I just noticed somewhere in Convex Optimization that the dual cone of $l^1$ is $l^\infty$! (A diamond in $\mathbb{R}^2$ for $l^1$ is a square in $\mathbb{R}^2$ for $l^\infty$.) In fact I cannot imagine that. Can you please explain it geometrically by the definition of the dual cone? [Ref. Convex Optimization book, Stephen Boyd]     $K = \{(x,t): \Vert x\Vert_1 \le t\} \Rightarrow K^* = \{(x,t): \Vert  x\Vert_\infty \le t\}$   Definition: $K$ is a cone, then the dual cone is :  $K^* = \{y: x^T y  \geq 0 \ \text{for all} \ x \in K\}$  I would be glad if you have any comment about that. For simplicity you can discuss about that in $\mathbb{R}^2$.
This  shows the dual cone of $K = \{(x,t) \mid \| \boldsymbol{x} \|_1 \le t \}$ is $K^{*} = \{(x,t) \mid  \| \boldsymbol{x} \|_{\infty} \le t\}$. Is it right? How is it proved?
What are the disadvantages of using a Zener diode over a linear voltage regulator? I wonder why a Zener diode is worse than linear voltage regulator.  Some of the posts online mentioned that because of the power dissipating problem. Zener diodes keep consuming a large amount of current while the load may just need a very little amount of current.   If I understand correctly, this phenomenon will happen only when the Zener diode is connected with the load in parallel. What if I connected my Zener diode with my load in series? Also, someone said that linear voltage regulators (e.g. LM7805) are not good voltage regulators as the power dissipated in them is much higher than that in switching voltage regulators. In my understanding, the power dissipated in a linear voltage regulator can be calculated by dropout voltage x current = power converted to heat.   Regarding these 2 points, other than a linear voltage regulator can handler a wider current range, what is the benefit of choosing a linear voltage regulator over a Zener diode? I have a site on my webhotel I would like to run some scheduled tasks on. What methods of achieving this would you recommend?  What I’ve thought out so far is having a script included in the top of every page and then let this script check whether it’s time to run this job or not.  This is just a quick example of what I was thinking about:  if ($alreadyDone == 0 &amp;&amp; time() &gt; $timeToRunMaintainance) {    runTask();    $timeToRunMaintainance = time() + $interval; }    Anything else I should take into consideration or is there a better method than this? How can I set my system to suspend when inactive to a longer amount of time I run Mythtv on some Ubuntu 11.10 based machines.  In the power settings, I can choose from a list of time periods from 5 minutes up to 1 hour for the the machine to suspend when inactive.  I would like to set the suspend to occur at a longer interval, like 2 hours or 4.  Previously with Gnome, I would think that I could go into the gconf editor and find the key there, I am not sure with Unity where to override a setting like this.  Any suggestions? Java: Detect duplicates in ArrayList? 'apt-get' does not work with Proxy For the command   sudo apt-get update   I get following error:  W: Failed to fetch http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/maverick-updates/multiverse/binary-i386/Packages.gz   407  Proxy Authentication Required (The ISA Server requires authorization to fulfill the request. Access to the Web Proxy filter is denied. )   I am running Ubuntu 10.10 installed on Windows XP using VirtualBox. For Internet connections I am using proxy server with an authentication. I tried to use gnome-network-proxy tool to set proxy settings system-wide.   After that /etc/environment has been updated by http_proxy variable with the format http://my_proxy:port/, there were no authentication data.  I checked this with Firefox. Browser asked my for login and password and everything was working fine. It was unfortunately not the case for apt-get. I have also tried to do as described . Unfortunately it does not work.  May it be somehow related to the fact that a proxy is in a Windows domain, any ideas?  My proxy name is http-proxy. Is '-' a special character here? How can I verify a Google authentication access token?  I need to somehow query Google and ask: Is [given access token] valid for the [example@example.com] Google account?  Short version: It's clear how an access token supplied through the  can be used to then request data from a range of Google services. It is not clear how to check if a given access token is valid for a given Google account. I'd like to know how.  Long version: I'm developing an API that uses token-based authentication. A token will be returned upon provision of a valid username+password or upon provision of a third-party token from any one of N verifiable services.  One of the third-party services will be Google, allowing a user to authenticate against my service using their Google account. This will later be extended to include Yahoo accounts, trusted OpenID providers and so on.  Schematic example of Google-based access:    The 'API' entity is under my full control. The 'public interface' entity is any web- or desktop-based app. Some public interfaces are under my control, others will not be and others still I may never even know about.  