Can I remove the second 'a' when asking "Is it a peach or a banana?" without changing the meaning? Is there any difference between asking     Is it a peach or a banana?   vs.      Is it a peach or banana?   The latter sounds to me like a yes/no question, while the prior does not. Is it just me?
Repeating determiners: “the X and (the) Y” I have a problem with the use of "the" after "and" where you would basically be connecting words. For example, which of the following is better:     The table and the chairs?   The table and chairs?   Or are both okay? What is the rule, and are there exceptions to it? Or is the rule just contextual and may vary between the sentences and meanings?
How to Set Firefox 4 to only store History for a set period of time, i.e. one day? Can I bring a painted Cow skull to the US with me via plane? I bought this traditionally painted cow skull, a typical decoration item for the day of the dead. Since its bone (completely clean though) can I bring it with me on a plane as carry-on or special luggage, without having to declare it or having it confiscated?    [] How could we improve our planned post notice improvements? Megan has written a .  I've seen a bunch of discussion about it on chat - but it feels like having it purely on the blog is a little clunky.  So specifically - what does the MSE community feel about the proposed post notices for closed questions? What's missing, or what should be added? What are some of the lessons we've learnt that could be helpful here? How should I submit bug reports and feature requests? Inspired by  I became curious about what is the current preferred mechanism for submitting bug reports and feature requests to Apple. I'm aware that they have the internal RDAR bug tracking system, and that there is an  project to crowdsource the tracking of issues, but I'm at a loss as to the preferred channel to submit something.    Is there a public-facing portal for submitting issues? Two load icons simultaneously appearing in Android app This  confirms that the Android app is using two different loaders since last year, but just today I've noted that, at the questions page, it is using them simultaneously. I've never noted this, so I believe this bug was recently created.  I hope the following gif is clear enough to show the issue. Also, note that the bigger loader is "freezing".    SE Android App Version: 1.0.60 My Android OS Version: 5.0.2  Still observed in version 1.0.89 Linux - Help, I'm running out of inodes! launch app, capture stdout and stderr in c++ What is the difference between Interest Rate and APY on savings accounts, CDs, etc?  Is there a simple formula to convert the two? I've got a recipe that calls for some buttermilk, but none on-hand. Is there some way I could use some common ingredient(s) as a substitute? My supervisor asked me to find out which distribution represents a particular situation.  I have a VoIP generator that generates calls "uniformly" distributed between callers. This means that the volume per caller distribution is "almost" uniformly distributed between a minimum and maximum. So by running a test with 10000 users and a min value equal to 30 calls per week and a max value equal to 90 calls/week i obtain that not all the users respect this limits: we have some users that generate &lt;30 calls and some other users that generate >90 calls. It is clear that the obtained distribution is not uniform.  The situation is this:    He said that i have to perform a sort of numerical process in order to find some formulas that could define this distribution. Initially, as wrote before,we wanted to obtain a uniform (min,max) distribution (the green area in the figure) but this is not the case as proved with chi-square test.  Moreover the curve in figure is not symmetric, the probability of call generation below 30 call/week and greater that 90 call/week are not identical (it is high for 90calls/week). The variability of the number of generated call increases with the increasing call generation rates.   "Actually implementation of this distribution is nothing but assigning different call rates in a range for users in domain which indicates implementation of several delta functions. As the call rates increases the variability of the generated calls also increases with the average call rate and this leads to the asymmetric behavior of the curve." [cit. from the Voipgenerator documentation]  Someone can help me?I think that now i cannot use Q-Q plot because i don't know which theoretical distribution i have to use in order to compare it with my empirical data.  