. | Another method is Bayesian Blocks from [Studies in Astronomical Time Series Analysis. VI. Bayesian Block Representations](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013ApJ...764..167S/abstract) by Scargle et al.
>
> Bayesian Blocks is a dynamic histogramming method which optimizes one
> of several possible fitness functions to determine an optimal binning
> for data, where the bins are not necessarily uniform width.
>
>
>
[Bayesian Blocks for Histograms](https://www.astroml.org/examples/algorithms/plot_bayesian_blocks.html) |
798 | I'm interested in finding as optimal of a method as I can for determining how many bins I should use in a histogram. My data should range from 30 to 350 objects at most, and in particular I'm trying to apply thresholding (like Otsu's method) where "good" objects, which I should have fewer of and should be more spread out, are separated from "bad" objects, which should be more dense in value. A concrete value would have a score of 1-10 for each object. I'd had 5-10 objects with scores 6-10, and 20-25 objects with scores 1-4. I'd like to find a histogram binning pattern that generally allows something like Otsu's method to threshold off the low scoring objects. However, in the implementation of Otsu's I've seen, the bin size was 256, and often I have many fewer data points that 256, which to me suggests that 256 is not a good bin number. With so few data, what approaches should I take to calculating the number of bins to use? | 2010/07/27 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/798",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/476/"
] | If I need to determine the number of bins programmatically I usually start out with a histogram that has way more bins than needed. Once the histogram is filled I then combine bins until I have enough entries per bin for the method I am using, e.g. if I want to model Poisson-uncertainties in a counting experiment with uncertainties from a normal distribution until I have more than something like 10 entries. | The [MDL histogram density estimation](http://proceedings.mlr.press/v2/kontkanen07a.html) method has the following features:
1. variable width; the method is not constrained to histograms with fixed bin widths.
2. adaptive; the number of bins, and bin widths are determined based on data. Very few input parameters are required, and the parameters have little impact on the resulting aesthetics.
3. principled; the resulting histogram is the normalized maximum likelihood distribution (constrained to histograms). |
798 | I'm interested in finding as optimal of a method as I can for determining how many bins I should use in a histogram. My data should range from 30 to 350 objects at most, and in particular I'm trying to apply thresholding (like Otsu's method) where "good" objects, which I should have fewer of and should be more spread out, are separated from "bad" objects, which should be more dense in value. A concrete value would have a score of 1-10 for each object. I'd had 5-10 objects with scores 6-10, and 20-25 objects with scores 1-4. I'd like to find a histogram binning pattern that generally allows something like Otsu's method to threshold off the low scoring objects. However, in the implementation of Otsu's I've seen, the bin size was 256, and often I have many fewer data points that 256, which to me suggests that 256 is not a good bin number. With so few data, what approaches should I take to calculating the number of bins to use? | 2010/07/27 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/798",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/476/"
] | Did you see the [Shimazaki-Shinomoto](https://papers.nips.cc/paper/3140-a-recipe-for-optimizing-a-time-histogram.pdf) method?
Although it seems to be computationally expensive, it may give you good results. It's worth giving it a try if computational time is not your problem. There are some implementations of this method in java, MATLAB, etc, in the following link, which runs fast enough:
[web-interface](http://176.32.89.45/~hideaki/res/histogram.html) | If I need to determine the number of bins programmatically I usually start out with a histogram that has way more bins than needed. Once the histogram is filled I then combine bins until I have enough entries per bin for the method I am using, e.g. if I want to model Poisson-uncertainties in a counting experiment with uncertainties from a normal distribution until I have more than something like 10 entries. |
798 | I'm interested in finding as optimal of a method as I can for determining how many bins I should use in a histogram. My data should range from 30 to 350 objects at most, and in particular I'm trying to apply thresholding (like Otsu's method) where "good" objects, which I should have fewer of and should be more spread out, are separated from "bad" objects, which should be more dense in value. A concrete value would have a score of 1-10 for each object. I'd had 5-10 objects with scores 6-10, and 20-25 objects with scores 1-4. I'd like to find a histogram binning pattern that generally allows something like Otsu's method to threshold off the low scoring objects. However, in the implementation of Otsu's I've seen, the bin size was 256, and often I have many fewer data points that 256, which to me suggests that 256 is not a good bin number. With so few data, what approaches should I take to calculating the number of bins to use? | 2010/07/27 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/798",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/476/"
] | Maybe the paper "[Variations on the histogram](http://pubs.research.avayalabs.com/pdfs/ALR-2007-003-paper.pdf)" by Denby and Mallows will be of interest:
>
> This new display which we term "dhist" (for diagonally-cut histogram) preserves the desirable features of both the equal-width hist and the equal-area hist. It will show tall narrow bins like the e-a hist when there are spikes in the data and will show isolated outliers just like the usual histogram.
