I've seen some discussions about the command of "fire" before gunpowder was invented. That may be "shoot", "loose", "throw" etc. But what was the command of "fire at will"?  Are there any clues?  Update:   "Fire at will" is a tactic which has long existed in history. After the invention of gunpowder, we call it "fire at will". Before gunpowder, what did we call this tactic? Was there a common used phrase or not?
Did the verb “fire a weapon” exist before the actual introduction of firearms on battlefields?  More specifically, does it make sense for a creative work to have archers (or whatever ranged weaponry) be told to “fire!”, when the world they live in has not yet seen firearms?  It seems some kind of an anachronism to me, since before firearms, “fire” would never propel any projectile...  I've seen several movies do it; I can't remember them all, but for instance I verified it in The Lord of the Rings trilogy (left), Kingdom of Heaven (top right), and more recently Frozen (bottom right):    The first two do it several times (with Kingdom of Heaven also using it on ballistae, and The Return of the King even having Aragorn ask Legolas to ), whereas firearms never appear on the battlefields they feature (Kingdom of Heaven is set in the 12th century; as for The Lord of the Rings, apart from one occurrence of a witchcraft-ish bomb, it's archery and medieval siege engines all the way).  Frozen may be debatable, happening probably somewhere in the 18th or 19th century, but since we only see swords, spears and the like, it made me flinch to hear crossbowmen use “fire!”.  I've also noticed other movies avoiding this, using “loose!” instead, such as Troy (left) and Gladiator (right):    This makes me think it would be the right thing to say instead... although I'm still wondering why not use “shoot”, which seems simpler to me.
What is the difference between a linear and a circular polarizer? Obi-Wan left Anakin for dead, and one movie later (in A New Hope) he was saying Anakin had been killed by Darth Vader.  What exactly did Obi-Wan know about Anakin and Darth Vader before A New Hope started? Explaining Horizontal Shifting and Scaling I've just made a minor alteration to a file from a TeX package.  I copied it into my local texmf tree and made the change there.  When I tried kpsewhich &lt;filename&gt; to test that it was finding my local version, it returned the original one and not the new one.  In actual fact, the original file was from my local texmf tree already so I renamed the old one something simple.  Now kpsewhich &lt;filename&gt; returned the system version of the file.  To check that the file was there, I tried kpsewhich -all &lt;filename&gt; and got the correct two versions of the file: my modified one and the system one (in that order).  If I try this with another file that I know exists in both places, then kpsewhich &lt;filename&gt; returns my local file.  Here's the various invocations and their results:  ~% kpsewhich pgfsys-pdftex.def /usr/local/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/tex/generic/pgf/systemlayer/pgfsys-pdftex.def ~% kpsewhich -all pgfsys-pdftex.def  /Users/stacey/Library/texmf/tex/latex/bzr/pgfsys-pdftex.def /usr/local/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/tex/generic/pgf/systemlayer/pgfsys-pdftex.def ~% kpsewhich tqft.sty               /Users/stacey/Library/texmf/tex/latex/bzr/tqft.sty ~% kpsewhich -all tqft.sty /Users/stacey/Library/texmf/tex/latex/bzr/tqft.sty /usr/local/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/tex/latex/tqft/tqft.sty   Is it something special about the .def extension?  Is there some command that I forgot to run?  Are there some other options to kpsewhich that will help me debug this? Since the final Black Hole (BH) had 3 solar masses less of mass than the original binary BH, it seems the 2 BHs lost mass, and with it event surface area, entropy, and information. If that came from inside the BHs it seems that it would be a contradiction of what a BH is --'nothing escapes its event horizon'. Some may say that came from the rotational energy of the pair, but the new BH now seems to have less than the two original ones summed. So, did some of that escape the horizons? How do I display a decimal value to 2 decimal places? When displaying the value of a decimal currently with .ToString(), it's accurate to like 15 decimal places, and since I'm using it to represent dollars and cents, I only want the output to be 2 decimal places.   Do I use a variation of .ToString() for this? Grammar of "supposed to": part of speech / word class, active or passive? If I say     I'm supposed to go.   Is supposed to here an adjective in a passive construction? In Ubuntu 13.04 I used to use the ppa:upubuntu-com/tor64  PPA to install the 64-bit Tor Browser Bundle. However, in Ubuntu 13.10 it doesn't work anymore. How do I install the Tor Browser Bundle in Ubuntu? Does "until [date]" mean "before that date"? What is difference between int.class and Integer.TYPE in java? In a preadditive category, products are coproducts $\renewcommand{\phi}{\varphi}$ $\require{AMScd}$ My question is different from .  