From  I learned that : can be used to get the side effects of a parameter expansion. I stumbled upon this code which uses a parameter expansion that looks new to me:   $ R=32; : $[R--]; echo $R 31   Here  : $[R--] seems to be equivalent to ((R--)). What is $[]? And is it documented in man  bash(1)? I couldn't find it on the man pages.
On the paragraph explaining arithmetic expansion,  uncovers 2 different ways of evaluating an expression, the first one uses $(( EXPRESSION )) and the second one uses $[ EXPRESSION ]. The two ways seem pretty similar as the only difference I have found is:     $[ EXPRESSION ] will only calculate the result of EXPRESSION, and do no tests:   Yet, I am intrigued because the same document recommends using $[ EXPRESSION ] rather than $(( EXPRESSION )).     Wherever possible, Bash users should try to use the syntax with square brackets:   Why would you want that if less tests are being done?
Repeatedly taking differences on a polynomial yields the factorial of its degree? Is it possible to view Google Chrome bookmarks and history from the terminal Is it possible to view Google Chrome bookmarks and history by using command line? With "magic quotes" disabled, why does PHP/WordPress continue to auto-escape my POST data? What should we do with old, very popular closed questions? Motivated by the deletion of     On one hand, I disagree with these closures, because:  These questions were (and still are) very popular They have some good information in them (or at least the first one does) and it feels like bad sportsmanship to remove good information from the internet, particularly when it was contributed by your fellow users  Number 2 in particular bothers me. A lot. On the other hand, I do agree that:  The community of 10k users should be able to decide which closed questions they wish to delete on their own without me intervening These questions should definitely remain closed, because they either have an absurd # of answers, or are duplicates (though some duplicates ). Which means they are eligible for deletion … forever. These questions wouldn't survive more than 10 minutes if asked today on Stack Overflow, so in some ways they are artifacts from the past, like dinosaurs in an era of mammals.  There is some related discussion in:   While I normally favor code solutions here, I am not sure I like the idea that once a question gets 400 upvotes it should become extremely difficult to delete. It feels like mob rule. Official policy on the blog: So basically as it stands I have a laptop which has no cd/dvd drive, and I don't have a usb drive.  The laptop has windows 7 installed with ubuntu 11.04 installed through wubi.  What I want to do is remove windows completely, and make ubuntu the only OS installed on the system.  Is there a way to do this without re-installing ubuntu? (i.e. can I take my wubi install away from windows?)  or is there a way to from inside ubuntu have it run the ubuntu iso somehow so I can just wipe the system and install it fresh? (even if it means I need to have an e.g. 2gb partition just for the image to reside in). How can I install Minecraft? I have tried many tutorials but none of them are clear enough. I have also tried installing it using Wine but it won't update and Wine goes gray and stops working.  Does anybody know an easy way to install Minecraft though the Java file without using Wine? Apologies in advance for the long question.  My understanding is that in GR, massive observers move along timelike curves $x^\mu(\lambda)$, and if an observer moves from point $x^\mu(\lambda_a)$ to $x^\mu(\lambda_b)$, then his clock will measure that an amount of time $t_{ba}$ given by the curve's arc length; $$   t_{ba} = \int_{\lambda_a}^{\lambda_b}d\lambda \sqrt{-g_{\mu\nu}(x(\lambda))\dot x^\mu(\lambda)\dot x^\nu(\lambda)} $$ will have elapsed where $g_{\mu\nu}$ is a metric on spacetime with signature $(-,+,+,+)$.    Why is this so?     Here is how I would attempt to justify this fact in special relativity with $g_{\mu\nu} = \eta_{\mu\nu}$.  Consider an inertial observer $O$ in $\mathbb R^{3,1}$, and suppose that this observer sees a clock, which I'll call observer $O'$ moving around on a curve $x^\mu(\lambda)$.  If $O'$ were also an inertial observer, then given any event with coordinates $x^\mu$ as measured by $O$, observer $O'$ would measure the coordinates of the event to be $x'^\mu = \Lambda^\mu_{\phantom\mu\nu} x^\nu + x_0^\mu$ for some Lorentz transformation $\Lambda$.  If $O'$ is not inertial, then this is no longer true, and there is some more complicated family of transformations, say $T_\lambda$ between events as seen by both observers.  