I am trying to identify a story I read decades ago that I visualize this way and often think about when I am cross country running:   There is a machine that I visualize as round, with some way to destroy people (such as injecting them with something) that relentlessly chases the protagonist to run him down.   I seem to associate the name Ruun with the story.
This story had a researcher landing on an uncharted planet to see if it was any good for mining some type of mineral/metal.  Whilst there he encounters this type of ball that chases him all over the planet. He ends up finding this ball’s collection of other things it has caught including animals all the way back to the dinosaurs.  On the ball it has the writing '+/-7.  In the end it chases him for so long that he weighs too little for the balls 'collection'.  Any ideas greatly appreciated.
I was having trouble playing the game on my android so I downloaded it to my wife's phone (Galaxy S6). I read some posts on how to get it running on my android and it worked but, my level 7 account is on my wife's phone.  How do I get it back to my android? When I sign out and back in it doesn't ask for any sign in info. I've tried deleting the app's data and even uninstalling and re-installing, but it still doesn't ask for sign-in info. Donating winning lottery ticket to 501(c)3 Private Foundation: cost-basis deduction + full tax free redemption for foundation? Simulating data to fit a mediation model prove that : $\cos x \cdot \cos(x-60^{\circ}) \cdot \cos(x+60^{\circ})= \frac14 \cos3x$ I should prove this trigonometric identity. I think I should get to this point : $\cos(3x) = 4\cos^3 x - 3\cos x $ But I don't have any idea how to do it (I tried solving $\cos(x+60^{\circ})\cos(x-60^{\circ})$ but I got nothing) Boundary of Ball of radius R has zero measure How to compute $\,3^{3^{3^{\:\!\phantom{}^{.^{.^.}}}}}\!\!\!\!\bmod 46,$ for power tower height $2020$? What is the remainder of $\,3^{3^{3^{\:\!\phantom{}^{.^{.^.}}}}}\!\!\!$ divided by $46$?  The level of powers is $2020$.  First there is no parenthesis so it means 3 power of 3 which is also power 3 and so on 2020 times  Second I think that we can use Fermat's Little Theorem but I don't know how, and maybe there is a better way. Proving square root of a square is the same as absolute value Lets say I have a function defined as $f(x) = \sqrt {x^2}$. Common knowledge of square roots tells you to simplify to $f(x) = x$ (we'll call that $g(x)$) which may be the same problem, but it isn't the same equation. For example, say I put $-1$ into them:  $\begin{align} f(x) &amp;= \sqrt {x^2} \\ f(-1) &amp;= \sqrt {(-1)^2} \\ f(-1) &amp;= \sqrt {1} \\ f(-1) &amp;= 1 \end{align}$  $\begin{align} g(x) &amp;= x \\ g(-1) &amp;= -1 \end{align}$  thereby, we conclude that $f(x)$ and $g(x)$ do not produce the same results even though they are mathematically the same. This is also shown when we try to graph the functions:  :    :    :    From this, we can see that given $f(x) = \sqrt {x^2}$, when simplified is not the same as $f(x) = x$. So, is there any way to prove that $y = \sqrt {x^2}$ is not the same as $y = x$ for negative values, but is infact the same as $y = \mid x \mid$? Column and row padding in tables How do you guys go about controlling column padding in tables?   Update  To clarify, I'm looking for a way to control both vertical and horizontal padding. So, if I had a simple table like in the following code snippet, I could pad the columns and make them look a bit less... ugly. :P   \begin{tabular}{|l|l|}     \hline     column 1 &amp; column 2 \\      \hline     I really would like this less &amp; crammed\\     \hline \end{tabular}   I tried this by using the command \vspace but it leaves gaps in the vertical lines. How to set Windows bootloader as default bootloader? I have a Win 7/11.10 dual boot system with Grub 2 as the default bootloader. However, I want to make Windows bootloader the default bootloader (grub 'dos' like interface scrares the hell out of my sister) so when I start the PC I will have the following boot options: 1. Windows 7 2. Ubuntu  NB: A process to reverse this operation so Grub can be the default bootloader again will also be appreciated How to normalize data to 0-1 range? I am lost in normalizing, could anyone guide me please.  I have a minimum and maximum values, say -23.89 and 7.54990767, respectively.  If I get a value of 5.6878 how can I scale this value on a scale of 0 to 1. If $A\subseteq\mathbb N$ and $\sum\limits_{a\in A}\frac1a$ converges then $A$ has natural density $0$ In this  to a question about a series, a theorem was stated:     If $A= \{a_i \}$ is a set such that $\sum_{i = 1}^{\infty} \frac{1}{a_i}$ converges, then $d(A) = 0$, where $d(A)$ is the  of the set.   My background in number theory is basically zero and all my attempts to prove this have been utterly unseccessful; would anyone please help me, or at least provide me with a hint to prove it? Age replacement policy for hard disks and SSDs at servers I'm planing an age replacement policy for our storage and servers. Most of them are for DBs and some for images (static content) so yes, they have an huge I/O everytime.  