Can a snake feel if a Parselmouth is around? When Harry and the Durselys visited the zoo in the first book, the snake was sleeping all the time and didn't even move when the glass was knocked at. But when Harry moved closer to the cell, it opened its eyes and winked at Harry even though Harry hadn't said a word.  Harry moved in front of the tank and looked intently at the snake. He wouldn't have been surprised if it had died of boredom itself -- no company except stupid people drumming their fingers on the glass trying to disturb it all day long. It was worse than having a cupboard as a bedroom, where the only visitor was Aunt Petunia hammering on the door to wake you up; at least he got to visit the rest of the house. The snake suddenly opened its beady eyes. Slowly, very slowly, it raised its head until its eyes were on a level with Harry's. It winked.  Did the snake feel that a Parselmouth was around? Because how else would it have recognized Harry as a Parselmouth as it winked at Harry before he uttered a word.
Why did the snake wink at Harry at the zoo? This is mostly a memory question - I'm having a hard time remembering this and I can't read the book right now.  On the first book, a snake at the zoo winks at Harry. For the sake of the question, we'll assume that snakes can in fact wink.  I have a fuzzy memory here - I think that it winked before Harry had any kind of interaction with the snake (was this before or after Harry broke the glass?)  So, why did the snake wink at Harry? Given that they had not met ever before.  I suppose that the only reason it would wink at Harry would be because it knows Harry can communicate with it. But this would imply that snakes are capable of sensing such ability on wizards - is there (other) evidence that this is true?
Given that $a$~$\mathcal{N}(\mu, \Sigma)$ and $\mu$~$\mathcal{N}(0, \sigma^2 I)$, Is $p(a|\Sigma, \sigma)=\int p(a|\mu, \Sigma)p(\mu|\sigma)d\mu$ again a Normal distribution? And how to estimate the mean and variance respectively? Thanks a lot! How to show/hide a column at runtime? I'd like to show/hide a column at runtime based on a particular condition. I'm using "Print when expression" to conditionally show/hide this column (and it's header) in my report. When the column is hidden, the space it would have occupied is left blank, which is not particularly attractive.  I would prefer if the extra space was used in a more effective manner, possibilities include:   the width of the report is reduced by the width of the hidden column the extra space is distributed among the remaining columns   In theory, I could achieve the first by setting the width of the column (and header) to 0, but also indicate that the column should resize to fit its contents. But JasperReports does not provide a "resize width to fit contents" option.  Another possibility is to generate reports using the Jasper API instead of defining the report template in XML. But that seems like a lot of effort for such a simple requirement. I was just curious, why is epic a silver badge if only 73 users have been awarded with it?  For example: Silver Epic - 73  Gold Electorate - 193    Edit: My point was to reduce the level of epic, like "hit the daily reputation cap on 30 days" so it becomes some what at par with other silver badges. What does Geordi see on the holodeck? We've seen how he interprets people and things with his VISOR, but if the holodeck is all force-fields and holographic imaging, how does he interact in a similar way to other members?   What does the holodeck look like to Geordi LaForge using his VISOR? WPF CommandParameter is NULL first time CanExecute is called XSD extend a complex type How can one refute John Searle's "syntax is not semantics" argument against strong AI? How does a sarlacc gain any energy if it keeps victims alive for a thousand years? When eaten by a sarlacc, according to C-3PO,     In his belly, you will find a new definition of pain and suffering, as you are slowly digested over a thousand years.   I imagine that keeping a victim alive for a thousand years takes much more energy than is available to the sarlacc from the body of the victim.  Thus, keeping victims alive for so long would seem to be a net loss of energy for the sarlacc.  Is there a canon answer to resolve this conundrum?  Did the sarlacc have another energy source (for example, ability to harvest sunlight)? What is the smallest (installed size) ubuntu based distribution? For ridiculously small hard drives (8GB), what Ubuntu Based (although not necessarily official) distribution offers the smallest installed size?  Let me clarify: I still want a certain amount of personal file space, preferably a few gig. I also don't have a problem with performance, while it is mediocre, a 2.6GHz single-core and 1GB of ram suffice to run ubuntu fine, but i find that it  uses 6-7GB of space. I am aiming for closer to 4GB. How to adjust the gap between figure and caption within the same subfloat NOR Gate is Working Correctly with Vcc Pin Disconnected After installing fedora and Centos and other OS now I have them all showing in my Boot menu [F2] on start up not the menu form the OS even after deleting them and reinstaling other OS - Ubuntu -so It just shows one when the OS starts but when I go to UEFI setting I still find all the old ones they instruct you to use DEL to take them out but that does not work 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? This post is in reference to the following blog post:   To start off, a quick introduction of myself; my name is Jascha Drel, Product Manager for Advertising at Stack Overflow. In this role, I am part of ’s organization.   Our team is continuously making improvements to the ads experience on our sites. One of the changes we’re excited about sharing is the new Report this Ad feature now available on some of our sites. We want to continue to give our communities more native control over their ad experience. We needed a quantifiable way to receive feedback and this feature will allow that.  We enforce strict  on the types of advertisers we work with but cannot fully control what is shown due to how advertising delivery works. However, being able to hear from our users about problematic ads will be a huge benefit as we can address those problems faster and with more accuracy. The Report this Ad feature will allow us to quickly see and investigate ads reported by you which matters to us because we want to hear your thoughts.  Furthermore, this new feature ensures that the members of our communities have a built-in way to report ads they consider problematic when we test any new ad formats/solutions.  We are launching this feature on 5 sites initially (, , , , and ) to get a good understanding of what we can expect in terms of numbers of reports whenever launching this to the entire network. Prior to launching it network-wide, we’ll share general results we’ve seen here.  What happens once an ad is reported?  All reports will be consolidated into a dashboard that the team will look at several times per week to spot irregularities in terms of the total number of reports, report categories, and on an advertising campaign basis. We will not be replying to individual reports, but we will reach out to our advertisers, to share feedback or notify them if the ad being reported does not fit our guidelines. We may also evaluate our policies in response to large numbers of reports not covered by them. Since we don’t have a baseline for the number of ads that are going to be reported using this new feature, we will consider reevaluating the process if the current process doesn’t scale.    We’d like to share an update on the progress of this feature:   We've launched this feature on 5 SE sites (Server Fault, Database Administrators, Arqade, Game Development, and Unix &amp; Linux) initially for logged in users only, and for anonymous users afterward. The report this ad button was shown several million times (of which roughly 65% paid ads and 35% house ads). We showed several dozens of different ad campaigns. So far we have received 0 reports. We've tested the feature several ways, found some minor bugs (which have been/are being fixed), however, in the vast majority of the scenarios the feature works well (we’re happy to be ).   We’re currently graduating this feature and are releasing it network-wide this week. Feel free to comment below if you have any questions/comments. What is the correct form in the following sentences, "both" and "both of them"?      a) "Both of them are unique."      b) "Both are unique."   If "both" by itself already contains "both of them", so I can conclude that the first option is not correct. Isn't it? I am wondering if there is a modifier or tool that will essentially undo a subsurf or subdivide command. What is CTAN.org now? What are underfull hboxes and vboxes and how can I get rid of them? If background applications can't launch automatically how does Cardcase launch on a location change? How do you prove ${n \choose k}$ is maximum when $k$ is $ \lceil \tfrac n2 \rceil$ or $ \lfloor \tfrac n2\rfloor $?