Read it as a child in the mid 80’s in Hebrew.  A young man, the child of a planet’s ruler escapes in a small craft, possibly with his traitorous uncle and love interest.  Escape has something to do with conquest, rebellion and empire?  In the end discovers the rebel base on his home planet.  Spaceship guns and hand weapons were probably a translation to Hebrew of blasters.  The ruler’s title was an odd one: probably plutocrat.   Craft was detailed to have a bridge and one other room to show it’s small.   There was also a discussion of rations available in it.  Unlikely to be an obscure text, as it was translated.
I recall Asimov had a character who was The autoc of , clearly based on the word “autokrat” but I don’t recall the exact spelling.  This stumped Google, which would rather correct the spelling to some other word than find a unique word.  In the story, he had gone undercover and the reader did not know either that some other character was in fact the Autoc, until it had been revealed to the main character.
lognormal distribution, standard-deviation and (physical) units I have a distribution of microparticles that follows a lognormal distribution. The cumulative distribution function thus is given by:  $$ F_X(x;\mu,\sigma) = \frac12 \operatorname{erfc}\!\left(-\frac{\ln x - \mu}{\sigma\sqrt{2}}\right) $$ $$ \mu = ln(M) + \sigma^2 $$  Now, the plot of the distribution function should be exactly the same no matter if the particle diameter $x$ is given in micrometers or meters (as long as I adapt the x-axis accordingly of course). However, this only works if I only convert $x$ and $M$, while not touching the numerical value of $\sigma$, and I don't understand why. $F_X$ has to be unitless, so $x$, $\mu$ and $\sigma$ should all have the same unit, right? Connecting GSM SIM900A module with Ardunio I have bought an SIM900A Mini V4 GSM module. Here is the module,   I want to configure with arduino to send and receive SMS.   Do I have to connect TXD of this module--Tx of Arduino &amp; RXD of this module--Rx of Arduino or other way around?  There is no datasheet or documents on this new module.  When I search about RXD &amp; TXD, I found this in      TxD means "Data to be transmitted over the comms link" - which will clearly be an input to the modem;    Similarly, RxD means "Data that has been received from the comms link" - which will clearly be an output from the modem.    But I couldn't send or receive SMS using this configurations.  As I am new to this, It would be very helpful if anyone help on this.  Thank you in advance. SSD drives lifetime Some years ago when I was looking to buy an SSD drive, I remember reading about how SSD drives had low lifetime with frequent read/writes, so I backed off.  Now I see this in Specifications:  MTTF: 1,000,000 Hrs    That's 114 years (ok, it could be a few years less, but still WOW)    What has changed since then? What is your personal experience about this technology? I am thinking of building a model predicting a ratio $a/b$, where $a \le b$ and $a &gt; 0$ and $b &gt; 0$. So, the ratio would be between $0$ and $1$.  I could use linear regression, although it doesn't naturally limit to 0..1.  I have no reason to believe the relationship is linear, but of course it is often used anyway, as a simple first model.  I could use a logistic regression, although it is normally used to predict the probability of a two-state outcome, not to predict a continuous value from the range 0..1.  Knowing nothing more, would you use linear regression, logistic regression, or hidden option c? Installing MinionPro fonts on Ubuntu 10.04 running TexLive 2012 I followed the instructions to install MinionPro fonts from this website.   However, when I tried to run the tex file at the bottom, I have this error message:  ! LaTeX Error: File `MinionPro.sty' not found.   Running the command kpsewhich MinionPro.sty gives the following output:  /usr/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/MinionPro/MinionPro.sty   So the system knows where MinionPro.sty is, so why can't the file compile? I`m using the Newton-Raphson method for obtaining MLE for parameters for maximizing my objective function. At each iteration, I want to check that is the Hessian matrix negative definite or not and I see the Hessian matrix is not negative definite at some iterations. So, I want to use the Fisher scoring algorithm ( of derivation) In this situation, the Fisher information matrix is indefinite!! Is it possible? What are the reasons for this? Are the second-order derivatives wrong? Or are values of expectations incorrect? I have been around on Twitter for awhile and I regularly find people using "Please to retweet this" or "Please to help me", etc. Is this proper English? I do not think prefixing the infinitive form with a 'to' is necessary here at all. What are some of the rule changes that Pathfinder brings in comparison to D&amp;D 3.5?  