In  Jen jumps off the cliff. Did she die in the novel? What happened?
What happens to Zhang ziyi (Jen) in  when she jumps off the cliff .. she dies? becomes immortal? Just before jumping what does she want Lo to become - a master?  Why does she jump off, guilt?
What recourse do I have if I believe a moderator has abused their privileges? One or more of the following things happened to me on a Stack Exchange site:   My post(s) were wrongly deleted or locked by a moderator A moderator posted a wrong comment on one of my posts I was suspended, but did not do anything wrong I asked a meta question, but the question was closed and/or deleted A moderator discredited me in public ...   I think a moderator has abused their power, but I feel powerless against them.  What recourse do I have now? What can I do when I feel that a moderator has abused their power, and has been repeatedly unfair in their dealings with me? Can every non-simple group $G$ be written as a semidirect product? When people want to classify a group with certain (small) order, they seem to find a normal subgroup $H$ and a subgroup $K$, and then consider how many distinct $H \rtimes_\varphi K$ are there.  My question is: For any group $G$, does it always exist normal subgroup $H$, subgroup $K$ and $\phi : K \rightarrow Aut(H)$ s.t. $G\cong H \rtimes_\varphi K $?  Sorry if this question is too basic...  Thanks the comment and the answers. Then if the $G$ is not simple, can we have can $G\cong H\rtimes_\varphi K$ for proper subgroup $H$, $K$, with $H$ normal?  EDIT:  If we have a group $G$, that is not simple (then $G$ has at least one normal subgroup), are there always a non-trivial normal subgroup $H$ and a proper subgroup $K$ s.t. $G \cong H \rtimes K$. (Note that if $G$ is simple this is clearly not possible).  But the quaternion group and $Z_4$ given in answers have shown that we cannot always have it. Given the positive integer numbers $n$,prove that $$\sum_{k=1}^{2^{n-1}}\sigma{(2^n-2k+1)}\sigma{(2k-1)}=8^{n-1}$$  where $\sigma(n)$ is defined as $$\sigma{(N)}=\sum_{d|N}d$$  This problem I think is very interesting, and have nice methods?  Thank you everyone.  and I find some of this     or can see: Combo box in Java - nullpointer Is there any intuition or meaning regarding Cauchy-Riemann equations? I have heard that .NET is not free and that I have to pay Microsoft if I develop a .NET application.  Is this true?  If so:   What do I have to pay? I'm a subscriber to the MSDN via the Academic Alliance (we download a variety of Microsoft Software products for free, like VS2008 and Windows Server 2008). Do I have to pay for the software that I make with these tools? What about web apps with ASP.NET? Is there a payment due when I host my application or do I just pay for the technology?   EDIT:  So what you are saying is that it's the same to develop a web application using ASP.NET or PHP (ignoring technical issues, just payment side), all what I have to pay is the hosting fees?  EDIT 2:  .NET rules :) Is my ESTA valid for a second trip? I visited the USA in May this year, on an ESTA which I applied for in April. It was approved and I was allowed entry into the country.    I'm re-visiting again this November for two weeks. Am I able to use the same ESTA again or do I need to re-apply for a new one? I know it says it's valid for two years, but is that valid for every use within those two years, or I have to use it within two years, and once I have visited on that visa, it's invalid? I was thinking of how to create an IV for a block cipher that doesn't require stored state, and I came up with the idea of using an HMAC of the (padded) plaintext and a (possibly distinct) key as the IV.  This seems to be secure:   The IV will only be reused if there is an HMAC collision or if the plaintext and key are the same.  The former would imply that the HMAC is broken and the latter is harmless, since it is just producing the output twice. The HMAC is verified after decryption, but before padding is checked, so padding-oracle attacks should not be an issue.   In particular, if the HMAC and the block cipher use different keys, there seems to be a very simple proof of security, assuming that either (1) the HMAC cannot be distinguished from a random function or (2) the block cipher is secure against maliciously-chosen (but unique) IVs:   The attacker cannot forge the HMAC, since this would require knowledge of the signing key. Since the signing and encryption keys are different in this case, and the HMAC is assumed random, malicious IVs cannot be triggered by an attacker.   Alternatively, if the cipher is secure against malicious (but unique) IVs, then the security of the cipher+security of the HMAC seem to prove the security of the system.  This (obviously) provides no protection against replay attacks, but that requires state anyway.  However, I am not a cryptographer so I do not trust my conclusions on this matter.  If this technique is secure, it would appear to be quite useful in practice, as it is simple and provides both encryption and authentication. Is there a limit to Rule 0? Rule Zero: All other rules can be changed by the GM.   I appreciate that there is a massive amount of work that goes into being a GM and the last thing that any GM wants or deserves is to have his players constantly questioning everything they do. However, a group I am currently playing with has been having a huge problem with a GM who has been using rule 0 to deny virtually every skill check and give all his custom enemies powers that have either no save or unbeatable DCs. Then, whenever he realizes he has made the fight unwinnable he brings in one of his level 60+ GMPCs to instantly win the fight, making us feel even more helpless.  We try to hold our tongues and not be the dreaded Rules Lawyer, but he keeps pulling out stuff so ridiculous that we have to question it… and every time we do we find that he is either misunderstanding or completely disregarding the rules. When this happens he always jumps immediately to rule 0. He probably cited rule 0 around 6 times in our last session (and we only had one combat encounter). What is the most "pythonic" way to iterate over a list in chunks? I have a Python script which takes as input a list of integers, which I need to work with four integers at a time.  