Therefore I cannot trust the token supplied to the API in step 3. This will be supplied along with the corresponding Google account email address.  I need to somehow query Google and ask: Is this access token valid for example@example.com?  In this case, example@example.com is the Google account unique identifier - the email address someone uses to log in to their Google account. This cannot be assumed to be a Gmail address - someone can have a Google account without having a Gmail account.  The Google documentation clearly states how, with an access token, data can be retrieved from a number of Google services. Nothing seems to state how you can check if a given access token is valid in the first place.  Update The token is valid for N Google services. I can't try a token against a Google service as means of verifying it as I won't know which subset of all Google's services a given user actually uses.  Furthermore, I'll never be using the Google authentication access token to access any Google services, merely as a means of verifying a supposed Google user actually is who they say they are. If there is another way of doing this I'm happy to try. My new laptop came preinstalled with Windows 8. Naively, as I am, I just formatted the harddrive and installed fine old Ubuntu. Now I want to install Windows 8 for dual boot again, but I have no DVD and to download the ISO one needs a product key. That key is not on the back of the laptop anymore but somewhere on the mainboard.  Is there any way to recover the product key from the mainboard using Ubuntu? What are the badges I can earn on each site, and what are the exact criteria for earning each badge? I'm very new to presentations in LaTeX (I've been using PowerPoint for years but have finally converted). I am wondering how to get a GIF into a section. If need be, I can convert a GIF into lots of pictures and have them overlay to give the impression of movement. Would changing IP addresses affect my SEO We're about to change our website from a shared hosting account to run on a VPS, mainly so we have our own resources and control over server settings.   An IP address is included with the VPS. What I was wonder is if the IP address change will have a similar affect to changing the domain name?   Obviously the links will still come from the same domain, so that's fine, but I was thinking more along the lines of the way a search engine sees the site - would it downgrade you for switching IP's? What regression model is the most appropriate to use with count data? I am trying to get a little into statistics, but I am stuck with something.  My data are as follows:  Year   Number_of_genes 1990          1 1991          1 1993          3 1995          4   I now want to build a regression model to be able to predict the number of genes for any given year based on the data. I did it with linear regression until now, but I have done some reading and it does not seem to be the best choice for this kind of data. I have read that Poisson regression might be useful, but I am unsure what to use. So my question is:  Is there a general regression model for this kind of data? If no, what do I have to do to find out which method is the most  appropriate to use ( in terms of what I have to find out about the data)? Mark or don't mark required fields if all are required? If all fields in a form are required should they be marked somehow (eg. with an asterisk)?  I see this done a lot and find it redundant?  There could be a difference in big forms and small forms, but in big ones I would add a note at the top that all fields are required, but I wouldn't necessarily do that on small ones.  What do you think is the right approach? I know that this sounds like Strange Days, which I haven't seen, but from the Wikipedia description I don't think that's it.  I saw this back in the early-to-mid-90's on TV, pretty sure it was a premium channel. It follows a research group who develops a way to record experiences. Not thoughts, but at least the sights, sounds, smells, touch, etc. They record it onto this reel-to-reel tape, it looked striated and golden in color. The protagonist is the head of the research team.  I don't remember a great deal of the plot, but there were conspiracies surrounding the invention. The lab clown decides to give it a whirl by putting the bike-helmet-sized apparatus on his head and going out to have a little fun, in the classic wine, women, and song fashion. Once he returns, an older member of the team finds the tape and finds a section where the clown is having sex. Later on, the protagonist, who is the lead researcher, finds the older member shut up in his house seemingly for days and nearly comatose. The older researcher had the playback device over his head and is non-responsive. Worried, the protagonist removes the helmet and puts it on himself, only to find that the older researcher had snipped a few seconds of tape and had them running on a non-stop loop; the moment of orgasm for the clownish researcher. The older researcher eventually comes to and awkwardly apologizes.  