Can a 'curse' or 'polymorph' transform any creature into a humanoid?    In Volo's Guide to Monsters, a note suggests a 'curse' can turn someone into another humanoid - the 2nd row of the Monstrous Origin table (p. 118) says:     You are the victim of a Curse or Polymorph spell.   Mr. Geddarm's book suggests that one could become a  playable (N)PC via either of these two source-spells. Note: Volothamp is portrayed as an unreliable source (guest writer 'Elminster Aumar' expands on this) / arguably not RAW.  Let us briefly explore each spell type below:    Bestow Curse (abridged):     At the GM’s option, you may choose an alternative curse effect, but it should be no more powerful than those described above. The GM has final say on such a curse’s effect.   This suggests Bestow Curse can do virtually anything, so long as it impacts the recipient less than the listed curse set. This leeway is explicitly subject to table rulings / under DM discretion.    Polymorph (abridged):     The new form can be any beast whose challenge rating is equal to or less than the target’s.   This should simply NOT work. Though one can argue that the  obviously applies to most beasts and most humanoids, 5e D&amp;D is unique in that humanoids are NOT viable / selectable end-forms with this 4th level spell (no other edition had this limitation-severity). Note: this DOES work with the more powerful  True Polymorph spell - especially if concentration is held for an hour. At 9th lvl, is not an abuse of RAW, RAI or RAF.  Let us assume that the author(s) of Volo's Guide meant True Polymorph / kept it simple &amp;/or elegant.    Can the Bestow Curse spell alter one's form?  Three possible interpretations:   Rule of Cool: Why not? This racial modification is far less grievous, arduous &amp;/or impactful than any of the other listed Cursed possibilities in the PhB (q.v. Basic Rules, pg. 218). Cursed race-change = 'modify your character's abilities &amp;/or innate magical powers appropriately'.  Against R.A.I.: A 3rd level spell ('Bestow Curse') CANNOT out-perform a 4th level spell ('Polymorph'). So deeply abusable! A variant human paladin gains long-range Darkvision, more strength - and easily  an entire orc tribe! Not a 'curse' at all, is it? Bestowing this 'curse' on a rabbit and making a pop-up elven ally is also right out of the question ('This curséd rabbit is our archer... and also does our cooking and cleaning! Poor thing.'). Some R.A.W. blending: Possibly give slight change in mass and appearance - and nothing else. Thus, the aforementioned vuman paladin would look a bit like an orc but be the same size-weight (NPC orc: 'Hm. You thin. Comrade orc, eat this sand-witch!'), yet not gain any magical or racial abilities. Logically this must NOT not work on rabbits... or Purple Worms... or anything that did not start as a living-breathing humanoid in the first place.   The main problem with this third ruling: some racial abilities are amazing curses (arguably the point of said spell &amp;/or Volo's RAW option). Example: Drow sunlight-blindness IS a curse - with bonus universal hatred for any UnderElf that isn't . Second example: a PC that looks, smells, sounds and walks as a zombie (no other disadvantages) is a fantastic curse - both story-wise and 5e D&amp;D thematically (especially if the PC goes to town unaware / cannot see his or her appearance).  Basic question / sum up: If 'Bestow Curse' spell transforms any creature into a humanoid of the caster's choosing (on failed save) - how does any self respecting DM keep power-balance &amp;/or player abuse-ability in RAW-check?
In Volo's Guide it is suggested that a curse could transform someone into a race of 'monstrous origin' (p. 118). Does this apply to the Bestow Curse spell specifically? Note: this is a  (my apologies).  In film / lore, such magic does , ,   - or even  transformative curses.  Points &amp; Concerns:   this is within guidelines for a 'reasonable' curse, i.e. less harm than the listed set Bestow Curse writeup encourages DM-homebrewing &amp;/or interpretation. Great role-play possibility / RAI (hence most myths, fairy tales, cartoons, legends, etc) this could be subject to abuse, temptation to bestow a 'curse' as a blessing / boon one could also change: age, size, weight &amp;/or gender (all great curse ideas... but RAW-legal?)   Summation:  What are the limits of the 3rd lvl / Necromatic Bestow Curse spell for transformation?