>
>
>
They also mention that code in R is available on request. | If I need to determine the number of bins programmatically I usually start out with a histogram that has way more bins than needed. Once the histogram is filled I then combine bins until I have enough entries per bin for the method I am using, e.g. if I want to model Poisson-uncertainties in a counting experiment with uncertainties from a normal distribution until I have more than something like 10 entries. |
34,886,749 | I have a (asp.net)web service service and I am using Apigee as API management tool. I wanted to know some performance testing tools to test my api's and also wanted to evaluate them based on SSL support, encryption, can be automated, integration with source control(tfs)
Can anybody suggest some tool options or any other information regarding performance testing rest api? | 2016/01/19 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/34886749",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/3866016/"
] | Basically any performance testing tool which supports HTTP(S) protocol and setting headers can be used for load testing APIs.
The most popular tool for web services testing is [SoapUI](https://www.soapui.org/getting-started/load-testing.html). It can be used for load testing as well.
Other free and open source tools are:
* [Grinder](http://grinder.sourceforge.net)
* [Gatling](http://gatling.io)
* [Apache JMeter](http://jmeter.apache.org)
* [Tsung](http://tsung.erlang-projects.org/)
See [Open Source Load Testing Tools: Which One Should You Use?](https://blazemeter.com/blog/open-source-load-testing-tools-which-one-should-you-use) guide for detailed description of the above softwares, sample test reports and comparison matrix.
Personally I would go for JMeter as SoapUI and Gatling do not scale (i.e. if one machine won't be able to produce the anticipated load it will be your bottleneck), Grinder and Tsung are not that user-friendly (Python and XML test definition formats correspondingly) | [Restbird](https://restbird.org), offer docker deployment and support javascript, python and Golang to add logic, everything is stored in local file system makes it easy to scale . |
2,977,317 | Can anybody recommend a (preferably open-source) framework for decoupling GUI from model in Java desktop applications? | 2010/06/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2977317",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/9204/"
] | [Java Swing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_%28Java%29#Loosely-Coupled_and_MVC) actually makes good use of MVC for just this purpose. | From your reaction to the suggestion that Swing is an MVC framework for desktop apps, I think that you really need some kind of generator framework that will generate the 'model' and 'view' code from higher level specifications. Examples I'm (more or less) familiar with are Eclipse EMF, GEF and related technologies. |
2,977,317 | Can anybody recommend a (preferably open-source) framework for decoupling GUI from model in Java desktop applications? | 2010/06/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2977317",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/9204/"
] | Fundamentally decoupling a GUI model from your core java code is best done with a databinding library. Which is to say you have your pojo business code, you have the GUI component code, and you don't fancy writing a load of logic to sync them up all the time whilst updating the view and implementing the business logic. So don't. Find a mature databinding framework for the GUI widgets you are using and learn that; have it keep the screen controls in sync with your pojo code.
[JGoodies](http://jgoodies.com/) and [beanbindings](https://beansbinding.dev.java.net/) are good examples of Swing variants of binding onto an OO model. The core bits of JGoodies are opensource. If you go to /articles on the jgoodies site it has articles on pattern and databinding. Whilst each binding framework has different classes the patterns for writing good clean code are portable between GUI frameworks and bindings frameworks.
If you download the now opensource [WindowsBuilderPro](http://code.google.com/javadevtools/wbpro/) tool then it has excellent examples in both Swing and SWT of doing good databindings. The swing jphonebook example uses the beanbindings library. WindowsBuilderPro is a drag and drop GUI builder; you used to have to pay for it as a leading drag and drop GUI builder which works with the leading free GUI libraries. It was bought by google and opensourced so that they could beef up its graphical screen builder support for GWT (the Google web GUI framework).
