Should the cardinal directions be capitalized when used as an adjective?
When does a locational distinction change its suffix and capitialization in a proper name?
What is the easiest way to make a backup of an entire hard disk I got myself a dell laptop from the local computer store. Its a used machine with Windows Vista Home Basic on it. I want to load Ubuntu Desktop 10.10 though so I can do perl development. BUT I want to keep a copy of the entire harddrive with the dell utility partition and Windows Vista in case I want to go back. I was thinking I could image the drive but I not sure what to use, I don't have Ghost or anything, Someone had told me about Clonezilla. Would that work for me? Is it hard to use? Also I want to burn the data to a DVD or something more storable than a harddisk. Should individual letters be preceded with "an"? I was reading a comic book and I noticed that the author used "an A" and "an N" in a particular phrase (screenshot below). While I understand the usage of "An A" here (A being a vowel and what not) and "N" having a pronunciation which has a sound similar to "A".  Since most of English alphabets have pronunciations which start with a syllable similar to one of the vowels or semi-vowels; is it OK to prefix the letters using "An"?  For eg. An X, or An Y.        Zenescope's Grimm Fairy Tales - Werewolves: The Hunger, page #8 (Click to enlarge) How can I write a unit test to determine whether an object can be garbage collected? Sometimes you spend a day or more solving a technical problem, and when you finally solve it, you may want to post it on your blog (if you have one) to share with the community.  However, most developers don't have a lot of time to update their blogs, and that is why personal blogs are not ranked very highly on Google/Bing.  So even if you describe a brilliant idea, chances are that, except a few of your friends, nobody will ever find it. This is a common reason why some developers start their blogs and soon give up; it is not interesting to write for the community if you have no feedback on your posts.  Unlike personal blogs, Stack Exchange sites are highly ranked in Google (I was amazed when I saw that a question asked on SO just an hour ago appeared 3rd in my Google search!), so if your question and answer are valuable for others, they will be rated highly and will be visible for other developers.  With this in mind, is it good practice to post a question and answer it yourself immediately when you want to share an idea with the community? Uniformly convergence of $f_{n+1}(x)= \int^x_0 f_n(t)dt$ Can you dispel a magic effect you can't perceive? Discussions about Dispel Magic seem to imply that as long as you can perceive a magic effect in range of the spell, you can try and dispel it.   See  and  from @Miniman:      knowing where it is means that you know where it is. This allows you to use spells like Dispel Magic to remove its invisibility.   But what if you can't perceive it?  Two scenarios come in mind:   In combat, an evil wizard casts Invisibility on himself, walks away from the fray and uses the hide action on his next turn. Since PCs know/assume/deduce he's invisible and certainly in range of the spell, can one use Dispel Magic to end the spell? PCs enter a 80'&times;80' room. Can one declare: "I dispel any Invisibility spell in range", thus revealing one (the closest?) invisible enemy in the room?   What's enough to enable a caster to cast Dispel Magic on a magic effect:    perceiving (seeing, hearing, smelling, etc.) it? knowing/assuming/deducing it's there? or merely suspect/predict it? Find the value of $\sum_{k=1}^{n}k\binom{n}{k}$? Midpoint-Convex and Continuous Implies Convex Given that $$f\left(\frac{x+y}{2}\right)\leqslant \frac{f(x)+f(y)}{2}~,$$ how can I show that $f$ is convex. Thanks.      Edit: I'm sorry for all the confusion. $f$ is assumed to be continuous on an interval $(a,b)$. system of ode with non-constant coefficient matrix Parsing date/time string with timezone abbreviated name in Python? Even though a question may be closed by receiving 5 close votes, the votes do not necessarily need to agree.  I think this is a good behavior, but  (which it was) and found the question was closed as "not a real question".  This is unfortunate, while I'm happy to display my username and acknowledge that I voted to close, I'd like some additional transparency.  That is, if it was a 4-1 vote for "not a real question" vs "exact duplicate" I'd be interested in seeing that level of information.  The point is to be transparent about why the question was closed, and though 5 users may agree the question needs to be closed they may not agree why.  It's important to recognize all the reasons for closure, not just the majority reason.  I'd suggest displaying this information as something like:     closed on Jun 21 at 4:26 as:         not a real question by foo, bar, baz   exact duplicate by alice, bob      Once a question has been closed I'd argue it's more important to understand the rationale than it is to worry about an extra 2 lines of text. If the votes are 2,1,1,1 perhaps keep just 2 bullets, the first showing the majority vote, the second saying "for other reasons" as a summary of the change.  The point is to aggregate the summary by reason. Problem with sudo apt get update: The repository cdrom... does not have a Release file What equipment is necessary/preferred for real estate photography? What equipment is necessary for real estate photography, and what is preferred?  I'm starting into real estate photography, and I'm trying to figure out what I need and what I will want to plan on adding to my kit as I go.  I'm thinking especially along the lines of lighting equipment and lenses (focal lengths).  For example, is an ultra-wide actually necessary? Or is a general walk around sufficient. Does $1^{\infty}=e$ or $1^{\infty}=1$? Why is the Java plugin (JRE) disabled in Chrome? Why is the Java plugin (JRE) is disabled in Chrome? It is some security concern?  