I think there were also experiments in recording the sensorum of a lab monkey, and that played into the plot. I remember the plot seemed fairly thin and dull for what seemed to be a pretty neat idea. I don't desperately feel the need to watch the movie, but I'm mildly curious if my impressions would differ 20 years later now. Let's say you tell me to produce randomly a number from 1-100, and I choose the number 47. Can it be said that there is a specific reason I chose the number 47, and that it is not completely random? By random I mean that there is absolutely no reason this number in particular was chosen.    It seems odd to me, since it seems like since I have applied conscious effort to produce or choose a number within that range, or even without range, that it can't be truly random, but there might be a reason why I chose that number amongst the many others I could have chosen.  I guess the general question, which I'm interested to know if any philosophers in the past have discussed, is whether our thoughts are necessarily based on prior thoughts, or if thoughts can be truly spontaneous and random? Motion Tracking objects that go out of frame and re-enter later I am motion tracking a video in which the camera turns away from one scene and then shortly returns to it. However, the segments that went off-screen lose their track and do not continue tracking once the camera returns. I am wondering if there is a manual way to tell a segment where and when to continue looking for it's tracking target. Is this possible to do? MySQL cartesian product between two SELECT statements "Thanks for having me" Recently, I finished my phone job interview with the phrase "Thanks for having me". It was a reply to the other person's "Thank you for your time". So, does "thanks for having me" sound alright in this context? I am working with a time-series dataset that is based on demand-supply dynamics with several variables.  THe sample data for one time period is: &gt; data # A tibble: 19 x 6    Pred_error_A Pred_error_B  Pred_error_C  Pred_error_D  Pred_error_E  Pred_error_Target                  &lt;dbl&gt;         &lt;dbl&gt;          &lt;dbl&gt;      &lt;dbl&gt;      &lt;dbl&gt;           &lt;dbl&gt;  1            -0.45           1.72          -0.170      1.85       -0.01          -0.7    2            -0.45           1.72          -0.170      2.35       -0.01          -1.2    3            -0.45           1.92          -0.170      2.35       -0.01          -1      4            -0.0500         0.37          -0.12       1.65       -0.01          -1.5    5             0             -0.840         -0.12       0.950      -0.01          -1.7    6             0             -0.200         -0.12       1.35       -0.01          -1.5    7             0             -0.460         -0.12       1.35       -0.01          -1.8    8             0             -0.520         -0.12       1.05       -0.01          -1.5    9             0             -0.340         -0.12       1.05       -0.01          -1.4   10             0             -0.340         -0.12       1.35       -0.01          -1.7   11             0             -0.110         -0.12       1.05       -0.01          -1.2   12             0             -0.110         -0.12       0.850      -0.01          -1     13             0              0             -0.12       0.350      -0.01          -0.4   14             0              0             -0.12      -0.15       -0.01           0.100 15             0              0             -0.12      -0.350      -0.01           0.300 16             0              0             -0.02       0          -0.01          -0.1   17             0              0              0          0           0              0     18             0              0              0          0           0              0     19             0              0              0          0           0              0   I was working on a regression for each time period with data and wanted to find the relative importance of regressors in explaining the target variable ( Pred_error_A through E and dependent variable is Pred_error_Target ) using relaimpo package in R. However, I soon realized I can't use regression setting because of near to perfect collinearity and hence no relative importance values. Is there a way to go around this? Or, can I use any other method (instead of regression)? Any suggestions will be useful. The predictors are near to perfect and each one is important. I can't exclude any single one and I need the relative importance of all 5 regressors. I am also trying XGBoost as an alternative. However, I am not sure if it takes care of multicollinearity. Prove that for every $a\in A$ $\exists$ $q\in M,s\in A$ s.t. $a=sba+qa$ where $M$ is maximal ideal in $A$. Let A be a commutative ring with unity ring, M be a maximal ideal and $b\notin M$ . Show that there exists $q \in M, s\in A$ such that for every $a \in A$ we have $a=sba+qa$. Show that this is true only when $M$ is a maximal ideal.   Suppose if we take $A=2\mathbb Z$ and $M=4\mathbb Z$, $a=6.$ Then by the given statement $\exists$ $s\in A$, $q\in M$ s.t. $6=6(2s+q)$ $\implies$$s=\frac{1-q}{2}\implies q \text { is odd}$. But $q \in 4\mathbb Z.$  Please someone give some hints. how can solve this.  Thank you.. How to twist radial vector to make spirals?