I am looking for the title or author of a atory I read back in the 90's, no idea when it was written. The plot goes something like this: Humanity has gained access to space travel and sends 9 or 12 survey ships towards galactic center, only 1 returns with stories of an enemy so rapacious that humanity starts preparing for war. After a long time, the enemy hasn't shown up and people begin to doubt the need to keep building for war. The government engineers a plan to turn the core systems against the fringe worlds and start warring amongst ourselves so that we may be prepared for when the real enemy shows up.  Written with the focus on one spaceship captain battling in our own internal war.
I remember a story I have read buy could not remember the author the name or anything apart from the basic plot. The story is about some future where humanity has to fight with some aliens (not 100% sure). The story tells about a guy who was some kind of activist and who was in a prison two or more times and somehow helped humanity by being held in a prison (can't remember details). I think the story starts by saying that there is a statue in his honor that is not very well known but he did more to help humanity than famous politicians.   The story is most likely written by some famous English-speaking author, though I read it in a translation.
Fortunately, I have very few strongly negative interactions with cars (most people generally seem to respect the way I ride), but those that do stick with me for a while.  The scenario is almost always the same. Rude driver approaches, does their rude thing (obscenities, "get off the road," unsafe passing, etc...), then speeds off to annoy the next bicyclist (or more than likely arrives at the next red light).  While this is generally a short interaction, I find that I just don't have a good rest of the ride. I find myself angry at the driver, thinking about what I could have done differently, and just generally being pissed off. Clearly I realize that it is possible I'm a jerk, but given the relative infrequency of these events I'm hoping that's not the case and I'm just riding defensively and this driver is having a bad day.  What can I do to get over (or mitigate) my anger at inconsiderate drivers? This is a summary of the excerpt:  Given that we have:  *$10^9$ people  *each person has a chance of 0.01 of going to a hotel  *we have $10^5$ hotels, each hotel holds 100 people  *Thus, $P(2 \text{ persons meet on the same hotel in any given day}) = 0.01 \cdot 0.01 \cdot 10^{-5}$  *and $P(2\text{ persons on the same hotel in $2$ day}) = P(2 \text{ persons on the same hotel in any given days})^2 = 10^{-18}$  the book "Mining of Massive Dataset" said that the expected number of pairs who stay in the same hotel for 2 days is:  $P(2 \text{ persons on the same hotel in $2$ days}) \cdot ( \text{number of pairs of people} ) \cdot (\text{number of pairs of days})$  this is the part where I got stuck. Can't understand how it come to this derivation. Can anybody explain it in more elaborate detail.  You can find the content on page 6 of this link:  (it is freely available) I have two tables in my database:  NEWS table with columns:   id - the news id  user - the user id of the author)   USERS table with columns:   id - the user id   I want to execute this SQL:   SELECT * FROM news JOIN users ON news.user = user.id    When I get the results in PHP I would like to get associative array and get column names by $row['column-name']. How do I get the news ID and the user ID, having the same column name? Bootable USB of Ubuntu Minimal CD I want to burn Ubuntu Minimal CD ISO to an old, 1 GB USB thumbdrive. Regular ISO doesn't fit. I already tried Startup Disk Creator and Unetbootin but both failed. I tried installing GRUB and pointing it to boot like this:  insmod part_msdos linux /linux initrd /initrd.gz   but it doesn't work. I also tried dd but I ended up with not bootable drive.  Rufus worked on Windows with the same thumbdrive but I no longer use Windows.  What else can I do? How to zip a whole folder using PHP Convert .bbl file to .bib file How can I convert a .bbl file to a .bib file. I  lost my .bib file but I still have my .bbl file. Now , I need to add more references to my .bbl file according to a specific format which I need to produce using Bibtex, so how can I convert my .bbl file to a .bib file so I can add the new references according to the format.  Thanks for any insight. I am needing to auto increment a field based on groups within a feature class. I have 8 plots within a given polygon and I need to assign them an ID from 1-8 for each set of plots within each polygon. The polygon would have its own unique ID number to be used to group the plots.  I assume it would be an alteration of this:  rec=0 def autoIncrement():  global rec  pStart = 1   pInterval = 1   if (rec == 0):    rec = pStart   else:    rec = rec + pInterval   return rec An integer is a $n$'th power if that holds true for all moduli. I have not been able to solve this problem. Any insights would be appreciated!   Let $x, n > 1$ be integers. Suppose that for each $k > 1$ there exists an integer $a_{k}$ such that $x − a_k^n$ is divisible by $k$. Prove that $x = A^{n}$ for some integer $A$. $\mathbb{R}P^4$ and $\mathbb{R}P^6$ do not admit fields of tangent $2$-planes LaTeX doesn't recognize "et al." in the Bibliography I'm using Jabref to manage my Bibliography.  