As in the header, I remember very little about this book or series   Some guy who is a key leader, either Earth Government or a corporation or a power bloc. There was a space trading element but I really can't remember anything about that. I don't think this person was the main character.  The key point I remember is, from the moment he wakes up, there's a little device or implant at one of his ears. All day long he gets updated on stock market and political info and military dispersals. A continuous low murmur.
I read it as a paperback book somewhere in the mid-90s, I think. The protagonist lived in an apartment building. He's out on the balcony when a birdlike (but humanoid) alien swooped down and attacked him. The presence of the aliens was commonly known and was a known danger. He kills it with his watering can and is rewarded by either the aliens or the humans for it with money. Other than that, all I remember was that the chapters were started with an internet-like news report which I think chronicled things getting worse and more violent. One of the updates involved the bombing of a bridge with the casualties raised by having two slow-moving trucks moving side by side obstructing traffic and ensuring a full bridge.  The internet system was pretty ubiquitous as I recall. I think that he looked up his watering can shortly after the incident with the aliens, but decided to keep this one, even if it leaks a bit. I want to say that it was by Piers Anthony, but none of the book titles look familiar. I think the cover I had showed the man being attacked by the bird-man, which looked kind of like the illustrations on the cover of The Stand.
I can never remember how I do this because it comes up so infrequently for me. But in C or C++, what is the best way to read a character from standard input without waiting for a newline (press enter).  Also ideally it wouldn't echo the input character to the screen. I just want to capture keystrokes with out effecting the console screen. Radius of Convergence of a given Power series Coming from a programming background, where should I start to learn web design? I'm a web developer mainly working in front end developing. My main fields are HTML5, CSS3 and Flash ActionScript 3.0.  Here in Iran, teamwork means nothing for most of the people, but I think it's the most important aspect of our work, especially in web design.   I have poor skills in graphic design and UI design. I always have to work with graphic designers for my websites. They are usually good and skilled designers. But they are all print designers and unfortunately they know nothing about the web and designing for it.  For example, one of the designers that I work with most of the time is a great designer and he won a couple awards for his logo and poster designs. However, he knows nothing about the web and most of my time is spent explaining to him how things work on the web, i.e. in what size he should work, using pixels instead of centimeters, and so on... After all he is a print designer, not a web designer. They often think everything is static and constant, not in motion.  So the best way to work around this is to improve my skills in graphical designing. I just want to be able to design good layouts, make good color selections, and etc for my websites. I do not want to design illustrations and do heavy graphical works. Just design websites with no Photoshop illustrations like posters and etc.  What do you do for your graphic works, and if you do them yourself, which books or references do you suggest I read? Where should I start? parsing a date string from FTPClient.getModificationTime() How to check if a string starts with a specified string? How do I preload a program for faster start? Is it possible to "preload"(actually not preload, but kinda emulate the startup) e.g. nautilus (or firefox) startup at login, so the first time I launch it myself it launches faster? Probably to start it on another desktop and close after some seconds? How can number of subdirectories and files be determined from the output of using ls -ld command?  I realize that this command only lists the directories. How do I synchronise two folders in real-time in Windows 7? What does "65" mean? $f^2$ and $f^3$ are holomorphic implies $f$ is holomorphic. Why do people buy stocks that pay no dividend? Before recently, Apple Inc. did not give dividend to shareholders.  This makes me curious why people buy Apple Inc. stocks; while it might be due to the expectation of selling stocks at a higher price, this can only be possible if other people are thinking the same, thereby increasing demand. But the stocks themselves do not pay interests - so Apple's amazing revenue/profit records would not matter.... Continued fraction of a square root If I want to find the continued fraction of $\sqrt{n}$ how do I know which number to use for $a_0$? Is there a way to do it without using a calculator or anything like that? What's the general algorithm for computing it? I tried to read the wiki article but was overwhelmed and lost. I tried Googling but couldn't find a website that actually explained this question.  If anyone has a good site that answers these questions either, please let me know. Thanks! What tips and advice do you have for photographing the Aurora Borealis? A friend has been kind enough to lend me a DSLR for a few months.  