I would argue, however, that if we were to partition the interval $[\lambda_a, \lambda_b]$ into a large number $N$ of intervals $I_1=[\lambda_a, \lambda_i], \dots, I_N=[\lambda_{N-1}, \lambda_b]$ with $\lambda_n = \lambda_a+n\epsilon_N$ and $\epsilon_N=(\lambda_b-\lambda_a)/N$, then on each interval $I_n$, $O'$ is approximately an inertial observer in the sense that $$   T_{\lambda_n} = P_n + \mathcal O(\epsilon_N), \qquad (\star) $$ for some Poincare transformation $P_n$.  Then we would note that since $O'$ is stationary in his own reference frame, he measures his worldline to have the property $\dot x'^\mu(\lambda) = (\dot t(\lambda), \mathbf 0)$ so that $$   I_{ba}=\int_{\lambda_a}^{\lambda_b}d\lambda \,\sqrt{-\eta_{\mu\nu}\dot x'^\mu\dot x'^\mu} = \int_{\lambda_a}^{\lambda_b} d\lambda \, \sqrt{\dot t^2} = t(\lambda_b) - t(\lambda_a) = t_{ba} $$ On the other hand the integral on the left can be written as a Riemann sum using the partition above, and we can invoke ($\star$) above to get \begin{align}   I_{ba}  &amp;= \lim_{N\to\infty}\left[\sum_{n=1}^N \epsilon_N\sqrt{-\eta_{\mu\nu}\dot x'^\mu(\lambda_n)\dot x'^\nu(\lambda_n)}\right] \notag\\ &amp;= \lim_{N\to\infty}\left[\sum_{n=1}^N \epsilon_N\sqrt{-\eta_{\mu\nu}\dot x^\mu(\lambda_n)\dot x^\nu(\lambda_n)} + \mathcal{O}(\epsilon_N^2)\right] \notag\\ &amp;= \int_{\lambda_a}^{\lambda_b}d\lambda \,\sqrt{-\eta_{\mu\nu}\dot x^\mu\dot x^\mu} \end{align} Combining these two computations gives the desired result.  How do others feel about this argument?  I'm not completely comfortable with it because of the assumption $(\star)$ I made on $T_\lambda$.  I imagine that in GR a similar argument could be made by invoking local flatness of the metric. Disabling module with config sync and removing with composer I have an issue disabling modules, I've searched but cannot find something useful:  - Developer A disable module and via composer remove it  - I pull his changes so i run composer install that remove the code, then drush cim to update configuration, but it complains that the module is missing while it's trying to delete its configurations.  What's the right way to do this? I can't import config before running composer install because along the uninstalled module there could be also new modules needed for the configuration import. What is true for a ring with exactly two right ideals jQuery find events handlers registered with an object Intersections of all subgroups is a nontrivial subgroup, so every element has finite order. I need help to prove this result:  "Let $G$ be a group such that the intersection of all its subgroups other than $\{1\}$ is a subgroup different from $\{1\}$. Then all its elements have a finite order".  I know I must think of an element $g$ of infinite order. That will imply that every subgroup has infinite order (because it will contain an element like $g^k$). After this, I don't know which step I can take. Can someone help? Bind application to a specific network interface I have tried ForceBindIP, but it has a significant downside - it doesn't affect the children of the application I'm trying to bind, it only affects the application itself. It also can't force an application to always run through a specified interface, it has to be run through forcebindip.exe every time. It becomes a problem with applications like League of Legends where the process tree looks like that:    The launcher runs the patcher, the patcher run the client, etc. I can only affect the parent of all these processes in the tree, so the actual game is not bound to the interface I want, making this whole venture pointless.  Is there a more modern alternative to ForceBindIP for Windows 7? There are many questions similar to this one on this site, but they are mostly old. Maybe there is now a better way to solve this problem?  My current idea is to do the following:   Set up local 3proxy server bound to the desired interface. Run the game through Proxifier or similar software configured to run through that local proxy.   I'm not sure if that will work, but even if it will, it seems like a sub-optimal solution. Do you guys have any better ideas?  Edit: My idea didn't work :(  Edit 2: Basically, what I'm trying to achieve is bind a few applications to a regular interface, while VPN is running. The reason is that I need to connect through VPN most of the time, but some applications (such as games) don't work properly this way, because of higher ping and other issues. Simplest Light triggered relay I am building a large array of Light Switched relays, and due to the size of the array i want to keep the part count down.  