Sometimes, I put directly:     First Author et al.   when adding the article author's name in Jabref.  When compiling my .tex file, LaTeX doesn't recognize the et. al as more names. It takes it as a name/surname.  This is an example of a Bibliography entry in Jabref.  @ARTICLE{Wolf2003,     author = {Wolf, K.et al.},     title = {Compensation mechanism in tumor cell migration: mesenchymal–amoeboid     transition after blocking of pericellular proteolysis},     journal = {J. Cell Biol.},     year = {2003},     volume = {160},     pages = {267–277},    }   This is a .texMWE with the bib entry mentioned:  \documentclass[11pt]{book}   \usepackage{cite}   \bibliographystyle{unsrt} \begin{document}   Here is the bib entry mentioned\cite{Wolf2003}    \bibliography{bibfile}  \end{document}   Here's the output:   How can I solve this problem? I can't create an onCheckedChanged listener for my RadioGroup Do I need a firewall for my desktop? I don't have a  router, but I mostly use my desktop for online shopping and torrenting. So, do I have to enable the firewall? I hope not, because I'm really dumb and I don't think I will be able to configure the firewall. Does it make a difference to CP if you feed candies before or after evolving? How can I define a 3D version of the built-in VoronoiDiagram (VoronoiMesh in V10) function? Integer coefficient polynomial $p(x)$ has no integer roots of $\,p(0)$ and $p(1)$ are odd [Parity Root Test] This came up an a training piece for the Putnam Competition and also in Ireland and Rosen.  The question posed was basically:  Let $p(x)$ be a polynomial with integer coefficients satisfying that $p(0)$ and $p(1)$ are odd. Show that $p$ has no integer zeros.  I&amp;R give an example:  $p(x) = x^2 - 117x + 31$  and show (no problem) that for any $n$ whether even or odd, $p(n)$ will be odd. And claim that this shows $p(n)$ will never be $0$.  I can see, e.g., that $x^2 + 2x + 1$ will be odd substituting an even $n$ and even for an odd $n$.   But would appreciate help in understanding the underlying math and what is happening here.  Also, as a second part, can a general statement about the existence of an integer solution be made if $n$, even and odd, generates an even and an odd as in the last example.  I can see that if you look at these equations (mod $2$), you can distinguish whether there is an integer solution. And I would guess this is intimately connected with the question.  Thanks as always. I am in doubt as to whether the subject-verb agreement of the second sentence of this paragraph is correct :  Unfortunately, there is no such thing as the ideal home workshop because most people are limited by the space available and by their budget. However, the information and diagram here acts as a guide to help you formulate a sensible workshop layout and a machinery “wish list”.  I suppose if the compound subject is seen as a single unit, then the sentence can be considered as correct. A little further in the same book, another sentence has a singular verb with a compound subject :  Alternatively commandeer a garage, or build yourself a substantial workshop if outdoor space and permission allows – however, do consider the impact of machinery noise on your neighbours.  Can &quot;outdoor space and permission&quot; be seen as one thing, or would this be considered a mistake ? $P(X<Y)$ where X and Y are exponential with means $2$ and $1$ What characters do I need to escape when using sed in a sh script? Take the following script:  #!/bin/sh sed 's/(127\.0\.1\.1)\s/\1/' [some file]   If I try to run this in sh (dash here), it'll fail because of the parentheses, which need to be escaped. But I don't need to escape the backslashes themselves (between the octets, or in the \s or \1). What's the rule here? What about when I need to use {...} or [...]? Is there a list of what I do and don't need to escape? Do you get to use the additional attack from the Extra Attack feature as well when you Ready an Attack action?  One of my players, a monk, decided to Ready an action as an earth elemental was about to attack. The trigger was the elemental moving within five feet of him. When this occurred, he took his Attack action, and then proceeded to take the extra attack as well.  I was unsure at the time whether or not the extra attack would also happen, and I haven't had much luck figuring it out. Why are addition and multiplication commutative, but not exponentiation? We know that the addition and multiplication operators are both commutative, and the exponentiation operator is not.  My question is why.  As background there are plenty of mathematical schemes that can be used to define these operators. One of these is   where $H_0(a,b) = b+1$   (successor op) $H_1(a,b) = a+b$   (addition op) $H_2(a,b) = ab $   (multiplication op) $H_3(a,b) = a^b$   (exponentiation op) $H_4(a,b) = a\uparrow \uparrow b$   (tetration op: $a^{(a^{(...a)})}$ nested $b$ times ) etc.    Here it is not obvious to me why $H_1(a,b)=H_1(b,a)$ and $H_2(a,b)=H_2(b,a)$ but not $H_3(a,b)=H_3(b,a)$  Can anyone explain why this symmetry breaks, in a reasonably intuitive fashion?  Thanks.