When asked a question about Collective Nouns, I told them that it is all right to use a singular or plural verb after a Collective Noun, as in -   The class was listening to the lecture with rapt attention.    Here the class is taken as a whole.   The class were working on their projects.    Here the the individuals are taken into consideration rather than the class as a whole.  Now the question is: Do we use singular or plural verbs with the names of countries, which are proper nouns, for the same reason?   As in:    Bhutan is said to be The Last Shangrila.   Bhutan are working on promoting their GNH Philosophy.
I'd say Microsoft have a way of bending the rules and I know that McLaren have won the championship. While this sounds strange, I believe it is correct English (sorry, I'm not native).   But when it's a small company, would you still use it this way? Is a company always plural, or are small companies singular? I.e., would you say Bakery Johnson makes fine bread or Bakery Johnson make fine bread? Is it My book seller, Woody's, have moved or is it has moved?
How to get rid of blank pages in PDF exported from SSRS I have a two-page SSRS report. When I exported it to PDF it was taking 4 pages due to its width, where the 2nd and 4th pages were displaying one of my fields from the table. I tried to set the layout size in report properties as width=18in and height =8.5in.  It gave me the whole table in a single page of PDF, but I am still getting the 2nd and 4th pages blank.   Is the way I am doing it incorrect?  How else can I get rid of those blank pages? Why doesn't hydrogen gas exist in Earth's atmosphere? The root mean square velocity of hydrogen gas at room temperature is: Gas constant: $R=8.31\ \mathrm{J\ K^{-1}\ mol^{-1}}$ Molar mass of hydrogen gas: $M=2.02\times10^{-3}\ \mathrm{kg/mol}$ $$\begin{align} v &amp;= \left(\frac{3\times8.31\ \mathrm{J\ K^{-1}\ mol^{-1}}\times300}{2.02\times10^{-3}\ \mathrm{kg/mol}}\right)^{\frac12}\\ &amp;= 3356.8377\ \mathrm{m/s}\\ &amp;= 3.356\ \mathrm{km/s} \end{align}$$ The escape speed of Earth is $11.2\ \mathrm{km/s}$, which is larger than the root mean square velocity of hydrogen gas. But still, hydrogen gas doesn't exist in Earth's atmosphere. Why? Have I made any mistakes in my calculations? `testl` eax against eax? I am trying to understand some assembly.  The assembly as follows, I am interested in the testl line:  000319df  8b4508        movl   0x08(%ebp), %eax   000319e2  8b4004        movl   0x04(%eax), %eax   000319e5  85c0          testl  %eax, %eax   000319e7  7407          je     0x000319f0     I am trying to understand that point of testl between %eax and %eax? I think the specifics of what this code isn't important, I am just trying to understand the test with itself - wouldn't the value always be true? How can I convert a string of bytes into an int in python?   Say like this: 'y\xcc\xa6\xbb'  I came up with a clever/stupid way of doing it:  sum(ord(c) &lt;&lt; (i * 8) for i, c in enumerate('y\xcc\xa6\xbb'[::-1]))   I know there has to be something builtin or in the standard library that does this more simply...  This is different from  for which you can use int(xxx, 16), but instead I want to convert a string of actual byte values.  UPDATE:  I kind of like James' answer a little better because it doesn't require importing another module, but Greg's method is faster:  &gt;&gt;&gt; from timeit import Timer &gt;&gt;&gt; Timer('struct.unpack("&lt;L", "y\xcc\xa6\xbb")[0]', 'import struct').timeit() 0.36242198944091797 &gt;&gt;&gt; Timer("int('y\xcc\xa6\xbb'.encode('hex'), 16)").timeit() 1.1432669162750244   My hacky method:  &gt;&gt;&gt; Timer("sum(ord(c) &lt;&lt; (i * 8) for i, c in enumerate('y\xcc\xa6\xbb'[::-1]))").timeit() 2.8819329738616943   FURTHER UPDATE:  Someone asked in comments what's the problem with importing another module. Well, importing a module isn't necessarily cheap, take a look:  &gt;&gt;&gt; Timer("""import struct\nstruct.unpack("&gt;L", "y\xcc\xa6\xbb")[0]""").timeit() 0.98822188377380371   Including the cost of importing the module negates almost all of the advantage that this method has. I believe that this will only include the expense of importing it once for the entire benchmark run; look what happens when I force it to reload every time:  &gt;&gt;&gt; Timer("""reload(struct)\nstruct.unpack("&gt;L", "y\xcc\xa6\xbb")[0]""", 'import struct').timeit() 68.474128007888794   Needless to say, if you're doing a lot of executions of this method per one import than this becomes proportionally less of an issue. It's also probably i/o cost rather than cpu so it may depend on the capacity and load characteristics of the particular machine. I have a number of friends on my battle.net account. However, sometimes I don't want to appear online to some (or all) of them. Is there a way to be hidden from your friends on battle.net? Answers no longer sorted by score/votes Choosing equipment options at character creation So if I'm correct, when you chose your starter gear and wealth you can either choose to roll some dice depending on your class and buy everything from that or you can choose the starter gear from your class and add the background items (including some gold). Here are my 2 questions:   If I choose the gear from my class, do I have to take all the equipment from only one of the (a) or (b) choices, or can I freely mix-and-match choices from the two sets? Can you spend the extra gold you get from your background on extra equipment (e.g. some soap and some fishing equipment) or do you have to start with that gold in its pouch?   