Here's something that's always stumped me: If the USA was settled by people fleeing prosecution from the British, why don't we (in present day) speak with British accents? All things considered, the US is still a "young" country - this didn't happen all that long ago. Did the language change that fast? Are the accents we commonly associate with places like Boston or New York City still "remnants" of the British accent?
Why do people in different areas speak differently? Where do accents come from, how do they change and/or survive over time and why do we have them?   Reading recommendations on this topic would be welcome.
I would like to sell my Macbook Pro, but I want to make sure that there is no way to retrieve the deleted data from my SSD. Is there a way to completely delete all files on a hard drive so that even a forensic expert cannot recover anything? What should main() return in C and C++? What is the correct (most efficient) way to define the main() function in C and C++ — int main() or void main() — and why? And how about the arguments? If int main() then return 1 or return 0?  There are numerous duplicates of this question, including:       — For C++, with a very good answer indeed.     Related: 12.04.3 can start only after I press "resume" in rescue mode (every boot) - problem with Nvidia driver I've tried to install maybe ten Linux distros on my new PC, and every time I have problems with video drivers: black screen or visual artefacts.  I was able to install only Ubuntu 12.04.3 64-bit, but also with problems: black screen on startup (sometimes all was normal when I used Live mode before install, sometimes I was not able to load Live Mode - Ubuntu says that I have problems with video and gives me a choice with four elements, one of them "use safe graphics mode", but I even can't choose this - the system is frozen).   In tty I installed nvidia-current, but it didn't help me. Every boot I need to press ESC and enter rescue mode and just press Resume and after this the system boots normally. If I try to do a normal restart I get a black screen after Ubuntu logo again.  I tried switching nvidia driver in the options - I have version 319-updates and version 319 [Recommended], but neither works.  I have Palit GeForce GTX650, all updates. Solving a Linear Diophantine Equation A Linear Diophantine Equation is of the following form:                                                                                        $Ax+By+C=0$, where $x_1 \leq x \leq x_2$ and $y_1 \leq y \leq y_2$.  If the value of $A,B,C,x_1,x_2,y_1,y_2$ are given and $x_1 \leq x_2$ and $y_1 \leq y_2$, then how many solutions can be found? How can I find out the total number of solutions according to the above condition. What is the easiest way to swap occurrences of two strings in Vim? I've been told that I should use simple past in reported speech when the direct speech is in simple present such as I **am** the best   ~>   He said he **was** the best  but what happens for imperative mood direct speech     "Mom said dont trust strangers"   Or     "Mom said didn't trust strangers"   I think I should maintain the first form. But I'm not sure. And I'm not even sure this relates to the sentence mood. I need the best choice and a further explaination for this :) Where can I find sugar cane? I played several hours a started three different worlds in Minecraft, but I have never found any sugar canes. I read on Minecraft wiki to search near water but still no luck. Do you have more hints? Is it possible to re-create an environment that allow sugar canes to naturally grow? error when adding user to wheel group in CentOS 7 I am trying to grant sudo privileges to a user of a CentOS 7 devbox by typing gpasswd -a user wheel, but the attempt is failing.  What am I doing wrong?    Here is what I typed:    I discovered that the user is not in the wheel group as follows:    [user@localhost git]$ sudo yum install git [sudo] password for user:  Sorry, try again. [sudo] password for user:  Sorry, try again. [sudo] password for user:  user is not in the sudoers file.  This incident will be reported.   I then logged in as root and typed the following to add the user to the wheel group:    [user@localhost git]$ su - Password:  Last login: Thu Aug 20 17:11:31 PDT 2015 on pts/0 [root@localhost ~]# gpasswd -a user wheel Adding user user to group wheel [root@localhost ~]# exit logout   I finally tried to use the sudo command again but it failed as follows:    [user@localhost git]$ sudo yum install git [sudo] password for user:  user is not in the sudoers file.  This incident will be reported. [user@localhost git]$ Suppose that an entire function $f(z)$ satisfies $\left|f(z)\right|\leq k\left|z\right|^n$ for sufficiently large $\left|z\right|$, where $n\in\mathbb{Z^+}$ and $k&gt;0$ is constant. Show that $f$ is a polynomial of degree at most $n$. Monotonicity in argmin function I have the following equation $$f(a)=\text{argmin}_{t\in\mathbb{R}} \sum_{i=1}^n\frac{1}{2}(1-a)(b_i-t)^2+a| b_i-t |, a\in[0,1]$$  How does one prove that the function is monotone in a? Should I use 'was' or 'were' in this example?     I was always delighted when my brother or one of my sisters was/were asked to do them. How to pretty print XML from Java? I have a Java String that contains XML, with no line feeds or indentations. I would like to turn it into a String with nicely formatted XML. How do I do this?  String unformattedXml = "&lt;tag&gt;&lt;nested&gt;hello&lt;/nested&gt;&lt;/tag&gt;"; String formattedXml = new [UnknownClass]().format(unformattedXml);   Note: My input is a String. My output is a String.   (Basic) mock result:    &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt; &lt;root&gt;   &lt;tag&gt;     &lt;nested&gt;hello&lt;/nested&gt;   &lt;/tag&gt; &lt;/root&gt; How to determine the most likely reading frame of a DNA sequence? This question is from a past exam paper for an introductory bioinformatics module. I'm a computer scientist doing biology for the first time.  "A short bacterial gene has been sequenced, giving the following DNA sequence. Write out the 6 possible reading frames for this sequence and indicate which is the most likely protein translation of this sequence. Explain your reasoning for picking the given translation, and write all the translations in single letter amino acid code form.  5' - ttattcatccgccagcgccatgcgcgccat - 3'  "  I think I understand the 6 possible reading frames: three from the 5' end starting tta, tat and att; and three from the 3' end starting tac, acc and ccg.  I could also write out the translations for a given reading frame with a codon usage table. It's the most probable reading frame part I don't get. I thought perhaps I was looking for the longest open reading frame. I can only see one start codon (atg). What is the correct way to recognize the most probable reading frame?  I can't find this problem exactly on Biology Stack Exchange. I did find:     It made me wonder if I'm getting confused between "reading frame" and "open reading frame", this question only asks or the former.  Thanks! Direct observations of a black hole? I'm not very knowledgeable about physics generally, but know that nothing can escape a black hole's gravitational pull, not even light (making them nearly invisible?).   My question is: What has been obtained from direct observation of a black hole to prove their existence? Please note that I'm not questioning the existence of black holes, but am just curious as to how we have come to realize it. Is there any hint that some of the beings in Tolkien's lore may have survived into "our" times? In Tolkien's lore, they are many very old beings. Is there any indication that some or even one would have been truly immortal and survived into what we would call "our" history or Age? Galadriel, Cirdan, Ingwe, Bombadil, Ungoliant, or any Maia or Ainur? Anyone or anything? Seems there must be some kind of carry-over seeing as how "man" existed in this time. Image capture opens after iPhone is connected Everytime I connect my iPhone to my laptop, Image Capture opens. How to I stop it? I just need to use iTunes, not Image Capture. Why are objects at rest in motion through spacetime at the speed of light? I'm writing a web app using Twitter Bootstrap with PHP on server side. My app makes regular ajax requests via jQuery and i want to disable certain parts of the UI until the server completes processing and hands back the control to Client-Side.  I wonder what would be best practices for the same? How can I take a picture with my webcam in Windows 7? I know it existed as sort of a folder in Windows Explorer in at least Windows XP, but I just can't seem to find it in Windows 7...  How can I take a picture with my webcam in Windows 7 without using any 3rd party tools? Can blender use the Alpha channel of an image as transparency on a plane?