What is a good book for someone who has never studied philosophy before? I've never studied philosophy, nor have I previously been interested in it, but I feel like I need to esablish a philosophical foundation on which my personal stance on various political and perhaps even spiritual ideologies will be allowed to develop. My social ineptitude (due to chronic mental illness) has prevented me from being exposed to many important aspects of life and I believe philosophy could help me with that. Therefore I've come here to search for book recommendations. I am looking for a book that serves well for someone who has never studied philosophy before. If you feel like you need to know more speific information about me in order to recommend a book please ask me questions and I'll try to answer them.
What are some good introductions to philosophy? I've been searching the questions posed here, and don't seem to find one that gives the answers I am looking for. I've proposed to start a  on meta but no one proposed anything, so I feel I must ask this question: What are some books generally regarded as good for a general introduction on philosophy? By this I mean good books that can introduce you to philosophy in general and throughout the times, not to some philosophy or period in particular.   almost answers mine, except for the fact that most things proposed there are not books, thus not giving me much options to weigh upon.  regards contemporary philosophy in particular. And  has the same problem as the first one, plus the fact that it asks for layman's terms, which is not what I am looking for.  I've been tempted to buy Will Durant's , but am not sure if it is the best book to get started on philosophy (plus, the book has some mixed reviews). I also checked , which seems to be unanimously good, but has the format of dictionary/encyclopaedia, which is not exactly what I am looking for (at least as a main source).  also seems to be a good introduction regarding how to do philosophy, rather than to its history and ideals (this also interests me, but I'd rather learn about the philosophers and their theories first).   It is also important to point out that I have little notions (or none at all) on philosophy. I would like to read something that covers from classical to contemporary philosophy generally (although I do not know if there is such a book), so that from there I could pick some author, period or branch of philosophy in particular to read further on. So, to sum up, I would like to 'hear' your opinions on what are some books generally regarded as good for a general introduction on philosophy.
Shrink the database only up to its initial size which is set after creating database In SQL server every database has a property Initial Size (MB) which can be seen in properties of database in SSMS. By default it will be 3 MB for mdf and 1 MB for ldf file.  So now if create a new database then it will be set to default size(i.e 3 MB for mdf and 1 mb for ldf file). But after creating the database  I change the initial size to some other value say For mdf 10 MB and ldf 5 MB.(In real-time some database administrator may want to change initial after creating database)  But now if shrink the database it will shrink beyond the initial size I have set after creation(consider that no data is there in database otherwise it will shrink to its actual content size). It will shrink till the initial size it had during creation of database(i.e 3mb for mdf and 1 mb for ldf). I was expecting to shrink till the initial size which I have set(i.e 10 mb for mdf and 5mb for ldf). Can it be possible to do? If possible then how?  In some article i saw like dbcc SHRINKFILE can be used to shrink beyond initial size and dbcc SHRINKDATABASE cannot shrink beyond initial size. But I want to shrink only till the initial size to which I have set.  Note: I know that shrink is bad and should not be done.But I want to know how it can be done? If sql server considers only the initial size set during creation of database then what is the use of setting the initial size after creating database?  EDIT:  From microsoft shrink related article: Using DBCC SHRINKDATABASE you can not shrink database below its initial size.  My question is Can I change the initial size of existing database itself?  