Unfortunately, I don't have control of the input, or I'd have it passed in as a list of four-element tuples.  Currently, I'm iterating over it this way: for i in range(0, len(ints), 4):     # dummy op for example code     foo += ints[i] * ints[i + 1] + ints[i + 2] * ints[i + 3]  It looks a lot like &quot;C-think&quot;, though, which makes me suspect there's a more pythonic way of dealing with this situation.  The list is discarded after iterating, so it needn't be preserved.  Perhaps something like this would be better? while ints:     foo += ints[0] * ints[1] + ints[2] * ints[3]     ints[0:4] = []  Still doesn't quite &quot;feel&quot; right, though.  :-/ Related question: Motivating the ansatz for the infinitesimal translation operator In indirect speech we generally backshift the tense. For ex - Direct speech : "I am the most powerful person." Indirect speech : "He said that he was the most powerful person."  What if someone reports like -  He denied the charges claiming that he is/was the most powerful person. So here which is correct- is or was ?  Thanks in advance. Trying to remember the name of a grade-school book about an alien in a cereal box When I was a kid (Grade school, Elementary, can't remember the exact grade, but it was between 1992 and 1999) I read a book about a kid who found an alien in his cereal.  This alien informed him that he was there to defeat an evil threat to Earth, that took the form of the school's most popular student.  The alien came with a gun that did nothing, and the alien in the popular kid disguise had the power to make the kid's fingernails bleed by damaging his nerve endings.  In the end, it was revealed that the evil alien had a huge craving for, and vulnerability towards, pizza flakes, and was defeated by gorging himself on them and then exploding. Why are there two sets of the Ctrl, Alt, and Shift modifier keys when only one of each is necessary? In Fringe's season 1, the episode  (1x13) shows how  travels on VertusAir flight 718. We witness how he develops some strange symptoms, withdraws into a lavatory and transforms into a porcupine-like monster.  At the end of season 3, Peter "switches" the timeline (changing the past and making the present continue in a different timeline henceforth) from blue- to orange-verse. Various statements throughout the 4th season indicate time (the date) was not reset; Olivia and Walter have been working on Fringe cases for some three years etc. - hence it is safe to say that season 4 plays 3 years after season 1.  Then, in the episode  (4x16), the events from 1x13 happen again, up to the point of Bowman's transformation, which this time doesn't happen (not aboard the plane, anyway). As far as I can tell, great care was taken to exactly recreate the events from the season 1 episode, including hiring the same actors to play the flight attendants once again ( and ), so obviously this is supposed to be the same event with slight changes.  Peter, as well as Olivia - who is in the process of regaining her memories from the blue-verse -, remember the events from 1x13 and note the difference that Bowman's transformation happened later this time, implying that in the orange-verse, everything related to flight 718 played out the same way, except for the small difference that the transformation happened a bit later.  BUT ... all of this happened 3 years later!! Is there any explanation for this?  How unlikely is it that in the orange-verse timeline, Marshall Bowman is on the very same flight with the very same flight attendants 3 years after the same would have happened in the blue-verse? Mind you, this is not a "small change" in the course of events while mostly everything else stays the same.  So, why did Peter and Olivia realize the transformation happened a tad later in the orange-verse timeline, but were not baffled by the fact that essentially the same events as in the blue-verse happened, but three years later?  EDIT: Not only the flight and the flight attendants were the same in both episodes. The passenger next to Bowman was the same, an elderly lady played by  both times, as well. Moreover, the transcripts of  and  reveal that the dialogue between Bowman, the passenger next to him, and the cabin crew is the same down to the lines of text until the moment of transformation.  Interestingly, the announcement by the captain in the beginning seems to be different - starting the inflight movie + selling headsets vs. circling before beginning the final descent + selling snacks. On the other hand, this could be presumed to be a slight retcon, as in 4x16, it was crucial for the plot that the plane would be close to landing, and starting the inflight movie would not make much sense right before landing. Do I need to reboot my HTC Desire periodically? Size of the universe This is really a follow up to the  question.  In the first answer to the question, Ted Bunn says:     However, the best available data seem   to indicate that the Universe is very   nearly spatially flat. This means   that, if we do live in a 3-sphere   Universe, the radius of the sphere is   very large, and the distance you'd   have to travel is much larger than the   size of the observable Universe.   My question is, can the available data be used to set a lower bound to the size of the Universe?   In other words, suppose the Universe was actually shaped like a 3 sphere. Then based on our best data, what would the "radius" of that sphere be? How much larger is that than the observable universe? How can we differentiate between change and progress in the area of history and natural sciences? It would be a very useful idea to be able to import PEAR projects that somebody maintains to their careers.stackoverflow.com profile. Most of what is required could be gleaned from the user specific rss profile URL; this takes the form of {username}.rss Anime: boy transforms into white+orange being after a terrorist attack