There is a human settlement, and there seems to have been an alien invasion, but it's long over. I've read this in a German anthology, but am sure it's British or American. It begins with a man at home, a circular door pops up in his room. On the other side he finds strange, giant buildings and a giant empty pit. He finds some screen-device and makes it play back some imagery. This shows some alien lifeform in the pit. The images are so horrifying, that he almost goes mad and only after some time he barely recovers. He leaves the compound and finds a human settlement, with very healthy but somehow primitive people. They seem to worship him. He returns home by the teleporter door, picks up some books and returns to stay as their leader. I read this about 30 years ago, but I´m quite sure the story is from the fifties or sixties. Unique detail at the end: He grabs all the books about agriculture and leadership he can get his hands on and jumps back through the circular opening to the other end. He then learns, that a part of his book stack was cut in half by touching the rim of the circle, one of the ruined ones being Hitler´s Mein Kampf, which he then applauds as all for the better being ruined. I remember this especially, because that book is forbidden for sale in Germany, you can only get it legally for scholarly reasons at university or such places, and by this story I first learned that drivel seems to have been received elsewhere in the world as well and seemingly even recognized as a legitimate work of political literature, which I found appalling at the time but also fascinating. So maybe the story was from the fifties, if that book was still in circulation there at that time...
Years ago I read short story about a man sitting in his room. Suddenly appears the same man but from the future and gives him an advice about the future. Original man seems to agree to follow that advice. Man from the future goes away. Then another version of that man from another future comes and gives a completely opposite advice and begs original man to follow it. Then this second version of this man from future also left. Original man stays alone not knowing which advice from future he must follow.
Shouldn't there be a way to prevent automatic awarding of a bounty? For example, if someone provides an answer that sounds good but is totally wrong, it may happen that it gets a score of +2, but doesn't deserve the bounty. If no one else answers, half the bounty will automatically go to this person. Automatic awarding is good if an inactive user offers a bounty, but I think there should be a button that basically means "I know the bounty should now be awarded, but I have read the answers and none of them deserve the bounty".  The button should obviously not refund the bounty, just let it go to /dev/null instead of awarding it to someone who doesn't deserve it. I know someone or the other has asked about disabling ⌘Q, but I like the shortcut, and I use it often. However, I use an email client called Airmail that unfortunately does not keep a service (for notifications) running in the background when it is quitted. However, if I press the close button a service runs in the background, allowing me to receive notifications.  But since I have a habit of pressing ⌘Q all the time to close apps, I was looking into a way I could disable it for only Airmail.  Anyone know of a what to do this? tcolorbox Spanning Two Columns in {paracol} Environment The paracol environment allows figures to span two columns by using an asterisk in the figure's environment declaration: \begin{figure*} ... \end{figure*}.  I'm not familiar with the guts of why that works, and I was curious to know if there's something analogous for an environment derived from tcolorbox (like \newtcolorbox{NewBox}[1][!htbp]{...float=#1}). That is, in this example, can I get a NewBox that spans both paracol columns the way I wrongly assumed \begin{NewBox*} ... \end{NewBox*} would.  