i need help with this exercise.     If $\mathbb{H}$ is a finite field and $a\neq0, b\neq0$, are elements   of $\mathbb{H}$ then exists $u,v\in\mathbb{H}$ such that   $1+au^{2}+bv^{2}=0 $   I don't have idea of how attack this exercise. Can someone help me?
Let $\mathbb{F}$ be a finite field.  Let $a_1,\dots,a_n \in \mathbb{F}$ be given.  I want to know whether there exists $x_1,\dots,x_n \in \mathbb{F}$ such that  $$a_1 x_1^2 + a_2 x_2^2 + \dots + a_n x_n^2 = 1.$$  My question: Can we characterize when this equation has a solution, i.e., by some criterion on $a_1,\dots,a_n$?  Is there a clean characterization, in terms of $a_1,\dots,a_n$ and the properties of $\mathbb{F}$?    Here's what I can see immediately.  First, if $n=1$, there is an easy answer (the equation has a solution iff $a_1$ is a square in $\mathbb{F}$).  Second, if any $a_i$ is a square in $\mathbb{F}$, the equation has a solution (set all other $x_j$'s to $0$), so we can assume that all the $a_i$'s are non-squares and that $n \ge 2$.  Third, if $-1$ is a square in $\mathbb{F}$, then the equation has a solution: we can take $x_2 =  \sqrt{-a_1/a_2} \cdot x_1$.  But what about the case where $-1$ is a non-square in $\mathbb{F}$?  Is it always guaranteed to have a solution in this case?
How do I edit/access Chrome app properties on GNOME? Custom right-click action in Unity Launcher keeps cursor busy for 20 seconds To have a "minimize window" option through right click on an icon in the Unity launcher (Ubuntu 14.04), I followed the detailed instructions  about changing a .desktop file and made a custom Firefox launcher in ~/.local/share/applications/ folder. The relevant part of the .desktop file is:  Actions=NewWindow;NewPrivateWindow;Minimize  [Desktop Action NewWindow] Name=Open a New Window Exec=firefox -new-window OnlyShowIn=Unity;  [Desktop Action NewPrivateWindow] Name=Open a New Private Window Exec=firefox -private-window OnlyShowIn=Unity;  [Desktop Action Minimize] Name=Minimize Windows Exec=sh /home/myusername/Documents/xdotool_sh/minimize.sh firefox OnlyShowIn=Unity;   The desktop action "Minimize" invokes a simple shell script, minimize.sh that has the following content:  #/bin/bash name=$1 for i in $(xdotool search --class "$name"); do     xdotool windowminimize $i done   The script uses xdotool, that can be installed from the official repositories, to find all the firefox windows, iterate over them and minimize them.  The script works and the launcher right menu option "Minimize Windows" works as well, but as soon as the windows are minimized, the mouse pointer gets in "busy" mode and stays like this for about 20 seconds (although the mouse actions are still responsive).   Does anyone know why starting a shell script from a right menu option in Unity could lead to this behaviour?  EDIT: Apparently the wait period is inevitable, as explained in Jacob Vlijm's answer. Since the mouse remains responsive, avoiding the transformation of the pointer in the spinning wheel is a partial esthetic workaround, as explained on .  EDIT2: giving the system a fake window is a better solution, as explained by Jacob below. How to mount PCIe SSD from MacBook Air in another computer I got this SSD out of an Apple laptop that's broken from liquid damage.  What is this connection called and how do I mount this storage device to retrieve data from it? It looks like PCIe. Does Apple sell a part to mount this via USB adapter or something? Average arc length of a uniformly distributed points Suppose I have $N$ points on a unit circle. I am aware that for a uniform distribution the average angle of one point is not defined, but I want to calculate the average arc length between nearest-neighbors. I disregard arc lengths larger than $\pi$.  For $N = 2$ I am formulating the problem as: \begin{equation} \langle \Delta x \rangle = \frac 1 {\pi^2}\int\limits_0^\pi \int\limits_0^\pi  dx_1 dx_2 \, |x_1-x_2| = \frac \pi 3. \end{equation}  This answer does not make sense to me. Did I make a mistake constructing this integral?  What would happen to $N = 3$, etc? In classical logic, why is $(p\Rightarrow q)$ True if both $p$ and $q$ are False? I have a long sequence of hex digits in a string, such as      000000000000484240FA063DE5D0B744ADBED63A81FAEA390000C8428640A43D5005BD44   only much longer, several kilobytes.  