I followed a guide to create a batch file so I can delay a program from starting up for a few seconds. (I didn't want to use a 3rd party tool)  The thing is I don't want to see that cmd window for X seconds until it launches that program. Any ideas?  Here is the code I am using within the .bat file:  @ECHO OFF TIMEOUT /t 3 &gt; nul START "" "C:\program.exe"
I'm looking for some way to run a batch file (.bat) without anything visible to the user (no window, no taskbar name, .etc..).  I don't want to use some program to do that, I'm looking for something cleaner. I've found  that uses VBScript, but I don't really like using VBS, either.
Automorphism of rational numbers Let $\mathbb Q$ be group of rational numbers under addition.  Then I want to find out the automorphism group of $\mathbb Q$. In a book it is given that Aut($\mathbb Q$) is isomorphic to $\mathbb Q^*$, the  multiplicative group of rational numbers. I stuck in this. Constructing a continuous function whose graph seems 'special' I've been reading through Zorich's "Analysis I" book recently, and I came across this nice little exercise.  Let $f: [0,1]\to \mathbb R$ be a continuous function such that $f(0)=f(1)$. Show that    for any $n\in \mathbb N$ there exists a horizontal closed interval of length $\frac 1n$ with endpoints on the graph of this function; if the number $\ell$ is not of the form $\frac 1n$ there exists a function of this form on whose graph one cannot inscribe a horizontal chord of length $\ell$.   The first part can be proven like this: Consider $g: [0,(n-1)/n] \to \mathbb R$ given by $g(x) = f(x) - f(x+1/n)$. Then   $$\sum_{k=0}^{n-1} g(k/n) = 0$$  and therefore either all of these points are zero or there exists both a point where $g$ is positive and a point where $g$ is negative. By continuity, there must then also be a point where $g = 0$. So we are done.  Now, the second statement seemed rather counterintuitive, and I have given it some time now, but don't see a counterexample for $\ell &lt; 1/2$.  (For $\ell &gt; 1/2$ the function $f(x) = \sin(2\pi x)$ will do.)  Can anyone help me out?  Cheers, How to scroll in a terminal using keyboard? How can I scroll in bash using only the keyboard? If it's not possible in bash, are there any other shells that support this? I want to install the latest Python tarball on Ubuntu, downloaded from .  Is this is a correct way to install?  ./configure make make install   If not, how do I do that? Tag scores update is supposed to happen at 03:00 UTC every day. Tag scores are updated by a scheduled job that is time consuming and often times out  (see for example the answers for  and ).  In the past month or two, the issue with not updating the scores has gotten much worse. Tag scores are now regularly not updated for 2-3 days in a row. The job fails more often than it runs which obviously lowers usability and appeal of tag badges (which are not awarded when the script fails) and scores to some extent.  I can also guess that if a job fails on consecutive days, it only makes it harder to make it work as it has more and more tags and answers to recount.  This issue happened in the past but not to the extent it's happening now.  Please do not close it as duplicate. I'm creating a separate post as I've been asked to do it by Adam Lear in a comment for the answer for the first of the linked questions. Other posts reporting this issue have accepted answers which makes them difficult to track for the SE team.  UPDATE  I've been writing down whether the scores were updated or not every day in April.  The results are:  Day      1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10  11  12  13  14  15   Updated  -   -   -   ✓   -   ✓  -   -   -   -   -   ✓   -   -   -   Day      16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  24  25  26  27  28  29  30 Updated  ✓   -   ✓   -   ✓   -   -   ✓  ✓   -   ✓  -   ✓   -   -   The update succeeded on 10 days, failed on 20. The situation got somewhat better in the second half of the month. Has something been done about it? Most accurate Map of Arda before Beleriand was lost I am making my own Lotr themed Risk game and I am having trouble finding a very accurate map of Arda before beleriand was lost. This map should include Valinor and Numenor as well.  The best I can find so far appears to be a map from David Day's "Tolkien Bestiary"  I hope this is not a bad question, I am new. I think the following is true:  If $q$ is coprime to $a$ then $a\mid (nq-1)$ for some $n\in\mathbb Z$.  I have started to first reducing $n\in\mathbb Z$ to $n\in\{1,\ldots,a-1\}$ and then considering all the cases $q = ka + j$ for $j=1,2,3,\ldots,a-1$. I stopped at $j=3$ and found that this is kinda messy. Does anyone have an elegant proof for this (maybe using some results from number theory)?  [Note: question has been generalized from prime $q\nmid a$ to $\,q$ coprime to $a$] Explicit construction of a finite field with $p^n$ elements How to create a cross-browser sub document with iframe or shadow dom? How can I avoid soft dull "spots" in my pictures? Recently, I've been doing a lot more photography, particularly with my 100-400mm telephoto and 16-35mm wide. I am skilled enough that I can capture the shot mostly as I want with just the camera gear, requiring minimal post processing. I'm a huge fan of ETTR now, so most of my shots are overexposed to support more shadow DR and improve the noise performance of my el-chepo 450D body.  