I have noticed that it seems to be good etiquette to write the "at" sign and then the userid of the person whose post or comment one is responding to in a comment.  I believe that's called pinging.  I've tried to do this and sometimes it works, and sometimes it just disappears when I hit "Enter."  Am I supposed to ping?  If so, are there some tricks to make it work more consistently?  Or could someone at least explain the pattern to me?
How do the comment replies (aka &quot;pinging users&quot;) work?  Who can I send an @reply to? How do I respond to a specific user when entering my comment? Will they be notified? What do people mean when they talk about &quot;pinging&quot; another user?  Related:
Suppose there are two face down cards each with a positive real number and with one twice the other. Each card has value equal to its number. You are given one of the cards (with value $x$) and after you have seen it, the dealer offers you an opportunity to swap without anyone having looked at the other card.  If you choose to swap, your expected value should be the same, as you still have a $50\%$ chance of getting the higher card and $50\%$ of getting the lower card.  However, the other card has a $50\%$ chance of being $0.5x$ and a $50\%$ chance of being $2x$. If we keep the card, our expected value is $x$, while if we swap it, then our expected value is: $$0.5(0.5x)+0.5(2x)=1.25x$$ so it seems like it is better to swap. Can anyone explain this apparent contradiction? Why is the word 'number' abbreviated to 'No.' in UK English and '#' in American English? Why the disparity? And why use 'No.'? Is it from the French?  And the hash or pound sign seems a weird choice too, is there a history or any reason involved? I am reading Tom Apostol's Analysis and come across this theorem.   Should $a \leq b$ if $a\leq b+\epsilon$ for all $\epsilon &gt;0$?   I don't doubt the proof in the book but I don't understand the intuition or geometric explanation behind this. Could somebody shed some light on this equation? I just started studying analysis on my own.$\ \ $ Can't specify the 'async' modifier on the 'Main' method of a console app I'm used to always hearing or seeing a  before certain nouns.  Yet on certain occasions the article is totally omitted, and it bothers me.  I'm wondering what the justification for omitting the article is, especially when the definite article would seem to be required, or if it is just bad English either on the part of the individual in question or more likely by tradition.  The most frequent place I hear this is at the doctor or dentist's office. In every one I have ever visited, the receptionist or assistant always says things like "Doctor will see you shortly" instead of "The doctor will see you shortly."  The wikipedia article linked above says this: "A definite article indicates that its noun is a particular one (or ones) identifiable to the listener".  In the case of a clinical setting, I know who the doctor is, especially if this is not my first visit.  The people in the office know the doctor even better than I, so it would seem to be inappropriate to omit the article. Even the indefinite article would be incorrect. It further says, under "Zero article":  "In languages having a definite article, the lack of an article specifically indicates that the noun is indefinite."  Since the noun is not indefinite, why are they omitting the article?  Another place I see the article omitted is with the word "bar".  Bartenders apparently don't say "I tend the bar" they say "I tend bar".  Unless a bartender works in multiple bars, it would seem like an article would be required.  Furthermore, "the bar" can mean any bar a person goes to, so even in a case like , it seems like the word "the" should be in the sentence.  The only thing I can think of in this case is maybe the speaker doesn't want to confuse the listener into thinking they work in the legal field.  Is this just a bad habit, a historical corruption or tradition, or is there really a valid reason (or perhaps more than one) for these omissions? First, when I never had installed sl:  diogosaraiva@Ubuntu:~$ sl O programa 'sl' não está instalado actualmente. Pode instalá-lo escrevendo: sudo apt-get install sl   traslaction: "The program 'sl' is not currently installed. You can install it by typing:"  But when I'm tired of it and I remove it by typing sudo apt-get remove sl per example...  