It's my first foray into DSLR photography, or indeed any kind of photography beyond simply aiming my Canon IXUS at something and clicking the button.    Over the last few weeks, I've been busy studying, practising and trying to learn as much as possible ahead of a planned trip to Norway where I hope to see, and get some photos of, the Aurora Borealis.  I currently have:   Canon Rebel Xsi (450D) Canon 50mm f/1.4 L  Canon 18-55m kit lens Aluminium full height tripod with ball head Cable release Spare battery &amp; memory cards   I'm prepared to spend the night wrapped up outdoors, in the hope that they will make an appearance. I'd like some advice on how to get the most out of this kit for the trip:   How should I go about setting up to get pics of the Aurora?  How might I achieve optimum focus? From what I've read, I'll need to use the tripod and cable release, with IS turned off, on continuous shooting mode with long exposure times. But I'd like some more specific tips in terms of which aperture and ISO settings might work best? Should I use one of the lenses above, or would it be worthwhile renting a better, wide angle lens; if so, which would you recommend? How are PCA and classical MDS different? How about MDS versus nonmetric MDS? Is there a time when you would prefer one over the other? How do the interpretations differ? Security Review - CRUD/FLS Checks for every SOQL Query I know this sounds like a standard question, so please bear with me.  Recently our Security Reviews fail due to CRUD/FLS violations. The highlighted codelines include almost every SOQL Query in the application.  Our approach is usually as follows:   In case of displaying data on VF pages we either use sObjects fields or use the platform methods to check the accessibility of the fields In case of domain logic triggered by the user (e.g. by clicking a button on a VF page) we have a helper class that checks every field to be updated before doing the DML operation.   Up until recently this approach has worked fine (and passed pervious Security Reviews). As mentioned above the latest Security Review results seem to require us to check every field in a SOQL query for accessibility even if it is never displayed back to the user.    Let's suppose the following program flow as an example:   Query an object with some fields Perform some modification on said fields Perform an update on the sObject to save the modification using a helper class which checks for the required CUD/FLS rights for the modified fields   As I see it there is no need for checking field accessibility in step 1 in that case (since nothing is displayed back to the user and the dml operation is already protected). Is that correct or am I missing something? So is it really required to do an accessibility check for every SOQL Query in the code?  Another question would be how to handle background operations in that case like data purging. These have either to be running in system mode (which causes issues during the Security Review) or require the job to be started by a user with the appropriate access rights (which can be error prone and is not that user friendly). Is there any best practice regarding that.  Unfortunately I could not find a question targeting exactly that issue. Most of the questions I have found are related to how to perform that check (like  or ). So please apologize in case the question was already answered (I would really appreciate a link to the answer then).    Thanks for your time and help.  Mathias Food in the Star Wars Universe? Are the foods in the Star Wars Universe the same as ours'? Do they have strawberries or potatoes or something? I know that they might have some food other than the food that we also have, but I'm wondering if they have any food like ours'. How can I record sound from the windows command line? Is there an application capable of recording sound that I can run from the command line on XP?  Ideally I'd start it with one command and stop it with another. Or I could specify a duration with the starting command. I need two bib-like sections: a "References" giving works explicitly cited in my text, and a "Bibliography" (or "Further reading" if you prefer) giving everything from my bibfile that didn't already appear in "References". The first is of course completely standard, but the second... I'm stumped.  Further loose constraints: I'm somewhat committed to biblatex and the biblatex-apa style. But I'll happily accept an answer not related to them if there's any chance I can adapt it. Height and minimal number of generators of an ideal How can I determine the height and the least number of generators of the ideal $ I=(xz-y^2,x^3-yz,z^2-x^2y) \subset K[x,y,z] $?      I tried to calculate the dimension of the vector space $I/I\mathfrak m$ with $\mathfrak m=(x,y,z)$, but I'm not able to find it.  I think the height is $2$, because the affine variety should be a curve, and also I know that the ideal is prime, so I need a chain $0\subset \mathfrak p \subset I$. Maybe $(xz-y^2)?$ Is it prime? How do I execute a string containing Python code in Python? How do I execute a string containing Python code in Python?