Book About Earth Boy Who Becomes Space Cadet I'm looking for a book from the late 80s. It's about a teenage boy who finds a spaceship out in the country that's crash-landed. There's only one survivor: a boy from a vampiric alien race but he's badly hurt. He's somehow able to show the boy his home planet and the muscular cow-like creatures that his people use for their blood. Eventually the boy's brother, a druggie and Vietnam vet, puts the boy and his alien friend to work making drugs, which they both need masks to do.  Eventually the alien's friends (dressed in skin suits) come to their house.   Apparently the boy was a cadet for some kind of interstellar federation, and they want to know what happened. The boy tells them, and an orangutan-like alien (who we are strangely told has the skull of a Hispanic man) and his friends (who are the same species as the boy's friend) ultimately allow him to go with them, as there is nothing for him on Earth after his brother was busted.  The boy is treated more like a talking animal than he is a sapient being because he can't speak the Galactic Lingua Franca, and so when they get to a planet he's taken to be taught and has his brain's plasticity increased so he can learn the language in record time. He's placed in classes with other people from less advanced planets, and he ultimately makes friends with a girl. The girl is an alien from a theocratic planet, and she can unhinge her jaw like a snake's. She eventually freaks out from culture shock, but the boy manages to pass and become a cadet. He also meets a group of humans who were taken from Earth in the 1400s, and who call the alien inhabitants of the planet Devils.  He's eventually given a ship and a partner (whose species looks similar to Big Bird), but they crash-land and his partner is killed by the natives. The boy is imprisoned and tries to communicate with his captives using drawings, but they don't understand him. They're fascinated by his facial hair, as they can't grow any themselves even though they're humanoid, and eventually they allow him to speak to the cameras after he is publicly unveiled. He talks in the Galactic Language and gives them a Reason You Suck speech, but they still don't understand him.
SF novel -- the only human on a space station full of aliens Some things I remember:   Pretty sure the author was female The novel had won some award or other The title was one word (I think) and it started with "I" (I think) It would have come out in the mid to late 90s or early 2000s It was a paperback or trade paperback, in English.  The book was originally written in English as far as I know. The cover, if I remember correctly, had an orangish background.   The plot involved a sole human representative to what was effectively an alien "United Nations" type of organization.  There were myriad types of aliens, many of whom were completely biologically incompatible.  Even the ones that could live in the same conditions generally found each other either repugnant or incomprehensible.  The main character ended up feeling incredibly lonely and was "set up" with a superficially similar humanoid female, but found their pheromones were incompatible and it was still difficult to communicate.
I recently made my pen-drive bootable with Ubuntu 14.04. But I need to unboot my pen-drive now. I formatted my pen-drive once,But the size of the pen-drive still shows 2.25 MB. Whereas,this is an 8GB pen-drive. How can I get rid of this problem. I'm still using Windows 7. Current in wire + moving charge next to wire creates magnetic force in the stationary reference frame OR electric force in the moving reference frame from special relativity due to change in charge density etc.... I think I understand this and I think it's super cool. Now here's the rub...  Current in wire + stationary charge next to wire creates no net charge. This is how nature behaves. I get it. My question is why can't I use the same special relativity logic as above, that is, current in wire cause electrons in wire to contract in accordance with special relativity so there has to be a net charge on the wire, which then acts on stationary charge next to wire.  I have been reading and reading and reading and I have come up with the following:  (1) When electrons in wire get accelerated to create current the distance between them actually expands in accordance with special relativity - something to do with bells spaceship paradox - which I am not going to pretend to understand  (2) This expansion from (1) above is exactly opposite and equal in magnitude to the contraction special relativity then causes and the expansion and contraction cancel out to keep the charge density in the wire constant and therefore no net charge on the wire  Here are my questions:  Is the explanation above correct? If so, please elaborate because i dont understand  If not correct, what is going on?  