I get this when I type sl:  -bash: /usr/games/sl: Ficheiro ou directoria inexistente   translate: "-bash: /usr/games/sl: No such file or directory" instead of:    diogosaraiva@Ubuntu:~$ sl O programa 'sl' não está instalado actualmente. Pode instalá-lo escrevendo: sudo apt-get install sl   This appears with others packages too...  How I get rid of this: -bash: /usr/games/sl: Ficheiro ou directoria inexistente ?  I want see the original:  diogosaraiva@Ubuntu:~$ sl O programa 'sl' não está instalado actualmente. Pode instalá-lo escrevendo: sudo apt-get install sl   Output of type sl  sl está hasheado (/usr/games/sl) Can you explain briefly the main concepts and command line tools used to manage file permissions? Windows 7 low and critical battery levels cannot be set lower than 10% Regarding the recalc in question rep increase what happens due to the cap? Removing a list of characters in string The classic example... $X \sim Po\left (\lambda\right ), Y \sim Po\left (\mu\right)$, X and Y are independent.  Show that the conditional distribution of X is binomially distributed. Or in other words, $P(X=k\mid X+Y = n) = P (\tilde{X} = k), \tilde{X} \sim B\left (n ,\frac{\lambda}{\lambda + \mu}\right )$.   I've so far managed to reach to this step, and have been stuck since. Just somehow gotta get a $\frac{1}{n!}$ in the denominator, that would then complete the proof..or at least I think..  $$P(X=k\mid X+Y=n) = \frac{\frac{\lambda^{k}\mu^{n-k}}{k!(n-k)!}}{P(X+Y = n)}=  \frac{\frac{\lambda^{k}\mu^{n-k}}{k!(n-k)!}}{\sum_{i=1}^{n} \frac{\lambda^{i}\mu^{n-i}}{i!(n-i)!}}$$  Thanks for the help! Compute the limit $\lim_{n \to \infty} \frac{n!}{n^n}$ Help me understand the proof for Bolzano-Weierstrass Theorem! Is there a pronoun I can use as a gender-neutral pronoun when referring back to a singular noun phrase?  Each student should save his questions until the end. Each student should save her questions until the end. Xml configuration versus Annotation based configuration In a few large projects i have been working on lately it seems to become increasingly important to choose one or the other (XML or Annotation). As projects grow, consistency is very important for maintainability.   My questions are: what are the advantages of XML-based configuration over Annotation-based configuration and what are the advantages of Annotation-based configuration over XML-based configuration? I'm trying to prove that the following set ($B$) defined by an ellipse is convex, but I am getting stuck.  $$B = \left\{(x_1,x_2):3(x_1-3)^2+2(x_2-3)^2 \leq 1 \right\} $$  My sad attempt:  $$ \textrm{Let }x,y \: \in \: B \:, \: \lambda \: \in \: [0,1]$$  $$ \lambda x+(1-\lambda)y=(\lambda x_1+(1-\lambda)y_1,\: \lambda x_2 +(1-\lambda)y_2  )$$ $$3(\lambda x_1 + (1-\lambda)y_1 -3)^2+2(\lambda x_2+(1-\lambda)y_2-3)^2=3(\lambda ^2x_1^2 +(1-\lambda)^2y_1^2+9+2\lambda x_1(1-\lambda)y_1-6\lambda x_1 -6(1-\lambda)y_1)+2(\lambda ^2x_2^2 +(1-\lambda)^2y_2^2+9+2\lambda x_2(1-\lambda)y_2-6\lambda x_2 -6(1-\lambda)y_2)$$  and this is where I have lost all confidence in proving it. I was able to factor some of the terms into the form $(\lambda x_1 -3)^2$, $((1-\lambda) y_1 -3)^2$, $(\lambda x_2 -3)^2$, and $((1-\lambda) x_2 -3)^2$, but I don't think that helps the situation any. How to get the path of a running JAR file? The following is an Exercise of Conway's Functional Analysis.   Prove that $X$ is a $\,Banach$ space iff whenever $\{x_n\}$ is a sequence in $X$, such that $\sum \| x_n \| &lt; \infty$, then $\sum x_n$ converges.   I easily can show that if $X$ is a Banach space then $\sum x_n$ converges. My problem is showing that $X$ is a Banach space. For this I suppose that $\{s_n\}$ is a Cauchy sequence in $X$, then I want to make a series. For this I do not have any idea. Please help me. SVG for images in browsers with PNG fallback A positive integer is divisible by $3$ iff 3 divides the sum of its digits I am having trouble proving the two following questions:    If $p|N$, $q|N$ and gcd(p,q)=1, then prove that $pq|N$ If $x$ is non zero positive integer number, then prove that $3|x$ if and only if 3 divides the sum of all digits of $x$.   For both questions I tried to use theorems of discrete mathematics, but I could not find the way to solve them.