Handling myths in answers
How to deal with upvoted yet clearly wrong answers
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. iPhone with broken home button is stuck on black screen after jailbreaking Make Launchpad Appear on screen with mouse I see that the code in many packages and examples contains percent signs % at the end of (many) lines. What are they used for? Do they affect the parsing of those lines? Attributive nouns vs. of-genitive The ideal generated by $2$ and $ x$ in $\mathbb{Z}[x]$ Is there any point in taking the alternate exits in Bit Trip Runner 2?  I can't see any benefit to doing so in terms of unlocking a different path in the overworld, so is it just for your own benefit? I was wondering. If I have a bilinear symmetric form, it is easy to find its matrix. But, when I have a quadratic form, which is the procedure to do that?  I heard that one possibility is: If $q$ is my quadratic form, then $$f(x,y) = \frac{1}{4}q(x+y) - \frac{1}{4}q(x-y)$$ is the bilinear symmetric form associated, so the method reduces to find the matrix of $f(x,y).$   The point is that seems a little noising... How to find, in practice, the matrix of quadratic form?  Thanks in advance. It seems like I'm doing something wrong when using foreach variables to indicate node numbers. The two foreach loops are anchoring the paths to the east of each node. Why does this happen?    \documentclass{article}  \usepackage{tikz} \usetikzlibrary{backgrounds,fit,patterns,decorations.pathreplacing,calc}  \makeatletter \tikzset{   labelnode/.style={draw=none, fill=none, black},   latentnode/.style={draw, minimum width=5mm, shape=circle, ultra thick, black},   dagconn/.style={arrows=-&gt;, black, thick}, } \makeatother  \begin{document} \begin{tikzpicture}[scale=1]  \pgfmathsetmacro{\colgap}{1.6}  \pgfmathsetmacro{\rowgap}{1.3}   \node[labelnode] (x1) at (\colgap*0,\rowgap*1) {$X_1$};  \node[labelnode] (x2) at (\colgap*1,\rowgap*1) {$X_2$};  \node[labelnode] (x3) at (\colgap*2,\rowgap*1) {$X_3$};   \node[latentnode,blue] (x4) at (\colgap*0,\rowgap*0) {$X_4$};  \node[latentnode,red] (x5) at (\colgap*1,\rowgap*0) {$X_5$};  \node[labelnode] (x6) at (\colgap*2,\rowgap*0) {$X_6$};   \foreach \c in {1,...,2} {    \foreach \r in {1,...,2} {      \pgfmathsetmacro{\st}{(((\r-1)*3)+\c)}      \pgfmathsetmacro{\en}{\st+1}      \draw[dagconn] ([xshift=0.2cm]x\st) to ([xshift=-0.9cm]x\en);    }  }   \foreach \c in {1,...,3} {    \foreach \r in {1,...,1} {      \pgfmathsetmacro{\st}{((\r-1)*3)+\c}      \pgfmathsetmacro{\en}{\st+3}      \draw[dagconn] (x\st) to (x\en);    }  } \end{tikzpicture} \end{document} Creating a dictionary from a CSV file What are the differences between rings, groups, and fields? Rings, groups, and fields all feel similar. What are the differences between them, both in definition and in how they are used? What is the problem that gets worse after you try to solve it? Example sentence - This problem is a _____ which gets complicated every time you try to solve it.   Is there such a word that represents a problem which will become worse if/when one tries to solve it?  Note - After seeing the comments and answers I'd like to add that this is not a can of worms or Pandora's box because it doesn't create a new problem but just worsens.   Example: Magic leaves protecting a fruit by enclosing it. Every time a leaf is touched, all the leaves close together further, that is more tight than before. Can black holes form in a finite amount of time? One thing I know about black holes is that an object gets closer to the event horizon, gravitation time dilation make it move more slower from an outside perspective, so that it looks like it take an infinite amount of time for the object to reach the event horizon. It seems like a similar process should slow the formation of the black hole itself: As the star collapses, its gravitational time dilation make itself collapse more slowly. This make me wonder, are what astronomers claim to be black holes really black holes, or are they stars that progressively make themselves more similar to one without actually reaching the stage of having an event horizon?  EDIT: Contemplating one answer, I realize the question is ambiguous. What does finite time mean in general relativity. Here is a less ambiguous question: Is there a connected solution of 3+1 dimensional general relativity with one space-like slice not have a singularity, and another space-like slice having one. What does the size of the font translate to exactly? I have a 40 pixel font that I'm trying to translate into custom images. I'm trying to match the size of the image exactly, but I'm having some problems getting exactly the right size. Basically, what it comes down to is this. When a font says it is X pixels, what does this physically mean? From the man page on git-merge, there are a number of merge strategies you can use.     resolve -  This can only resolve two heads (i.e. the current branch and another branch you pulled from) using 3-way merge algorithm. It tries to carefully detect criss-cross merge ambiguities and is considered generally safe and fast. recursive -  This can only resolve two heads using 3-way merge algorithm. When there are more than one common ancestors that can be used for 3-way merge, it creates a merged tree of the common ancestors and uses that as the reference tree for the 3-way merge. This has been reported to result in fewer merge conflicts without causing mis-merges by tests done on actual merge commits taken from Linux 2.6 kernel development history. Additionally this can detect and handle merges involving renames. This is the default merge strategy when pulling or merging one branch. octopus -  This resolves more than two-head case, but refuses to do complex merge that needs manual resolution. It is primarily meant to be used for bundling topic branch heads together. This is the default merge strategy when pulling or merging more than one branches. ours -  This resolves any number of heads, but the result of the merge is always the current branch head. It is meant to be used to supersede old development history of side branches. subtree -  This is a modified recursive strategy. When merging trees A and B, if B corresponds to a subtree of A, B is first adjusted to match the tree structure of A, instead of reading the trees at the same level. This adjustment is also done to the common ancestor tree.   