Pluralizing an irregular family name I have a doubt about the pluralization of irregular family names. What if the family name is an irregular plural form like "mice"? Should you say "the Mice" or "the Mices"?
Family name pluralization When pluralizing family (last) names that also happen to be common English words, does the pluralization follow the same rules as the common word?  For example, "the Smith family" can be pluralized as "the Smiths", but what if the family name is "Wolf" or "Fish"?  Would the correct pluralization be "the Wolfs" or "the Wolves"?
How do I find the angle between two vectors? I have 3 points on my screen:  a = a point which is (c.x, 0) makes a line pointing straight up b = a user input touch, can be anywhere on the screen c = a moving object         a _______.________ |      |       | |      |       |  |   b  |       | |  .   |       | |   \  |       | |    \ |       |  |     \|       | |      | c     | |______._______|   I have drawn some lines so that you can see the vectors.  I want to be able to get the angle between a and b. I have tried this, but it doesn't work, does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?:  //v1 moving object float boxX = this.mScene.getLastChild().getX();  float boxY = this.mScene.getLastChild().getY();  //v2 user touch float touchX = pSceneTouchEvent.getX(); float touchY = pSceneTouchEvent.getY();       //v3 top of screen float topX = boxX; final float topY = 0;  float dotProd = (touchX * topX) + (touchY * topY);  float sqrtBox = (touchX * touchX) + (touchY * touchY); float sqrtTouch = (topX * topX) + (topY * topY);  double totalSqrt = sqrtBox * sqrtTouch; double theta = Math.acos(dotProd / Math.sqrt(totalSqrt));   The answer I usually get is between 0 and 1. How do I fix this so that I get the angle in degrees? I'm trying to continue the numbering of examples in enumerate environments in beamer. For example, I'd like one slide to feature   Foo Bar   and the next slide   Zip Yadda   My strategy so far has been to define a counter that saves the enumerate counter at the end of the first environment and can then be queried to set the enumerate counter at the start of the second enumerate environment. (This is essentially the proposal also found at )  That works wonderfully so long as I don't try to uncover elements of the slide sequentially. The problem, of course, is that as each of the pdf-pages that make up the slide is created, the counter is advanced. Here's a MWE.  \documentclass{beamer}  \setbeamercovered{highly dynamic}  \newcounter{saveenumi} \newcommand{\seti}{\setcounter{saveenumi}{\value{enumi}}} \newcommand{\conti}{\setcounter{enumi}{\value{saveenumi}}}   \begin{document}  \begin{frame}[&lt;+-&gt;]   \begin{enumerate}   \item foo   \item bar%     \seti   \end{enumerate} \end{frame}  \begin{frame}[&lt;+-&gt;]   \begin{enumerate}     \conti   \item zip   \item yadda%     \seti   \end{enumerate} \end{frame}  \end{document}   As the second slide is progressively uncovered (pages 3 and 4 of the resulting PDF), the counter at the beginning of the enumerate environment is advanced each time. So page 3 of the PDF has the right numbering, (3) and (4) respectively, while the fully revealed page has the wrong numbering. Pictures follow:   on one of the slides    on the following one Undefined reference to `pow' and `floor' How does Salesforce SSO call just-in-time handler methods When ever I save a gedit file in a directory, two copies of it get saved with identical content. Ex: If the gedit file is named as file_name and saved in Home directory then when u ls the Home directory you get file_name and file_name~ in the list. When the file command is run against them I get ASCII text, with very long lines for both of them when I view their contents using the less command they seem to largely contain identical content. The ~ file is a copy of the file when it was saved for the penultimate time. Can someone please help me in understanding as to why such a file (the file with a trailing ~ mark in its name ) is created? Killing thread after some specified time limit in Java Shortcut to view wireless networks in Windows 7 Does anyone know how to create a shortcut which opens the wireless networks dialog box in Windows 7?  I'm looking for a shortcut that takes me directly to the window which shows you the available wireless networks around you. I deleted a folder in Ubuntu, how can I recover it? The folder is massive (390GB) and contains many different files. The file system is ext4  I was about to copy this file to another hard drive using gksudo nautilus so I didnt have do a massive chmod operation on the destination hard drive, but then I accidentally hit move to trash, which in gksudo nautilus means permanent deletion. I checked the trash but it's not even an operation...  I have seen tools like testdisk and other recovery tools but none that can recover and whole folder because its made up of different files.   I don't think that this would work but if I deleted the partition could I just recover the whole partition at once?  Or would this be wrong because i have already deleted the partition's content? This is my first job in Linux IT.  