EDIT:  I have about 5 sql server instance. All the database where created with default size of 3 mb for data and 1 mb for log(about 3 years back). Now all the databases are in the range of 100-1000 mb. I wont shrink the database normally as it is not good practice. But some database grow more than 10 GB(mdf file itself as i insert so much data in it). So when database is large I will shift unimportant and old contents from this database to another server as it is not required in that server for me. So that database size reduces from 10 GB to 1 GB. Now the remaining 9 Gb left unused. Now I  want to specify database size to be reduced to 2 GB so that i will get 1 GB free space(Also 2 Gb is the ideal size for this database), Which can be used to avoid autogrowth till next 1 Gb of data is filled. Also i have set 100 MB auto-growth for this kind of large database which has more writes. So instead of specifying size as 2 GB in shrinkfile command,if it was possible to change initial size to 2 GB (which shrink considers) then it would have been better. During this database creation there was no plan about size ,autogroth etc. As it was created about 3 years back. Now i am planning to set autogrowth etc. I cant again create new database with new initial size and shift data. So I was asking whether I can change the Initial size for existing database? Predicator vs. Predicate BACKGROUND According to Oxford Dictionaries Online:   means &quot;(In systemic grammar) a verb phrase considered as a constituent of clause structure, along with subject, object, and adjunct.&quot;  means &quot;The part of a sentence or clause containing a verb and stating something about the subject (e.g. went home in John went home).&quot;  In the latter example of John went home, it seems, the predicate is went home whereas the predicator is went, home being an adjunct and thus not part of the predicator as defined. Now, I looked further in  to better understand the difference. The article recognizes two competing notions of the predicate in theories of grammar:  (1) Predicates in traditional grammar (e.g., went home in John went home) (2) Predicates in modern theories of syntax and grammar (e.g., went in John went home)  Which, according to the article, causes confusion as to what exactly the term predicate mean, and some grammarians came up with a new term &quot;predicator&quot; specifically for use (2), says the article. No problem thus far. What bothers me: The article in its explanation of (2) says, &quot;Other function words -- e.g. auxiliary verbs, certain prepositions, phrasal particles, etc. -- are viewed as part of the predicate.&quot; (Emphasis mine.) Now, remember this definition of the predicate, i.e., (2) above, corresponds to the new term &quot;predicator&quot;. I understand that auxiliary verbs are part of this definition of predicate, because an auxiliary verb can be part of a verb cluster. But can certain prepositions and phrasal particles also? The article has these example sentences (Words belonging to &quot;predicate&quot; (2) are boldfaced as in the article itself; My comments in parentheses.):  The butter is in the drawer. (preposition in being part of the predicate) You should give it up. (particle up being part of the predicate) Susan is pulling your leg. (I don't know why leg is marked as part of the predicate. Maybe a typo?)  QUESTION Except for the last one, which I suspect is a typo, I'd like to know whether the preposition in and the particle up belong to the predicate as presented in (2) and thus belong to the new term &quot;predicator&quot;. I am wondering why matrix factorization techniques in the machine learning domain almost always expect the provided matrix to be non-negative. What is the advantage of this constraint?  Background: I want to use matrix factorization algorithms for a sparse user-item matrix containing positive and negative implicit feedback. Is there any another possibility to set interactions with negative indications apart from fields that denote that no interaction happened between the user and the item? Solution of trigonometric equation $0 = x\cos(x)+2$ Integrating $\int^{\infty}_0 e^{-x^2}\,dx$ using Feynman's parametrization trick What developer text editors are available for Ubuntu? Why do we make a distinction between derivatives and partial derivatives? Regex exec only returning first match Dates and times: "on", "in", "at"? I’m often confused when I speak about times and dates. What is the rule for using on, in, and at in the following sentences?   I will do it ___ Tuesday. We married ___ March. He returned ___ the same day. Every day ___ the same time, I walk the dog. In naive set theory, I believe ∅ = {∅} = {{∅}} is correct, but just wanted to make sure that I understood this correctly.   ∅ is an empty set, so having an empty set as an element of a set that contains nothing else is pretty much the same thing as e.g. marking the number 2 as 2.000000, right? Doesn't the symbol ∅ intrinsically imply that this is an empty set which contains it self? Subtracting even and odd binomial coefficients? I've bent (again) my derailleur hanger. It's a replaceable hanger but for this summer I can't get an original one and I know that the non-original one I can get is made in a harder material and could possibly damage the frame.  So I'm left with the choice of straightening this light aluminium alloy thing. How do I do that without breaking/weakening it? I am performing a meta-analysis with 137 study arms. From each arm I have extracted a proportion of a disease. Here are my proportions:  [1] 0.002710027 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.017857143 0.000000000 0.010269576 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.000000000  [12] 0.010000000 0.053691275 0.052631579 0.070351759 0.000000000 0.108333333 0.262626263 0.013043478 0.000000000 0.007000000 0.000000000  [23] 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.240000000 0.000000000 0.033333333 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.013201320 0.000000000  [34] 0.005361930 0.002308403 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.030000000 0.046296296 0.000000000 0.020000000 0.045454545 0.161073826  [45] 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.095238095 0.007194245 0.001472754 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.012048193  [56] 0.000000000 0.048780488 0.000000000 0.086253369 0.033898305 0.011966701 0.004162331 0.062790698 0.005555556 0.004451039 0.287356322  [67] 0.083333333 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.014666667 0.006160164 0.023809524 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.001552795 0.102564103  [78] 0.030555556 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.029411765 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.000000000  [89] 0.003231018 0.000000000 0.037500000 0.040247678 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.007299270 0.014598540 0.000000000 0.015118790 0.000000000 [100] 0.000000000 0.005555556 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.003039514 0.042145594 0.250000000 0.307692308 0.324444444 0.002057613 [111] 0.008333333 0.000000000 0.027522936 0.022598870 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.000000000 0.135278515 0.033333333 0.000000000 0.000000000 [122] 0.003690037 0.003412969 0.000000000 0.017391304 0.004237288 0.033210332 0.000000000 0.008928571 0.038834951 0.030303030 0.142857143 [133] 0.170000000 0.000000000 0.112903226 0.000000000 0.007299270   A majority of the proportions has zero value. I am struggling with whether I should go for logit or arcsine transformation. One source says that arcsine transformation should not be used . On the other hand, I several zero counts. With logit transformation values 0 and 1 are mapped to infinity, and according to another source I should go with arcsine transformation . Furthermore, I found another study close to my topic in which they used arcsine transformation. The default in R with metaprop function is logit.   Which one I should go with my data? Kill some processes by .exe file name Calculate a running total in MySQL I have this MySQL query:  SELECT DAYOFYEAR(`date`)  AS d, COUNT(*)  FROM  `orders`  WHERE  `hasPaid` &gt; 0 GROUP  BY d ORDER  BY d   Which returns something like this:  d  | COUNT(*) | 20 |  5       | 21 |  7       | 22 | 12       | 23 |  4       |   What I'd really like is another column on the end to show the running total:  d  | COUNT(*) | ??? | 20 |  5       |   5 | 21 |  7       |  12 | 22 | 12       |  24 | 23 |  4       |  28 |   Is this possible? Loop-cut won't go all the way around How do I search a specific user's answers? A closed ball in a metric space is a closed set Prove that a closed ball in a metric space is a closed set   My attempt: Suppose $D(x_0, r)$ is a closed ball. We show that $X \setminus D $ is open. In other words, we need to find an open ball contained in $X \setminus D$.   Pick $$t \in X-D \implies d(t,x_0) &gt; r \implies d(t,x_0) - r &gt; 0 $$ Let $B(y, r_1)$ be an open ball, and pick $z \in B(y,r_1)$. Then, we must have $d(y,z) &lt; r_1 $. We need to choose $r_1$ so that $d(z,x_0) &gt; r$. Notice by the triangle inequality  $$ d(x_0,t) \leq d(x_0,z) + d(z,t) \implies d(z,x_0) \geq d(x_0,t) - d(z,t) &gt; d(x_0,t) - r_1.$$  Notice, if we pick $r_1 = d(t,x_0)-r$ then we are done.  Is this correct? I am stuck on the following question:     Find the volume of the torus obtained by rotating the circle $(x-a)^2+y^2=b^2$, where $a&gt;b$, around the y-axis. Forcefully update to new windows