How do you write something that was discussed in the past, while the issue still exists in the present?        The discussion resulted in the committee members highlighting crucial areas that need to be addressed.   The discussion resulted in the committee members highlighting crucial areas that needed to be addressed.      ......................     1'. The discussion resulted in the committee members highlighting crucial areas that need to be addressed if one is to achieve the desired outcome.      2'. The discussion resulted in the committee members highlighting   crucial areas that needed to be addressed if one were to   achieve the desired outcome.
I'm wondering whether I should use the present tense for a descriptive statement but in a past context. For example:     (1) I went to the zoo and saw a giraffe last week.       (2) A giraffe is a mammal with long neck.       (3) It is the first time I see that animal with my own eyes.   Statement (2) is a description of a giraffe in general, not the specific one in the zoo, so is it correct to use is?  Statement (3) is an event that is still true now, so should I use is and see?  I'm not native speaker so forgive me if the question is very obvious to others.
Opening a file from terminal When we want to open an application or file from the terminal, we type, say,  okular file.dvi   This opens the application, but also shows the status of the application. We cannot close the terminal, because it kills the process. Unfortunately, if you're trying to, for example, create a LaTeX file, you will need one tab for the text editor, one for the dvi file, and so on. And if you're trying to open all windows from the terminal, you can forget it. I'm trying use the terminal as much as possible, and while I have Yakuake, it is still a bother having so many tabs and seeing which of those have an application I've killed and so on.  So, is there a way to open an application/file from the terminal so that the status doesn't show and immediately gives the prompt so that we can use it to open more applications? Arrays in Java and how they are stored in memory Is system cleanup/optimization needed Does Ubuntu need regular cleanups like Windows. For example:   Cleaning the logs Temporary files Package cache Dependencies left over   I am not referring to web browsers only.  In case I never do a cleanup, will I have a system like new without my hard drive being full of temporary files, packages, etc.?  Will the performance degrade overtime if a cleanup is not done. When I went to the review overview on Meta on 08.01.2015, 19:16, it listed two open items in the suggested-edits queue, however when I clicked on the queue, I was told that the queue had been cleared. When I went back to the review overview, however, the edits were there again.  Since the icons for recent reviews had not moved, I suppose that these were still the same two items waiting for review, and since phenomenon lasted for half an hour now, I would rule out  or  to be the reason for this.  After a while, the phenomenon ceased, with one new reviewer popping up in the icon list of recent reviewers.  I had not performed or skipped any suggested-edit review from the queue at that point.    A similar phenomenon occurred for several hours up to 11.04.2015, 11:05: The review overview showed two suggested edits and when I went to the suggested-edits queue, it was cleared. Sometimes, edits that I could review appeared, but two phantom edits remained. I tried to add a new repository to software sources, but "add source" button is unavailable. I can't click on it.  I also tried to add a new software source from the terminal, but it didn't work.  sudo‬‬ ‫‪add-apt-repository‬‬ ‫‪ppa:n-muench/burg‬‬   s‫‪udo‬‬: command not found     I also tried these commands:  ‫‪sudo‬‬ ‫‪add-apt-repository‬‬ ‫‪deb‬‬ ‫‪http://ppa.launchpad.net/n-muench/burg/ubuntu‬‬ natty‬‬ ‫‪main‬‬   sudo‬‬: command not found TeXnicCenter & Adobe Reader DC I tried to fix my hard drive using Ubuntu but I encountered an error message and didn't know how to proceed. I need to fix my bad sectors   fsck /dev/sdb   fsck from util-linux 2.20.1   e2fsck 1.42.5 (29-Jul-2012)   fsck.ext2: Permission denied while trying to open /dev/sdb   You must have r/w access to the filesystem or be root I am trying to make a custom food recipe. I'm using spawn eggs with /replaceitem because spawn eggs are not obtainable in survival. This works fine when the player crafts only one spawn egg, but when I scroll over multiple spawn eggs, I receive only 1 of the custom food. BTW this food uses custommodeldata, so I can't simply add it into the crafting recipe. I cannot seem to find a way around this. If I make the item non-stackable, such as a piece of armor, mass crafting would be impossible. If I make an item.dropped scoreboard, the player could keep the item and use it to spawn mobs (griefing or for own profit.)  My command:    execute as @a[nbt={SelectedItem:{id:"minecraft:villager_spawn_egg"}}] run replaceitem entity @s weapon  minecraft:melon_slice{CustomModelData:10000101,display:{ Name:"{\"text\":\"Blue Melon Slice\",\"italic\":\"false\"}"}}     My problem is that the command does not see item count, as it is often used for weapons and armor only.    One way I thought to fix this issue is by storing the amount of custom food crafted in a scoreboard item and then giving the player that same count of the custom food, but I do not know how to do this; consequently, I don't know if this works.    Is there a way to do this method, or is there another, simpler method possible? Calculation of subgroups of $(Z_{12}, +)$ How calculate all subgroups of $(Z_{12}, +)$?  I know that the order of subgroups divide the order of the group, but there is such a smart way to calculate the subgroups of order 6? What is a terminal and how do I open and use it? What is a terminal? How do I open a terminal window? How do I use the terminal? How to run grep with multiple AND patterns? My current prompt is colorized and edited as so -  #!