Comic story about a group of explorers/tourists on another planet who are engulfed by a large semi-sentient life form (eg a slime mold?). They are able to communicate, quarrel etc. but cannot escape (at least for a while). Read this at least 40 years ago, any help appreciated...
I think this story dates from the 1950s, plus or minus a decade - I read it about 30-35 years ago in a (then) fairly old story collection. It involves explorers on a planet falling into a gelatinous object that dissolves most of their bodies except for their brains and nervous systems. About four of them fall in to the same creature, and they discover that by thinking about it they can grow limbs and other body parts. At first they try to fight each other, by growing arms so they can hit each other's brains - and one of them realises that growing a skull would be a good idea - but later they agree to grow legs and move the creature around co-operatively. I would love to identify this story.
How can I make a tool drop blocks with CanPlaceOn tag In Adventure mode, I'm trying to let a player get blocks that he can place later, is there a way to do it directly or do I have to change them in his inventory?  Situation: The player gets a tool that will allow him to clear a boulder blocking the road. Further down the path, he encounters a broken bridge, and I want him to use the blocks he gathered before to rebuild it.  At the moment, if I build the boulder with blocks having the CanPlaceOn tag, the tag disappear when the player destroys them and they go in its inventory. Recently I have updated my postgresql version. I have also upgraded pgAdmin from 3 to 4. But I was unable to load shapefile. I didn't find any plugin called shapefile loader. How can I get the shapefile loader plugin in pgAdmin 4? Is the "Final Release" a "Development Release"? Update  appear to have been updated recently (as of writing this the last update appears to have taken place on 3rd of June) to include the following statement:  The -d switch is necessary to upgrade from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS as upgrades have not yet been enabled and will only be enabled after the first point release of 20.04 LTS.  Also note that .  TLDR (as of 15 Aug 2020):   is the canonical tracking document for the first Focal Fossa point-release (20.04.1). It’s a live document. The Ubuntu release team will be updating it as we work on releasing 20.04.1. […] Upgrades from 18.04 to 20.04.1 are still disabled as we are working through a few upgrade blockers   Edit The answers (so far) do not answer the question. The question is pretty simple. Ubuntu.com points to a &quot;FinalRelease&quot;, which turns out to be a &quot;Development Release&quot;, see evidence below. I'm not asking how and when to upgrade. I'm pointing out what seems to me to be an apparent inconcistency (in semantics, linguistics, logic) in the way Ubuntu names or labels its releases. From an answer to the question I'd except someone to pick up and acknowledge this inconsistency. An answer could start with a &quot;Yes, ...&quot; or a &quot;No, ...&quot;, for starters. (Moreover, a good answer could distinguish between the release being in dev stage and/or the upgrade process (e.g. from LTS to LTS) being in dev stage, if appropriate.) This question, as I see it, is not a duplicate. Futher, I think it is a question which deserves a non-patronizing answer. Thanks.   indicates that today (23rd April 2020) the new Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is to be released.  See &quot;condensed screenshot&quot; here:  Indeed, it seems that that's what happened, see  and :  However, when following the instructions to upgrade (from 18.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS) found  and elsewhere (edit: actually , too!), even prior to the July point release, I'm a bit confused to see that the instruction is to use update-manager -d which also points to the &quot;Development Release&quot; (see screenshot below) rather than the &quot;FinalRelease&quot; (see screenshot and link above). Is the &quot;Final Release&quot; (which I'm after) the/a &quot;Development Release&quot;? Why isn't it called something like &quot;Production Release&quot; or &quot;Final Release&quot;? When will it no longer be referred to as &quot;Development Release&quot;? In July? I'm confused :( How come the PHP private class var is not private? What is the definition of how to count degrees of freedom? resulted, rather as by-product, the discussion on how to count degrees of freedom (DOF). I extend that question here:   Are necessary1 derivatives such as velocities counted as individual DOFs or together with the respective coordinate2? Should complex valued DOFs be counted twice as in "two real-valued DOFs" or once as in "one complex-valued DOF"? (I mean, when one does not want to specify this explicitly)   Please answer with some reference, unless it turns out this is actually a matter of taste rather than a strictly defined thing.    1) I mean those a value of which is required as an initial condition 2) I count fields in QFT as coordinates as well, while space-time-coordinates are parameters to me, if that matters. I know a field actually has $\infty$ (or rather, $2^\aleph$) DOFs itself, but let's say e.g. "one $\mathbb R^3$ continous DOF" in that case A topological space $X$ is said to be irreducible if it cannot be written as a union $X = A∪B$, where $A$ and $B$ are proper closed subspaces of $X$  I want to try the following:  Show:  $(i)$ That every set with the indiscrete topology is irreducible, and every infinite set with the finite complement topology is irreducible.  $(ii)$ That an irreducible Hausdorff space contains at most one point.  Can you give me any suggestions on how to try this? Is this valid for convergence? Does $\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \sqrt[n]{3} - 1$ converge or diverge?   Hints please  I have that $0 \le \sqrt[n]{3}  - 1 \le 1$  Does this help? Aristotle's Categories with academic commentary Using restroom on airplane while fasten seatbelt light is on? This question about  over on  made me wonder what a passenger is supposed to do when they urgently have to use the restroom while the fasten seat belt light is on. FAA regulations require passengers to obey the seat-belt sign, even if flight attendants do not.  I saw this happen on a flight where an older gentleman asked the flight attendant if he could use the restroom, and she said "not until the light is off". The flight had been free of turbulence for 15 minutes or so by this time, and the flight attendants were walking freely throughout the cabin, collecting post-meal trash, etc. The gentleman who asked to use the restroom appeared to be in quite some discomfort, and practically ran to the restroom when the light went off 10 minutes later.  