I get  Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account. See the Help Center to learn more.  on  on Meta.SO. As you can see, I am an active Stackexchange user, mostly on SO. I always try to contribute to the value of all Stackexchange sites. Of course I have read  and  about the automatic ban system. Improving my bad-voted questions on Meta.SO would not really help because downvotes were not because of the quality of the questions but because people were often/mostly disagreeing with my suggestion. I understand that this is automatic and my ban cannot be undone by request. So I want to request that the logic behind the autoban on Meta.SO to be changed because downvotes mostly never mean that the question is bad.
appears to have been question banned because of two unpopular Meta suggestions. (He says so in )  Look at the two contributions that appear to have gotten him banned. Like those of many others, they may not be of perfect quality, but they are not actively harmful to the site, either. As it stands, you can get question blocked on Meta simply for asking questions that aren't popular with the Meta crowd.  Why does the team insist on keeping the question ban active on Meta?  Why can't real problem users be dealt with through manual moderator action? Don't tell me it's a problem of scale; as far as I can see, actually toxic users are very rare on Meta.  People will frequently complain that Meta actively discourages the expression of unpopular viewpoints and suggestions. With the threat of question bans in place, I find those complaints difficult to refute. I hate that.
Why not use "which"? What to use then? Solve for $x$ in $6x^2-25x+12+\frac{25}{x}+\frac{6}{x^2}=0$ I simplified to get $6x^4-25x^3+12x^2+25x+6=0$  Or $6 (x^2+1)^2+25x(1-x^2)=0$  Then I substituted $z=x^2+1$, to get $6z^2+25\sqrt{(z-1)}(2-z)=0$  I can't find a way to proceed further. Experimental data for asymmetric Newton cradle Using a "successive impact model" (as if each ball were seperated from the other ones), I produced the following animations:    You can see any combination of balls with masses of 1 or 2 (left) or 1 and 4 (right).  Unfortunately, I do not have any Newton cradle to make some experiments, and I'd like to compare my results with observations. I contacted the author of , which is the most instructive one I found about asymmetric Newton cradle. In particular, he writes that the "OoO" configuration behaves as the "ooo" one, which is not what I simulate. But the author is not sure whether who is wrong because he did the experiments a long time ago.  I am especially interested in asymmetric Newton cradle with simultaneous impacts: left and right balls collinding at the same time.   Please let me know if you have any idea on where to find such experimental data.  Edit Just of few general remarks to avoid extending the comments.    Energy and momentum are conserved. However, they are sufficient to ensure uniqueness of the post-impact velocities only when there are 2 balls. The successive impact model precisely consists in propagating the impact ball after ball, and therefore leads to a unique solution (which conserves momentum and energy globally). From the waves point of view, changing the mass of a ball can be done by increasing the diameter, or the density (or a combination of both). This simple model cannot account for such subtleties of course, but maybe it does not matter when the balls are "small enough". Even if I think it's quite basic, following WetSavannaAnimalakaRodVance's comment, I am ready to hand out my Mathematica code to anybody who wants it. I'll check for good ways to share it. How can I escape white space in a bash loop list? I have a bash shell script that loops through all child directories (but not files) of a certain directory.  The problem is that some of the directory names contain spaces.    Here are the contents of my test directory:  $ls -F test Baltimore/  Cherry Hill/  Edison/  New York City/  Philadelphia/  cities.txt   And the code that loops through the directories:  for f in `find test/* -type d`; do   echo $f done   Here's the output:   test/Baltimore test/Cherry Hill test/Edison  test/New York City test/Philadelphia   Cherry Hill and New York City are treated as 2 or 3 separate entries.  I tried quoting the filenames, like so:  for f in `find test/* -type d | sed -e 's/^/\"/' | sed -e 's/$/\"/'`; do   echo $f done   but to no avail.  There's got to be a simple way to do this.    The answers below are great.  But to make this more complicated - I don't always want to use the directories listed in my test directory.  Sometimes I want to pass in the directory names as command-line parameters instead.  I took Charles' suggestion of setting the IFS and came up with the following:  dirlist="${@}" (   [[ -z "$dirlist" ]] &amp;&amp; dirlist=`find test -mindepth 1 -type d` &amp;&amp; IFS=$'\n'   for d in $dirlist; do     echo $d   done )   and this works just fine unless there are spaces in the command line arguments (even if those arguments are quoted).  