This is driving me absolutely nuts. Change \textwidth after first page in scrlttr2 Where are the Stack Exchange data dumps? I see a lot of talk around here regarding the Stack Overflow public data dump.  Where is it? How can I play with it? "He needn't say" / "He doesn't need to say" When I studied English at school (in Italy, more than 35 years ago), we were taught a rule according to which one should say, e. g., "He needn't (need not) say", but NOT "He doesn't need to say".  If I'm not mistaken, it was explained to us that the rule holds good with the following limitations:  1) only in the negative form: thus, "He needn't say", but "He needs to say", and "Does he need to say?";  2) only in the present tense: thus, "He needn't say", but "He didn't (won't, wouldn't, etc.) need to say";  3) only when an infinitive follows: thus, "He needn't see a doctor", but "He doesn't need a doctor".  But, if I google "doesn't need to", I find 125,000,000 occurrences.  I was wondering: does the rule hold good more for British than for American English?  Also, perhaps it isn't an absolute rule, and both constructions ("He needn't say" and "He doesn't need to say") are possible.  Is the rule at least a good description of the circumstances when we CAN (but needn't necessarily) use this construction?  Thank you very much, for this and the other answers. Pairwise independence of Random variables does not imply indendence Show by a counterexample that for a family $(X_i)_{i\in I}$ of random variables the independence of all pairs $(X_i,X_j)$ with $i,j\in I, i\neq j$ does not imply the independence of the family (It is enough to consider $\mbox{card}(I)=3$.).      Hello, I am searching for a simple example. The professor gave the hint that one might consider random variables which only can take two different values, but I do not know exactly what is meant.  By the way:  We call the family $(X_i)_{i\in I}$ of random variables independent, if $(\sigma(X_i))_{i\in I}$ is independent, whereat we call a family $(\mathcal{E}_i)_{i\in I}$ with $\mathcal{E}_i\subset\mathcal{A}$ independent, if for any finite subset $I_0\subset I$ and any choice $E_i\in\mathcal{E}_i, i\in I_0$, it is $$ \mathbb{P}(\bigcap_{i\in I_0}E_i)=\prod_{i\in I_0}\mathbb{P}(E_i). $$ Can a spellcaster use spell slots above their normal limit if their ability scores allow bonus spells of that level? This question is inspired by discussion , about how Heighten Spell works with Reserve Feats.  The question that I am asking here deals with whether or not players can cast spells using spell slots for spell levels that they don't have access to yet.    I feel like an example would explain this concept best.  Take Xylitol, the first-level wizard with an intelligence of 18.  He has 5 0th-level spells per day and 3 1st level spells per day from his class.  He also has 1 bonus 1st level spell per day from his high intelligence.  The  table says that he also has 1 bonus spell of each 2nd, 3rd, and 4th levels.  The question is this:  Can Xylitol cast 1st level spells using the bonus slots for his 2nd, 3rd, and 4th level spells?  He clearly can't cast spells that are inherently higher level than 1st, since he can't learn them, but can he cast 1st level spells using bonus 2nd, 3rd, and 4th level slots?  This has come up on these boards before, .  What I'm looking for here is a clear rules citation that clarifies this one way or the other.  The wording in the section on ability scores makes it quite clear that characters cannot cast spells that are actually higher level than their class allows them to cast, but it is not clear that these higher level slots are barred until the appropriate spell level is unlocked.  If a character has access to a spell level that they can't use because their ability score isn't high enough, they can freely use those slots for lower level spells, so why can't they use their bonus spell slots for lower level spells?  As KRyan's answer says, the Basics section covers this.  Based on questions and comments both here and elsewhere, that section seems to be worded ambiguously enough that it's caused confusion.  I'd like to find another, more clear wording to this rule if at all possible.  Answers from either D&amp;D 3.5 or Pathfinder are acceptable, but please note which one your answer applies to.  N.B. I'd like to note that I personally don't feel that players should have access to higher level slots like this.  There are a large number of locations where it's heavily implied that this is not the case, but I feel that finding a clear rules citation here would be helpful.  I can't find one that is clear for either interpretation here. Drupal out of the box comes with a page (which is the default homepage) that is assigned to the node path.  