From official Java website:     Chrome no longer supports NPAPI (technology required for Java applets)   The Java plug-in for web browsers relies on the cross platform plugin architecture NPAPI,   which has been supported by all major web browsers for over a decade.   Google's Chrome version 45 (scheduled for release in September 2015) drops support   for NPAPI,   impacting plugins for Silverlight, Java, Facebook Video   and other similar NPAPI based plugins.   But anyone knows why? How it could be dangerous for Chrome user with latest version of Java JRE installed? Failure to download extra data files - ttf-mscorefonts-installer This is an old problem that deserves a bugfix, but it's getting beyond a joke now and I can't seem to work around it.  I keep getting the dreaded failed To download extra data files error in relation to ttf-mscorefonts-installer:    Repeatedly asking it to try again doesn't help, additionally, repeatedly trying-  sudo rm -rf /var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial/* sudo apt-get --purge --reinstall install ttf-mscorefonts-installer   Isn't working either.  I just get at least one 404 error from one of the sourceforge links that stops it working-  Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree        Reading state information... Done 0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 20 not to upgrade. Need to get 0 B/29.5 kB of archives. After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used. Preconfiguring packages ... (Reading database ... 352049 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../ttf-mscorefonts-installer_3.4+nmu1ubuntu2_all.deb ... mscorefonts-eula license has already been accepted Unpacking ttf-mscorefonts-installer (3.4+nmu1ubuntu2) over (3.4+nmu1ubuntu2) ... Processing triggers for fontconfig (2.11.94-0ubuntu1.1) ... Processing triggers for update-notifier-common (3.168.2) ... ttf-mscorefonts-installer: processing... ttf-mscorefonts-installer: downloading http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/andale32.exe Get:1 http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/andale32.exe [198 kB] Fetched 198 kB in 0s (339 kB/s)                                                 W: Can't drop privileges for downloading as file '/var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial/andale32.exe' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied) ttf-mscorefonts-installer: downloading http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/arial32.exe Get:1 http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/arial32.exe [554 kB] Fetched 554 kB in 0s (575 kB/s)                                                 W: Can't drop privileges for downloading as file '/var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial/arial32.exe' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied) ttf-mscorefonts-installer: downloading http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/arialb32.exe Get:1 http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/arialb32.exe [168 kB] Fetched 168 kB in 0s (306 kB/s)                                                 W: Can't drop privileges for downloading as file '/var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial/arialb32.exe' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied) ttf-mscorefonts-installer: downloading http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/comic32.exe Err:1 http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/comic32.exe   404  Not Found W: Can't drop privileges for downloading as file '/var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial/comic32.exe' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied) E: Failed to fetch https://netix.dl.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the fonts/final/comic32.exe  404  Not Found  E: Download Failed Setting up ttf-mscorefonts-installer (3.4+nmu1ubuntu2) ...   The specific point at which it fails to download changed - it seems to be a sourceforge reliability problem, but this has now been going on weeks and results in annoying popups as above all the time.  How do we get this fixed and/or how can I work around it for now. In languages like Java and C#, strings are immutable and it can be computationally expensive to build a string one character at a time.  In said languages, there are library classes to reduce this cost such as C# System.Text.StringBuilder and Java java.lang.StringBuilder.  Does php (4 or 5; I'm interested in both) share this limitation?  If so, are there similar solutions to the problem available? I'm trying to wrap my head around this very Hello World-y problem in game development. I've created a TicTacToe game in XNA so I guess the next step would be a  clone.  Keep in mind that I have no knowledge on game programming or even what maths I should apply to where. That's why I'm asking this question.    To the question: How can I determine where the ball should bounce when it hits the paddle at the bottom of the screen?  I'd imagine it would be something like:   Capture speed and angle from incoming ball. Detect where it touched the bar (far left, far right, center) and according to that give it a higher speed if it touched the outer areas. This is where I'm stuck. Hehe.   Any insights? I realize this is not a straightforward answer type question, but I'm sure it's one everyone faces at some point.  I'm reading the book Linear Algebra that was recommended on this website, but I still have no idea if I should apply it here. Boarding a train in India at another station I have booked a ticket on a train from Mumbai to Chennai and boarding at Pune. Since my schedules have changed, I will be in Mumbai on that day. Can I board the same train in Mumbai in my own ticket and claim the seat/berth? Aligning table within latex editor