I'm kinda confused and can anyone say whats the right form and elaborate as to why
On the one side, the USA is just one country. Logic says it should be, then, singular, just like the United Kingdom is. Example:     The USA owns this domain.   On the other side, if I however expand "the USA" to "the United States of America", I'd tend towards using plural &mdash; the noun the verb agrees with, "States," is definitely plural. Example:     The United States of America own this domain. → The USA own this domain.   What form should I prefer?
I often hear about subatomic particles having a property called "spin" but also that it doesn't actually relate to spinning about an axis like you would think. Which particles have spin? What does spin mean if not an actual spinning motion? How do I install VMware Player? I am new to Ubuntu and want to install VMWare Player. What is the step by step procedure to install that? I am a n00b to physics. What physics I know comes from high school and popular science books.  At school we were taught about atoms and what make up atoms, but we weren't actually told what the particles were!  So sure an atom has electrons orbiting around a nucleus made of protons and neutrons, but what exactly is an ?  And if we don't know, how can we fire them from guns, like they do in experiments ... etc  Any clarification on this would be great. Huge close votes review queue on Stack Overflow Shouldn't the badge requirements scale? Many badges have fixed requirements, such as:   Answer score of 100 or more   However different websites means a different level of difficulty: the more active users a website has, the easier the badge is to get.  On a new and/or low-view website getting this badge may be impossible for several months; on a website like stack overflow now you can obtain it in a day, and it's relatively easy (compared to other SE sites).  Do you think it would be a good idea to implement a formula that allows the required score to scale? The more active users voting, the more votes are required to get it?  If yes how would you handle people who got it for a post that no longer meets the requirements? What's the difference between declaring a variable "id" and "NSObject *"? In Objective-C, what's the difference between declaring a variable id versus declaring it NSObject *? In the context of boiling water for pasta or other purposes, all over the Internet the advise is oft-repeated that salt should not be added to the water when it is cold in order to prevent damage to the pot such as pitting over long term use.  The reasoning is that the salt stays on the bottom of the pot for longer without dissolving, and has a chance to interact with the surface metal.  Is there any objective evidence--preferably scientifically based--that this phenomenon actually occurs in practical kitchen-type conditions, or is this another piece of common wisdom that is often shared but not backed by evidence, much like  common wisdom that it is necessary to use very large volumes of water to cook pasta? Suppose you have 2 circles that intersect each other in such a way that each circle passes through the other's center. What is the area between the circle(or common area) i.e. area between the centres of the circles? Identify $P(2014)$ if $P(i)=1/i$ for every positive integer $1\le i\le2013$ GIS Point or discrete longitude and latitude columns? Both the Romulans and the Federation have regularly violated the Treaty when it suits them. Starfleet has obviously developed and manufactured cloaking/stealth technology and the Romulans make regular excursions across the Neutral Zone. They obviously aren't declaring all-out war, so what penalties or sanctions have been imposed for violations?  -edit added for clarity-  Has either side ever 'punished' their own people for any violations of the Treaty? Is there a quick way to lock my Mac? On Windows you can hit the keys Windows+L to lock your computer if you step away.  I don't want to have to remember if sleep currently asks for a password, if there is a time out where my screen isn't locked during a short period. Even with Lion supporting resume of many apps, I don't want to log out.   I do want to be sure data is secure when stepping out for lunch or a smoke break. How do I replace the *first instance* of a string in .NET? Properly discontinuous actions and discrete groups in complete Riemannian manifolds. I was reading the article "The Geometries of 3-manifolds" by Peter Scott and in the end of page 406 he states the following:     If $G$ acts properly discontinuously on a space $X$, then $G$ is a   discrete subset of the space of all continuous functions $X \to X$   with the compact-open topology. The converse is false, in general, but   is true if $X$ is a complete Riemannian manifold and $G$ is a group of   isometries of $X$.   How do I prove the last statement?     If $X$ is a complete Riemannian manifold and   $G$ is a group of isometries of $X$ acting properly discontinuously on $X$, then $G$ is discrete.    Observation: We say a group $G$ of homeomorphisms of $X$ acts properly discontinuously on $X$ if for every compact $K \subset X$ the set $$\{g \in G: gK \cap K \neq \emptyset\}$$ is finite. Suppose $f:(a,b) \to \mathbb{R} $ satisfy $|f(x) - f(y) | \le M |x-y|^\alpha$ for some  $\alpha &gt;1$ and all $x,y \in (a,b) $. Prove that $f$ is constant on $(a,b)$.   I'm not sure which theorem should I look to prove this question. Can you guys give me a bit of hint? First of all how to prove some function $f(x)$ is constant on $(a,b)$? Just show $f'(x) = 0$? How to disable automount in nautilus's preferences I am using Ubuntu 11.10 (64 bits) and I do not want to mount automatically USB thumb drives in my system. I tried the command dconf-editor and gconf-editor but there isn't the icon to disable it in nautilus preferences (apps|nautilus|preferences|media_automount).  Thanks. Should form 'Continue' button be disabled if validation is incomplete? In forms we often see the 'continue' button inactive until all the required fields are complete:         &ndash; Wireframes created with   Is this actually a help to the user, or a hindrance?  I imagine the Pro for this is that it's a visual indicator to the user that they haven't finished filling in the form or dealing with errors (because even with inline validation a user won't be informed if they've never actually interacted with a field so won't show any errors for those at that point).  But then the main Con for this (which I've also seen borne out in usability testing) is that users will be confused why they can't click the button.  Is the pattern of disabling the Continue button until validation is complete actually providing a negative user experience? How to download Ubuntu over an unreliable connection Decode escaped Url without using HttpUtility.UrlDecode Is there any function that converts an escaped Url string to its unescaped form? System.Web.HttpUtility.UrlDecode() can do that job but I don't want to add a reference to System.Web.dll. Since my app is not a web application, I don't want to add a dependency for only using a function in an assembly.  UPDATE: Check  about the same issue. How to install Windows 8 without the setup DVD that came with my notebook?