I've noticed quite a bit lately during post processing in lightroom that my sky's or any other lighter areas of my shots tend have spots on them. They are soft and dull to one degree or another (seems to depend on the zoom factor), so probably something either on the sensor or the lens. I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly what they are, as I try to use my lens pen brush before any shoot, yet I still have them. I am having to make quite a few healing corrections post-process to get rid of them.  Is there an easy way to identify where the spots are on my lenses? Once identified, if a quick brush of the outer lens element with a lens pen (or soft camel hair brush) doesn't do the trick, does that mean the spots are on my sensor? Is it possible there is particulate inside the lens body (all of my gear is less than a year old outside of my 450D body, and its all Canon L-Series gear, so I would home that I don't already have detrimental particulates floating around inside my lenses messing up my shots. :|)  Here are a couple examples. The spots are harder to see on screen, and I first noticed them when I printed a few of my more recent shots. There are quite a few, and the shot the examples below were taken from, where the sky took up about 30% of the top edge of the photo, there were probably 10-12 different spots, some of them darker, many of them lighter. The darker ones are the ones that are very visible in prints, where as the softer ones are not as visible, but still apparent enough to ruin an expensive print. I have some questions with string theory:   Why is it that there is exactly 4 large spacetime dimensions while the rest remain small? It is a nonlocal QFT. How could that fit in GR? Limit $\frac{x^2y}{x^4+y^2}$ is found using polar coordinates but it is not supposed to exist. Consider the following 2-variable function:     $$f(x,y) = \frac{x^2y}{x^4+y^2}$$   I would like to find the limit of this function as $(x,y) \rightarrow (0,0)$.   I used polar coordinates instead of solving explicitly in $\mathbb R^2 $, and it went as the following:  $$ x = r \cos \theta, \qquad y = r\sin\theta $$   Hence,  $$\lim_{(x,y) \to (0,0)} \frac{x^2y}{x^4 + y^2} = \lim_{r \to 0}\frac{r^2\cos^2\theta(r\sin\theta)}{r^4\cos^4\theta + r^2\sin^2\theta}$$  This simplifies to,  $$ \lim_{r \to 0} \frac{r^3 \cos^2\theta\sin\theta}{r^2(r^2\cos^4\theta + \sin^2\theta)}$$  Simplifying $r^3/r^2$, we finally get;  $$\lim_{r \to 0} \frac{r (\cos^2\theta\sin\theta)}{r^2\cos^4\theta + \sin^2\theta}$$  Now from the above, we find that as $r \to 0$ the limit is $0$.   I wanted to verify this answer so I checked on Wolfram Alpha. Explicitly without changing to polar coordinates, it said that the limit does not exist at $(0,0)$ and rightly so. Then how is it that with polar coordinates, the limit exists and is $0$? Am I doing something wrong in this method?  Also, what should I do in this situation, and when should I NOT use polar coordinates to find limits of multi-variable functions? Did English ever have a word for 'yes' for negative questions? The Germans have doch and the French have si as a word that means "yes" in response to a negative question, such as:     Don't you want some ice-cream?   Yes [I do]!   In English, we only have yes (as far as I know) and further clarification is required in order to be unambiguous.  Did we ever have such a word in English and, if so, what happened to it? If not, given the French and Germanic influences on English, any idea why not? If this is a duplicate question, please point to the right way, but the similar questions I've found here haven't been sufficiently similar. Suppose I estimate the model $$Y=\alpha + \beta X + u$$  and find that $\beta&gt;0$. However, it turns out that $X=X_1+X_2$, and I suspect $\partial Y/\partial X_1 \ne \partial Y / \partial X_2$, and in particular, that $\partial Y/\partial X_1 &gt; \partial Y / \partial X_2$. So I estimate the model $$Y=\alpha + \beta_1 X_1 + \beta_2 X_2 +u$$and find significant evidence for $\beta_1,\beta_2&gt;0$. How can I then test whether $\beta_1&gt; \beta_2$? I considered running another regression $$Y=\alpha +\gamma(X_1 - X_2) + u$$ And testing whether $\gamma&gt;0$. Is this the best way?  Also, I need to generalize the answer to many variables, i.e. suppose we have $$Y=\alpha + \beta^1 X^1 + \beta ^2 X^2 + \dots + \beta^nX^n + u$$ where for each $j=1,\dots,n$, $X^j=X_1^j+X_2^j$, and I would like to test for each $j$ whether $\partial Y/\partial X_1^j \ne \partial Y / \partial X_2^j$.  By the way, I am primarily working in R. Prove $\left| \int_a^b f(t) dt \right| \leq \int_a^b \left| f(t) \right| dt$ I've been given a proof that shows the following:  If $f:[a,b]\to \mathbb C$ is a continuous function and $f(t)=u(t)+iv(t)$ then $$\left| \int_a^b f(t) dt \right| \leq \int_a^b \left| f(t) \right| dt$$ The proof begins by letting $\theta$ be the principle argument of the complex number $\int_a^b f(t)dt$ and there is one step in the proof I don't understand; can anyone explain to me why $$\int_a^b e^{-i\theta}f(t) dt=\Re\bigg(\int_a^be^{-i\theta}f(t)dt\bigg)$$  Would this not imply that the imaginary part of the left hand side is equal to $0$? I'm not sure why the LHS and RHS would be equal here. Why there is a $\frac{1}{2}$ in the distance formula $d=\frac{1}{2}at^2$? Difference between modelAttribute and commandName attributes in form tag in spring? Increase iPhone call history How can see call history in iPhone one month back, i also tried with tried party software but that is not perfect , is the any solution from apple? What does the Y capacitor in a SMPS do? How do I check if an array includes a value in JavaScript?