How binding are Meta answers? I recently had a user on a particular StackExchange site direct me to a Meta answer in a case that was not specifically addressed elsewhere in the site guidelines.   It turned out that the answer linked was from the same person directing me to it.  The answer had 4 votes and was the only answer to the question relating to the issue I raised. This particular user stated that his answer represented "the consensus on Meta".    This occurred on the Christianity SE and the Meta was the Christianity Meta.  The answer that contained the comment with a link was deleted by a moderator and I haven't been able to locate the Meta question and answer since.  But it related to what sort of answers would be and would not be acceptable for questions asking about the "Biblical basis" for something.  I disagree with the singleton Meta answer and am trying to determine to what extent that particular answer is or is not binding on Christianity SE users.  But I am also keenly interested in the general case as well.   My questions:   Can Meta answers be considered binding on users? If so, what constitutes a binding vs. a non-binding answer?   For example, is only the most highly voted answer considered binding?  Would a solo answer with just one vote be considered binding? 2 votes? 4 votes?   Does it make any difference if the Meta answer is accepted?
How is consensus determined on Meta sites? On our main sites &quot;the best answer&quot; is  as the superposition of the highest voted answer and the accepted answer.  Truth be told, the system is rather insistent on allowing multiple &quot;right answers&quot; and that's one of its strengths: you can be the judge of who you believe. But that doesn't always translate well on the per-site metas, which serve as a sort of policy-creation body.  People who are active on meta help decide how policies are enforced on the main site.  Moderators who have ♦-powers tend to take mandates on meta very seriously.  , accepted answers to meta-questions are no different than any other answer.  Does that leave just votes to determine consensus? Closely related: Not everyone participates on meta-sites.  It can be hard to tell if enough people have looked and voted on questions for real consensus to be declared.  Size of the site determines how many people could be voting on questions.  What counts as a quorum? Finally, sometimes people change their minds about a meta-question, but, , it's not really possible to change one's mind without a pointless edit to someone else's answer.  When should meta-questions be revisited?  On graduated sites, ♦ moderators are elected, which makes them representatives of the active participants, but on beta sites, we are appointed.  It's doubly pressing for beta sites to determine &quot;the will of the people&quot; since part of the point of a beta is to get a working policy framework in place before electing permanent moderators. I'm interested in figuring out how sites already answer these questions and what might be done network-wide to make discovering consensus a little bit easier.  N.B.: Obviously this assumes that consensus matters.  It does to me when I'm making my decisions and I suspect it matters to others.  But that isn't to say that it always makes a difference.  I'm really not interested in answers that hope to use this question as a grindstone for all the axes stored up against certain people who have made unpopular decisions and have the power to make those decisions stick.  Feel free to ask your own question(s).  (Thank you.)
Doing a search via regular Gmail frontend in the browser, shows strange results.  I want to search all mails from   *@ebay.*   My search:  from:@ebay   shows also emails sent from an ebay subdomain:   eBay@reply.ebay.com   It seems like Gmail ignores the "@", otherwise I can't see why those messages appear in the search results.  I also tried following searches with no success:  from:"@ebay" from:'@ebay' from:(@ebay) from:("@ebay") from:('@ebay') example of not surjective isometry on a bounded not closed set. Is there an example of a bounded not closed set $A\subset \mathbb R^n$ for some $n\in \mathbb N$ and an isometry $f:A\rightarrow A$ ($\forall x,y\in A\space;\space d(x,y)=d(f(x),f(y))$ where $d$ is the euclidean metric) such that $f$ isn't surjective? How can I easily encrypt a file? How to create Motion Trail in Cycles I want to create a motion trail effect for a sword like known in games look at that example if you have an solution that looks not as fancy as in the picture don't mind to post it. I'll accept anything useful. I have defined my own custom vim file type with highlighting etc.  