Also, we use Samsung 840 Pro SSDs for the RAID Controllers (PERC H700i) as CacheCade.  Are you guys managing the replacement of old hard drives and solid state drives? Literature with Biber generates strange citations: firstnames appear erratically I had been using bibtex and then biblatex for quite some time. For the newest edition of my book I moved to biber. I happened t notice that firstnames are sometimes generated and sometimes not. Has this been observed by others?   I have tried to make a minimal example but without success. Using the following code, which shows all the commands related to biblatex I have in my preamble I could not get the firstnames to be shown. Even with the stylefile I made for this book (second line) the error did not occur.  I have a dropbox with the latex files for the book available. I can give access to these.   What do you propose?  \documentclass[fontsize=10pt,twoside]{scrbook} \usepackage{hormonbuch} \usepackage[%   style=authoryear%   ,natbib=true%   ,sorting=nyt,backend=biber,doi=false,isbn=false,url=false]{biblatex} \addbibresource{../Literatur/EndokrinologieKundeNourl.bib}  \renewcommand*{\bibpagespunct}{\addcolon} \DeclareFieldFormat{pages}{#1}  \renewrobustcmd*{\enquote}{}  \renewbibmacro{in:}{%       Herbert Voss auf http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/10682/suppress-in-biblatex   \ifentrytype{article}{}{%   \printtext{\bibstring{in}\intitlepunct}}}  \renewbibmacro*{journal+issuetitle}{%   \usebibmacro{journal}%   \setunit*{\addspace}%   \iffieldundef{series}     {}     {\newunit      \printfield{series}%      \setunit{\addspace}}%   \usebibmacro{volume+number+eid}% %  \setunit{\addspace}%   \newunit}  \renewbibmacro*{volume+number+eid}{%   \printfield{volume}% %  \setunit{\addcolon\space}%   }% % \renewbibmacro*{note+pages}{%   \printfield{pages}%   \newunit} % \begin{document}  \citet{CRT+88,FDe+85} \citep{CRT+88,FDe+85} \cite{CRT+88,FDe+85}  \printbibliography  \end{document} Access Java / Servlet / JSP / JSTL / EL variables in JavaScript Formation of ammonia from air and moisture On extended bicycle trips I sometimes slept under a plastic sheet, which helped with mosquitoes on hot nights. But there was a noticeable build-up of ammonia which made this almost impossible for more than an hour or so at a time.   Air is mostly nitrogen $(N_2)$ and there is always water (containing hydrogen) on a humid day. But I wonder about the mechanism for the formation of ammonia under these circumstances? There are (according to Wiki) trace amounts of methane and $H_2$ in the air. But methane and hydrogen (g) are I think pretty stable.   I wonder if the presence of exhaled air (containing $CO_2)$ could be a factor?  Thanks for any ideas. LuaLaTeX protrusion problem with Negative value Are there wizarding schools in the rest of the "magical" world? Are there other schools for witches and wizards in the rest of the world? In the books they only speak of 3 schools, but what about Asian or American people?  And even more, were they affected by the events happening in Europe? half sine and half cosine quaternions I play with some serious board gamers, but we have neglected Monopoly for a number of years, so our knowledge is mostly based on high school &amp; house rules.  We played last week and enjoyed it, but there was a piece of contention. There are times where we decide that we don't like one of our friends for some reason and don't want them to win (i.e. we landed on their property a bunch, or they refused to make a deal, etc.).  So when player 1 has some property and player 2 lands on it and cannot pay the rent their assets (houses/hotels get liquidated), their property gets transferred to the other player. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) In this case, though, player 3 "traded" the amount of money owing for a piece of property (way overpaid). In this case they did it so that player 1 would not get the properties. Player 2 had no chance of winning the game (all properties mortgaged, no cash to speak of and many of the other properties with 3+ houses/hotels on them).  To summarize: Is it OK for a third player to purchase/trade property or cash to/from a player who is about to lose? When I go to localhost/phpmyadmin I get the apache "Not Found" error (404). However, I can load html pages, and run php pages (such as &lt;?php phpinfo(); ?&gt;). And phpmyadmin is installed.  balter@homedevbox:~$ aptitude search phpmyadmin i   phpmyadmin                                               - MySQL web administration tool   I also installed the standard ubuntu LAMP stack and set passwords for mysql and all that.  What could be the problem?  EDIT: Here is where my phpmyadmin files are.  balter@homedevbox:/var$ cd / balter@homedevbox:/$ sudo find . -type d -name phpmyadmin ./var/lib/mysql/phpmyadmin ./var/lib/phpmyadmin ./etc/phpmyadmin ./usr/share/phpmyadmin ./usr/share/dbconfig-common/scripts/phpmyadmin ./usr/share/dbconfig-common/data/phpmyadmin ./usr/share/doc/phpmyadmin