I remember reading an anthology/collection of sci/fi and fantasy stories sometime between 1990-1996 which had as its first(?) story one called 'Kraken' or 'The Kraken' maybe.  It was about a post apocalyptic water world where the only surviving people were living on floating islands of junk and seaweed. The most interesting theme to me was that the protagonist rediscovered ways of resynthesising metals and chemicals from the sea and the sun using crude chemistry principles.
I read a book a while ago ( read many years, maybe a decade ago, it was at least 20 years old then) about a watery planet ruled over by a monstrous overlord sea monster thing.   The hero rallies some of the floating villages to fight the monster and they make iron weaponry out of iron from blood as far as I can remember.   Beyond this I can't remember much about the book, but I'm sure at least one other person out there must have read it.  Edit for more potential details: I think the village folk were reluctant to trust the hero, he was maybe a stranger to them and a lot of them didn't want to upset the status quo.    The iron weapons were maybe to pierce the hide? A harpoon seems familiar, something to trap him with the aid of nets.
SQL Server equivalent to Oracle's CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW In Oracle, I can re-create a view with a single statement, as shown here:  CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW MY_VIEW AS SELECT SOME_FIELD FROM SOME_TABLE WHERE SOME_CONDITIONS   As the syntax implies, this will drop the old view and re-create it with whatever definition I've given.  Is there an equivalent in MSSQL (SQL Server 2005 or later) that will do the same thing? Grub not loading after Windows 8 Install How to typeset subscript in usual text mode? SQL group by day, show orders for each day I have an SQL 2005 table, let's call it Orders, in the format:  OrderID, OrderDate,  OrderAmount 1,       25/11/2008, 10 2,       25/11/2008, 2 3,       30/1002008, 5   Then I need to produce a report table showing the ordered amount on each day in the last 7 days:  Day,        OrderCount, OrderAmount 25/11/2008, 2,          12 26/11/2008, 0,          0  27/11/2008, 0,          0  28/11/2008, 0,          0 29/11/2008, 0,          0 30/11/2008, 1,          5   The SQL query that would normally produce this:  select count(*), sum(OrderAmount)     from Orders     where OrderDate&gt;getdate()-7     group by datepart(day,OrderDate)   Has a problem in that it will skip the days where there are no orders:  Day,        OrderCount, OrderAmount 25/11/2008, 2,          12 30/11/2008, 1,          5   Normally I would fix this using a tally table and outer join against rows there, but I'm really looking for a simpler or more efficient solution for this. It seems like such a common requirement for a report query that some elegant solution should be available for this already.   So: 1. Can this result be obtain from a simple query without using tally tables?  and 2. If no, can we create this tally table (reliably) on the fly (I can create a tally table using CTE but recursion stack limits me to 100 rows)? Traverse a list in reverse order in Python What is the difference between .profile and .bash_profile and why don't I have a .profile file on my system? So I'm pretty new to Linux and recently installed Fedora 19 on my netbook. I want to have a deeper understanding of Linux and the CLI so I'm now reading .  In exercise 3 the author gives the following commands:   ls -al cat .profile   I try to follow these instructions but to no avail. There is no .profile file in my user name directory as I can see from ls -al. From what I've learned the .bash_profile and .profile file are practically the same. The only difference I concluded from my research is that .bash_profile gets checked first.   What I don't understand is why are there multiple files for the same function in Linux, why is the Author using .profile and not .bash_profile (if I understand correctly .profile won't be read when the system finds .bash_profile first) and how comes that I don't have the .profile file on my system? Calculate sums of inverses of binomial coefficients How to calculate the sum of sequence $$\frac{1}{\binom{n}{1}}+\frac{1}{\binom{n}{2}}+\frac{1}{\binom{n}{3}}+\cdots+\frac{1}{\binom{n}{n}}=？$$ How about its limit? So that I could resize the window to a certain size from within Terminal. How can I find the version of Ubuntu that is installed? I installed some version of Ubuntu on my VMware, but I don't know what version exactly it is. How can I find it out? Is any particular punctuation necessary when a quotation is the subject of a sentence? For example, in the sentence below, should there be a comma after export? Or anything else?     "Laughter is America's most important export" is a well-known quote of Walt Disney's. states that if $f:X \rightarrow Y$ is a morphism of ringed space, $G$ is a locally free $O_Y$-module, then $f^*G$ is a locally free $O_X$ module.     Suppose that $G$ is a locally free $O_Y$ module, hence it is a free $O_Y|_U=O_U$ module. We have an induced map  $$f^{-1}(U) \rightarrow U$$ given by restriction of morphism of ringed spaces.   