The reason I ask is that I have recently created a level 1 wood elf druid and I mixed-and-matched the gear from the class, so that I chose a shortbow as a "(b) simple weapon" for the first point and a "(a) Scimitar" at the second point. My DM wasn't so happy about this, as he can't understand why I'm mixing (a) and (b).  He also wasn't so happy with me spending my 10gp from my outlander background. I decided that my druid wouldn't lay so much worth in 10gp compared to a bunch of stuff I got for that (e.g. some soap and some fishing equipment and some other useful things) and he seems to think that I'm supposed to just start with the gold instead. "In" vs. "after" for future talk For example:  javac Foo.java Note: Foo.java uses unchecked or unsafe operations. Note: Recompile with -Xlint:unchecked for details. Necessary and Sufficient conditions for $(i \, j)$ and $(1 \, 2 \, \dotsc \, n)$ generate $S_n$. I have a homework question that asks     Find necessary and sufficient conditions on $1 \leq i &lt; j \leq n$ so that $(i \, j)$ and $(1 \, 2 \, \dotsc \, n)$ generate $S_n$.   Here is what I have done so far.  Call $c = (1 \, 2 \, \dotsc \, n)$.  I made the observation that $$ \overbrace{c c \dotsb c}^{n - j + 1} (i \, j) \overbrace{c^{-1} c^{-1} \dotsb c^{-1}}^{n - j + 1} = (1 + i - j + n \, 1). $$ Thus, $\langle (i \, j), c \rangle = \langle (1 \, i - j + n + 1), c \rangle$, so it suffices to look at $\langle (1 \, k), c \rangle$ for positive integers $2 \leq k \leq n$.  I've checked that, for the value $k=2$, $\langle (1 \, 2), c \rangle = S_n$.  This immediately implies $\langle (1 \, n), c \rangle = S_n$.  I suspect that no other values of $k$ will work, but am not sure how to prove it. Why doesn't Quicksilver create sonic booms? How can black hole increase its mass? Reading the reviews of the  on Google Play,  said that since Chrome supports HTML5, he had managed to persuade the BBC iPlayer website to play him streams meant for iPad/iPhone devices by spoofing an IOS user agent string on his Nexus 7.  How might I go about getting the same thing to work myself?  I have looked at  and  but both seem to concentrate on the Dolphin browser. Also, please mention if a solution will require me to root my Nexus-7.  Incidentally, I also tried using  with Firefox, but although Firefox supports HTML5 and the iPlayer website shows pages without either install flash or use external app messages, it still won't play the streams (it just sits swirling its progress wheel), hence looking for a solution for Chrome. If $\lambda_{max} = n$, then $n\times n$ positive, reciprocal matrix A is consistent At the end of . the author states that  Suppose we have $n \times n$ matrix $A$ having only positive elements and satisfying the property $a_{ij}=1/a_{ji}$ (a matrix satisfying this property is called a reciprocal matrix).  If its largest eigenvalue $\lambda_{max}$ is equal to $n$, then the matrix $A$ satisfies the property (consistency property) $a_{ij} a_{jk} = a_{ik}$ where $i,j,k=1,2,...,n$.  I'm not convinced this theorem is true. Could anyone help? Minion Pro, TL2016 and LuaLaTeX When I compile with LuaLaTeX and TL2016 this MWE   \documentclass{article}  \usepackage[no-math]{fontspec} \usepackage{luatex85} \usepackage{shellesc}  \setmainfont{Minion Pro}  \begin{document}  \huge{huge} \textbf{\huge{huge}}  \Huge{Huge} \textbf{\Huge{Huge}}   \end{document}   I have this .pdf.     Any help? With TL2015 all is correct. Thanks Let $f$ be a continuous function on $[0,1]$ such that $f([0,1])=[0,1]\times[0,1].$ Then show that $f$ is not one-one.  Hints will be appreciated. I recently read this , which stated:     For scientists trying to design a compound that will attach itself to,   and modify, a target disease pathway, the critical first step is to   determine the electronic structure of the molecule. But modeling the   structure of a molecule of an everyday drug such as penicillin, which   has 41 atoms at ground state, requires a classical computer with some   $10^{86}$ bits—more transistors than there are atoms in the observable   universe. Such a machine is a physical impossibility. But for quantum   computers, this type of simulation is well within the realm of   possibility, requiring a processor with 286 quantum bits, or qubits.   Along with this resource estimate for penicillin, I've also seen  of the number of qubits required to model the ground state of caffeine (160 qubits). Given that the above report offers no reference(s) (probably in the name of business intelligence) and much Internet searching and looking into the quantum chemistry literature has come up short, my question is: Where are these resource estimates coming from – is there a journal article that published these numbers? I would really like to identify the methodology and assumptions used in making these estimates. Calculate Limit 0f nested square roots What is the simplest SQL Query to find the second largest value? Powershell Parameters