I am curious what changes were made so I can explain to my group what it has to offer. Why is polynomial regression considered a special case of multiple linear regression? If polynomial regression models nonlinear relationships, how can it be considered a special case of multiple linear regression?  Wikipedia notes that "Although polynomial regression fits a nonlinear model to the data, as a statistical estimation problem it is linear, in the sense that the regression function $\mathbb{E}(y | x)$ is linear in the unknown parameters that are estimated from the data."  How is polynomial regression linear in the unknown parameters if the parameters are coefficients for terms with order $\ge$ 2? I would like to close some view windows that I opened accidentally.  See the image below:    Edit: another note: I tried searching for the solution, but only found things like "Join Area", which don't seem to work in this situation. We noticed that lots of bugs in our software developed in C# (or Java) cause a NullReferenceException.  Is there a reason why "null" has even been included in the language?  After all, if there were no "null", I would have no bug, right?  In other words, what feature in the language couldn't work without null? Let $$ f(x) =    \begin{cases}\begin{align}     1\quad&amp;\text{ if }\; 0\leq x \leq 1 \\     2 \quad&amp;\text{ if }\; 1&lt;x \leq 2 \\   \end{align}\end{cases}$$  Then $\int^2_0 f(x)dx=3$ and an anti derivative of f(x) is $$F(x)=\begin{cases}\begin{align}     x\quad&amp;\text{ if }\; 0\leq x \leq 1 \\     2x \quad&amp;\text{ if }\; 1&lt;x \leq 2 \\   \end{align}\end{cases}$$ But, $F(2)-F(0)=4-0=4 \neq 3.$ Why has this happened?  Find an anti-derivative $G(x)$ of $f(x)$ such that $G(2)-G(0)=3$, the correct answer.  My attempt: $F(2)-F(0)=4 \neq 3$ because we need to break it up into two parts like this: $\int^2_1 2x dx + \int^1_0 x dx = x^2|^2_0 + \frac{1}{2} x^2|^1_0 =4-1+\frac{1}{2}-0=3.5$ but this is not right either. :(  For the "Find an anti-derivative $G(x)$..."I'm completely lost but perhaps if we solve the first part then I'll understand what it's asking for there.  Any help would be appreciated. Is my US visa still valid after change in name? I'm a Malawian national and I got US Visa years back.  Recently, due to some reasons, I had to get my first name partially changed on my passport. I have got an affidavit certificate stating the reason and proof.  Since the visa on my old passport has still not expired, but there is a difference in first name, will I face any problem? Is there a way to transfer thousand of small files faster on Windows 7? I noticed that if I transfer a few large files between two hard drives, it's pretty speedy, at around at least 30&nbsp;MB per second, but if I transfer thousands of files less than 5&nbsp;KB, it is pretty damn too slow.. around 1 to 2&nbsp;MB per second.   Is there a way to speed up the copy/paste process with thousands of small files on Windows 7? Help! My party isn't challenged? While I've been running my campaign, I'm starting to get stumped. I am playing with a party of four, and we recently switched from 3.5 to Pathfinder, but the problem was the same in both situations.  No matter what I throw at the party, they seem to have no problems. Even if I put them up against something that is supposed to be 'Epic' or 'overwhelming' in terms of CR, they make out just fine. The one exception to this is when I had several encounters in one day that taxed them to near death. Usually I have about two encounters a day, but that day I had four encounters, with two of them being APL+1 and the other two being APL+2, and that was challenging. But other than that nothing seems to faze them!  How can I make the game more challenging without making it harder?  Just for reference, the party is fairly standard, and low level (level 4):   Wizard (tends to resort to mind-affecting spells, or grease if the creature is immune) Cleric (heals a lot, but always has spells / healing left over) Rogue (sneak attack, of course, which is more potent in Pathfinder) Fighter (gets enlarged and in-charge'd) I want to use a Java file SaveProp which is written in a package user. The class file has been placed in WEBINF/classes. Below are the two lines which cause the issue.  jsp:useBean id="user" class="user.SaveProp" scope="session"  jsp:setProperty name="user" property="*"   It throws:  The value for the useBean class attribute user.SaveProp is invalid   I'm using Tomcat 6.0. Scorched3d will not launch Scorched3d worked then stopped. Unistalled and reinstalled did not help. Running Ubuntu 16.04.04LTS. I think it was after installing new release.  I think the problem is the Ubuntu 16.04.4LTS. The newer version has no Scorched3d in the Ubuntu Software Center. I have 3 systems. After updating to new version. Scorched3D will not install and work after updating.  