I lived in mainland China as an English teacher from August 2006 to August 2008.  At that time, it was pretty easy for a US citizen to obtain a Chinese tourist visa in Hong Kong (I myself got a tourist visa to re-enter China for the Beijing Olympics after my residence permit expired).  I haven't been back to China since leaving in August 2008 and am now planning a trip with the family (myself, my wife, and three children) for Summer 2017.  I know that you can get multiple-entry visas at a Chinese Embassy in the US that are good for ten years but they are quite expensive, particularly for a family of five, and we really don't need a 10-year visa.  Given that we'll be traveling in Asia for a couple of months this summer (I've got a ten week sabbatical!) and will likely be visiting Hong Kong for a few days anyway, I'm considering waiting to get our visas until we are there.  Is it still easy to get a visa in Hong Kong?  How much does it cost and how long is it good for?
I know standing in line to get a visa is never fun, but was wondering if any Americans had experience getting a standard tourist "L" visa in Hong Kong.   I'm leaving on a RTW trip in less than two weeks and I plan on being in China around June. So I either need to get a 6 or 12 month multi-entry visa before I leave the USA - which would entail booking all my flights and accommodation and securing an invitation letter in the next few days - or just fly to Hong Kong before going to China in June.   Hong Kong seems like the simplest answer, but China usually doesn't allow Americans to get visas outside of their home country (HK seems to be an exception). I just wanted to know if any Americans had done it successfully.  Update: The Chinese Visa Office in HK currently has this notice on their website: "If you don't reside or work in Hong Kong permanently, you are required to apply Chinese visa from the Embassy or Consulate-General of Peoples' Republic of China in your resident country." It seems practices may have changed. Any Americans with experience care to contradict this?  Link:
p:commandbutton action doesn't work inside p:dialog Before I start, don't lecture me on the fact that FAT32 is old and hasn't been updated for nearly 20 years. Right now I have sorted that. I am trying to install Ubuntu Linux onto a 64GB flash drive and it wants me to format it to one of the EXT file systems.  The problem is if I put the flash drive into a Windows PC, I can't use it. I also can't install the required software onto every Windows PC that I will use. When I tried to install it on FAT32 I got an error and there is no option for NTFS.  Does anyone know how I could do this? Maybe a Windows based tool? Thanks in advance. Can I rephrase the sentence "Can you explain this word to me?" into "Can you explain me this word." $x^p-c$ has no root in a field $F$ if and only if $x^p-c$ is irreducible? Hungerford's book of algebra has exercise $6$ chapter $3$ section $6$ [Probably impossible with the tools at hand.]:     Let $p \in \mathbb{Z}$ be a prime; let $F$ be a field  and let $c \in  F$. Then $x^p - c$ is irreducible in $F[x]$ if and only if $x^p - c$   has no root  in $F$. [Hint: consider two cases: char$(F) = p$ and   char$(F)$ different of $p$.]   I have attempted this a lot. Anyone has an answer? C++ Struct Pointer Segfault How can I create light trails without a blurry subject? least common multiple of $\{1,2,...,n\}$ is bigger than $2^{n-1}$ The least common multiple of $\{1,2,...,n\}$ is greater than $2^{n-1}$ for any $n \ge 3$.   I found this in a MATHEMATICA book, but I don't know how to prove this. Can you help me?  [Edit:  has a discussion of an asymptotic stronger result, but that relies on the . What else is known about this? JL] Rules for the usage of "me" VS. "myself"? What are general guidelines for the use of "me" and "myself"?     Did I describe me or did I describe Maria?   OR     Did I describe myself or did I describe Maria? If I have several classes with functions that I need but want to store separately for organisation, can I extend a class to have both?  i.e. class a extends b extends c  edit: I know how to extend classes one at a time, but I'm looking for a method to instantly extend a class using multiple base classes - AFAIK you can't do this in PHP but there should be ways around it without resorting to class c extends b, class b extends a Vertex count appears incorrect after removing doubles I've only just started studying the Blender Python API. I'm writing a script (see below) to automate something I've done by hand : joining two adjacent cubes and cleaning up the resulting mesh.   After joining and removing doubles, I expect to have 12 vertices instead of 16 in the resulting object. In the Info header, this seems to be the case, but when I print to the windows terminal I still see 16. Also I do see the output from remove_double(), here's a screenshot :    So what's wrong here ? What is the right way to access an object's mesh, and count its vertices ?  Joao  import bpy  # Create two adjacent cubes and join them bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(location=(1,0,0)) ob = bpy.context.object bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(location=(3,0,0)) ob.select = True bpy.ops.object.join()  # Expect 16 vertices, 24 edges, 12 faces result = bpy.context.object print(str(len(result.data.vertices)))  # Go to edit mode, remove double vertices bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'EDIT') bpy.ops.mesh.remove_doubles()  # Expect 12 vertices, 20 edges, 11 faces result = bpy.context.object print(str(len(result.data.vertices))) How to download, modify, build and install a Debian source package? If I want to make minor changes to the source code of a Debian package, how do I go about downloading, incrementing the package version, building the (modified) source, and installing it on my computer? Every time I touch an object a full-render starts I don't know what setting I switched, or what happened, but for some reason now every time I move, scale or rotate an object in the 3d View - blender starts a render. I am not talking about the 3d View being in "Rendered" mode. I am talking about the same behavior as when you click the "Render" button (switch to image editor, begin full render). This is driving me crazy and I can't seem to figure out how to turn it off or what I did to start it. It happens whether I use the mouse or keys. If I open a new document the behavior goes away so it is probably a preference setting(?) If you can help, I will be eternally grateful.  