Sorry if I have stressed with a similar problem a few weeks ago, but initially we thought we could change the implementation, but now we cannot. Hence i have to discover the type of the distribution i obtained and i don't know how can i do this. Does each imply the other? If not, does one imply the other? Why/why not?  This issue came up in response to a comment on an answer I posted .  Although google searching the relevant terms didn't produce anything that seemed particularly useful, I did notice  on the math stackexchange. However, I thought that this question was appropriate for this site too.  EDIT after reading the comments  Relative to the math.stackexchange answer I was after something more in depth, covering some of the issues dealt with in . Also, as I see it the math.stackexchange question shows that consistency doesn't imply asymptotically unbiasedness but doesn't explain much if anything about why. The OP there also takes for granted that asymptotic unbiasedness doesn't imply consistency, and thus the sole answerer so far doesn't address why this is. I'm new to Delphi, and I've been running some tests to see what object variables and stack variables are initialized to by default:  TInstanceVariables = class   fBoolean: boolean; // always starts off as false   fInteger: integer; // always starts off as zero   fObject: TObject; // always starts off as nil end;   This is the behaviour I'm used to from other languages, but I'm wondering if it's safe to rely on it in Delphi?  For example, I'm wondering if it might depend on a compiler setting, or perhaps work differently on different machines.  Is it normal to rely on default initialized values for objects, or do you explicitly set all instance variables in the constructor?  As for stack (procedure-level) variables, my tests are showing that unitialized booleans are true, unitialized integers are 2129993264, and uninialized objects are just invalid pointers (i.e. not nil).  I'm guessing the norm is to always set procedure-level variables before accessing them? understanding the commutator of dihedral group Let  $G=D_{2n}=⟨x,y|x^2=y^n=e,  $ $yx=xy^{n-1}⟩$  I need to find $G'$ [ the commutator of G]  now I understand that $G'$ is the subgroup generated from $ U=xyx^{-1}y^{-1} , $ $ \ \forall x,y \in G$ So, $U=&lt;y^2&gt;$  whats the strategy  here ? Ubuntu 17.10 and later: can't change the input switching shortcut to alt+shift Should seemingly arbitrary things like "play piano for Church" or "intramural badminton" go on M.S. or PhD applications in sciences/engineering? And if they should, I assume that these things should go on a resume under something like "Activities and Community Service". I mean I consider being able to sight read music to play at my Church as a significant feat (how many people can do that?) and might sway one person on an admissions committee if he or she enjoys music and understands how hard one must have worked to accomplish this.   Badminton?.... perhaps not so much Rescuing/Compiling old TeX file starting with “\input amstex” I have come across an ancient (1995) LaTeX file which was (surely) once compliant, but now does not compile at all. Is there any way to rescue it?  My actual question is much more precise. I want a copy of the follow paper on the arXiv:    Downloading the pdf source produces something which looks like a document on a4 paper printed on US letter (the bottoms of some pages are cut off). However, if you download the TeX source from the arXiv, then it doesn't compile (even adding .tex, naturally). I'm using an up to date version of TeXshop on a mac. As homework, I have to prove that     $\forall n \in \mathbb{N}: n^3-n$ is divisible by 6   I used induction  1) basis: $A(0): 0^3-0 = 6x$ , $x \in \mathbb{N}_0$ // the 6x states that the result is a multiple of 6, right?  2) requirement: $A(n):n^3-n=6x$  3) statement: $A(n+1): (n+1)^3-(n+1)=6x$  4) step: $n^3-n+(n+1)^3-n=6x+(n+1)^3-n$  So when I resolve that I do get the equation: $n^3-n=6x$ so the statement is true for $\forall n \in \mathbb{N}$  Did I do something wrong or is it that simple? Removing and adding permission using numerical notation on the same line How to run xrandr commands at startup in Ubuntu How can I run the following xrandrcommand on startup?  xrandr   cvt 1368 768  xrandr --newmode "1368x768_60.00"   85.25  1368 1440 1576 1784  768 771 781 798 -hsync +vsync xrandr --addmode VGA1 1368x768_60.00 xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1368x768_60.00 What is a combo update and how is it different than the regular update? What is a combo update and how is it different from a normal update?