In the novel Strata instead of earning money you earn days, which act as a currency. Instead of paying for food etc with money you pay with 'days'.  In Time is a film with a similar concept where someone is giving away days. I thought Strata was the first instance of this, but I wasn't sure.  Is Strata the first instance of this, or is it older?
I recently read the .  This book had the idea of the time you live as something that can be used to pay for things. When you run out of "money" you die.  I was wondering is this the original source for this idea? Or does anyone know of an earlier book with the same idea?
I have just updated MiKTeX and have found that pstricks now appears to cause a problem. The error message I'm getting is     ("C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\tex\generic\pstricks\pstricks.tex"      ! Undefined control sequence.      l.31 \if@check@engine   Not sure what's happening here. If I stop pstricks from being loaded things work ok.  Is there a known problem with the latest pstricks? if $A$ subset of $B$ then $P(B)-P(A)=P(B\setminus A)\ge 0$ Let $P$ be a probability measure on $(\Omega, \mathscr{F})$, If $a,b,\in\mathscr{F}$ and $A\subset B$, then $P(B)-P(A)=P(B\setminus A)\ge 0$.  So far I have:  $A\subset B \implies B\setminus A = B\cap A^c = \emptyset$ as $A$ and $B^c$ are disjoint. Since $A\cup (B\setminus A)=A\cup (B\cap A^c)=(A\cup B)\cap (A\cup A^c)=B\cap\Omega = B$  Then for $A,B\in \mathscr{F}\implies P(A\cup (B\setminus A))=P(A)+P(B\setminus A) = P(B)$ by countable additivity.  Rearranging, $P(B)-P(A)=P(B\setminus A) \ge 0$. If I take the $k \in \mathbb{N}$ power of 10 and mod it by a large prime, I notice that the remainders repeat at some point.  For instance $10^k mod~7$ seems to repeat every $8$th value of $k$.  Given $k$ (the power of ten), and a large prime number $p$, how can I compute the size of the cycle?  I tried writing a python script that computes the first instance of a repeat. However, I don't know if this works since a single instance of a repeat may not necessarily mean a full cycle. \includegraphics: Dots in filename \includegraphics cannot handle filenames that contain more than the one dot, separating the filename from the extension. Apparently it uses everything after the first dot as extension and then, of course, complains about an unknown graphics extension.  This is annoying as I very often have filenames that contain parameter values, e.g. plot_a0.4_b0.6.pdf.  Is there a way to teach LaTeX to interpret only the string behind the last dot as extension? Default poster size What is the typical size for a conference poster? Is it "ask the organizers", or can I safely assume that I'll get a default size, and that there will be enough space to hang it at the poster session? Parallel universe: in every universe, you are presented with a different decision. Does that mean there are an infinite amount of parallel universes? I.e., if in one universe I choose to go left, I am then presented with different choices vs if i choose right, and that creates more universes with more decisions to be made.  Or does it mean that in the end of one's life we end up in the same place, meaning that its just one parallel universe that eventually collides with the other. How to remove the Mail icon indicator applet? Drop Table and recreate Permissions So we followed an best practice by Andreas de Ruiter ()  The Idea behind it is, that you write SQL Views which are easy to maintain and deploy. You use stored procedures to use these views and create tables from it. He suggests dropping or truncating the tables to maintain consistency over the data. I think it's the easiest approach without writing any complex update logic.  On these tables we have the need to set specific user permissions. By dropping the table we would lose them. So for us the question is, how could we drop the table and recreate the existing permissions on the newly created table? Which option is grammatical?        There will be readings from Nikki Giovanni’s and Alice Walker’s writings.   