Thanks in advance. I obtained a licence key for Windows 8 through DreamSpark. Is there a way to download a Windows 8 ISO image like you could for Windows 7? I am on a non-Windows machine, so I cannot use the Secure Download Manager to download Windows 8 directly using DreamSpark. Translating cooking terms between US / UK / AU / CA / NZ It's clear to me by inspection that if we fix $\beta = \frac{1-\mu}{\mu} \alpha$ (thereby fixing the mean) and let $\alpha \rightarrow 0$, the Beta distribution approaches a Bernoulli($\mu$) distribution.  For example:  par(mfrow = c(1, 2),     oma = c(0, 0, 1.5, 0)) xx = seq(0, 1, length.out = 1000) mus = c(.2, .7) for (ii in 1:2) {   mu = mus[ii]   matplot(xx, sapply(10^(-1:-5), function(al)      pbeta(xx, al, (1-mu)/mu * al)),     type = 'l', lty = ii,     main = paste('Mean:', mu),     ylab = 'Cumulative Probability', xlab = 'x') } title('Beta Approaches Bernoulli', outer = TRUE)     That is, if $X \sim B(\alpha, \frac{1-\mu}{\mu} \alpha)$, its CDF $F_X(x; \alpha, \mu)$, satisfies  $$ \lim_{\alpha \rightarrow 0} F_X(x; \alpha, \mu) = 1 - \mu = F_Y(x) \quad \forall x \in (0, 1)$$  Where $Y \sim$ Bernoulli($\mu$), and the convergence is non-uniform. I tried to do a more formal proof of this but couldn't make any progress, even in simple cases (like $\mu = \frac12$). The  makes reference to the $\mu = \frac12$ case several times without proof. Perhaps I'm missing something easy about doing the integral, or some fact about the Beta/incomplete Beta function. Any help would be appreciated! Add field "tome" to biblatex entries I need to add a new field in the @book or @InProceedings entries: this field is "tome", for I have for instance the following title:  Francesco Bertolini, Società di trasmissione orale: mito e folclore, in Lo spazio letterario della Grecia antica, a cura di G. Cambiano, L. Canfora e D. Lanza, vol. I, tomo I, Salerno, Roma 1992, pp. 47--75.   So the following code is not enough:  @InProceedings{ bertolini:1992,   author                   = "Francesco Bertolini",   title                    = "Società di trasmissione orale: mito e folclore",   booktitle                = "Lo spazio letterario della Grecia antica",   editor                   = "G. Cambiano and L. Canfora and D. Lanza",   publisher                = "Salerno",   location                 = "Roma",   year                     = "1992",   volume                   = "1,   pages                    = "47--75", }   Using othes codes, I was able only to produce the "tome" field, but with a general trouble about the other fields:  \DeclareSourcemap{   \maps[datatype=bibtex]{     \map{       \step[fieldsource=tome,fieldtarget=usera]     }   } } \DeclareFieldFormat{usera}{tomo\space{#1}}   \DeclareBibliographyDriver{book}{%   \usebibmacro{author/editor}%   \setunit{\labelnamepunct}\newblock   \usebibmacro{title}%   \newunit\newblock   \usebibmacro{journal+issuetitle}%   \setunit{\bibpagespunct}%   \printfield{pages}%   \newunit\newblock   \printfield{usera}%   \usebibmacro{finentry}} \renewcommand*{\finentrypunct}{}   (useful for articles, but not for my case). By real, I'm not able to understand  which bibmascros I have to invocate...  I tried to write a biblatex-tome.dbx:  \ProvidesFile{biblatex-tome.dbx}   \DeclareDatamodelFields[type=field,datatype=literal,skipout=false]{tome}   \DeclareDatamodelEntryfields{tome}   Inside the main .tex file I put just this code:  \DeclareFieldFormat{tome}{\mkbibacro{tome}\addcolon\space #1} \newcommand*{\patchmoretome}[1]{   \xpatchbibdriver{#1}%     {\printfield{tome}}     {\printfield{tome}%           \newunit\newblock      \printfield{tome}}%     {\typeout{patching #1 to include more tome succeded}}%     {\typeout{patching #1 to include more tome failed}}% } % patch all drivers \patchmoretome{article} \patchmoretome{book} \patchmoretome{collection} \patchmoretome{inbook} \patchmoretome{incollection} \patchmoretome{inproceedings} \patchmoretome{manual} \patchmoretome{periodical} \patchmoretome{proceedings} \patchmoretome{report} \patchmoretome{thesis}   but it doesn't print the field in bibliographic entry. So I'm very confused about a (re)writing of driver How to update kernel to the latest mainline version without any Distro-upgrade? Currently I'm running Linux-3.0 and I want to update it to Linux-3.3.1 the latest stable kernel release as mentioned at . Can I update to 3.3.1 in Ubuntu without any risk of crashes? I'm updating my kernel regularly as provided by the Update Manager..Currently I have Linux-3.0.0.17..Can I update?  NOTE:  The latest kernel version any user is supposed to use in Ubuntu is updated automatically via the Update Manager, so no action is normally required by user regarding kernel upgrades. What the question author is referring to is mainline kernel, see: Will I be able to play my Destiny Characters if I buy Legendary Edition (PS3) Why don't researchers request payment for refereeing? Conservation law of energy and Big Bang? Did the law of conservation of energy apply to the earliest moments of the Big Bang? If so, what theoretical physics supports this?   I hear that Einstein's theory of relativity disputes the law of conservation of energy- so does that mean the law is false, or only some aspect of it?