This again is another strange decision on Sauron's part, we know from Grishnakh and the fact Legolas killed a fell beast that there is at least one Nazgul on the eastern side of the Anduin, possibly more. Now in both Saruman and Sauron's case they know that a halfling currently holds the one ring, so they naturally think Merry or Pippin has it, as their the only halflings the Uruk-hai, northerners and possibly Mordor orcs come across at Amon Hen.  Now from my personal point of view it is likely Sauron learnt from the orcs on the eastern bank of the Anduin or merely guessing (we know he finds Saruman easy to predict) that Saruman has sent his own band of merry Uruk-hai to capture and deliver the hobbits to Isengard, so himself sends Grishnakh and maybe a few other Mordorians he make sure Ugluk actually takes the hobbits east. Grishnakh himself learns that Ugluk represents the white hand and out numbers him by a lot so Grishnakh then slumps off for a bit and returns with 40 Mordorians with him.  Now why i find this so strange is down to the fact Sauron risks letting a rival having the ring (from their view, we know Frodo in fact has the ring) by sending an orc messenger who is heavily outgunned, even though he has at least one nazgul on the eastern bank of the Anduin ( personally i think there is more than one waiting). Now the main argument against myself is that Grishnakh reveals the winged Nazgul of forbidden in showing themselves across the Anduin, but we know they could cross in secret and use horses instead of the giant fellbeast.  So why does Sauron send a lackey instead of an actual power to get the ring?
In the movies, the pack of Uruk-Hai capture Merry and Pippin, and are bringing them back to Saruman as quickly as possible.  Why didn't they use Wargs to carry the Hobbits instead of packing them on their backs?    Or, better yet, why didn't the Nazgul fly down and take them on their Fell Beasts?
Is there a rational number between any two irrationals? Suppose $i_1$ and $i_2$ are distinct irrational numbers with $i_1 &lt; i_2$.  Is it necessarily the case that there is a rational number $r$ in the interval $[i_1, i_2]$?  How would you construct such a rational number?  [I posted this only so that the useful answers at  could be merged here before that question was deleted.] How were hobbits created? How were hobbits created? I can't find any reference in The Silmarillion about this. Are they just men who have shrunken over generations or what? Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange sites do I post on? There seems to be more than a few computer science/programming Stack Exchange networks (is that the correct term?). Stack Overflow, being the first, has by far the most users, questions, and answers.  What is the reasoning for creating the others, and are there clear guidelines for which kinds of questions should be posted? I can see a large amount of potential overflow, many cases of people not getting a good answer to their question, because the person who has the answer isn't browsing that particular network at the moment.  I understand that they were probably created for organizational purposes, but wouldn't it almost make more sense to just have them as categories under Stack Overflow, keep them separated but still connected, instead of making people have to create multiple 'account's, one for each network?  I am sure there was a very good reason to break them up, but as someone that is new to SE, it can be somewhat intimidating to decide which one to post in to ensure you get a good answer. For example, if I am a computer science student, my first instinct might to be to post in the computer science network, until I see that it literally has 1% of the users as the Stack Overflow network, which still seems to be for programming/computer science related questions.  So my second instinct would then to be to post it into the Stack&nbsp;Overflow site on the basis that I have a significantly higher chance of my question being seen and getting a good answer. Then I notice that there is also a 'programmers' network, and I don't even begin to know where that fits in. I, and I am assuming most people, will probably just post on Stack&nbsp;Overflow to be safe.  My question is, other than the short little description blurb of each one, is there a clear cut set of guidelines which what each network is intended for, what kinds of questions should go to each one, and is anything being done to encourage people to post in these newer, smaller (more specialized?) networks as opposed to just posting in big daddy Stack Overflow?  Now again, this is for computer science/programming/"why isn't this code doing what I want?" related questions, I am not saying that if I had a question about Linux or WordPress or something I would have the same confusion. Is $G^{(X, Y)} = (G^X)^Y?$ ($A^B$ just means that $B$ is mapped to $A$) Is Borden's true identity real, or another ruse? Towards the end of , it's revealed that Borden accomplishes his Transported Man trick by using his twin brother, Fallon, as a double. It then becomes clear that he has been doing this in his personal life as well as on stage - each brother leads 'half a life', sometimes appearing as Borden and sometimes as Fallon. This is how he completes the illusion: one Borden goes into the first door, the other Borden emerges from the second door a moment later. Angier doesn't know how Borden does the trick, and doesn't believe Borden uses a double despite being told as much by Cutter. He follows what he believes to be a clue in Borden's notebook and travels to Colorado to meet Nikola Tesla, who Angier believes can build a machine that can help him perform the trick. Angier believes that Tesla built a similar machine for Borden. However, the final pages of the notebook reveal that Tesla was merely a red herring, designed to get Angier out of Borden's way for a long time. Tesla, it turns out, had never built such a machine before. At this point, Tesla agrees to build Angier's machine anyway. Instead of building a machine that transports matter, he builds one that duplicates it. Angier uses this machine in his act, but in order to avoid having to deal with multiple clones (the &quot;prestige materials&quot;), one of them must die as part of the act. This all makes sense, so far, but I find it hard to believe that Borden's use of the word 'Tesla' as the key to his cipher is random. It's too coincidental that he sends Angier on a wild goose chase, but Angier returns with a working machine. A film that is otherwise so tightly plotted shouldn't rely on coincidence to move the narrative forward, so there must be something else going on. Is it possible that Borden cloned himself using Tesla's machine? Difference between $\mathbb C$ and $\mathbb R^2$ What are the basic differences between $\mathbb C$ and $\mathbb R^2$?  