So what is a passenger supposed to do when he isn't permitted to use the lavatory, when he has to go and can't wait? Just go in their seat? What is the relationship between UV image and material texture? I am struggling to understand perhaps a very simple concept in Blender. There are materials which might have some diffuse coloring and a texture image, and there are also UV maps with their own images. Both can be applied to meshes or faces, but it seems that if a face has UV map then the material's texture is ignored and an image for UV map is picked.   If so, what is the use for a texture in a material if it is replaced by UV map's image?   EDIT: I've added some images to clarify the issue I have.   Case 1: a basic plane with material which has a texture, and no UV map. Diffuse color is applied, but material's texture is not.   Case 2: like above, but with reduced intensity of texture.   Case 3: Added UVmap and added image to the UVmap. Now I have texture, but not the diffuse color, and if UVmap was a different image, it would be picked regardless of texture set in the material.   So if I have UVmap image, what is the material texture for? hard voting, soft voting in ensemble based methods I'm reading . Then I'm not able to figure out the difference between hard voting and soft voting in context to ensemble based methods.  I quote descriptions of them from the book. The first two images from the top are description for hard voting, and last one is for soft voting.        In my view hard voting is majority decision, but I don't understand soft voting and the reason why soft voting is better than hard voting. Would anyone teach me these? Open source computer algebra systems for general relativity I would like to use an open source computer algebra system (CAS) for research in general relativity. Kindly suggest a good choice between Ipython and Sage. I am more interested in the theoretical aspect rather than numerical computations. Failure to download extra data files - ttf-mscorefonts-installer This is an old problem that deserves a bugfix, but it's getting beyond a joke now and I can't seem to work around it.  I keep getting the dreaded failed To download extra data files error in relation to ttf-mscorefonts-installer:    Repeatedly asking it to try again doesn't help, additionally, repeatedly trying-  sudo rm -rf /var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial/* sudo apt-get --purge --reinstall install ttf-mscorefonts-installer   Isn't working either.  I just get at least one 404 error from one of the sourceforge links that stops it working-  Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree        Reading state information... Done 0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 20 not to upgrade. Need to get 0 B/29.5 kB of archives. After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used. Preconfiguring packages ... (Reading database ... 352049 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../ttf-mscorefonts-installer_3.4+nmu1ubuntu2_all.deb ... mscorefonts-eula license has already been accepted Unpacking ttf-mscorefonts-installer (3.4+nmu1ubuntu2) over (3.4+nmu1ubuntu2) ... Processing triggers for fontconfig (2.11.94-0ubuntu1.1) ... Processing triggers for update-notifier-common (3.168.2) ... ttf-mscorefonts-installer: processing... ttf-mscorefonts-installer: downloading http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/andale32.exe Get:1 http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/andale32.exe [198 kB] Fetched 198 kB in 0s (339 kB/s)                                                 W: Can't drop privileges for downloading as file '/var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial/andale32.exe' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied) ttf-mscorefonts-installer: downloading http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/arial32.exe Get:1 http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/arial32.exe [554 kB] Fetched 554 kB in 0s (575 kB/s)                                                 W: Can't drop privileges for downloading as file '/var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial/arial32.exe' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied) ttf-mscorefonts-installer: downloading http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/arialb32.exe Get:1 http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/arialb32.exe [168 kB] Fetched 168 kB in 0s (306 kB/s)                                                 W: Can't drop privileges for downloading as file '/var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial/arialb32.exe' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied) ttf-mscorefonts-installer: downloading http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/comic32.exe Err:1 http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/comic32.exe   404  Not Found W: Can't drop privileges for downloading as file '/var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial/comic32.exe' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied) E: Failed to fetch https://netix.dl.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the fonts/final/comic32.exe  404  Not Found  E: Download Failed Setting up ttf-mscorefonts-installer (3.4+nmu1ubuntu2) ...   The specific point at which it fails to download changed - it seems to be a sourceforge reliability problem, but this has now been going on weeks and results in annoying popups as above all the time.  How do we get this fixed and/or how can I work around it for now. How do I see my name in the panel in Gnome Shell? I have Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS and from installation, my name has not appeared in the panel. I have enabled it via dconf in org.gnome.desktop.privacy, but it has yet to appear even after a re-login and restart.  Can I receive some assistance into the cause of this and a solution?  This is where I would like it to appear: PHP: Static and non Static functions and Objects We know Euler formula:  $$ e^{ix}=\cos(x)+i\sin(x). $$  Does this formula work if we replace real number $x$ with complex number $z$? In SQL, what's the difference between count(column) and count(*)? Orthogonal basis for infinite-dimensional vector spaces How do I add a DNS server via resolv.conf? Is /etc/resolv.conf useless in  (Precise Pangolin)?  I see that the DNS server information is stored in  now. The nmcli command line tool can list that for you.  If I want to add one more  server, will adding it to /etc/resolv.conf by using the resolvconf package help? How do I combine the NBT tags from two separate commands? I have two commands I'd like to combine into one, but I'm not sure how to go about combining them. Is this possible?   Here are the commands. They work individually, I just can't seem to get them to work together:  /give @p jukebox 1 0 {CanPlaceOn:["minecraft:melon_block"]}     /give @p jukebox 1 0 {display:{Name:"Box"}}   Can you help me to add one of the commands to the other one?