For example, calling the script like this: test.sh "Cherry Hill" "New York City" produces the following output:   Cherry Hill New York City Lighter nuclei liberate energy when undergoing fusion, heavier nuclei when undergoing fission.  What is it about the nucleus of an Iron atom that makes it so stable?  Alternatively: Iron has the greatest nuclear binding energy - but why? I am wondering if my proof is correct? Thank you for whoever willing to take a look at it for me.     Proof $\liminf E_k \subset \limsup E_k $   If $\{E_k\}_{k=1}^\infty$ is a sequence of sets, we define \begin{align*} \limsup E_k &amp; = \bigcap_{j=1}^\infty\left(\bigcup_{k=j}^\infty E_k\right)\\ &amp;= \bigcap_{j=1}^\infty(E_j \cup E_{j+1} \cup \cdots)\\ &amp;= (E_1 \cup E_2 \cup \cdots) \cap (E_2 \cup E_3 \cup \cdots) \cap \cdots. \end{align*}  Therefore, $\limsup E_k$ consists of those points in $\mathbb{R}^n$ which belong to infinitely many $E_k$. \begin{align*} \liminf E_k &amp; = \bigcup_{j=1}^\infty\left(\bigcap_{k=j}^\infty E_k\right)\\ &amp;= \bigcup_{j=1}^\infty(E_j \cap E_{j+1} \cap \cdots)\\ &amp;= (E_1 \cap E_2 \cap \cdots) \cup (E_2 \cap E_3 \cap \cdots) \cup \cdots. \end{align*} Therefore, $\liminf E_k$ consists of those points in $\mathbb{R}^n$ which belong to all $E_k$ for $k \geq k_0$.  Now consider $x \in \liminf E_k$, then $x \in E_1 \cap E_2 \cap \cdots$, or $x \in E_2 \cap E_3 \cap \cdots$ and so on, that is to say, $x \in E_{k_0} \cup E_{k_0+1} \cup \dots$ for some $k_0$. More specifically, $x \in E_k \forall k \geq k_0$. Therefore, $x \in (E_1 \cup E_2 \cup \cdots) \cap (E_2 \cup E_3 \cup \cdots) \cap \cdots$, so we showed $x \in \limsup E_k$. Prove that $\frac{R/ \ker \phi}{(\ker \phi + J)/ \ker \phi} \cong \frac{S}{\phi(J)}$ Let $\phi: R \to S$ be a surjective homomorphism. Prove that $\frac{R/ \ker \phi}{(\ker \phi + J)/ \ker \phi} \cong \frac{S}{\phi(J)}$ for an ideal $J$ of $R.$  Obviously, $S \cong R/ \ker \phi$(first isomorphism theorem) and $\phi(J)$ is an ideal of $S$, since $\phi$ is surjective( $\forall s \in \phi(J), s = \phi(j)$ for some $j \in J, \forall s' \in S, s' = \phi(r)$ for some $r \in R$, so $ss' = \phi(j)\phi(r) = \phi(jr) \in \phi(J)$, and $ss' = \phi(r)\phi(j) = \phi(rj) \in \phi(J)$ ).  However, I'm having trouble with going on. If it's important, I mean a unitary ring by a ring. Until I went to army, I (had been / used to be / was ) a introverted person. - which one is right? Until I went into the army, I (had been / used to be / was ) an introverted person. And after I I finished army service, I became more confident.   I think all of these are possible.  As for had been, I'm referring to the state of me being introverted before the accident that happened in the past. So, I think I can use had been.  And at the same time I feel I can use used to be and was.. If I don't want to emphasize the time gap between two accident, I feel I don't need to use past perfect. So I think this problem depends on how I'm going to say something.   which one is preferable? and what is the difference? Integral change that I don't understand If $f(t)$ is a Probability density function of a positive RV.  $\int_0^\infty\int_x^{\infty}f(t)dtdx$ Using fubini theorem should become $\int_0^\infty\int_0^{t}f(t)dxdt$  But why? Surely the answer is very simple but I don't see it. Fubini theorem allows the change of the order of integration. So it should become $\int_0^\infty\int_x^{\infty}f(t)dxdt$  but then I don't understand what meaning could have $\int_x^{\infty}dx$ Show that $3p^2=q^2$ implies $3|p$ and $3|q$ This is a problem from "" (specifically, exercise set 2 #9), which is one of my math texts. Please note that this isn't homework, but I would still appreciate hints rather than a complete answer.  The problem reads as follows:     If 3p2 = q2, where $p,q \in \mathbb{Z}$, show that 3 is a common divisor of p and q.   I am able to show that 3 divides q, simply by rearranging for p2 and showing that  $$p^2 \in \mathbb{Z} \Rightarrow q^2/3 \in \mathbb{Z} \Rightarrow 3|q$$  However, I'm not sure how to show that 3 divides p.    Edit:  Moron left a comment below in which I was prompted to apply the solution to this question as a proof of $\sqrt{3}$'s irrationality. Here's what I came up with...  [incorrect solution...]  ...is this correct?  Edit:  The correct solution is provided in the comments below by Bill Dubuque. "New Item" in Finder's right-click menu In Windows when you're in File Explorer, you can right-click anywhere and create a new item of various types (there's then a submenu option to select which type: text file, ZIP file, etc., just to name a few). In Finder there seems to be no such option. I imagine the expected workflow on Mac would be to open an Application and create a new file from within the application, then save it. But I sometimes prefer this alternative workflow of creating a blank file first, and then opening it as the entrypoint into the application.  