That GUI builder tool has both excellent sample code and is an excellent opensource tool now. It does the same example of a phonebook in both Swing and SWT GUI libraries to demo its drag-and-drop GUI builder tool power. So it is a great way to compare and contrast Swing to SWT whilst learning databindings. | [Java Swing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_%28Java%29#Loosely-Coupled_and_MVC) actually makes good use of MVC for just this purpose. |
2,977,317 | Can anybody recommend a (preferably open-source) framework for decoupling GUI from model in Java desktop applications? | 2010/06/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2977317",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/9204/"
] | [Java Swing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_%28Java%29#Loosely-Coupled_and_MVC) actually makes good use of MVC for just this purpose. | [Biscotti](http://logicdevelopment.net/blog/?p=16) is a great framework |
2,977,317 | Can anybody recommend a (preferably open-source) framework for decoupling GUI from model in Java desktop applications? | 2010/06/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2977317",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/9204/"
] | Fundamentally decoupling a GUI model from your core java code is best done with a databinding library. Which is to say you have your pojo business code, you have the GUI component code, and you don't fancy writing a load of logic to sync them up all the time whilst updating the view and implementing the business logic. So don't. Find a mature databinding framework for the GUI widgets you are using and learn that; have it keep the screen controls in sync with your pojo code.
[JGoodies](http://jgoodies.com/) and [beanbindings](https://beansbinding.dev.java.net/) are good examples of Swing variants of binding onto an OO model. The core bits of JGoodies are opensource. If you go to /articles on the jgoodies site it has articles on pattern and databinding. Whilst each binding framework has different classes the patterns for writing good clean code are portable between GUI frameworks and bindings frameworks.
If you download the now opensource [WindowsBuilderPro](http://code.google.com/javadevtools/wbpro/) tool then it has excellent examples in both Swing and SWT of doing good databindings. The swing jphonebook example uses the beanbindings library. WindowsBuilderPro is a drag and drop GUI builder; you used to have to pay for it as a leading drag and drop GUI builder which works with the leading free GUI libraries. It was bought by google and opensourced so that they could beef up its graphical screen builder support for GWT (the Google web GUI framework).
That GUI builder tool has both excellent sample code and is an excellent opensource tool now. It does the same example of a phonebook in both Swing and SWT GUI libraries to demo its drag-and-drop GUI builder tool power. So it is a great way to compare and contrast Swing to SWT whilst learning databindings. | From your reaction to the suggestion that Swing is an MVC framework for desktop apps, I think that you really need some kind of generator framework that will generate the 'model' and 'view' code from higher level specifications. Examples I'm (more or less) familiar with are Eclipse EMF, GEF and related technologies. |
2,977,317 | Can anybody recommend a (preferably open-source) framework for decoupling GUI from model in Java desktop applications? | 2010/06/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2977317",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/9204/"
] | I would strongly suggest you to try the ZK framework. I have not found until today such a srtong framework. In my company we have applied new projects within a few weeks using the latest patterns like MVVM. The style of programming is much like developing a classic 'desktop' app.
PS: I am in no way related to the ZK people. I am just using their framework. | From your reaction to the suggestion that Swing is an MVC framework for desktop apps, I think that you really need some kind of generator framework that will generate the 'model' and 'view' code from higher level specifications. Examples I'm (more or less) familiar with are Eclipse EMF, GEF and related technologies. |
2,977,317 | Can anybody recommend a (preferably open-source) framework for decoupling GUI from model in Java desktop applications? | 2010/06/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2977317",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/9204/"
] | Fundamentally decoupling a GUI model from your core java code is best done with a databinding library. Which is to say you have your pojo business code, you have the GUI component code, and you don't fancy writing a load of logic to sync them up all the time whilst updating the view and implementing the business logic. So don't. Find a mature databinding framework for the GUI widgets you are using and learn that; have it keep the screen controls in sync with your pojo code.
[JGoodies](http://jgoodies.com/) and [beanbindings](https://beansbinding.dev.java.net/) are good examples of Swing variants of binding onto an OO model. The core bits of JGoodies are opensource. If you go to /articles on the jgoodies site it has articles on pattern and databinding. Whilst each binding framework has different classes the patterns for writing good clean code are portable between GUI frameworks and bindings frameworks.