How do you solve a recurrence with a summation function inside: $t(n) = 1 + \sum\limits_{j=0}^{n-1} t(j)$ Show that  $$t(n) = 1 + \sum_{ j=0}^{n-1} t(j)$$  is the same as  $$t(n) = 2^n$$  Initial condition $t(0) = 1$ I am looking for a package to create bullet gauge graphs, but I couldn't find any.  A bullet graph looks like this:    and an ample description/specification can be found   It is available in Mathematica 9 ()  Is it possible create this kind of graphs in a easy way with TeX (like Matehmatica 9 or similar)? Bisecting K-means using Dynamic Time Warping I'm trying to cluster time series of different length and I came up to an idea to use DTW as a similarity measure, which seems to be adequate, but the thing is, I cannot use it with K-means, since it's hard to define centroids based on time series which can have different length/phase. So I was thinking about Hierarchical clustering, since it seems appropriate to combine with DTW, but it's not scalable. So my next thought is to try with bisecting k-means that seems scalable, since it is based on K-means step repetitions. My idea is next, by steps:   Take two signals as initial centroids (maybe two signals that have smallest similarity, calculated using DTW) Assign all signals to two initial centroids Repeat the procedure on the biggest cluster   In this way I could use DTW as distance measure, that could be useful since my data may be shifted, skewed, and avoid calculating centroids. At the end I could take one signal from each cluster that is the most similar with others in cluster (some kind of centroid/medioid).  What do you think about this approach and about the scalability? Shutdown button only logs out ubuntu 15.04 A matrix and its transpose have the same set of eigenvalues/other version: $A$ and $A^T$ have the same spectrum Let $ \sigma(A)$ be the set of all eigenvalues of $A$. Show that $ \sigma(A) = \sigma\left(A^T\right)$ where $A^T$ is the transpose matrix of $A$. I have a CSV file where one line looks like this:  Duration, user, lat-start, long-start, lat-end, long-end 298, Casual,38.9101,-77.0444,38.91554,-77.03818   Each row in the CSV has two points and I need to draw a line between those two points for each row.   How can I do this using QGIS 1.8.0?   I have tried using the delimited text file plug-in, but it just draws points and has no line option from what I can see. Can "whatever" be split into two words? I tend to write, "say whatever they want", but I'm always tempted to write "say what ever they want". Is it acceptable to split the word in this context? Given, $\{x_n\}$ and $\{y_n\}$ are two real valued sequences such that $\lim_{n\to\infty} (x_{n}^{3}-y_{n}^{3})=0 $ Then is it always true that $\lim_{n\to\infty} (x_n-y_n) =0 $ ? I tried by splitting $ (x_{n}^{3}-y_{n}^{3}) $, but that didn't help as $\lim_{n\to \infty} (x_{n}^{2}+x_{n}y_{n}+y_{n}^{2}) $ can be $0$ or non zero or doesn't exist. How to view the user's status? "Neither Michael nor Albert is correct" or "Neither Michael nor Albert are correct"? What is the correct sentence?  Neither Michael nor Albert is correct.   Neither Michael nor Albert are correct. Suppose you cut a five year old's hair, save it for 10 years, and then use it for a Polyjuice transformation. What age do you turn into: The toddler or the teenager? How do I upgrade to the unreleased version of Ubuntu for testing? What do the different colors mean in ls? What do the different colours in Ubuntu's ls command mean? For example, when I type the ls command in one of my folders, I get one of the files in light green, the other (which is a folder) in blue with green highlighting.   What do those colours mean, and there is any manual about all the colours? I uploaded a pre-print of an article on arXiv 1 year ago. The article was accepted in SCI journal and currently available online. However, I found a typo mistake in one equation and want to add more discussion related one figure (On researchgate I am receiving a lot of queries regarding that figure). Should i upload a new version of pre-print on arXiv? (How citations will work in this case? as arxiv version is more advanced compare to Journal version) OrI may upload a short document on arXiv as an errata/correction with extra discussion?Or I may address errata and discussion in online page of journal? Actually this journal allows the registered users to comment and start discussion related to published article. Getting below error message while issuing :  sudo apt-get update  Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial InRelease [95.8 kB] Ign:2 http://repo.mongodb.org/apt/debian wheezy/mongodb-org/3.2 InRelease                                                                                                             Ign:3 