Is there some way to configure Finder to add a right-click option to create new, empty files? View history of changes Possible Duplicate:          How do I view the changes made to a question, in the SO-style visual diff?  I'm sure I've seen this before, but the "history" button eludes me. Clicking "edit" gives me a drop down of the revisions, but not the actual diff.    Edit  This edit is a demonstration of the revision history functionality. Inequality vs. Inequation, Equation vs. Equality When talking about statements that two terms are mathematically (un-)equal (e.g., 1 = 1, 1 &lt; 2, or 1 != 2), what is the correct notion for such mathematical statements? Are there special cases w.r.t. "mixed" relations like x &lt;= y? Can some notions be used interchangeably?  It seems many online sources use "equation" and "inequality" but there is also a . Apart from personal posts in forums, I have not found any sources using "equality" in such a situation, yet. Systematically, I would think that "equation" and "inequation" would make more sense than "equation" and "inequality", but not everything (probably very few things) in natural languages have developed according to a purely logical system.  Note that this question is more general than  for that it particularly asks for the relation between the notion for equations and the one for inequalities. Equations are not part of the existing question at all. How can I get the current working directory? I want to have a script that takes the current working directory to a variable. The section that needs the directory is like this dir = pwd. It just prints pwd how do I get the current working directory into a variable? Supremum of a Continuous Function is Continuous Thousands of .log files in Exchange 2007 Server folder I'm a bit of an Exchange admin noob so I don't know if this is normal, but on our Exchange 2007 server under C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Mailbox\First Storage Group\ there are 30,000 1MB .log files.  I don't know if those should be there or not, but they keep multiplying like little jackrabbits.  I've so far resisted deleting them as I'm sure something would break, but it's come to the point now where our 80GB disk is completely full up and Exchange has stopped receiving messages.  My best guess is that these are transaction logs and would be useful in rebuilding the database should something go awry, but 30GB of transaction logging seems a bit excessive.  Is there a way to limit it or is that even a good idea?  And of course did I completely miss the point? Attempting to create a tag wiki when a user has hit the suggested edit limit should alert the user that no more edits can be suggested at this time I ran into an issue on Gaming.SE where I attempted to create a tag wiki and wiki excerpt for a tag which did not have one already while I already have the maximum of five suggested edits in the queue.  Navigating to the tag page for the  provides a link to  for this tag. This link redirects to the  for this tag, without telling me that I can't submit an edit because I've reached the maximum number of suggested edits. Instead of silently redirecting, the page should alert me that I can't suggest any more edits until my suggestions are reviewed. Re-mounting an un-mounted USB stick Is there a way to mount back a USB stick that is once ejected, without physically detaching it and then plugging it in?  It was a live-usb of Linux Mint 14 in it, if it helps. It seems that through various related questions here, there is consensus that the "95%" part of what we call a "95% confidence interval" refers to the fact that if we were to exactly replicate our sampling and CI-computation procedures  many times, 95% of thusly computed CIs would contain the population mean. It also seems to be the consensus that this definition does not permit one to conclude from a single 95%CI that there is a 95% chance that the mean falls somewhere within the CI. However, I don't understand how the former doesn't imply the latter insofar as, having imagined many CIs 95% of which contain the population mean, shouldn't our uncertainty (with regards to whether our actually-computed CI contains the population mean or not) force us to use the base-rate of the imagined cases (95%) as our estimate of the probability that our actual case contains the CI?   I've seen posts argue along the lines of "the actually-computed CI either contains the population mean or it doesn't, so its probability is either 1 or 0", but this seems to imply a strange definition of probability that is dependent on unknown states (i.e. a friend flips fair coin, hides the result, and I am disallowed from saying there is a 50% chance that it's heads).  Surely I'm wrong, but I don't see where my logic has gone awry... Making pen and ink corrections on a UK visa form?