If you download the now opensource [WindowsBuilderPro](http://code.google.com/javadevtools/wbpro/) tool then it has excellent examples in both Swing and SWT of doing good databindings. The swing jphonebook example uses the beanbindings library. WindowsBuilderPro is a drag and drop GUI builder; you used to have to pay for it as a leading drag and drop GUI builder which works with the leading free GUI libraries. It was bought by google and opensourced so that they could beef up its graphical screen builder support for GWT (the Google web GUI framework).
That GUI builder tool has both excellent sample code and is an excellent opensource tool now. It does the same example of a phonebook in both Swing and SWT GUI libraries to demo its drag-and-drop GUI builder tool power. So it is a great way to compare and contrast Swing to SWT whilst learning databindings. | [Biscotti](http://logicdevelopment.net/blog/?p=16) is a great framework |
2,977,317 | Can anybody recommend a (preferably open-source) framework for decoupling GUI from model in Java desktop applications? | 2010/06/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2977317",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/9204/"
] | Fundamentally decoupling a GUI model from your core java code is best done with a databinding library. Which is to say you have your pojo business code, you have the GUI component code, and you don't fancy writing a load of logic to sync them up all the time whilst updating the view and implementing the business logic. So don't. Find a mature databinding framework for the GUI widgets you are using and learn that; have it keep the screen controls in sync with your pojo code.
[JGoodies](http://jgoodies.com/) and [beanbindings](https://beansbinding.dev.java.net/) are good examples of Swing variants of binding onto an OO model. The core bits of JGoodies are opensource. If you go to /articles on the jgoodies site it has articles on pattern and databinding. Whilst each binding framework has different classes the patterns for writing good clean code are portable between GUI frameworks and bindings frameworks.
If you download the now opensource [WindowsBuilderPro](http://code.google.com/javadevtools/wbpro/) tool then it has excellent examples in both Swing and SWT of doing good databindings. The swing jphonebook example uses the beanbindings library. WindowsBuilderPro is a drag and drop GUI builder; you used to have to pay for it as a leading drag and drop GUI builder which works with the leading free GUI libraries. It was bought by google and opensourced so that they could beef up its graphical screen builder support for GWT (the Google web GUI framework).
That GUI builder tool has both excellent sample code and is an excellent opensource tool now. It does the same example of a phonebook in both Swing and SWT GUI libraries to demo its drag-and-drop GUI builder tool power. So it is a great way to compare and contrast Swing to SWT whilst learning databindings. | I would strongly suggest you to try the ZK framework. I have not found until today such a srtong framework. In my company we have applied new projects within a few weeks using the latest patterns like MVVM. The style of programming is much like developing a classic 'desktop' app.
PS: I am in no way related to the ZK people. I am just using their framework. |
2,977,317 | Can anybody recommend a (preferably open-source) framework for decoupling GUI from model in Java desktop applications? | 2010/06/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2977317",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/9204/"
] | I would strongly suggest you to try the ZK framework. I have not found until today such a srtong framework. In my company we have applied new projects within a few weeks using the latest patterns like MVVM. The style of programming is much like developing a classic 'desktop' app.
PS: I am in no way related to the ZK people. I am just using their framework. | [Biscotti](http://logicdevelopment.net/blog/?p=16) is a great framework |
5,393,134 | i am a student(8th semester I.T.).i want to know the use of MVC(model view controller)in project...please explain..thanks | 2011/03/22 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/5393134",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/671426/"
] | [MVC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93controller) is an architectural pattern which can be used to organize the logic within an application. Unsurprisingly, it separates the logic into Models (business logic, the bulk of the knowledge in the code), Views (UI display and logic) and Controllers (sort of an eventing model for the UI to interact with the business logic).
This is by no means the only pattern one can use. But it's a commonly used one and fairly simple to understand. Whether or not to use it is an architectural decision on a case-by-case (or project-by-project) basis. | this should get you started:
[Java SE Application Design With MVC](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/javase/index-142890.html) |
5,393,134 | i am a student(8th semester I.T.).i want to know the use of MVC(model view controller)in project...please explain..thanks | 2011/03/22 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/5393134",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/671426/"
] | [MVC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93controller) is an architectural pattern which can be used to organize the logic within an application. Unsurprisingly, it separates the logic into Models (business logic, the bulk of the knowledge in the code), Views (UI display and logic) and Controllers (sort of an eventing model for the UI to interact with the business logic).
