non-root users can run passwd command as root, why can't they change password of root? I know about setuid bit on /bin/passwd file which allows us (non-root user) to run that command as root user. running passwd command requires root permissions to change /etc/shadow file.  My question is if I am running passwd command as root why I can't change the password of root since I am root while I am running that command?  edward@ArchLinux:~$ passwd root passwd: You may not view or modify password information for root.   Is it passwd command that does not allows non-root user to change the password? Can I write a malicious passwd command with setuid bit that can change any user's password?  (Logically I know that this would be disastrous but I want to know how this works in background)
How do real and effective user IDs work? When a normal user wants to make change to the passwd file, the user will by setuid be given the effective user access. User becomes root temporarily and can edit passwd.  However you can only edit your password right, and not everybody else? However your effective user access is root. So how come you're not allowed to change other passwords beside yours?  When you run a program with setuid, what does it mean actually when effective user is root, but real user id is still your name?
Is there a word that means "a span of six months"? That is, I want to connote a stretch of time that lasts half a year, not an event that happens every six months. We have a system hosting many websites for our customers, and inside that system there is a method that non-live customers can view their sites before we turn them on.  Say the link is something like this: ourbigcompany.com/customer/domain=thisisanewsiteurl  Those links are not linked to anywhere outside a secure login - they are only sent to the customer via email. They are publicly viewable, as they have to be, but that's not the real problem.  The real problem is that somehow Bing is getting hold of them and trying to crawl the sites.   I know how to stop the crawling, but that would be like treating the symptoms without fixing the problem.  We log the traffic and there is no referrer - so that is not helpful.  If I change the querystring value for a site, Bing has it within hours. I need to figure out where Bing is getting the links from so that I can close what is obviously a security hole, but I am not sure how.   Any ideas on how to figure that out? Combo box in Java - nullpointer The dimension of the Hilbert space is determined by the number of independent basis vectors. There is a infinite discrete energy eigenbasis $\{|n\rangle\}$ in the problem of particle in a box which can be used to expand a general state $|\psi\rangle$ as: $$|\psi\rangle=\sum\limits_{n=0}^{\infty} C_n |n\rangle$$ Here, the basis implies that the Hilbert space has countably infinite number of basis vectors. But one could well expand $|\psi\rangle$ in any other basis as well, say the continuous position basis. Then that superposition, $$|\psi\rangle=\int dx \psi(x)|x\rangle$$ is also possible. But this basis $\{|x\rangle\}$ is continuous and uncountably infinite. Such sets cannot be equal because they have different cardinality. Then my questions is how many independent basis vectors are really there in this Hilbert space? How to parse hex values into a uint? uint color;  bool parsedhex = uint.TryParse(TextBox1.Text, out color);  //where Text is of the form 0xFF0000 if(parsedhex)    //...   doesn't work. What am i doing wrong? Do subdomains help/hurt SEO? If I have example.com, and blog.example.com, do search engines see those as one site or two? Will using subdomains hurt SEO? I have some technical reasons why I can't use example.com/blog. What is the best way to copy text to the clipboard (multi-browser)? I have tried: function copyToClipboard(text) {     if (window.clipboardData) { // Internet Explorer         window.clipboardData.setData(&quot;Text&quot;, text);     } else {         unsafeWindow.netscape.security.PrivilegeManager.enablePrivilege(&quot;UniversalXPConnect&quot;);         const clipboardHelper = Components.classes[&quot;@mozilla.org/widget/clipboardhelper;1&quot;].getService(Components.interfaces.nsIClipboardHelper);         clipboardHelper.copyString(text);     } }  But in Internet Explorer it gives a syntax error. In Firefox, it says unsafeWindow is not defined. A nice trick without using : What Does it Really Mean to Have Different Kinds of Infinities? Draft watermark image just in a \section Is it possible to have a draft watermark only in a \section?  EDIT:  I have in a document more then one \section, and I need the draftwatermark just in some \section. Unfortunately the section with and without the draftwatermark share the page. For example I want the draftwatermark under the text of just one of these sections A,B,C  \documentclass{article}  \usepackage{kantlipsum} % supply mock text  \begin{document}  \section{A}  \kant[2]  \section{B}  \kant[2-4]  \section{C}  \kant[2]  \end{document} Can you use Wish to duplicate a spell at a higher level? Wish allows you to duplicate the effects of any spell L8 or lower. Does that include a lower-level spell, cast at L8? Say, as a Wizard, casting Heal at L8.  I'm leaning towards yes, but it wouldn't be the first time I assume the wrong answer... Multivariate multiple regression validation What happens to a Devil when its alignment is forcibly changed? According to PHB 122, in the section entitled Alignment in the Multiverse, for most creatures, "alignment is a moral choice." Myth says good-aligned gods created the races that are free to choose to be evil (they have free will), while evil-aligned gods created the races that are very inclined towards evil, since they were born to serve the evil god in the first place.  