Is there a builtin way to convert this to a bytes object in python 2.6/3? Install pandas to python3.5 instead of 2.7 Getting CalloutException when testing Batchable class with Callouts and HttpCalloutMock Intuition/Real-life Examples: Pairwise Independence vs (Mutual) Independence Would someone please advance/discuss some real-life situations falsities $1, 2$? I'd like to intuit why these are false. As a neophyte, since I still need to compute the probabilities for the examples in the two answers to apprehend them, I haven't naturalised these concepts yet. Thus, I beg leave to ask about other real-life examples which require less or no computations.  I tried and would appreciate less numerical examples than  and , and  Examples 1.22 and 1.23 on P39 of Introduction to Pr by Bertsekas.  $1.$ Pairwise Independence $\require{cancel} \cancel{\implies}$ (Mutual) Independence.      $2.$ Pairwise Independence $\require{cancel} \cancel{\Longleftarrow}$ (Mutual) Independence.         P38 defines (Mutual) Independence :    For all $S \subseteq \{1, ..., n - 1, n\} $ and events $A_i$, $Pr(\cap_{i \in S} A_i) = \Pi_{i \in S} A_i.$ Is my phone liable to explode if I charge it with a charger that came with a different phone? Setting up PyCharm to reference ArcPy? How would I setup  to recognize import arcpy?   I'd like to use PyCharm to develop and debug geoprocessing tool. Let $S=\{\frac{m}{2^n}| n\in\mathbb{N}, m\in\mathbb{Z}\}$, is  $S$ a dense set on $\mathbb{R}$? Proving $\lim_{n\to\infty} a^{\frac{1}{n}}=1$ by definition of limit given a sequence $a_n=a^{\frac{1}{n}}$ for $n\in\mathbb{N}^*$, $a\in\mathbb{R},a&gt;1$ then proof that $\lim\limits_{n\to+\infty}a_n=1$ by definition.   proof:  given $a_n=a^{\frac{1}{n}}$ for $a\in\mathbb{R},a&gt;1$.  for $n\in\mathbb{N}^*,n+1&gt;n\Rightarrow \frac{1}{n+1}&lt;\frac{1}{n}$ and because $a&gt;1$ we gets $a^{\frac{1}{n+1}}&lt;a^{\frac{1}{n}}$, since $\frac{1}{n+1}&gt;0$, then $1=a^{0}&lt;a^{\frac{1}{n+1}}&lt;a^{\frac{1}{n}}\Rightarrow 1&lt;a_{n+1}&lt;a_{n}$.  then we proof that $\lim\limits_{n\to+\infty}a_n=1$ we need to show that $\forall\epsilon&gt;0,\exists N,\forall n&gt;N,|a_n-1|&lt;\epsilon$  then for $\epsilon&gt;0$, choose $N=\frac{1}{\log_a(\epsilon+1)}$, since $a&gt;1$ we gets that $$\forall n&gt;N,1&lt;a^{\frac{1}{n}}&lt;a^\frac{1}{N}\Rightarrow0&lt;a^{\frac{1}{n}}-1&lt;a^{\frac{1}{N}}-1\Rightarrow |a^{\frac{1}{n}}-1|&lt;|a^{\frac{1}{N}}-1|=|a^{\log_a(\epsilon+1)}-1|=|\epsilon+1-1|=\epsilon\Rightarrow |a^{\frac{1}{n}}-1|&lt;\epsilon$$  wich implies that $\lim\limits_{n\to+\infty}a_n=1\square$  my proof to the limit is correct? Is it possible to produce a context free grammar for Tikz path? node? Even further, I would be happy to see a definition of the tikz language in the usual manner programming languages such as Java and Pascal are defined.   The reason I ask is that I keep getting mysterious error messages for the tiniest typos. Essentially, incorrect use of the underlying languages leads to a "crash" of the compiler. This crash sometimes gives useful error messages, but sometimes they are hard to decipher. I have Ubuntu 17.10 with GNOME 3.  What happens: I have (for example) LibreOffice Calc open, with some data columns in it.  I highlight the columns I want to chart, then I select INSERT > CHART.  The chart child window dialog pops up on top of my data, so I want to move it to the side.  When I grab the top bar and move it, the parent (spreadsheet) window minimizes (I think it actually disappears).  Continuing the above example, if I click FINISH on the chart window, I can then see the minimized spreadsheet application, which is the window title bar plus the menu bar just below it.  This seems like really odd behaviour and certainly falls under the category of "not being useful to the user", since the whole idea of moving the child window in the first place was just to be able to better see the spreadsheet!  In other applications, for example the PDF viewer, a slightly different problem occurs.  When I try to move the child window (for example the print dialog) the parent does not minimize but instead follows the child window around.  This is less surprising than having the parent disappear entirely but equally useless in terms of allowing the user to see the information present in the parent window.  