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable InRelease                                                                                                                          Hit:4 http://ppa.launchpad.net/canonical-x/vulkan/ubuntu xenial InRelease                                                                                                 Hit:5 http://repo.mongodb.org/apt/debian wheezy/mongodb-org/3.2 Release                                                                             Hit:6 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security InRelease                                                   Ign:7 http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb stable InRelease                                                      Hit:8 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates InRelease                                                    Ign:9 http://linux.dropbox.com/ubuntu wily InRelease                                            Hit:10 http://ppa.launchpad.net/numix/ppa/ubuntu xenial InRelease                               Get:12 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable Release [782 B]       Hit:13 http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb stable Release                   Ign:14 https://apt.dockerproject.org/repo ubuntu-wily InRelease           Hit:15 https://apt.dockerproject.org/repo ubuntu-wily Release             Get:16 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable Release.gpg [181 B]   Hit:17 http://linux.dropbox.com/ubuntu wily Release                                   Get:20 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable/main amd64 Packages [1,191 B] Fetched 98.0 kB in 0s (118 kB/s)                                  Reading package lists... Done N: Skipping acquire of configured file 'main/binary-i386/Packages' as repository 'http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable InRelease' doesn't support architecture 'i386'   This cuts across various releases of ubuntu Detecting an undefined object property What's the best way of checking if an object property in JavaScript is undefined? $X$ is Hausdorff if and only if the diagonal of $X\times X$ is closed Let $X$ be a topological space. The diagonal of $X \times X$ is the subset $$D = \{(x,x)\in X\times X\mid x \in X\}.$$   Show that $X$ is Hausdorff if and only if $D$ is closed in $X \times X$.   First, I tried to show that $X \times X \setminus D$ is open using the fact that $X \times X$ is Hausdorff (because $X$ is Hausdorff), but I couldn't find an open set that contains a point outside $D$ and is disjoint to it... How to create an Event Notification that runs a Job/procedure when mirroring state changes The question is $$\text{If }\, p, \ q\in \mathbb{N}, \;1-\frac12+\frac13-\frac14-\dotsb-\frac{1}{1318}+\frac{1}{1319}=\frac{p}{q}.\qquad \text{Prove that } 1979\mid p.$$ So my solution went like this:  $$S=1-\frac12+\frac13-\frac14-\dotsb-\frac{1}{1318}+\frac{1}{1319}\Rightarrow S=\sum_{k=1}^{1319}\frac{1}{k}-2\sum_{k=1}^{659}\frac{1}{2k}=\sum_{k=660}^{1319}\frac{1}{k}$$ Now this is equivalent to finding the sum of the roots of the equation $$\left(x-\frac{1}{660}\right)\left(x-\frac{1}{661}\right)\dots \left(x-\frac{1}{1319}\right)=0$$. Rewriting this equation, we get $(660x-1)(661x-1)\dotsc(1319x-1)=0$ (we can discard the $\displaystyle \frac{1319!}{659!}$ since $1979$ is a prime). Calculating the sum of the roots, we get the required value to be equal to $(1320+659)\times 330$ which is obviously divisible by $1979$ (again discarding the coeffecient of $x^{660}$).  Now my question is: Using the same method of converting the problem into finding the sum of roots of a polynomial, we get from the original equation something like this: $$(x-1)\left(x+\frac{1}{2}\right)\dots \left(x-\frac{1}{1319}\right)=0 \Rightarrow (x-1)(2x+1)\dotsc(1319x-1)=0$$ So, the sum of roots would be $-1+2-3+4-\dotsc+1318-1319=-660$ But this is not divisible by $1979$. Why does the former solution work while the latter doesn't? Is there a flaw in my reasoning? Note: I know that the question can be solved by some other methods. Please only explain my given doubts and don't instead give another solution  I realised my mistake after some hours of pondering over it. (In the 1st equation) To get the required sum I would need to take calculate $\displaystyle -\frac{\text{coeffecient of }x^{659}\,}{\text{coeffecient of }x^{660}}$. However what I've done is calculate this:  $\displaystyle -\frac{\text{ coeffecient of }x}{\text{coeffecient of }x^{660}}$ which is actually equal to $\text{sum of roots taken }659 \text{ at a time} $. It was just a coincidence that the value I calculated was divisible by $1979$. The correct way, indeed, would be through the link supplied How are strings passed in .NET?