Novel about alien conquerers who conduct games to select servants I read this maybe 10-15 years ago.   Aliens have conquered earth. Possibly quite some time before the time then novel is set in. They have built their own cities. They conduct periodic athletic competitions for humans similar to the current olympics. The winners are take into the city to act as servants to the masters. The protagonist is part of a human resistance movement who is competing in the games. The plan is to infiltrate the city, gather intel and escape. He wins, get in, finally has to kill his master and escape down a waste disposal system which ends up outside the city.   Anybody knows which one I am talking about?
Book series about aliens who put "caps" on people to control them I remember reading a series when I was around 7th or 8th grade about aliens who had taken over Earth by putting metal caps on people when they were "entering adulthood" to control them (not direct control, but it would keep them from rebelling). There was a faction of people who able to escape and had fake caps and would save teens who were about to be capped.  The main protagonist was a teen boy who was a boxer (or training to be a boxer or something). The aliens would hold tournaments for the humans and whoever won would be "worthy" to serve as personal slaves to the aliens.     The protagonist won and was able to get inside to try and learn more about the aliens from the inside.
Check for Process if Same is Running Is there a script or a way in linux that when I try to execute a shell script/process, if the same is running, it will prompt that same is running and will exit otherwise it will continue. Integral of Sinc Function Squared Over The Real Line Computing the $n^{\textrm{th}}$ permutation of bits. I've seen  post about the $n^{\textrm{th}}$ permutation of a set but that is not what I need. If you have a bit string (ones and zeros only) there are  to quickly permute the NEXT lexicographically ordered bit permutation. For example take $$000111 \rightarrow 001011 \rightarrow 001101\rightarrow\cdots$$ etc. If the string is long then there are going to be approximately one Bajillion of these things. And I want to know how to compute the $n^{\textrm{th}}$ guy without doing the exhaust.  Backgound: This is for a parallel computing job where I need to farm out the search space of elements of a set.  Foreground: I own a copy of Knuth's 4th volume of "The Art of Computer Programming" and I think the answer is in there but I can't seem to find it. (It's like 900 pages).  I'm posting here in the hopes that someone has knowledge of this (obviously). Even if you can point me to a source, say the part in Knuth's book where he describes this problem I would be most grateful. System.CalloutException: You have uncommitted work pending I have same exception can please   The previous post issue is resolved.  Exception: :System.CalloutException: You have uncommitted work pending. Please commit or rollback before calling out  Visualforce Page   &lt;apex:page controller="Controller" action="{!init}" showHeader="false" sidebar="false"&gt;     &lt;center&gt;         &lt;apex:pageBlock title="Request Listener"&gt;&lt;/apex:pageBlock&gt;               &lt;/center&gt; &lt;/apex:page&gt;   Controller :            PUBLIC with sharing class Controller {        PUBLIC String fromNumber      = ApexPages.currentPage().getParameters().get('From');     PUBLIC String toNumber        = ApexPages.currentPage().getParameters().get('To');     PUBLIC String body            = ApexPages.currentPage().getParameters().get('Body');        PUBLIC PageReference init()     {                    System.debug('From Phone Number :' +fromNumber);         System.debug('To phone NUmber :' + toNumber);         System.debug('Message Body :' + body);          TwilioRestClient Client = TwilioAPI.getDefaultClient();                                                                SYSTEM.DEBUG('FROM AND To  Number is NOT NULL');                      String formattedNumber='+919876543210';                 IF(body != NULL)                 body = body;             ELSE                 body = '';             Case c = NEW Case (Subject = formattedNumber,Description = body,Origin = 'Phone');             INSERT c;                               Map&lt;String,String&gt; params1 = new Map&lt;String,String&gt;             {                'To'   =&gt; fromNumber,                'From' =&gt; '+1908280****',                'Body' =&gt; 'Conformation to customer'             };             TwilioMessage message = client.getAccount().getMessages().create(params1); /* Valid conformation SMS sent to the Customer.*/                                            return null ;     } }   While loin as admin then click preview on visualforce page executed but case is not created.I have checked the the debug log it throw the exception. I know that any subset of V with more than k vectors is always linearly dependent, but how do I include matrix A into the vectors given to prove the statement?   