Hence, as $\bigoplus O_U \simeq G|_U$, $f^*:Mod(O_U) \rightarrow Mod(O_{f^{-1}(U)})$ is functorial, $f^*(G|_U) = (f^*G)|_{f^{-1}(U)}$, we have isomoprhism,  $$ \bigoplus O_{f^{-1}(U)} \simeq (f^*G)|_{f^{-1}(U)} $$ VS Code Setup - Create project with manifest error When I try to create project with manifest it is giving me this error:    Starting SFDX: Create Project  12:39:56.757 sfdx force:project:create --projectname Dev --outputdir c:\ --template standard --manifest { AssertionError [ERR_ASSERTION]: Trying to copy from a source that does not exist: C:\Program Files (x86)\Salesforce CLI\client\node_modules\salesforcedx-templates\lib\templates\project\standard\ScratchDef.json     at EditionInterface.exports.copy (C:\Program Files (x86)\Salesforce CLI\client\node_modules\salesforcedx-templates\node_modules\mem-fs-editor\lib\actions\copy.js:49:3)     at EditionInterface.module.exports [as copyTpl] (C:\Program Files (x86)\Salesforce CLI\client\node_modules\salesforcedx-templates\node_modules\mem-fs-editor\lib\actions\copy-tpl.js:29:8)     at ProjectGenerator.writing (C:\Program Files (x86)\Salesforce CLI\client\node_modules\salesforcedx-templates\lib\generators\projectGenerator.js:57:17)     at Object.&lt;anonymous&gt; (C:\Program Files (x86)\Salesforce CLI\client\node_modules\salesforcedx-templates\node_modules\yeoman-generator\lib\index.js:427:27)     at C:\Program Files (x86)\Salesforce CLI\client\node_modules\run-async\index.js:25:25     at new Promise (&lt;anonymous&gt;)     at C:\Program Files (x86)\Salesforce CLI\client\node_modules\run-async\index.js:24:19     at self.env.runLoop.add.completed (C:\Program Files (x86)\Salesforce CLI\client\node_modules\salesforcedx-templates\node_modules\yeoman-generator\lib\index.js:428:13)     at runCallback (timers.js:705:18)     at tryOnImmediate (timers.js:676:5)   generatedMessage: false,   name: 'AssertionError [ERR_ASSERTION]',   code: 'ERR_ASSERTION',   actual: false,   expected: true,   operator: '==' } { AssertionError [ERR_ASSERTION]: Trying to copy from a source that does not exist: C:\Program Files (x86)\Salesforce CLI\client\node_modules\salesforcedx-templates\lib\templates\project\standard\ScratchDef.json     at EditionInterface.exports.copy (C:\Program Files (x86)\Salesforce CLI\client\node_modules\salesforcedx-templates\node_modules\mem-fs-editor\lib\actions\copy.js:49:3)     at EditionInterface.module.exports [as copyTpl] (C:\Program Files (x86)\Salesforce CLI\client\node_modules\salesforcedx-templates\node_modules\mem-fs-editor\lib\actions\copy-tpl.js:29:8)     at ProjectGenerator.writing (C:\Program Files (x86)\Salesforce CLI\client\node_modules\salesforcedx-templates\lib\generators\projectGenerator.js:57:17)     at Object.&lt;anonymous&gt; (C:\Program Files (x86)\Salesforce CLI\client\node_modules\salesforcedx-templates\node_modules\yeoman-generator\lib\index.js:427:27)     at C:\Program Files (x86)\Salesforce CLI\client\node_modules\run-async\index.js:25:25     at new Promise (&lt;anonymous&gt;)     at C:\Program Files (x86)\Salesforce CLI\client\node_modules\run-async\index.js:24:19     at self.env.runLoop.add.completed (C:\Program Files (x86)\Salesforce CLI\client\node_modules\salesforcedx-templates\node_modules\yeoman-generator\lib\index.js:428:13)     at runCallback (timers.js:705:18)     at tryOnImmediate (timers.js:676:5)   generatedMessage: false,   name: 'AssertionError [ERR_ASSERTION]',   code: 'ERR_ASSERTION',   actual: false,   expected: true,   operator: '==' } 12:40:03.206 sfdx force:project:create --projectname Dev --outputdir c:\ --template standard --manifest  ended with exit code 0   Can you please let me know what I am missing:   I have:   installed vs code, salesforce extension pack, salesforce cli, set the environment variable for my user, there is jdk installed (I have not set the path for it, not sure if it is required?)    What I am missing?   Thanks in Advance!! Is this group solvable? Let $G=H\times K$ (a direct product of $H , K$) where $H$ is an abelian 2-group and $K$ is a non-abelian simple group. Is $G$ solvable? why?  These three answers are true, and I thought so. But in a book I found a remark that made me confused: T.M. Gagen, Topics in Finite Groups, London Math. Soc. Lecture Note Ser., vol. 16, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1976, Remark, Theorem A on p. $40 $ and Definition $11.3$ on p. $39$. Please see it and say me your ideas. Proving the determinant of a tridiagonal matrix with $-1, 2, -1$ on diagonal. Let $A_n$ denote an $n \times n$ tridiagonal matrix.  $$A_n=\begin{pmatrix}2 &amp; -1 &amp; &amp; &amp; 0 \\ -1 &amp; 2 &amp; -1 &amp; &amp; \\ &amp; \ddots &amp; \ddots &amp; \ddots &amp; \\ &amp; &amp; -1 &amp; 2 &amp; -1 \\ 0 &amp; &amp; &amp; -1 &amp; 2 \end{pmatrix} \quad\text{for }n \ge 2$$  Set $D_n = \det(A_n)$  Prove that $D_n = 2D_{n-1} - D_{n-2}$ for $n \ge 4$. How can I convert a std::string to int? If a function can only be defined implicitly does it have to be multivalued? I was looking for alternate proofs of the theorem that "a vector space $V$ of dimension greater than $1$ over an infinite field $\mathbf{F}$ is not a union of fewer than $|\mathbf{F}|$ proper subspaces" and possible generalizations.  A simple measure-theoretic proof over $\mathbb{R}$ is as follows: By countable additivity the sum of the measures of any collection of subspaces is zero since the measure of each subspace is zero, which is a contradiction.  I would like to look at proofs over arbitrary infinite fields and would like to know if similar statements hold for say modules (finitely generated or otherwise) over infinite rings. How do I show that $x^4-10x^2+1$ is irreducible over $\mathbb{Q}$? Someone says I should use the rational root test, but I don't exactly know how that applies. Thanks for any input. Title of short story: God granting immortality to others to find a way to kill himself Finding the missing digits of $23!$ It is given $23!=2585201xy38884976640000$. Now it is required to find the value of $x$ and $y$. I know I could find it by using divisibility rules and solving simultaneous equations. Is there any other way to solve it (without computing it by a calculator)? This question is just out of curiosity.