Update 2017/11/06  Pomsky's answer below fixes the problem, but leaves me wondering why the window manager is making the decision that all child windows have modal behaviour (or don't), and not the applications themselves; and further, why modal behaviour prevents moving the child screen around when it obscures useful info on the parent screen.  Neither of these seem like good design to me... Convert bytes to a string I'm using this code to get standard output from an external program:  &gt;&gt;&gt; from subprocess import * &gt;&gt;&gt; command_stdout = Popen(['ls', '-l'], stdout=PIPE).communicate()[0]   The communicate() method returns an array of bytes:  &gt;&gt;&gt; command_stdout b'total 0\n-rw-rw-r-- 1 thomas thomas 0 Mar  3 07:03 file1\n-rw-rw-r-- 1 thomas thomas 0 Mar  3 07:03 file2\n'   However, I'd like to work with the output as a normal Python string. So that I could print it like this:  &gt;&gt;&gt; print(command_stdout) -rw-rw-r-- 1 thomas thomas 0 Mar  3 07:03 file1 -rw-rw-r-- 1 thomas thomas 0 Mar  3 07:03 file2   I thought that's what the  method is for, but when I tried it, I got the same byte array again:  &gt;&gt;&gt; binascii.b2a_qp(command_stdout) b'total 0\n-rw-rw-r-- 1 thomas thomas 0 Mar  3 07:03 file1\n-rw-rw-r-- 1 thomas thomas 0 Mar  3 07:03 file2\n'   How do I convert the bytes value back to string? I mean, using the "batteries" instead of doing it manually. And I'd like it to be OK with Python&nbsp;3. Sigma algebra and algebra difference Javascript infamous Loop issue? Malus Law in Michelson Morley experiment My book of physics (I don't quote it here, since it is in Catalan) says  that in the 1887 Michelson - Morley experiment, after getting the transversal and longitudinal phase shifts, they claim that the number of fringer observed will belong to the number of times that both phase shifts contains 2 pi because that is the phase two maximums  repeat. My question is: why is here said that waves should form maximums? Because as I understand it, the expected result was to obtain a destructive interference whose phase shift could be jsed to determine Earth's velocity. If they were expecting a destructive interference, shouldn't the book use the phase two minimums repeat? Why do Google search results include pages disallowed in robots.txt? I have some pages on my site that I want to keep search engines away from, so I disallowed them in my robots.txt file like this: User-Agent: * Disallow: /email  Yet I recently noticed that Google still sometimes returns links to those pages in their search results.  Why does this happen, and how can I stop it? Background: Several years ago, I made a simple web site for a club a relative of mine was involved in.  They wanted to have e-mail links on their pages, so, to try and keep those e-mail addresses from ending up on too many spam lists, instead of using direct mailto: links I made those links point to a simple redirector /  script running on my own site.  This script would return either a 301 redirect to the actual mailto: URL, or, if it detected a suspicious access pattern, a page containing lots of random fake e-mail addresses and links to more such pages.  To keep legitimate search bots away from the trap, I set up the robots.txt rule shown above, disallowing the entire space of both legit redirector links and trap pages. Just recently, however, one of the people in the club searched Google for their own name and was quite surprised when one of the results on the first page was a link to the redirector script, with a title consisting of their e-mail address followed by my name.  Of course, they immediately e-mailed me and wanted to know how to get their address out of Google's index.  I was quite surprised too, since I had no idea that Google would index such URLs at all, seemingly in violation of my robots.txt rule. I did manage to submit a removal request to Google, and it seems to have worked, but I'd like to know why and how Google is circumventing my robots.txt like that and how to make sure that none of the disallowed pages will show up in their search results. Ps. I actually found out a possible explanation and solution, which I'll post below, while preparing this question, but  in case someone else might have the same problem.  Please do feel free to post your own answers.  I'd also be interested in knowing if other search engines do this too, and whether the same solutions work for them also.