Alternative definition: "something that is needed but cannot be done"  Impossible is the best I could find, but it doesn't imply that the subject is required; only that it can't be done.
I'm looking for a word which describes a task which I think is poorly designed and will lead to either mediocre results or failure, but which I have to do anyway, especially in a work setting.   The word "Dilbertian" comes to mind, however this word is obviously made up and is only meaningful to someone who is familiar with the Dilbert comic strip, so I'm looking for something which captures both the futility and compulsory nature of the task in a way which is meaningful to a broader audience.
I have been working with a string[] array in C# that gets returned from a function call. I could possibly cast to a Generic collection, but I was wondering if there was a better way to do it, possibly by using a temp array.  What is the best way to remove duplicates from a C# array? How to evaluate the series $1+\frac34+\frac{3\cdot5}{4\cdot8}+\frac{3\cdot5\cdot7}{4\cdot8\cdot12}+\cdots$ $1^n +2^n + \cdots +(p-1)^n \mod p =$? Calculate for every positive integer $n$ and for every prime $p$ the expression  $$1^n +2^n + \cdots +(p-1)^n \mod p$$    I need your help for this. I don't know what to do, but I'll show you what I know.   Wilson's theorem The identity $X^p-X = \prod_{a \in \mathbb{F}_p-1}(X-a)$ $\exists a \in \mathbb{Z}, \ a^2 \equiv -1 \mod p \qquad \iff \qquad p \equiv 1 \mod 4$   Now can you please provide me a hint? Let $G(r, n)$ be the Grassmannian of the set of all $r$-planes in a $n$-dim vector space. How to show that the cohomology of a Grassmannian has a basis consisting of the equivalent classes represented by Schubert cycles? I am confused since I don't know how to compute the cohomology of a variety (how to construct the co-chain complex). I am really appreciate if you can compute the cohomology of, for example, $G(2,4)$ and show that it has a basis consisting of the equivalent classes represented by Schubert cycles. How to change the name of a thread Shouldn't it be "he was the most famous fighter to have ever lived"? How do I prove that in every commuting family there is a common eigenvector? Will my device work with Ubuntu? What's the difference between centre of mass & centre of gravity for massive bodies? My book says:     For most of the small objects, both are same. But for mammoth ones, they are really different ones. And in a gravity-less environment, COG is absent; COM still exists.   Ok, what's the big deal when things are small and big? How these two :  &amp; ? What are the best methods to show a data table in mobile / tablet view? When I render a page using the Django template renderer, I can pass in a dictionary variable containing various values to manipulate them in the page using {{ myVar }}.  Is there a way to access the same variable in Javascript (perhaps using the DOM, I don't know how Django makes the variables accessible)? I want to be able to lookup details using an AJAX lookup based on the values contained in the variables passed in. Not flying the first leg of the journey – Company cancels the second-leg ticket I've a friend that booked a round-trip journey. He booked A-to-B and B-to-A. Somehow he needed to be earlier at location B, so he took a train and did not take the flight from A to B.  When he went to the airport to take the "back home" flight (B-to-A), he was informed that his ticket was canceled because he did not take the A-to-B flight. They canceled the ticket and sold it to someone else.  Is this normal? The company said it was their right to do so, and he could not get the flight back. The company was Iberia. As a new user without much rep, what should I do if someone else has already asked a question I have, but it has no answers? I'm trying to install queXS cati app on my Ubuntu desktop and I installed MySQL server and PHP 5 and I cannot login into MySQL server as root without password:  mysql -u root    it says  ERROR 1045(28000) : Access denied for user 'root@localhost' (using password: no )   But it's okay when I enter mysql -u root -p   I can't figure out what the problem is. Why am I getting 50V at a light when the switch is off? Export nodes from Drupal 4? Clip for each feature I want to clip a polyline feature class by a polygon feature class (buffers created from points). Several polygons overlap, so I want to get each polygon feature clipped with each polyline feature.  Using the Clip_analysis tool, I get the orange lines:   whereas I want the following red lines:    In a python script, I tried the following code to clip every polyline with each polygon:          temp = arcpy.ValidateTableName("clip_temp")     bufferCursor = arcpy.SearchCursor(buffer)     n = 0     for pRow in bufferCursor:         arcpy.AddMessage(n)         feat = pRow.Shape         arcpy.Clip_analysis(inputPolylineLayer, feat, temp, "#")         if n == 0:             arcpy.Copy_management(temp, clip)         else:             arcpy.Append_management(temp, clip)         n=n+1   But the execution is very very slow and it crashes before finishing.  I also tried the Intersect_analysis tool but I didn't get the right geometries:   Do you have any idea of a better methods to do it? Can I manually put an external hard disk to sleep? How can I encrypt and decrypt a string in C#? Maximum number of edges in a bipartite graph Prove that for a bipartite graph $G$ on $n$ vertices the number of edges in $G$ is at most $\frac{n^2}{4}$.     I used induction on $n$.    Induction hypothesis: Suppose for a bipartite graph with less than $n$ vertices the result holds true.    Now take a bipartite graph on $n$ vertices.Let $x,y$ be two vertices in $G$ where an edge exist between $x$ and $y$. Now remove these two vertices from $G$ and consider this graph $G'$. $G'$ has at most ${(n-2)^2}\over4$. Add these two vertices back.  Then the number of edges $G$ can have is at most    $$|E(G')|+d(x)+d(y)-1$$   My question is in my proof I took $d(x) + d(y) \le n$, where $d(x)$ denotes the degree of vertex $x$.  Can I consider $d(x)+d(y) \leq n$? I thought the maximum number of edges is obtained at the situation $K_{\frac n 2,\frac n 2}$