Probability in a Dice Game
Probability of first actor winning a "first to roll seven with two dice" contest?
I thought it was The Tommyknockers by Stephen King, but after a check with Wikipedia, it appears that's not the case.  What I remember about the story (a TV movie I think, but definitely based on a book) was that the world is created anew every night, and that the old, used up, Earth was eaten nightly by some scary creatures.  The major plot point involved some protagonists not getting onto the new world at midnight, and having to escape from the monsters that were eating up yesterday's planet.  Does this ring a bell for anyone? I'm finding it very hard to Google for. At the end of ‘The Return of the King’, Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf and others boarded a boat and left Middle-earth for Valinor.  Is there any canon explanation why they couldn’t just take the ring there in the first place and leave Middle-earth altogether? Would Sauron have gone after them? Couldn’t the elves living there safeguard it?  I do realize that without Frodo taking the ring to Mount Doom there would be no story at all, but I wonder whether or not there is any canon explanation for this. What does the caret (‘^’) mean in C++/CLI? Meaning of Conditional sentences with 'should' and 'happen to' I'm a bit familarized with conditional sentences. But the following sentences with 'should' and 'happen to' are quite confusing too me. They are:   If it should rain, I will stay at home. 2.If it should happen to rain, I'll stay at home   If it happens to rain, I'll stay at home.    What are the meaings of those sentences ? Do they all mean the same ? Thank you a lot in Advance for your answer. How do you declare an interface in C++? How to determine an object's class? Emoji Characters I'm trying to display Emoji Characters inside my XeLaTeX Document. It seems to work for some glyphs like the numbers and pound sign but not for all. Here is a MWE:  \documentclass{scrartcl}  \usepackage{fontspec}  \setmainfont{Apple Color Emoji} % The emoji Font   \begin{document} \char"0030{}  %Works \char"1F60D{} % Doesent Work should out put SMILEY FACE WITH HEART SHAPED EYES \end{document}   What is the reason for this strange behavior and is there a way to include Emojis in XeLaTeX?  Edit:   It seems the Character is there. It is selectable but not visible. I can copy&amp;paste it. How do I check whether a module is installed in Python, and install it if needed? In terminal, after I start Python, how will I know what are the modules present in python? Suppose I need to learn the modules NumPy and SciPy.   How will I install it if it is not installed?  How will I know if it is already installed? Why does an environment's label have to appear after the caption? \documentclass{article} \usepackage{algorithm}  \begin{document} \setcounter{section}{54} \section{A section with no label} \begin{algorithm} \label{myalg} \caption{An algorithm with the label `myalg'.} \end{algorithm} Reference to myalg: \ref{myalg}. \end{document}   With this code, the reference givens 55 (the section number); if I move the label after the caption command, I get the correct reference (1).  Why should this be the case? I find it confusing: when thinking about an algorithm as an environment, you expect to be able to label it right after you began it. At the very least I would expect some kind of error or "??" to appear, rather than the previous environment or reference-able entity being used. How to modify existing, unpushed commit messages? I wrote the wrong thing in a commit message.  How can I change the message? The commit has not been pushed yet. How to prove $3^\pi>\pi^3$ using algebra or geometry? It's a question of a some time ago test, I've found a way to solve the problem using calculus, but always I've thought that exist a solution with algebra and geometry.  Thank you for your time. A weaker Axiom of Infinity? If Cooper wanted to stay, why did he send the NASA Coordinates? In Interstellar, after Cooper arrives in the Tesseract, Cooper tries to send the message STAY to his daughter in the past so she won't let him go on the mission. If that was his intention then why did he send the coordinates of NASA afterwards? If he didn't send the coordinates, he wouldn't have found NASA or go into space, he would have stayed. Why are extra dimensions necessary? Some theories have more than 4 dimensions of spacetime. But we only observe 4 spacetime dimensions in the real world, cf. e.g.  Phys.SE post.   Why are the theories (e.g. string theory) that require more dimensions taken seriously by scientists?  Is there any proof that these extra dimensions exist? Is there a simple layman's explanation for the need [or strong hint] for extra dimensions? Thailand visa exemption: any rule limiting number of entries per year? Are there any disadvantages to using your companions for transporting Power Armor After I read that companions don't drain the fusion core of a Power Armor when wearing it, I decided to try giving my armor to Nick so I'll always have it close by if I need it.  But I was wondering if there are any other drawbacks to that. For example, does the Armor get damaged or destroyed when the companion is under fire? Can words like "what" be the subject of a sentence? In a question like "Who hears a noise?",  is the subject of the sentence who?  I can think of a few tests for subjects like: "the subject is the phrase that inverts with the auxiliary to form a question". But this is a question and there is no auxiliary. We could say that's because it's a subject, but that would be just to presuppose that it's a subject in the first place.  I can think of tests like: "the form of the verb will agree with the number of the subject", but on the other hand who does not seem to have  fixed grammatical number, and it sometimes seems like who might actually be agreeing with noun phrases later in the sentence:   Who are the most prolific writers of our age? Who is the most prolific writer of our age?   There are also tests like "the subject is usually the first noun phrase in the sentence". But of course if we have a question like:   Who have you bitten?   ... you, not who seems to be the subject. The first noun phrase test is not very good.  I also know that some theories of grammar say that there is a gap in wh- questions that the wh- word is extracted from. So can this gap for instance be the real object of a question? If so, is [See community wiki post in the linked to question]  How can we show whether who is really the subject of my original example question? And how about other wh- words like what? Can they (also) function as subjects? Pattern matching with LIKE, SIMILAR TO or regular expressions in PostgreSQL I had to write a simple query where I go looking for people's name that start with a B or a D :   SELECT s.name  FROM spelers s  WHERE s.name LIKE 'B%' OR s.name LIKE 'D%' ORDER BY 1   I was wondering if there is a way to rewrite this to become more performant. So I can avoid or and / or like? Protagonist becomes the avatar of an alien deity and has to cope with adversary god I read this at least 20 years ago, and I believe it was originally published in the '60s.   The main character is a human, but somehow "inherits godhood" from an alien, whose species is very long lived. IIRC this is one of the old-style god thingies, i.e. "god of thunder" not "omniscient omnipotent omnipresent transcendent being".  The plot somehow revolved around identifying and fighting some enemy which, I believe, was in turn a member of the alien species who acted as the avatar of the opposite god in the alien pantheon.  The only thing I remember for sure is that the enemy was identified as "green green" or "gringrin" (sadly, I read this in translation so I am not sure what the original meant) Set spawn point for a specific player I made a server and me and one of my friends want to do a prank on another friend, because he stole all my enchanted diamond armor.  The Prank  I want to set a player's spawn point in a pit of lava, how would I do this without affecting anyone else's spawn point?