I would like to open it using the terminal based vim when I double click on it.  I am using mac os x.  Any pointers on how to start on this? Prove that if $\lim_{n \to \infty}z_{n}=A$ then:  $$\lim_{n \to \infty}\frac{z_{1}+z_{2}+\cdots + z_{n}}{n}=A$$ I was thinking spliting it in: $$(z_{1}+z_{2}+\cdots+z_{N-1})+(z_{N}+z_{N+1}+\cdots+z_{n})$$ where $N$ is value of $n$ for which $|A-z_{n}|&lt;\epsilon$ then taking the limit of this sum devided by $n$ , and noting that the second sum is as close as you wish to $nA$ while the first is as close as you wish to $0$. Not sure if this helps.... Is there an upper limit to temperature in thermodynamics or statistical mechanics In many presentations of statistical mechanics where we have a system of particles having mass, such as the molecules of an ideal gas, the temperature is often equated to the average relative velocity of the particles. However no such velocity can exceed that of light. Is there therefore an absolute upper bound to temperature as well as an absolute zero? Oracle: Inserting into table error - either duplicate column name or invalid datatype I'm trying to insert data from an external table. INSERT /*+ ignore_row_on_dupkey_index ( consruct ( construct_id ) ) */ INTO construct        (construct_id,       n_term ,       enz_name,       c_term,       cpp,       mutations,       mw_kda) SELECT *     FROM EXTERNAL ((       construct_id NUMBER(10),       n_term VARCHAR2 (50),       enz_name VARCHAR2 (50),       c_term VARCHAR2 (50),       cpp VARCHAR2 (50),       mutations VARCHAR2 (50),       mw_kda NUMBER (7,3))      TYPE ORACLE_LOADER     DEFAULT DIRECTORY data_to_input     ACCESS PARAMETERS (         RECORDS DELIMITED BY NEWLINE         SKIP 1         BADFILE bad_files:'badflie_insert_into_construct_from_construct.bad'         FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '&quot;'         MISSING FIELD VALUES ARE NULL          )      LOCATION ('CONSTRUCT.CSV')     REJECT LIMIT UNLIMITED) ext          WHERE NOT EXISTS (         SELECT * FROM construct c         WHERE c.n_term = ext.n_term         AND c.enz_name = ext.enz_name         AND c.c_term = ext.c_term         AND c.cpp = ext.cpp         AND c.mutations = ext.mutations     );  But now i get this error: Error at Command Line : 171 Column : 7 Error report - SQL Error: ORA-00957: duplicate column name 00957. 00000 -  &quot;duplicate column name&quot;  Line 171 is the last line of this part INSERT /*+ ignore_row_on_dupkey_index ( consruct ( construct_id ) ) */ INTO construct        (construct_id,       n_term ,       enz_name,       c_term,       cpp,       mutations,       mw_kda)  Which is clearly not a duplicate column. If I do: INSERT /*+ ignore_row_on_dupkey_index ( consruct ( construct_id ) ) */ INTO construct      (construct_id,      n_term,      enz_name,      c_term,      cpp,      mutations,      mw_kda) SELECT *     FROM EXTERNAL ((       ext.construct_id NUMBER (10),       ext.n_term VARCHAR2 (50),       ext.enz_name VARCHAR2 (50),       ext.c_term VARCHAR2 (50),       ext.cpp VARCHAR2 (50),       ext.mutations VARCHAR2 (50),       ext.mw_kda NUMBER (7,3))      TYPE ORACLE_LOADER     DEFAULT DIRECTORY data_to_input     ACCESS PARAMETERS (         RECORDS DELIMITED BY NEWLINE         SKIP 1         BADFILE bad_files:'badflie_insert_into_construct_from_construct.bad'         FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '&quot;'         MISSING FIELD VALUES ARE NULL          )      LOCATION ('CONSTRUCT.CSV')     REJECT LIMIT UNLIMITED) ext          WHERE NOT EXISTS (         SELECT * FROM construct c         WHERE c.n_term = ext.n_term         AND c.enz_name = ext.enz_name         AND c.c_term = ext.c_term         AND c.cpp = ext.cpp         AND c.mutations = ext.mutations     );  I get Error at Command Line : 174 Column : 10 Error report - SQL Error: ORA-00902: invalid datatype 00902. 00000 -  &quot;invalid datatype&quot;  Line 171 is ext.construct_id NUMBER (10), How to iterate over arguments in a Bash script I have a complex command that I'd like to make a shell/bash script of.  I can write it in terms of $1 easily:  foo $1 args -o $1.ext   I want to be able to pass multiple input names to the script. What's the right way to do it?    