There will be readings from Nikki Giovanni and Alice Walker's writings.      Saying it out loud the latter sounds right, but looking at it the former looks better. Here is a simple table.  I want to merge 4 cells. I want to combine the three "this" cells area in this table. I thought I have to use multirow and multicolum at same time. However, I could not find how to use it.  If possible, could you post the modified LaTeX source code?     My LaTeX code:  \documentclass{article} \usepackage{multirow}% http://ctan.org/pkg/multirow \usepackage{hhline}% http://ctan.org/pkg/hhline \begin{document}  \begin{table}[ph] \begin{center} \begin{tabular}{c|c|c|c|c} \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Raaa (k)} &amp; \multicolumn{4}{c}{C ()} \\ \hhline{~----}  &amp; 3.3 &amp; 2.5 &amp; 1 &amp; 0.5 \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Raaa (k)} &amp; \multirow{2}{*}{this} &amp; this &amp; 0.5 &amp; 0.6\\ \hhline{~~~--}            &amp;                       &amp; this &amp; 0.7 &amp; 1.2 \\ \hline \end{tabular} \caption{R, C ripple size} \label{T:peak} \end{center} \end{table} \end{document} Question is to prove :  $f : S^1 \to \mathbb R$ is continuous then $f(x)=f(-x)$ for some $x\in S^1$  I guess it would be helpful to use intermediate value theorem  Assuming $f(x)\neq f(-x)$ then given any $p\in (f(-x),f(x))$ (assuming $f(-x)&lt;f(x)$) there exists $y\in (-x, x)$ such that $f(y)=p$  I am not very sure of how to use this..   It would be helpful if someone can give some hint which would help me to solve this..  Thank you. For $a,b,c>0$, prove that $\frac{a^2}{b}+\frac{b^2}{c}+\frac{c^2}{a}\ge a+b+c+\frac{4(a-b)^2}{a+b+c}$ Switching motherboard without new install? Pure virtual destructor in C++ Is it wrong to write:  class A { public:     virtual ~A() = 0; };   for an abstract base class?  At least that compiles in MSVC... Will it crash at run time? What is the weight equation through general relativity? The gravitational force on your body, called your weight, pushes you down onto the floor. $$W=mg$$ So, what is the weight equation through general relativity? I really miss the graphical "Services" tool from older versions of Ubuntu, but I understand why it had to go. I always have terminals open anyway, so I use (because I have to now, I guess) service --status-all to see what services are running. This would be ok except that the command produces output like the following:   [ + ]  winbind  [ ? ]  wpa-ifupdown  [ - ]  x11-common   I'm guessing that those symbols mean something like listening, blocked, or stopped, but which is which? More importantly, why doesn't the man page say? I have a basic doubt about the associativity of the cartesian product. Well, first wikipedia says that the cartesian product isn't associative, and there's a good argument for it: if $x\in E$, $y\in F$ and $z \in G$ the identity $((x,y), z)=(x,(y,z))$ would imply that $(x,y) =x$ and $(y,z) = z$ so that $((x,y),z)=(x,y,z)$ would mean nothing.  That's fine, I like this argument. However, in his book Calculus on Manifolds, Spivak says that the cartesian product is associative. He says: if $A \subset \mathbb{R}^m$, $B\subset \mathbb{R}^n$ and $C \subset \mathbb{R}^p$ then $(A\times B)\times C = A \times (B \times C)$, and both of these are denoted simply by $A \times B \times C$.  Well, this confuses me because Spivak is always very rigorous, so that he wouldn't state something that's not true in such way. Is Spivak or Wikipedia right ? Or Spivak's statement only works for subsets of euclidean spaces ?  Thanks in advance and sorry if this question is too basic. I'm using a common charger for both of my laptops.  The charger is specified at 20 Volts and 3.25 Amperes. My other laptop has a specification of 19 V and 3.42 A.  Is it safe to charge my laptop with chargers whose specifications exceed or are not equal to the mentioned specifications?  I have read somewhere that it may cause some damage if the voltage or amperage is not matching the specs. Can we create a subsection of the References Cited section with different reference numbering? Boundary of Ball of radius R has zero measure