Each 'Pixel module' has a 12V SPDT, bulb and an activate-on-dark circuit. There is a strong spotlight on the device and the viewers shadow is obscuring the light in their shadow so the swing is large.  I have seen the obvious LDR-and-Pot circuits with a junction out to a NPN Transistor, and the more stable comparator alternative  I was looking at "solar cell" types of Photodiodes (PiN Type), and I can't see why I cannot just lay one across a PNP transistor (Collector to Base?) or something so it applies a Base voltage when lit up.  Can someone briefly explain to me why I am wrong?  I figure it would be all over the net if it was that easy, and i cant find any examples!  Is this possibly the cheapest way to make a light switched 12V relay driver?  Note: I prefer solutions using discrete circuitry, as I have a thing for human readability, visual components etc :P Should we have a down-vote “safe zone” for new users with less than 50 reputation? I am attempting to set up an nmake makefile to export our balsamiq mockup files to png files automatically, but I'm afraid I can't make heads nor tails of how to make a generic rule for doing so, without explicitly listing all the files I want exported.  details the command line syntax for exporting the files, and  contains an example which looks like it contains a generic rule for .obj files to .exe files. The makefile I have tried so far looks like this: .bmml.png:     &quot;C:\Program Files\Balsamiq Mockups\Balsamiq Mockups.exe&quot; export $&lt; $@  But this doesn't work. If I simply run nmake (with some outdated png files), nmake just does this: [C:\Temp] :nmake  Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility Version 9.00.30729.01 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.   [C:\Temp] :  If I ask it to build one specific file, it does this: [C:\Temp] :nmake &quot;TestFile.png&quot;  Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility Version 9.00.30729.01 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.  NMAKE : fatal error U1073: don't know how to make '&quot;TestFile.png&quot;' Stop.  [C:\Temp] :  Any nmake gurus out there that can set me straight? An example makefile which simply makes .dat files from .txt files by copying them, to experiment with, looks like this: .txt.dat:     copy $&lt; $@  this does nothing as well, so clearly I'm not understanding how such generic rules work. Do I need to specify a goal above that somehow lists the files I want? Given fields $K\subseteq L$, why does $f,g$ relatively prime in $K[x]$ imply relatively prime in $L[x]$? I have a really simple Java class that effectively decorates a Map with input validation, with the obvious void set() and String get() methods.  I'd like to be able to effectively call those methods and handle return values and exceptions from outside the JVM, but still on the same machine Update: the caller I have in mind is not another JVM; thanks @Dave Ray  My implementation considerations are typical    performance ease of implementation and maintenance (simplicity?) reliability flexibility (i.e. can I call from a remote machine, etc.)   Is there a 'right way?' If not, what are my options, and what are the pro/cons for each?  (Stuff people have actually done and can provide real-life feedback on would be great!) Calculate the product of distances for a line perpendicular to hyperbola Let us have a hyperbola $\frac{x^2}{a^2} - \frac{y^2}{b^2} = 1$ and assume the normal at P meets the transverse (horizontal) axis $AA'$ in $G$ and the conjugate (vertical) axis $BB'$ in $g$. Assume CF be perpendicular to the normal from the center.   Find $\frac{PF \cdot PG}{CB^2}$ Find $PF \cdot Pg$   How can I solve the question in least amount of steps?  My attempt:  I first formed the equation of the normal and then I found out the points where it cuts the conjugate and transverse axis. After finding these points I used distance formula to find the distance required and convert it in the form that the question asked. But its a long method and took lot of steps Alternative to Adobe Illustrator Can you recommend a good alternative to Adobe Illustrator?   I am learning vector based graphic design, but I am not ready to make such a large investment as to purchase a copy of Adobe Illustrator. Also, Illustrator might be a little more power than I need at the moment. I am using a Macintosh. At most finitely many (Hamel) coordinate functionals are continuous - different proof