This is by no means the only pattern one can use. But it's a commonly used one and fairly simple to understand. Whether or not to use it is an architectural decision on a case-by-case (or project-by-project) basis. | MVC(Model | View | Controller) is a compound design pattern made of several design patterns. If you need to learn this pattern easily learn about the Observer pattern and Strategy pattern which MVC is made of. Models and Views use Observer pattern, there views are observers of models. When ever there is a change in the view, view trigger the controller to update the model. Then controller updates the model and then as View is the observer of the model model updates the view. |
5,393,134 | i am a student(8th semester I.T.).i want to know the use of MVC(model view controller)in project...please explain..thanks | 2011/03/22 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/5393134",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/671426/"
] | this should get you started:
[Java SE Application Design With MVC](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/javase/index-142890.html) | MVC(Model | View | Controller) is a compound design pattern made of several design patterns. If you need to learn this pattern easily learn about the Observer pattern and Strategy pattern which MVC is made of. Models and Views use Observer pattern, there views are observers of models. When ever there is a change in the view, view trigger the controller to update the model. Then controller updates the model and then as View is the observer of the model model updates the view. |
2,552 | I just got Intrigue, and it seems cool that it opens up the game to 5 or 6 players. However, the common consensus seems to be that its possible, [but not recommended](http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/40834/dominion-intrigue). Is there anything I can do to make Dominion play better with 5 or 6 people? | 2011/02/12 | [
"https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/2552",
"https://boardgames.stackexchange.com",
"https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/users/191/"
] | The biggest problem with extra players that I usually see is **down-time**. Dominion is partially a group solitaire game. There is some interaction between players with attack cards, but otherwise your opponents turns won't matter a lot besides keeping an idea on what piles are low and the game end. I find with 5 the main problem is "I know what I'm going to do, I just have to wait through 3 more people's turns to do it". You also might want to tweak the number of kingdom card piles to somewhere between 11 and 13.
The first and easiest thing you can do is **lessen the cards that take longer to resolve**. Spy, Throne room, Adventurer, Contraband, Counting House, Possession, and many others tend to make turns take a little longer. This doesn't mean that they are bad in any way, it just means if you are worried about long down-times with 5 or 6 people you might want to forgo them. Removing certain cards may annoy hardcore players who want a truly random layout, but my games usually aren't super serious and its worth it to fit in the extra person.
Another thing you can do if you are adventurous with 6 is play **3 teams of 2**. Turns pass from one team to another. Both members of that team take their turns at the same time and have totally separate decks. Their attack cards only affect the players on the other teams. It helps to use attack cards that don't depend on order very much in case you both attack. What do you do if one of you plays a spy and the other a thief? What order do they go in? Instead of trying to make rules about this, just use attacks that don't clash with others too easily, like militia and witch. The team mechanism is mainly to allow some simultaneous turns; you can play as a team and do some minor collaboration, like who should buy what or who should focus on attacks vs. victory points, or still make it every man for themselves and have the player with the most victory points win. | One suggestion I have is that, once someone finishes playing all their actions, have the next person start playing. There is only one Treasure card that involves any other player doing anything, and that is Contraband, where the person to your left can name a card you cannot buy.
Having said that, if a player has a card that affects other players, they need to stop and wait for the other players to catch up. Two non-attack cards this applies to are Masquerade and Vault.
If you're going to play an action that requires you to count cards (Counting House, Philosopher's Stone), count the cards in advance. The only time you can't do this is if you have other actions that will affect the card count. In the case of Philosopher's Stone, this is any card that causes you to draw cards (cards in your hand and in play are not counted by Philosopher's Stone). For Counting House, this big one that affects this is Chancellor, as long as you have two or more actions this turn.
This next part wasn't really what you were asking for, but for each player over 4, you should add 3 Estates, 7 Coppers, 10 Curses, and 3 Provinces to the game. The Estates and Coppers make sure these piles stay at their respective starting numbers despite the number of players (12 and 32 respectively), as there are cards that may or may not manipulate these piles. Increasing the number of Curses and Provinces is mentioned in the Intrigue rulebook. |
2,552 | I just got Intrigue, and it seems cool that it opens up the game to 5 or 6 players. However, the common consensus seems to be that its possible, [but not recommended](http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/40834/dominion-intrigue). Is there anything I can do to make Dominion play better with 5 or 6 people? | 2011/02/12 | [
"https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/2552",
"https://boardgames.stackexchange.com",
"https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/users/191/"
] | The biggest problem with extra players that I usually see is **down-time**. Dominion is partially a group solitaire game. There is some interaction between players with attack cards, but otherwise your opponents turns won't matter a lot besides keeping an idea on what piles are low and the game end. I find with 5 the main problem is "I know what I'm going to do, I just have to wait through 3 more people's turns to do it". You also might want to tweak the number of kingdom card piles to somewhere between 11 and 13.
