I have seen many simple questions (and even answers) with a very large amount of up-votes. Is it a good idea to give so much reputation just for a very simple question or answer which is just because it is a common request of people who search the web for it (and the question/answer author is one who just posted it sooner than other ones)?  As an example, consider this simple (one line) question on Stack Overflow:  Q: How do I redirect to another page?  => 6041 up-votes!   A: window.location.replace(...), with a little more explanation  => 10008 up-votes!   Also consider a 10 points gain for each up-vote! it could theoretically give authors 30k and 100k reputation! (If distributed per different days in 2 years, but, anyway they will produce a very large rep despite the per day limit.)  What is wrong with this? I agree that the up-votes should be saved in the system and also shown for each post (to show how popular the question/answer is), but the reputation assigned to the user can be controlled such that they don't get unnecessary points which other users should try hard to achieve.    So, to improve the reputation system, I think there must be some limits for the total reputation one user can get from each question (or answer), or some weight factor for votes higher than some limit.   Consider this with the fact that many good technical questions and answers provide a very low reputation gain (e.g., +15 for accepted answer or if you have chance for 10 upvotes: 10*10 = 100), or consider many hard questions suggest a bounty worth about +50 or +200 rep. How could we compare them?!   As I already mentioned, I know there is a limit of 200 rep for each user per day. I think its not enough to control the issue as I've explained above.   I don't say we should distinguish simple and non-simple q/a. I think that a limitation or weight on reputation per post will improve the meaning of the reputation system, better than what is now in place.
Recently I answered two questions on SO: The  is a completely trivial answer to a really basic question (kind of "read the manual and follow the one liner example there"). On the other hand, my  is a much more complicated answer that requires much more specialized knowledge of a very specific domain (happens to be related to my PhD research).  Clearly, the first answer could have been given by many SO users - I just happened to be the first to pick up the glove on this question. However, this is not the case for the second answer.  In contrast, when it comes to reputation - the first answer instantly got upvoted (everyone can relate to a simple question/answer), while the second one - I don't believe it will get much upvotes...  So, life isn't fair: for the one answer that really very few people could provide (the second answer) and is much harder to find and get -- is not rewarded, while the trivial answer is rewarded fast and strong...  How can we amend this? How can we encourage rare and specialized answers for difficult and deep questions?  Do we want SO to turn into a pool of trivial and superficial questions?    Update: Thanks to many meta-users who took the time to read through this question and ponder its implication, both answers I used as examples got exposed far beyond their fair-share. So, despite the fact that my original claim that the specialized answer get less reps is no longer valid, this does not change fact that in general my claim is stil valid: specialized answers requiring expert knowledge will recieve less attention at first.    Bottom line: (following my wish to have some sort of ). Indeed it sometimes seems like life isn't fair, but this is only in the short term. In the long run high quality answers do get their proper credit and exposure and their fair share of reputation. The reputation system of SO works quite well balancing and accounting for many factors and parameters. It would require a really strong argument backed up with serious research to change this mechanism.   Thank you all for the lively discussion and for showing me that life is fair after all.
There is a hint to show that if there were points in $\mathbb{Q}$, then there would exist $r,s, t \in \mathbb{Z}$ with $\gcd(r, t) = 1$ such that $2s^2 = t^4 - 17r^4$ , and then show that any prime dividing $s$ is a quadratic residue modulo $17$.  I'm stuck on the first bit - if you suppose $\left(\frac{a}{b}, \frac{c}{d}\right)$ is a point on the curve in $\mathbb{Q}$ (so $a, b, c, d \in \mathbb{Z}$) then you get to $2a^2d^4 = b^2c^4 - 17b^2d^4$, but I'm not sure where to go from here since you don't know that $b$ is a square? Calling a function of a module by using its name (a string) What is the best way to go about calling a function given a string with the function's name in a Python program.  For example, let's say that I have a module foo, and I have a string whose content is "bar". What is the best way to call foo.bar()?  I need to get the return value of the function, which is why I don't just use eval. I figured out how to do it by using eval to define a temp function that returns the result of that function call, but I'm hoping that there is a more elegant way to do this. How to solve the equation $\phi(n) = k$? Too much space between full paragraph and subequations env I have a document using subequations and the parskip package. If the paragraph before a subequations environment is completely filled up to the last line, then additional vertical whitespace is introduced between this paragraph and the following subequations. I guess this is a bug, but I'm not sure, nor do I have enough TeX knowledge to try and fix it. How can I fix this whitespace issue?  