When should I specify something different than the default?  What scenarios are each best for? Why does increasing the number of features reduce performance? I'm trying to gain an intuition as to why increasing the number of features could reduce performance.  I'm currently using an LDA classifier which performs better bivariately among certain features but worse when looking at more features.  My classification accuracy is performed using a stratified 10-fold xval.    Is there a simple case of when a classifier would work better univariately than bivaraiately to gain a somewhat physical or spatial intuition of what is happening in these higher dimensions? "There Is"/"There are" depends on plurality of the first list element or not? It seems I put a   Bounty assigned by outside party, two lengthy, reference-citing answers, one "-1" (awarded the bounty), one "-2", two others scored "0" and "-2" respectively, the answers suggesting one or the other is correct, 73 comments and no consensus so far - and me, as the asker, lost without a clue what to think of the answers anymore -  this is no longer "Learners' Level" question, so I thought I'd bring it here and hear what the experts have to say.    Original question:  Plurality of verb depending on plurality of list elements  An edit was suggested to my sentence.     There was were an orange, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries on the plate.   In my native language plurality of the verb always follows plurality of the first element on the list. There were an orange,... sounds awkward to me, no matter what follows up. My simple solution was reordering:     There were some grapes, an orange, two apples and a small pile of cherries on the plate.   But that's not the first time I faced this situation and I'd like to know what the rules of grammar say about that - was my editor overzealous or am I trying to copy rules of my language that don't apply in English?    Someone linked a  for negatives, where the situation is more clear-cut ("There is no..."). Same applies to connection with "or" apparently, per accepted answer there. Still, nothing for "and".  It seems there is a consensus that in that if the verb goes after the list, it will be plural.     an orange, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries were on the plate.   There doesn't seem to be clear consensus for:     On the plate { was | were } an orange, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries   Adding more to the confusion is the abbreviated form: "There's"     One last note. In North America, at least, there is a widespread use of using a singular form like "there is" and "there was", without regard for the subject item or items, and this "there is" is often shortened to "there's":           There's three apples on the table!      Could you please clarify this mess? What happens when you plug two sides of a cable to a single networking device? What is likely to happen when you plug two ends of a network cable to a single switch/router? Will this create problems on the network, or just be ignored? Decode JWT Token in Apex I am trying decode JWT token in apex, and i am not sure how that can be done. If anyone has done that before, please let me know the process.  A JWT token is sent to SFDC and need to decode it in apex class.  Questions: 1) Can we decode the JWT using any standard salesforce classes, if yes what class and method? 2) Or do we need to decode it with our custom code -- if so can you provide an example. Is being a right triangle both necessary and sufficient for the Pythagorean Theorem to hold? I recently encountered a Stack Overflow question (since closed) in which the OP was testing for whether a triangle was right by whether or not it "met" the criteria of the Pythagorean Theorem (i.e. whether or not the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the square of the two sides). The code was to this effect:  public void Test(int a, int b, int c) {    if ((c * c) == ((a * a) + (b * b)) {      System.out.println("This is a right triangle");    }    else {      System.out.println("This is not a right triangle");    } }   (There are obviously some other problems with this code, like the fact that it doesn't validate the input to make sure that the inputs are positive and the fact that it only accepts integers).  The question was asking about something completely different in the code and never directly addressed the test, but I got to thinking: is this a valid test for whether a triangle is a right triangle?  Obviously, the Pythagorean Theorem states that, for all right triangles, $a^2 + b^2 = c^2$ (where $a$ and $b$ are sides and $c$ is the hypotenuse). This will hold for all right triangles, so being a right triangle is a sufficient condition for the Pythagorean Theorem to hold.  Is it also a necessary condition? I.e. if $c^2 = a^2 + b^2$ for some arbitrary triangle, is the triangle necessarily a right triangle? Or are there counterexamples?