ron@RonsComputer:~$ sudo objdump -p $(type -p scorched3d) | grep NEEDED  NEEDED libwx_gtk2u_adv-3.0.so.0  NEEDED libwx_gtk2u_core-3.0.so.0 NEEDED libwx_baseu-3.0.so.0 NEEDED libfreetype.so.6 NEEDED libz.so.1 NEEDED libSDL-1.2.so.0 NEEDED libSDL_net-1.2.so.0 NEEDED libexpat.so.1  NEEDED libstdc++.so.6 NEEDED libm.so.6 NEEDED libgcc_s.so.1 NEEDED libpthread.so.0 NEEDED libc.so.6   ron@ron-desktop ~ $ objdump -p $(type -p scorched3d) | grep NEEDED | awk '{print $2}' | xargs -n 1 dpkg -S  libwxgtk3.0-0v5:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libwx_gtk2u_adv-3.0.so.0.2.0 libwxgtk3.0-0v5:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libwx_gtk2u_adv-3.0.so.0 libwxgtk3.0-0v5:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libwx_gtk2u_core-3.0.so.0.2.0 libwxgtk3.0-0v5:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libwx_gtk2u_core-3.0.so.0 libwxbase3.0-0v5:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libwx_baseu-3.0.so.0.2.0 libwxbase3.0-0v5:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libwx_baseu-3.0.so.0 libfreetype6:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so.6.12.1 libfreetype6:i386: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so.6 libfreetype6:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so.6 libfreetype6:i386: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so.6.12.1 zlib1g:i386: /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libz.so.1.2.8 zlib1g:amd64: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 zlib1g:i386: /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 zlib1g:amd64: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1.2.8 libsdl1.2debian:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libSDL-1.2.so.0.11.4 libsdl1.2debian:i386: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libSDL-1.2.so.0 libsdl1.2debian:i386: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libSDL-1.2.so.0.11.4 libsdl1.2debian:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libSDL-1.2.so.0 libsdl-net1.2:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libSDL_net-1.2.so.0 libsdl-net1.2:i386: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libSDL_net-1.2.so.0 libsdl-net1.2:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libSDL_net-1.2.so.0.8.0 libsdl-net1.2:i386: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libSDL_net-1.2.so.0.8.0 libexpat1:i386: /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1.6.0 libexpat1:amd64: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1 libexpat1:amd64: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1.6.0 libexpat1:i386: /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1 libstdc++6:amd64: /usr/share/gdb/auto-load/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6.0.21-gdb.py libstdc++6:i386: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++6:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++6:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6.0.21 libstdc++6:i386: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6.0.21 libstdc++6:i386: /usr/share/gdb/auto-load/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6.0.21-gdb.py libc6:amd64: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 libc6:i386: /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 libgcc1:amd64: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 libgcc1:i386: /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 libc6:i386: /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 libc6:amd64: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 libc6:i386: /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 libc6:amd64: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 ron@ron-desktop ~ $ Complete local ring which is not complete valuation ring Complete valuation ring is obviously complete local, because valuation ring is always local ring. I would like to know the example of  Complete local ring which is not complete valuation ring  Any examples? I could find example of local ring which is not valuation ring, but the example ring is not complete. Thank you for your help. How do you run a 32-bit program on a 64-bit version of Ubuntu? I have a 64-bit version of Ubuntu 13.10.  I want to run a 32-bit version of a program.  However I see ia32-libs is not included in 13.10.  Is there a replacement package for this or what? Changing the value of an element in a list of structs I have a list of structs and I want to change one element. For example :  MyList.Add(new MyStruct("john"); MyList.Add(new MyStruct("peter");   Now I want to change one element:  MyList[1].Name = "bob"   However, whenever I try and do this I get the following error:     Cannot modify the return value of   System.Collections.Generic.List.this[int]‘ because it is not   a variable   If I use a list of classes, the problem doesn't occur.  I guess the answer has to do with structs being a value type.  So, if I have a list of structs should I treat them as read-only? If I need to change elements in a list then I should use classes and not structs?