PS The tag below is "parcolumns" because I don't have a high enough reputation to create the tag 'paracol' (in reference to this CTAN package: ) Not able to calculate sum of multiple column where file data in different format .csv I have a scenario where i want to calculate sum of column   SAL|CAL|TAG|VAL 12.11"|"1.1"|"2.1"|"1.1 13.11"|"1.1"|"2.2"|"2.2 14.11"|"1.1"|"2.4"|"2.4   My below code not giving output giving output as 0.00  I need output for this column CAL VAL  awk -F'|' '{T+=$2} END { printf "%.2f\n", T }' demo.txt   output :  6.7 5.7 MapServer (MS4W) test page from shapefile shows only blank white square? I am trying to create a test page with mapserver and shapefile. At the moment I just want to get the map shown on my test page. I have gotten the EXTENT coordinates by opening shapefiles with QGIS - I am sure those are correct. I have followed this  as an example.  I am accessing my test page via this link:  http://localhost:1025/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe?map=C:\MS4W\ms4w\Apache\htdocs\mapfile.map   Problem I have - map is not loaded - I only see a blank white square.  When I look at contents of ms4w\Apache\htdocs\output , I see that images are actually getting generated but all of them are white (empty), for example:  lat_pmts_region13941906093724.png lat_pmts_region13941910095144.png lat_pmts_region13941913405500.png ...   Shapefiles are located at this location: C:\MS4W\ms4w\Apache\htdocs\shapefiles.  An example of what is logged to error file:  [Fri Apr 11 11:19:32 2014].883000 CGI Request 1 on process 7888 msWCSDispatch20(): wrong service (none) msWCSParseRequest(): request is KVP. msWCSDispatch(): SERVICE and REQUEST not included msDrawMap(): rendering using outputformat named png (AGG/PNG). msDrawMap(): WMS/WFS set-up and query, 0.000s msDrawMap(): Layer 0 (lat_pmts_region), 0.001s msDrawMap(): Drawing Label Cache, 0.000s msDrawMap() total time: 0.002s msSaveImage(C:/MS4W/ms4w/Apache/htdocs/output/lat_pmts_region13972043727888.png) total time: 0.138s [Fri Apr 11 11:19:33 2014].24000 mapserv request processing time (loadmap not incl.): 0.141s [Fri Apr 11 11:19:33 2014].24000 msFreeMap(): freeing map at 0246EFD8.   ms4w\Apache\htdocs\template.html:  &lt;html&gt; &lt;head&gt;&lt;title&gt;Mapserver Template HTML Document&lt;/title&gt;&lt;/head&gt; &lt;body bgcolor=#AAAAAA&gt; &lt;h2&gt;Template&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;img src="[img]" border=1&gt; &lt;/body&gt; &lt;/html&gt;   It looks like this:   C:\MS4W\ms4w\Apache\htdocs\mapfile.map:  MAP     CONFIG "MS_ERRORFILE" "C:/MS4W/ms4w/tmp/ms_error.txt"     DEBUG 5     NAME lat_pmts_region     STATUS ON     SIZE 800 600      EXTENT 286878.53 142087.25 799084.10 481123.75     #   lat_pmts_region      UNITS METERS     SHAPEPATH "shapefiles"     IMAGECOLOR 155 155 155      WEB     TEMPLATE "template.html"     IMAGEPATH "C:/MS4W/ms4w/Apache/htdocs/output/"     IMAGEURL "/output/"     END      LAYER     NAME "lat_pmts_region"     DATA lat_pmts_region     STATUS DEFAULT     TYPE POLYGON     END END   I will gladly provide more information if it's asked. Indicator Function Here is  an excerpt from "All of Statistics" by Larry Wasserman (page 23):     Given an event A, define the indicator function of A by      $$ I_{A}(\omega)= \color{Red}{I(\omega \in A)} =\begin{cases}  1 &amp;  \text{ if } \omega \in A \\   0 &amp; \text{ if } \omega \notin A   \end{cases} $$   I am not convinced, referring to term colored red, with the notation here. Since this is a widely referred text, I would like to know that whether this is a typo or I am missing something here. Why is Android refusing to resolve DNS records pointing to internal IP addresses? Why "hide" Luke from his father somewhere Anakin knows? In Episode II Anakin goes to the Lars homestead and meets his extended family. How would sending Luke there be "hidden" to Vader in any way? At least Leia had a random planet and family. Galactic Rotation Speeds - Ehrenfest Paradox, Gravitational time dilation, Dark Matter - all of the above? How to combine complex powers? Prove by induction that $$(a_{1}+a_{2}+\cdots+a_{n})\left(\frac{1}{a_{1}}+\frac{1}{a_{2}}+\cdots+\frac{1}{a_{n}}\right)\geq n^{2}$$  where $n$ is a positive integer and $a_1, a_2,\dots, a_n$ are real positive numbers   Hence, show that  $$\csc^{2}\theta +\sec^{2}\theta +\cot^{2}\theta \geq 9\cos^{2}\theta$$  Please help me.  Thank you! I have a complicated integral to solve. I tried to split ($101 x$) and proceed but I am getting a pretty nasty answer while evaluating using parts. are there any simpler methods to evaluate this integral?  $$ \int\!