And, of course, I want to handle filenames with spaces in them. To show that Fermat number $F_{5}$ is divisible by $641$. How can I show that  $F_{5}=2^{2^5}+1$ is divisible by $641$. Combinations of selecting $n$ objects with $k$ different types Suppose that I am buying cakes for a party. There are $k$ different types and I intend to buy a total of $n$ cakes. How many different combinations of cakes could I possibly bring to the party? I am developing a set of scripts, which I want to be present for all users, when I set up a server. But I don't want them in the standard locations like /usr[/local]/[bin],[sbin] etc.  Is there some existing convention for where such scripts should be placed? Does the hom-tensor adjunction hold for $O_X$ modules also? With sheaf hom and sheaf tensor product, the statement would consist of a natural transformation $Hom_O (M \otimes_O N, K)\cong_{nat} Hom_O(M, Hom_O(N, K))$, $O = O_X$ is the structure sheaf and $M,N,K$ are sheaves of $O_X$ modules.  If true I think I can check this by hand, by describing sheaves in terms of compatible germs, defining this adjunction on the germs and checking that they glue together. It is easier in the quasi-coherent sheaves on a scheme case because then one can just work in an affine cover and the distinguished base.  I am little bit concerned that one might need a finite presentation hypothesis somewhere, in order for $Hom$ to localize well. ($Hom_{R[S^{-1}]}(M[S^{-1}], N[S^{-1}]) \cong Hom_R(M,N)[S^{-1}]$ needs $M$ finitely presented.) Difference between StringBuilder and StringBuffer What is the main difference between StringBuffer and StringBuilder? Is there any performance issues when deciding on any one of these? Using methods from another class in the main? How to avoid nested With[]? Computing the best constant in classical Hardy's inequality Classical Hardy's inequality (cfr. Hardy-Littlewood-Polya Inequalities, Theorem 327)  If $p&gt;1$, $f(x) \ge 0$ and $F(x)=\int_0^xf(y)\, dy$ then   $$\tag{H} \int_0^\infty \left(\frac{F(x)}{x}\right)^p\, dx &lt; C\int_0^\infty (f(x))^p\, dx $$  unless $f \equiv 0$. The best possibile constant is $C=\left(\frac{p}{p-1}\right)^p$.   I would like to prove the statement in italic regarding the best constant. As already noted by Will Jagy , the book suggests stress-testing the inequality with   $$f(x)=\begin{cases} 0 &amp; 0\le x &lt;1 \\ x^{-\alpha} &amp; 1\le x \end{cases}$$   with $1/p&lt; \alpha &lt; 1$, then have $\alpha \to 1/p$. If I do so I get for $C$ the lower bound  $$\operatorname{lim sup}_{\alpha \to 1/p}\frac{\alpha p -1}{(1-\alpha)^p}\int_1^\infty (x^{-\alpha}-x^{-1})^p\, dx\le C$$  but now I find myself in trouble in computing that lim sup. Can someone lend me a hand, please?    UPDATE: A first attempt, based on an idea by Davide Giraudo, unfortunately failed. Davide pointed out that the claim would easily follow from   $$\tag{!!} \left\lvert \int_1^\infty (x^{-\alpha}-x^{-1})^p\, dx - \int_1^\infty x^{-\alpha p }\, dx\right\rvert \to 0\quad \text{as}\ \alpha \to 1/p. $$  But this is false in general: for example if $p=2$ we get   $$\int_1^\infty (x^{-2\alpha} -x^{-2\alpha} + 2x^{-\alpha-1}-x^{-2})\, dx \to \int_1^\infty(2x^{-3/2}-x^{-2})\, dx \ne 0.$$ How do I profile memory usage in Python? I've recently become interested in algorithms and have begun exploring them by writing a naive implementation and then optimizing it in various ways.  I'm already familiar with the standard Python module for profiling runtime (for most things I've found the timeit magic function in IPython to be sufficient), but I'm also interested in memory usage so I can explore those tradeoffs as well (e.g. the cost of caching a table of previously computed values versus recomputing them as needed). Is there a module that will profile the memory usage of a given function for me? Can someone give me an example of a function $f: I\to \mathbb R$ which is uniform continuous but not Hölder continuous (for any $\alpha$)? Here $I$ is an interval. If $I$ is closed and bounded then we are essentially assuming that $f$ is merely continuous.   By saying that $f$ is not Hölder continuous for any $\alpha$, I mean for all $\alpha &gt;0$,   $$\sup_{x,y\in I, x\neq y} \frac{|f(x) - f(y)|}{|x-y|^\alpha} = \infty.$$  That is, I need to find a function $f$ so that for all $\alpha$ and $M&gt;0$, there are $x, y\in I$ so that   $$ \frac{|f(x) - f(y)|}{|x-y|^\alpha} \ge M.$$  I know that $f(x) = x^\alpha$ are $\alpha$-Hölder continuous. Thus, in some sense, I am looking for $f$ which are worst than the functions $x^\alpha$ for all $\alpha &gt;0$. Is 'had have + past participle' a correct grammatical form?