How do I avoid users reach it, and redirect them to the actual homepage of the site? How to install Wi-Fi driver for Realtek RTL8821CE on Ubuntu 18.04? I'm trying to install drivers for my Wifi on my HP All-in-one desktop. I've been told to show the output of the command "sudo lshw -C network" so here it is:  *-network description: Ethernet interface product: RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0 logical name: enp1s0 version: 15 serial: 48:ba:4e:5c:06:5f size: 100Mbit/s capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full firmware=rtl8168h-2_0.0.2 02/26/15 ip=192.168.1.21 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=100Mbit/s resources: ire:31 import:e000(size=256) memory: fea04000-fea04fff memory:fea00000-fea03fff  *-network UNCLAIMED description: Network controller product: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 version: 00 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress cap_list configuration: latency=0 resources: import:d000(size=256) memory:fe900000-fe90ffff   Output from "lspci -nnk | grep -A2 0280":  02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8821CE 802.11ac PCIe Wireless Network Adapter [10ec:c821] Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company RTL8821CE 802.11ac PCIe Wireless Network Adapter [103c:831a] 03:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS5229 PCI Express Card Reader [10ec:5229] (rev 01) how to reset a lost admin password? Implementing auto correct/complete on Stack Overflow How to Generate surface from points Hi Guys,  I have a set of points in 3D. How can I convert this into a surface ? Is this a grammatically correct line in a poem: “Will he roll the dice, and follow it to Vegas?”? I want to use the following line in a poem: "Will he roll the dice, and follow it to Vegas?"   A couple of things to note; firstly, obviously I'm using "roll the dice" in both a figurative/idiomatic sense (as in taking a risk), and in a somewhat more literal sense (painting the image of the person actually following the dice that have been rolled to Las Vegas). That being said, my confusion here is if I can get away with using "follow it" or if I need to say "follow them" .... As I've read online "dice" traditionally refers to more than one die (i.e., the plural of die), but in the modern usage, "dice" can also be used to refer to the singular (i.e., just one die).   So, it seems like if I was referring to the image of just one die, then the way I phrased it could be correct. However, the image I'm trying to paint is the one usually associated with the phrase "roll the dice" (i.e., rolling two dice)...   So could "follow it" still be considered acceptable in this sense... or would I need to use "follow them"?... And if not referring to the dice themselves, could using, could the "it" be taken to refer to the act of rolling the dice, or would that not work either? Thanks so much in advance!! My wife wants a 4th baby, but I don't Let $A= a(i,j)$ and $B= b(i,j)$ be ($n\times n$) matrices that are positive definite such that $a(i,j) &lt; b(i,j)$ .Let $C= c(i,j)= a(i,j) - b(i,j)$, then $C$ is also positive definite. Why or why not?  what i know is $x^T(C)x= x^T (A-B) x = x^T(A)x - x^T(B)x$. Now both terms on right-hand side are greater than $0$ as $A$ and $B$ are positive definite. Also  $a(i,j) &lt; b(i,j)$. But in such case the sign of $x^T(C)x$ being positive or negative will also depend on the value of elements of vector $x$. So, we can't assure that $x^T(C)x &lt; 0$ always or that $C$ is not positive definite.  Am i right about this? How to install qt 4.8 from repository? How to install qt 4.8 and QtCreator from repository ? I read in a CSV file for linking to a .shp file.   All the variables that are just numbers came in as text.   How do I change the text variables to numeric in QGIS? Do not give the impression that all votes are unanimously in favor of the winning close-reason. I closed for "belongs on superuser," yet SO claims I closed for a completely different reason.  Source: If we disbelieve $H_0$, why quote a p value calculated assuming $H_0$ was true? Hypothesis testing seeks to reject a null hypothesis ($H_0$) on the basis of an assumption made about the sample following a certain distribution. This assumption is conditional on $H_0$ being true. So what is the flaw with the following reasoning?     If I reject $H_0$ in favor of the alternative hypothesis ($H_1$), I   must then assume that (1) $H_1$ is true, and (2) that at the   same time the variable under examination follows the distribution   used to reject $H_0$. Since we also stated that the assumed   distribution is conditional on $H_0$ being true, it appears that $H_0$   has got to be true in order to justify the assumption made about the   distribution. Logically, it would therefore seem that both $H_0$ and   $H_1$ have to be true, which is a paradox, because they are mutually   exclusive! Does anyone know of any linux tool specifically designed to treat files as sets and perform set operations on them? Like difference, intersection, etc?