\sin (101x)\cdot\sin^{99}(x)\, dx $$ How to run an executable on boot and keep it running? I have an executable build from a ndk-build program. I want to run it on a rooted Android device. How much is the possibility that Android will kill my executable?  Using adb shell, I am able to execute my executable using following commands:  adb push executable /sdcard adb shell device:/ $ su device:/ # cd /system device:/system # mount -o rw,remount /system device:/system # mv /sdcard/executable . device:/system # ./executable   My requirement is to run this executable on device boot.  I have tried following:   Write ./executable in init.rc.   On reboot init.rc reset to its original contents. I figured out that Magisk done this.  Write commands in /system/etc/init/bootstat.rc   ./executable service custom /system/executable on boot  ./system/dhandler/diag_revealer    None of the above thing is working. filling an occluded plane with the smallest number of rectangles I've got a specific problem which I'll try to describe as clearly as possible.   I have a defined rectangular region on a cartesian plane, and within that region there are other given rectangular sub-regions that are described in terms of their 4 vertices, ie {(x1, y1), (x1, y2), (x2, y1), (x2, y2)}, so that these regions form 'occlusions' on the plane. These regions don't overlap, but they can form more complex polygons when different-sized rectangles adjacent to each other appear joined.  here's an illustration:   I am interested in the space between these shapes, and how to define the space in the same way the occlusions are defined, that is as a set of rectangles. In particular I want the definition optimised so that the space is described using the smallest possible number of rectangles. For example, an incomplete rendering might look like this:   Can anyone suggest a way forward with this? How can I have the original set of vertices (describing the black rectangles) generate the 'complementary' set of vertices (red rectangles) such that the number of red rectangles is minimal?  I suspect it's a variation of a 'packing problem', but I have a feeling it might be fairly simple... How do I undo the most recent local commits in Git? strictly positive elements in $C^*$-algebra Let $A$ be a $C^*\text{-algebra}$ and $A_+$ denote the positive elements. An element $a\in A_+$ is called strictly positive if $\overline{aAa}=A$. Want to find the following:a)What are the strictly positive elements of $C_0(\Omega)$ where $\Omega$ is locally compact Hausdorff space, and $C_0(\Omega)$ is the space of continuous complex valued functions that vanishes at $\infty$.b)If $A$ is unital, then $a\in A_+$ is strictly positive iff $a$ is invertible.c)if $(e_n)$ is an approximate identity of $A$, then $a:=\sum_{n=}^{\infty}\frac{1}{2^n}e_n$is strictly positive.What I tried and know:a) I know that positive elements in this space are functions with positive images, and thus, strictly positive elements are functions with positive images and now real root. is this correct? and how can I show that the positive elements are these kind of functions.b) I figures out that if $a$ in invertible then $a$ is strictly positive, but no idea how to do the other direction.c)I did this but using another characterization of strictly positive elements but want to do it with this one, and I don't know how.Thank you for your help. "Access is denied" JavaScript error when trying to access the document object of a programmatically-created  (IE-only) The following code best describes the situation.  Why is the last line not outputting the trailing newline char?  Each line's output is shown in the comment.  I'm using GNU bash, version 4.1.5          echo -n $'a\nb\n'                  | xxd -p  # 610a620a              x=$'a\nb\n'   ; echo -n "$x" | xxd -p  # 610a620a      echo -ne "a\nb\n"                  | xxd -p  # 610a620a x="$(echo -ne "a\nb\n")" ; echo -n "$x" | xxd -p  # 610a62 Why can we apply the $E=hf$ equation for electrons? So in my textbook, it states that the $E=hf$ equation applies to electrons, and all particles, not just photons.   But in order to prove this, wouldn't these particles need to have zero mass, to satisfy $E=pc$ from Einstein's equation?  In Einstein's theory of relativity $E^2= p^2c^2 + m^2c^4$, we get $E=pc$ because we consider the mass to be zero.   For $E=hf$ to work for other particles, don't we need to assume electrons have zero rest mass? NSString by removing the initial zeros?