Also, for part (b), does the statement mean that Ax=0 only has the trivial solution since V intersects span{u1, u2, ..., uk}={0}?  Any help would be appreciated! Thank you! Undefined Symbol ___gxx_personality_v0 on link I've been getting this undefined symbol building with this command line:  $ gcc test.cpp Undefined symbols:   "___gxx_personality_v0", referenced from:   etc...   test.cpp is simple and should build fine.  What is the deal? Seeking appropriate statistic to measure spatial autocorrelation of points with binary values I am trying to determine the level of spatial autocorrelation in a point dataset.  The attribute I'm interested in is binary (presence/absence of a species), for which Moran's I is not appropriate.  On the other hand, Joint Count statistics, which are typically recommended for binary or categorical data, apparently are not appropriate for point data. What is an appropriate statistic to measure global and/or local spatial autocorrelation of points when the attribute of interest is binary? Is posting a very long quote OK for an answer? I just found  to a question on SO. While it provides a source for the (very long) quote, I do not like the fact that the answerer just posted the quote, without adding anything. Maybe add highlights/emphasis or remove uninteresting passages. Or skip the quote altogether and write a short summary. I feel, in the current form, this should have been a comment that just links to the original article.  Am I too pedantic? Should I flag this as not an answer? Should I downvote it? What do you think about such answers? $\int_0^{\infty} f(x)dx$ converges and $\lim_{x\rightarrow \infty} f(x)$ exists, then $\lim_{x\rightarrow \infty} f(x)=0$? Integral involving Cosine function What will be the formula for the following:  $$\int_0^\infty \cos(x)dx.$$ Solving trigonometric equations of the form $a\sin x + b\cos x = c$ Suppose that there is a trigonometric equation of the form $a\sin x + b\cos x = c$, where $a,b,c$ are real and $0 &lt; x &lt; 2\pi$. An example equation would go the following: $\sqrt{3}\sin x + \cos x = 2$ where $0&lt;x&lt;2\pi$.  How do you solve this equation without using the method that moves $b\cos x$ to the right side and squaring left and right sides of the equation?  And how does solving $\sqrt{3}\sin x + \cos x = 2$ equal to solving $\sin (x+ \frac{\pi}{6}) = 1$ Why does the dock appear on the left when my screen is locked? The dock doesn't work correctly after I enter my password, either. Overriding "+=" in Python? (__iadd__() method) How to know the usage of undocumented function like LinearAlgebra`BLAS? Need for a side book for E. Soper's Classical Theory Of Fields I am reading now E. Soper, Classical Theory Of Fields, now and sometimes it is very hard to follow the equations. So I need a side book on  to read it comfortably. Landau &amp; Lifshitz's book is not helping as its content and topics are very much different. How do I use the conditional (ternary) operator? Is copper piping required within a certain distance from a water heater? I have read that National Code requires you to use copper for 18 inches from your water heater.  How can I do this when everything existing is PEX?   I need to replace my existing low boy water heater next to my kitchen sink.  It was installed by the builder ten years ago. All the pipe in the house is PEX.  The existing water heater is connected using PEX as well.    The supply line comes directly thru the wall to the HW Heater. There is no space to run 18 inches of copper! The heater is under the kitchen counter, and the countertop is directly over it. Only about an inch clearance. Non-ECC memory with ZFS: a stupid idea? I have a new server and am planning to upgrade the paltry 2 GB of memory to the maximum of 16 GB. (Theoretically 8 GB is the limit, but empirically 16 GB has been shown to work.)   advise that ECC memory is not that important, but I'm not so sure I believe this.     I've installed  and am planning to add ZFS volumes as soon as my new hard drives arrive.   Would it be stupid to skimp and get non-ECC memory for a ZFS-based NAS?  If it's necessary, then I'll bite the bullet, but if it's just paranoia, then I'll probably skip it.  Is there any reason ZFS or FeeeNAS specifically would require ECC memory, or suffer especially when running on a system using non-ECC memory? On Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on a Dell Vostro 2420 laptop, each time I start Ubuntu, the screen brightness is set to the maximum level, which gives a high glare. (I have recently installed Ubuntu on the laptop, but did not change any default settings related to brightness, IIRC.) I am currently lowering the brightness manually each time after starting, using the System Settings icon on the left of the screen. Looking for a permanent way to set it to a lower value. How do I reenable Quack Overflow if I disabled it?