/bin/bash  # GIT Prompt help if tput setaf 1 &amp;&gt; /dev/null; then     tput sgr0; # reset colors     bold=$(tput bold);     reset=$(tput sgr0);     txtund=$(tput sgr 0 1);     black=$(tput setaf 0);     blue=$(tput setaf 33);     cyan=$(tput setaf 37);     green=$(tput setaf 64);     orange=$(tput setaf 166);     purple=$(tput setaf 125);     red=$(tput setaf 124);     violet=$(tput setaf 61);     white=$(tput setaf 15);     yellow=$(tput setaf 136); else     bold='';     reset="\e[0m";     black="\e[1;30m";     blue="\e[1;34m";     cyan="\e[1;36m";     green="\e[1;32m";     orange="\e[1;33m";     purple="\e[1;35m";     red="\e[1;31m";     violet="\e[1;35m";     white="\e[1;37m";     yellow="\e[1;33m"; fi; ORIG=$PS1 HOST=$HOSTNAME PS1="\[${txtund}${green}\]${HOST}\[\[${reset}\]"; PS1+="\$(prompt_git \"\[${white}\] on \[${violet}\]\")"; PS1+="\[${reset}\]"; PS1+="\[ at - ${orange}\W\]"; PS1+="\[${reset}\]"; PS1+="\[ - \u \]"; PS1+="\n\$ ";   I know that the line  PS1+="[ - \u ]"; will show me my current user. However, I want that section to be red if it is root. All other users should be the default color of gray. Is there a way to change the color in that section based off of current user or should I just declare a variable and use an IF statement to insert that section or a modified section with red as a color?  My expected output is gray named user for all normal users. Root should be red. This is BASH. Thermodynamics of supercooled water Does herd behavior influence the SO sites? Are you influenced by existing votes? That is, if a question or answer has a large number of up votes, are you more likely to vote it up (and similar for down)?  The reason I'm putting this question is this: on these sites we see how other people vote before we do. This almost certainly influences us (see resources, below) - just as we can be influenced by our  (people often naturally pick the busy one).  This trend may also be further influenced by rep - do we give more weight to the answer of someone with 10K rep than someone with 10 - even if they both have e.g. zero votes?  And if this does happen, is it even a problem?  I'm not looking here for solutions - right now I'm just curious as to whether this is something you recognise.  Clarification edit: I'm referring to voting here. Example: if you see a question or answer with 20 plus votes, are you more likely to vote it up than if it has no votes, or a negative number vote?  Bounty: I've been so impressed at the quality of answers and comments here that I'm offering a small bounty to encourage more great responses and discussion.  Wrapped up: Bounty awarded to the answer that received the most votes. In light of the question, it only seemed appropriate...  Resources: How can I get rid of those little white dots? I am using Blender 2.70a. Publishing a review in a peer-reviewed Wiki vs a traditional journal? The topic of Wikipedia contribution has come up before, but I am interested in the community's opinion on peer-reviewed wiki publishing (e.g., Scholarpedia). I would like to know if there is any advantage for a PhD student to publish in such an online venue versus the traditional journal publication for review content. The advantages I see to the wiki approach is free of charge publication, open access for all, not necessarily being limited by character limits. However, the disadvantages I see could be the citation being completely ignored by the intended audience and therefore missing out on the benefits of scientific communication and the possible loss of accompanying reputation for the publication. I would also worry these publications would be ignored or minimized by future supervisors and review committees. tikz: Distribute evenly and randomly circles I want to fill a part of a picture with more or less evenly and randomly distributed circles which should not overlap. It would be okay if circles are only partly inside the shape.  The density should be like what you see on this page  with values 80-100. (But I do not need so many circles, 30 should be enough, I could repeat the pattern).   I cannot use a grid and "wobble" the circles a bit: The circles are too large and it simply does not look randomly.   Currently I am thinking about a random attempt: Get some random point, measure its distance to existing circles, either paint or throw the point away. Try 100 times and hope that you get the right number of circles (and that it does not take too long). But perhaps someone has a better idea.   The example draws the circles simply manually:  \documentclass{article} \usepackage{tikz} \usetikzlibrary{backgrounds} \begin{document}   \begin{tikzpicture}[framed,gridded,radius=0.5cm]  \draw[red](0,0) rectangle (5,5);   \draw (1,1) circle;   \draw (2.3,1.1) circle ;   \draw (4.5,0.8) circle ;   \draw (5.1,1.8) circle ;   \draw (0.4,3.3) circle ;   \draw (2.1,2.8) circle ;   \draw (3.8,3.5) circle ;   \draw (4.8,4.2) circle ;   \draw (0.8,4.9) circle ;   \draw (2.1,4.1) circle ;   \draw (3.8,2.0) circle ;   \draw (3.5,0.6) circle ;   \draw (3.0,5.0) circle ;      \draw (4.1,5.1) circle ;             \draw (0.9,2.1) circle ;  \end{tikzpicture}  \end{document} I am using a logit model. My dependent variable is binary. However I have an independent variable which is categorical and contains the responses: 1.very good, 2.good, 3.average, 4.poor and 5.very poor. So, it is ordinal ("quantitative categorical"). I am not sure how to handle this in the model. I am using gretl.  [Note from @ttnphns: Although the question says the model is logit (because the dependent is categorical), the crucial issue - ordinal independent variables - is basically alike, be the dependent categorical or quantitative. Therefore the question is equally relevant to, say, linear regression too - as it is to logistic regression or other logit model.] Story about a utopian city that periodically destroys itself I'm trying to enable Intel SRT on my laptop. To do this, I need to change SATA controller mode from AHCI to RAID. The problem is that windows has no drivers for RAID and I can't install it while controller is in AHCI mode.   For now I have RAID driver in INF package (inf, sys, cat files). And I can load Windows recovery console with controller in RAID mode. The last thing to do is to intall this driver, but I don't know how to do it.  Google says rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 123 &lt;filename&gt;.inf might help, but it doesn't.