The first and easiest thing you can do is **lessen the cards that take longer to resolve**. Spy, Throne room, Adventurer, Contraband, Counting House, Possession, and many others tend to make turns take a little longer. This doesn't mean that they are bad in any way, it just means if you are worried about long down-times with 5 or 6 people you might want to forgo them. Removing certain cards may annoy hardcore players who want a truly random layout, but my games usually aren't super serious and its worth it to fit in the extra person.
Another thing you can do if you are adventurous with 6 is play **3 teams of 2**. Turns pass from one team to another. Both members of that team take their turns at the same time and have totally separate decks. Their attack cards only affect the players on the other teams. It helps to use attack cards that don't depend on order very much in case you both attack. What do you do if one of you plays a spy and the other a thief? What order do they go in? Instead of trying to make rules about this, just use attacks that don't clash with others too easily, like militia and witch. The team mechanism is mainly to allow some simultaneous turns; you can play as a team and do some minor collaboration, like who should buy what or who should focus on attacks vs. victory points, or still make it every man for themselves and have the player with the most victory points win. | Whenever my group has 5 or 6 for Dominion, I try to split it into two groups, either 3+2 or 3+3. With Intrigue, there are enough basic Treasure, Victory, and Curses to go around. Then when both groups are finished, you can switch and play with the other Kingdom with no additional setup time; then compare notes as to how the different groups handled the different boards. |
2,552 | I just got Intrigue, and it seems cool that it opens up the game to 5 or 6 players. However, the common consensus seems to be that its possible, [but not recommended](http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/40834/dominion-intrigue). Is there anything I can do to make Dominion play better with 5 or 6 people? | 2011/02/12 | [
"https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/2552",
"https://boardgames.stackexchange.com",
"https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/users/191/"
] | Not forever, but for a while at least, don't play with the cards that require a player to make a choice for every other player. I'm thinking of cards like the Spy, where you get to choose whether or not to trash the top card of each player's deck.
I suggest this because, if your group is inexperienced at Dominion, this kind of thing can easily slow the game down to a crawl. Personally I find that a lot of *my* Dominion actions are really simple things like "buy a Treasure" or "buy a Province". It drives me crazy if I'm waiting 5 minutes between each move when I'm just autopiloting my strategy.
Once everyone is experienced at Dominion, of course, they can get their moves done quickly and efficiently, even if multiple additional actions and draws are involved. As long as the game is going pretty much as fast as it can go, there are no grounds can complaint. But until then, it can be really frustrating to be sitting around non-interactively for minutes on end waiting to play a move that requires no thought on your part anyway. So, yes, that's my suggestion: phase the more complex and fiddly cards in gradually! | One suggestion I have is that, once someone finishes playing all their actions, have the next person start playing. There is only one Treasure card that involves any other player doing anything, and that is Contraband, where the person to your left can name a card you cannot buy.
Having said that, if a player has a card that affects other players, they need to stop and wait for the other players to catch up. Two non-attack cards this applies to are Masquerade and Vault.
If you're going to play an action that requires you to count cards (Counting House, Philosopher's Stone), count the cards in advance. The only time you can't do this is if you have other actions that will affect the card count. In the case of Philosopher's Stone, this is any card that causes you to draw cards (cards in your hand and in play are not counted by Philosopher's Stone). For Counting House, this big one that affects this is Chancellor, as long as you have two or more actions this turn.
This next part wasn't really what you were asking for, but for each player over 4, you should add 3 Estates, 7 Coppers, 10 Curses, and 3 Provinces to the game. The Estates and Coppers make sure these piles stay at their respective starting numbers despite the number of players (12 and 32 respectively), as there are cards that may or may not manipulate these piles. Increasing the number of Curses and Provinces is mentioned in the Intrigue rulebook. |
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