The points in these two sets are written as ordered pairs, I mean the structure looks similar to me. So what is the reason to denote these two sets differently? Are fractions with prime numerator and denominator dense? Why are all of my appliances becoming energized when ground wire is excluded? Sources missing in /etc/apt/sources.list, how do I get them back? What happens if a Rainbow Servant takes levels in Mystic Theurge? Let $t∈\Bbb N$ and let $x=6t+1, \:y=12t+1$ and $z=18t+1$. $x, y$ and $z$ are all primes and let $n=xyz$. Prove that  $a ^{n-1} \equiv 1 \pmod  n\;$ whenever $ a∈\Bbb Z$ and $\gcd(a,n) = 1$.  I have started using the Euler-Fermat Theorem since $\gcd(a,n)=1$. Giving $\phi (n)=(1296t^3) $ But unsure how to proceed? I find myself repeating a lot of:  mkdir longtitleproject cd longtitleproject   Is there a way of doing it in one line without repeating the directory name? I'm on bash here. I am able to locate files in a folder containing a specific text string using this command:  grep -lir 'string' ~/directory/*   How do I move the files that appear in the above result to another location? How can I "group by" and sum a column in excel? I'm trying to figure out how to "group by" values in an Excel spreadsheet.  Given the following example (this is an inventory sheet I use at my restaurant:)    At the far right of the spreadsheet there is a column named Cost of Goods Sold.  I would like to be able to come up with a total COGS figure for each Category.  Is this possible in excel? Moreover, I'd like to do it in a separate worksheet so that the first worksheet (what is pictured) isn't affected.  Any ideas?  Thanks! I can understand this requirement for the old PPC RISC systems and even for x86-64, but for the old tried-and-true x86? In this case, the stack needs to be aligned on 4 byte boundaries only. Yes, some of the MMX/SSE instructions require 16byte alignments, but if that is a requirement of the callee, then it should ensure the alignments are correct. Why burden every caller with this extra requirement? This can actually cause some drops in performance because every call-site must manage this requirement. Am I missing something? Update: After some more investigation into this and some consultation with some internal colleagues, I have some theories about this:  Consistency between the PPC, x86, and x64 version of the OS It seems that the GCC codegen now consistently does a sub esp,xxx and then &quot;mov&quot;s the data onto the stack rather than simply doing a &quot;push&quot; instruction. This could actually be faster on some hardware. While this does complicate the call sites a little, there is very little extra overhead when using the default &quot;cdecl&quot; convention where the caller cleans up the stack.  The issue I have with the last item, is that for calling conventions that rely on the callee cleaning the stack, the above requirements really &quot;uglifies&quot; the codegen. For instance, what some compiler decided to implement a faster register-based calling style for its own internal use (ie any code that isn't intended to be called from other languages or sources)? This stack-alignment thing could negate some of the performance gains achieved by passing some parameters in registers. Update: So far the only real answers have been consistency, but to me that's a bit too easy of an answer. I have well over 20 years experience with the x86 architecture and if consistency, not performance, or something else concrete, is really the reason then I respectfully suggest that is a bit naive for the developers to require it. They're ignoring nearly three decades of tools and support. Especially if they're expecting tools vendors to quickly and easily adapt their tools for their platform (maybe not... it is Apple...) without having to jump through several seemingly unnecessary hoops. I'll give this topic another day or so then close it... Related I want to mount the device /dev/sda3 to the directory /foo/bar/baz. After mounting the directory should have the uid of user johndoe. So I did:  sudo -u johndoe mkdir /foo/bar/baz stat -c %U /foo/bar/baz johndoe   and added the following line to my /etc/fstab:  /dev/sda3 /foo/bar/baz ext4 noexec,noatime,auto,owner,nodev,nosuid,user 0 1   When I do now sudo -u johndoe mount /dev/sda3 the command stat -c %U /foo/bar/baz results in root rather than johndoe. What is the best way to mount this ext4-filesystem with uid johndoe set? Text highlighting in revisions is wrong For example, when watching revision 2 in  in the side-by-side mode, word "answer" marked as deleted on the left hand side and as added again on the right hand side:        If we switch to the side-by-side markdown mode no "answer" word is highlighted at all (correctly): Entire function $f$ such that $|f(z)| ≤ K |z|^3$ for $|z|\ge1$ and $f(z) = f(iz)$ for every $z∈C$ Let $f(z)$ be an entire function such that for some constant $K$ , $|f(z)| ≤ K$ $|z|^3&lt;$ for $|z|\ge1$ and $f(z) = f(iz)$ $∀z∈C$ , then which of the following are correct ?  (A)$ f(z) = Kz^3$ $∀ z∈\Bbb{C}$ (B) $f(z)$ is a constant function (C) $f(z)$ is quadratic function (D) No such $f$ exists   My attempt : I can deduce that since $f(z) = f(iz)$ and since $i^4=1 \implies f$ must involve only fourth powers of $z$ . Hence $f(z)=a_1z^4+b_1z^8+c_1z^{16}+ \cdots $-------(1)  Also for $|z| \ge 1 $: let C.   Then $|g(z)| = |f(z)|/|z^3| \le k$ => By the Cauchy estimate theorem we can prove that :  $f(z)/z^3$ is a constant function $= c $   $\implies f(z)=cz^3$ for $|z| &gt; 1$     ...........(2)  From (1) and (2) ; we get  there does not exist a function like this ?  My textbook answer says it's a constant function ? How do I modify the options for the power button? When I press the power button a dialog opens, but I want to shutdown the system without receiving "Do you really really want to shutdown?". How can I choose a direct shutdown action on a pressed power button?   I had the same problem with the 11.04 version, but I don't remember the solution and yesterday I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10. I'm trying some things with my shell. This includes the following command:  kill $$  My expectation was that the shell would log me out and terminate itself. But instead the bash persists without change.   Any idea why?  I ran this command on different environments (archlinux, debian). The behavior was always the same.