However, there are some types of creatures -- like devils -- which embody an alignment in its essence:     Alignment in the Multiverse, PHB 122      A devil does not choose to be lawful evil, and it doesn't tend toward lawful evil, but rather it is lawful evil in its essence. If it somehow ceased to be lawful evil, it would cease to be a devil.   My first thought was to not take this reading literally. The text could have meant that a neutral evil devil "isn't really a devil," but really, it's still a devil. It's a bit like imagining a guitarist who loses both hands. The loss of some part of a person's essence makes them not the same person anymore.  However, keeping my attention on it, I'm finding this text more and more difficult to interpret. If a devil "is lawful evil in its essence" then what does it mean when "it would cease to be a devil"? What happens to a devil when its alignment is forcibly changed?  There are , and a devil can be subject to some of them. We completed development on our dev environment and I copied the files over from the dev server to the production server through FTP.   Then through back up and migrade module, I made a back up of the SQL database. I created a new database through Plesk with the same name, username and password. I then imported the SQL database into the new server through phpmyadmin. I go to the URL and get the Site Maintenance message (which is correct, I placed the site in maintenance mode before copying the files over) but cannot navigate to any sub pages. Generally I can add /user or /admin to the end of the url and get the login screen. However all I get are 404 errors. Difference between Groovy Binary and Source release? Legitimate edits of less than 6 characters Energy-Momentum Tensor in QFT vs. GR What is the correspondence between the conserved canonical energy-momentum tensor, which is $$ T^{\mu\nu}_{can} := \sum_{i=1}^N\frac{\delta\mathcal{L}_{Matter}}{\delta(\partial_\mu f_i)}\partial^\nu f_i - \eta^{\mu\nu}\mathcal{L}$$ (the four conserved Noether currents corresponding to four possible spacetime translations)  where $\{f_i\}_{i=1}^N$ are the $N$ matter fields in the theory, and we assume $f_i\mapsto\alpha^\nu\partial_\nu f_i$ for translations,  and stress-energy tensor from the Einstein-Hilbert action, which is: $$ T_{\mu\nu}\equiv-\frac{2}{\sqrt{-g}}\frac{\delta\mathcal{L}_{Matter}}{\delta g^{\mu\nu}} $$   In particular, how do you get that the two are equal (are they?) for Minkowski space, for which there is no variation in the metric? Which variables should I transform, center, and/or standardize in my data for Principal Component Analysis? I have multiple datasets that I am attempting to use principal component analysis (PCA) on in order to infer the underlying structure of the data.  I'm attempting to predict growth increment of conifers (the response which apparently needed to be cube root transformed for my original linear models).  My predictor variables include: continuous (some log-transformed like size-related variables, some compositional, and some traditionally scaled); binary; ordinal; and nominal (of which I'm pretty sure I can order with respect to site productivity).  I'm mostly attempting to make inferences because some of my previous models from linear regression have not produced significant terms corresponding to categories like health or climate and I feel that they should have.  I've read in Joliffe (2002) that I might want to leave my compositional data uncentered.  Forgive my naiveté, but I'm wondering if I should also do this for my binary data.  It also seems that I might not want to scale these since they're already on a 0 - 1 scale but I'm not sure.  After only using my continuous predictors (including compositional variables), it appears that a size principal component makes up the largest portion of the variability and Joliffe also mentions that one might want to attempt a "double-centering" of the log-transformed data if this is the case.  I don't know if this is even possible since the log-transformed data only makes up a small portion of my datasets.  Finally, I should ask if having such a combination of data types will complicate analysis so much that it will make inferences unreliable.  I am currently using R for this analysis.  Thank you. I've got a road bike with brake lever shifters, and it's developed a small problem with age: sometimes, the shifter doesn't catch the first time or two I push it. It'll move easily, with no resistance, since it's not actually pulling on the cable, then after a few tries, catch and work normally. The colder the temperature, the more often this happens.  I don't know how the mechanism works internally, so I'm curious what would cause this, and also whether it's (as I suspect) gradual wear of some part of the mechanism, and if it's likely to fail catastrophically, or gradually worsen. I'm trying to work out what value resistor to use in a LED circuit. The equation I'd use to do this is:  $$ R = \frac{V_{cc} - V_f}{I_f} $$  Seems logical, and makes complete sense. The answers to the question  confirm this too.  I have the following LEDs:   \$ V_f = 3.3V \$ \$ I_{f_{typ}} = 20mA \$   Using a 5V power supply:   \$ V_{cc} = 5V \$   Plugging these into the above equation gives:  $$ \begin{eqnarray} R &amp; = &amp; \frac{V_{cc} - V_f}{I_f} \\   &amp; = &amp; \frac{5V - 3.3V}{20mA} \\   &amp; = &amp; 85\Omega \end{eqnarray} $$  All good so far.  However, if I use the calculator at , that gives me 100&Omega;. If I use the ElectroDroid app on my phone, that gives me 85&Omega;.  So, I assume that the linear1 calculator is using a different method of calculating this resistor value; is there some better way of doing this? What does $\dot\sim$ notation (dot over tilde) mean, in the context like $x \mathrel{\dot\sim} \mathcal N(0,1)$?  Turns out it is easier to find how to typeset it correctly:  that one should type \mathrel{\dot\sim} instead of simply \dot\sim to fix the spacing issue -- than to find what it actually means. It has only been used  on CV until now; is it standard?