I don't have a backup... I was trying to make one because the old backup drive died :( I am making a Minecraft Mini Game adventure map, and one of the levels has a /setblock command, I am using the command in a way to spawn an item in a chest (Wooden Button) I need the wooden button to have CanPlaceOn tag so it can be placed on a log. I have tried this command: setblock 294 5 -1251 minecraft:chest 0 replace {Items:[{Count:1,Slot:0,id:minecraft:wooden_button,CanPlaceOn:[log]}]}` I want to add  on my blog hosted on Blogger. The only solution I found is , but it requires a hosting server. Any other option? Installing Maya on Ubuntu Linux Installing Autodesk Maya on Ubuntu is possible, but can be a bit challenging.  Assuming that one already has the required specs and a solid graphics card driver installed, how can it be done? "Scaled $L^p$ norm" and geometric mean How do I submit .jar file to the ubuntu software center I am writing an app using JAVA Swing for all platforms. After that I want to add this app to Ubuntu Software Center for free Is it possible?   My app is just one *.jar file, its helping to play card games.  I dont know Python language and saying the truth - dont want to learn it now.  What should I do to be able to submit my app? If-else working, switch not Using a web service is often an excellent architectural approach. And, with the advent of WCF in .Net, it's getting even better.  But, in my experience, some people seem to think that web services should always be used in the data access layer for calls to the database. I don't think that web services are the universal solution.  I am thinking of smaller intranet applications with a few dozen users. The web app and its web service are deployed to one web server, not a web farm. There isn't going to be another web app in the future that can use this particular web service. It seems to me that the cost of calling the web service unnecessarily increases the burden on the web server. There is a performance hit to inter-process calls. Maintaining and debugging the code for the web app and the web service is more complicated. So is deployment. I just don't see the advantages of using a web service here.  One could test this by creating two versions of the web app, with and without the web service, and do stress testing, but I haven't done it.  Do you have an opinion on using web services for small-scale web app's? Any other occasions when web services are not a good architectural choice? Can I use an "if" clause without "then"? Derive Fourier transform of sinc function We know that the Fourier transform of the sinc function is the rectangular function (or top hat). However, I'm at a loss as to how to prove it. Most textbooks and online sources start with the rectangular function, show that   $$\int_{-\infty}^\infty \text{rect}(x)e^{i\omega x}dx=\int_{-1/2}^{1/2}e^{i\omega x}dx=\left.\frac{e^{i\omega x}}{i\omega}\right\vert_{-1/2}^{1/2}=\text{sinc}(\omega/2)$$  and then just invoke duality and claim that the Fourier transform of the sinc function is the rectangular function. Is there any way of deriving this directly? i.e., starting with the sinc function?   I've tried, but I'm not sure as to how to proceed. I know that the sinc is not Lebesgue integrable and only improper Riemann integrable. Some vague recollection of these being important in the Fourier transform hinders my thought process. Can someone clear things up for me? Is there a way to view your own progress towards certain badges? For example:   Tumbleweed - What value constitutes low views for a week? Fanatic  – Is there a way to view how many days in a row you currently have? Beta – Is it even possible to get this badge anymore? My grandparents bought a flight on United Airlines, as the one and same ticket, from Toronto, to ORD with one 55-minute layover, then to Maui. :     You won’t need to pay extra for airfare if you miss the flight, but on the other hand, you will most likely not be compensated by the airline for the incurred delay. It always depends on the amount of time, the reason for the delay and the airline’s policies. As soon as it’s weather-related, you won’t be getting a penny (and that’s normal: airlines can’t control the weather).    Yet they obviously prefer to avoid such charges from missing the 2nd flight.   Please see the titled question? Would they need to hotfoot or scamper from one gate to another, to not miss the 2nd flight? If yes to 2, can they request an airport electric shuttle cart now, before the flight? Server login attempts NOT blocked after configuring fail2ban So, I installed (and configured) fail2ban on three Ubuntu VPS servers. I configured (imo) a maximum of 3 failed login attempts (via Putty as root) within 2 minutes. Then I restarted the fail2ban service (according to ).    But when I look at my auth.log files in /var/log/ I still see 4, 5 or more failed attempts from certain IP's. So obviously I did something wrong as the IP is not blocked after 3 failed attempts.   It might have to do something with iptables, but that's where it gets a bit "foggy" for me..   Not sure how to setup a max-three-failed-login-attempts rule..  Additional: I see that the login attempts mostly have different ports for every attempt. Does that influence the count to max-three?  Because I see a port being "poked" twice and then no more attempts. Then the IP tries a different port (again 2 times). (all bots of course)