Below is a MWE which shows the behaviour, at least on LaTeX2e &lt;2003/12/01> with pdfeTeX 3.141592-1.21a-2.2 (unfortunately on this machine only an old tetex distribution is installed).  \documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{article}  \usepackage{parskip} \usepackage{amsmath}  \begin{document}  The subequations environment provides a convenient way to number a foos \begin{subequations}\label{foo}   \begin{align}     x^2 + y^2 &amp;= z^2\\     a &amp;= b + c   \end{align} \end{subequations}  \end{document} How do I clone a generic list in C#? Where can I find fantasy minis on the cheap? I'm looking to build a collection of fantasy miniatures, preferably pewter - but I don't want to buy them one at a time from my local hobby store... Much too expensive, and they don't often carry anything I'm interested in buying, which makes it a long term venture as well. So I'm looking for ideas on how to obtain many miniatures at once, preferably for cheap. D&amp;D Miniatures aren't a good source for me as they're collectibles, and the prices on those are also prohibitive.  By the way - they don't have to be pewter, that's just my preference. =) How do I animate time? Proving by induction that $\sum\limits_{k=2}^n \frac1{k^2}\le 1$ Does anybody know where to download the QGIS toolbar icons? Singularity in Newton's gravitational law "May I go to the bathroom?" and "I asked if I might go to the bathroom."   The modal auxiliary 'may/might' is used to ask permission.     "He may not have understood your question." and "He might not have understood your question."   The same modal auxiliary is used for uncertainty.  Why? Does set difference distribute over set intersection? I am asked to prove that, if $A, B$ and $C$ are sets, then $$A-(B\cap C)=(A-B)\cap(A-C).$$  However, I think that either I have made an error in my working, or the wording of the problem contains a typographical error.    My working so far is as follows: $$\begin{align}x\in(A-(B\cap C)) &amp;\iff (x\in A)\wedge(x\not\in(B\cap C))\\ &amp;\iff(x\in A)\wedge((x\not\in B)\vee(x\not\in C))\\ &amp;\iff((x\in A)\wedge(x\not\in B))\vee((x\in A)\wedge(x\not\in C))\\ &amp;\iff(x\in(A-B))\vee(x\in(A-C))\\ &amp;\iff x\in((A-B)\cup(A-C)) \end{align}$$  First line to second line: by De Morgan's Law. Second line to third line: by distributivity of set intersection over set union. Third line to fourth line: by definitions of intersection and set difference.   If my working is correct, then I have shown that $$A-(B\cap C)=(A-B)\cup(A-C).$$ Am I correct? Let's say we have two models trained. And let's say we are looking for good accuracy.  The first has an accuracy of 100% on training set and 84% on test set. Clearly over-fitted. The second has an accuracy of 83% on training set and 83% on test set.   On the one hand, model #1 is over-fitted but on the other hand it still yields better performance on an unseen test set than the good general model in #2.   Which model would you choose to use in production? The First or the Second and why? How to get the ASCII value of a character Mac Mini (Mid-2011), 16GB SSD, 16GB RAM, El Capitan (v10.11.6)  The Mac ran fine until I upgraded to Sierra. The latest Mac OS conflicted with most of the specialized apps I use every day, So I immediately returned to El Capitan.  Activity monitor shows that two "Installer/Installer.app" items are always running and are they major users of all of my available memory. Consequently, all my others apps become unresponsive.  I run Disk Utility, and the Installer.app show up there as .dmg files; but I cannot erase, delete, or unmount them. None of my 3rd party app can remove the installers.  My Mac Mini, which should be running super-fast (as it used to), now runs dreadfully and disgustingly slow. I a truly upset with Apple for this kind of garbage. To get their help: $$$. I am a Nigerian citizen.  In 2007 I was twice denied a visa to the UK.  Recently I was filling out an application for another UK visitor visa and by mistake I answered no to the question whether I had ever been denied a UK visa, instead of yes.  When reviewing my application, the visa officer found out about the previous visa rejections and as a result I got a 10 year ban on travel to the UK.  What can I do to lift my 10 year ban?   Will this ban affect my chances of obtaining a visitor visa to the USA? How to connect Nokia Lumia 730 to Ubuntu 15.04? My Nokia Lumia 730 (WP8.1) is not getting detected on Ubuntu 15.04.  Can anybody tell me how to fix this? setfacl incorrectly changes group permissions Many spells have "At higher levels" that provides for more targets or more damage.  For example Magic Missile can be cast as a second level spell and shoot 4 missiles instead of it's 3 as a first level spell.  Can a spell without that verbiage, such as Firestorm be cast in higher level slots for the same effect as the lower level spell? Regarding ,  it is not possible to combine complex powers in the usual way:  $$ (x^y)^z = x^{yz} $$  There was mention of multi-valued functions, is there some theory that makes this all work out correctly?