I want to see how in a preadditive category $\mathcal{C}$ a product is a coproduct, following . I'll write the proof up to the point where I get stuck.  Let $A=A_1,B=A_2$ be objects and suppose their product $P$ does exist, with projections $\pi_i:P\rightarrow A_i$. By considering a wedge  $$\begin{CD}A @&lt;{id_A}&lt;&lt;  A @&gt;{0_{AB}}&gt;&gt;  B\end{CD}$$  and the obvious analogous one with $A$ and $B$ exchanged, where $0_{A,B}$ is the zero morphism, we see that the product property implies the existence of two unique morphisms $k_i\in\mathcal{C}[A_i,P]$ s.t.  \begin{align*} \pi_j\circ k_i=\begin{cases} \mathrm{id}_i &amp;\text{if }i=j\\ 0_{A_i, A_j} &amp;\text{if }i\neq j \end{cases}. \end{align*} Using these equations and the definition of zero morphism, it's easy to see that the morphism $m\equiv k_1\circ \pi_1+ k_2\circ \pi_2$ satisfies $\pi_i\circ m=\pi_i$.   This is where I get stuck: In the linked proof, they now state that this implies $m=\mathrm{id}_P.$ But I don't see why this should be true.   Specifically, if $\phi\in\mathcal{C}[S,P]$ for some arbitrary object $S$, it is not apparent why $m\circ\phi=\phi$. All that we know is that there are some morphisms $x_i\in\mathcal{C}[S,A_i]$ that factor through $P$ via the universal property, but these are not necessarily unique.  And we learn even less about $m$ by looking at morphisms in $\mathcal{C}[P,S]$.  What am I missing here? wildcard * in CSS for classes Why does chown report "Operation not permitted" on OS X? I am trying to do the following on my Mac (10.6.7):  sudo chown myusername:wheel ./entries   but Unix/Mac is returning "Operation not permitted". When I ls -lash the culprit file, it looks as follows:  8 -rwxrwxrwx   1 myusername  staff   394B Apr 26 23:26 entries   I've tried sudo and sudo su; nothing works. Any ideas what's up?  I'm trying to chmod files I've copied from my old Ubuntu box. Most of the files have successfully chmod'ed recursively; just this one is stuck and I don't understand why. what are all the open subgroups of $(\mathbb{R},+)$ Here's my preamble:  \documentclass[11pt]{amsart} \usepackage{geometry}                % See geometry.pdf to learn the layout options. There are lots. \geometry{letterpaper}                   % ... or a4paper or a5paper or ...  %\geometry{landscape}                % Activate for for rotated page geometry %\usepackage[parfill]{parskip}    % Activate to begin paragraphs with an empty line rather than an indent \usepackage{graphicx} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{epstopdf} \usepackage{float} \usepackage[normalem]{ulem}  \DeclareGraphicsRule{.tif}{png}{.png}{`convert #1 `dirname #1`/`basename #1 .tif`.png}  \title{\emph{Research Proposal:}\\Perceptual Effects of Cross-Contextualized Soundscapes within the Built Environment}   Here's what happens:    Any ideas? What is the difference between align and equation environment when I only want to display one line of equation? I am typesetting a physics document, and sometimes I need to type equations of several lines while in most cases I only need to type one-line formula. So is it OK if I always use align environment instead of switching between align and equation What are their differences? In HLW8012 where should I connect the reference voltage (GND) In the , the both 33nF capacitors , 1K resistor and 0.1uF capacitor are connected to GND. I'm not sure where should I connect those ends of components marked with GND symbol, (To Live, To Natural or the DC GND). I can't read Chinese, I don't really know what everything mean there.  Live directly connects to the shunt resistor and this means that live is also GND (0 volt reference) for the chip? Should I connect those end of components marked as GND symbol to Live wire? Birational map from elliptic curve keeps smoothness? Let $E$ be a elliptic curve that is , genus $1$ smooth curve with base point. And suppose that the map $φ$, which sends $E$ to $E'$, is birational. Birational means there are two rational maps on both direction which composites identity. Then, can we say that $E'$ is smooth? Is it correct to say "I wrote him" or "I wrote to him"?  My Mother was a stickler for English grammar and would say "I wrote your Uncle..." rather than "I wrote to your Uncle..." How can I easily encrypt a file? Is there any simple (IE: right click in Nautilus) way to password protect a particular folder/file in Ubuntu? I've got a few files containing sensitive info and I'd much prefer that if/when I leave my computer alone, they aren't accidentally accessed by someone else.  The secruty does not have to be extremely tight. My only concern is that when family/friends come over, I don't really like the idea of them looking at my bank details, accounts or, you guessed it, porn collection.  A simple, effective way to let me put my machine in the hands of someone else knowing that said machine can not cause me embarresment is the sole reason why I'd like to see this in Ubuntu.