Looking for an old sci-fi short story where the side with the most advanced technology loses because of unexpected side effects of their high tech.  The story is told from the perspective of the losing side who claim that they lost because they kept inventing superior technology. For example, they create better FTL ships but after they are in service for a while they warp and become useless.
I am looking for help to point me out at a very old novel (likely from the '60s) about two empires at interstellar war. When it comes to starships, one is technologically very advanced, and the other has very low and inefficient technology.  The highly advanced empire has apparently strong chances to win the war, in particular considering a new technology they were developing. I remember the technology to work like this: consider the space as a flat surface, and on this surface, a disk around the spaceship. When the technology was turned on, this disk was stretched out, as made of rubber, so that it produced a cone, with the tip being the spaceship. The spaceship was therefore teleported 10 parsec away (if I remember correctly), but retained all the connections to the original position. If the spaceship moved, the cone moved as well. This allowed to move in position among enemy ships completely unnoticed, by stretching while afar, then moving in the proper position 10 parsecs away, then destretching.  Despite this technology, the empire lost the war because of delays. It's a perfect example of how having a disruptive technology does not guarantee to win against the competitors.  I am trying to find out the author and name of this novel, hopefully with the date of publication and in which journal/magazine.
What are good starting settings to store for exposure bracketing shots? I started experimenting with the Custom Functions (C1,C2,C3) on my Canon 7D and I decided a useful one to have may be setting it up for exposure bracketing. So it's a quick switch if I ever need it, as opposed to going through the menu to set it up.  I realize the settings would vastly depend on the situation, but do you have any suggestions for some good all round settings to program in as a starting point?    Examples: 1 stop vs 1 1/3 vs 2 stop brackets / ISO choices / Metering mode / shooting mode and so on. What role does "spontaneously symmetry breaking" played in the "Higgs Mechanism"? In talking about Higgs mechanism, the first part is always some introduction to the concept of spontaneously  symmetry breaking (SSB), some people saying that Higgs mechanism is the results of SSB of local gauge symmetry, some people says that we can formulate Higgs mechanism in a gauge invariant way, some people also says that we need only a non-zero vaccum expectation value... I am confused about this different or maybe same point of views.  In this post:  , the most highly voted answer, I still can't feel how SSB worked in Higgs mechanism. It seem that the validity of last part, the appearance of a mass term for $A$, is guaranteed if we have a non-zero equilibrium value $\phi_0$ to expand around. I do not see that the requirement that the phase of the field $\phi$ need to be fixed at some particular value to generate mass term. Thus it seems to me it is not true that SSB is really indispensable for Higgs mechanism.  To put it simply:  The spontanously breaking of what is attributed to Higgs mechanism?   local gauge symmetry global symmetry, since breaking of a "gauge symmetry" should not have any effect on physics. In higgs mechanism, the really broken symmetry is a global one. Mathematically, it is similar in looking as fixing a gauge, but one should not think it as a spontanously breakdown of local gauge symmetry. other.   Is SSB really indispensable for Higgs mechanism?    yes, Higgs mechanism is relied on the SSB of some symmetry (above question), the other approches of description eventually has spontanously broke some symmetry. No, the SSB is just one way to describe Higgs mechanism (or even not a complete way), what is really need is the non-zero vaccum expectation value, for example in the linked post the requirement for the mass term to occur is to have some non-zero expectation value of $\phi$ to expand around, we do not need the phase of the field to be fixed, thus the symmetry is not broken. Other.   some reference materials:    States that SSB of local gauge symmetry is impossible.  in the abstract states that:       gauge symmetries merely reflect a redundancy in the state description   and therefore the spontaneous breaking can not be an essential   ingredient. Indeed, as already shown by Higgs and Kibble, the   mechanism can be explained in terms of gauge invariant variables,   without invoking spontaneous symmetry breaking     In the introduction it says:      In particular, we emphasize that global U(1) phase rotation symmetry,   and not gauge symmetry, is spontaneously violated, and show that the   BCS wave function is, contrary to claims in the literature, fully   gauge invariant I recently updated my version of Lyx from 1.6.7 to 2.0.6. I would like to transfer my old keyboard shortcuts to this new version, but I am having difficulty because I was inconsistent with the way that I set them up:   Some were defined in the specified .bind file,  but others were modified in the lyx preferences menu.   I found that when importing my old .bind file into this updated version of lyx, it imported the keyboard shortcuts that were in the .bind file, but not those that I had added in the preferences menu.  Does anyone know if these keyboard shortcuts that were added via the preferences menu are stored in another .bind file somewhere in the lyx directory? Has anyone else successfully transferred keyboard shortcuts that had been implimented in the preferences menu? Explicit norm on $\mathcal{C}^0(\mathbb{R},\mathbb{R})$ Do you know an explicit norm on $\mathcal{C}^0(\mathbb{R},\mathbb{R})$? Using the axiom of choice, every vector space admits a norm but have you an explicit formula on  $\mathcal{C}^0(\mathbb{R},\mathbb{R})$?  A related question is: Can we proved that $\mathcal{C}^0(\mathbb{R},\mathbb{R})$ has a norm without the axiom of choice? Trouble understanding Landau & Lifshitz writing about Lagrangians and Galilean Relativity We have two inertial coordinate systems, $K'$ and $K$. $K$ is moving with infinitesimal velocity ${\epsilon}$ relative to $K'$. Using Galilean relativity we can transform this into $v'=v+{\epsilon}$. Here Lagrangian is only a function of speed $L=L(|v|^2)$. $L'$ may differ from $L$ only by a total derivative of function of coordinates and time, i.e. $L'=L+\frac{d}{dt}f(q,t)$  $"$We have $L'=L(|v|^2+2{v}·{\epsilon}+{\epsilon}^2)$. [1. ] Expanding this expression in powers of ${\epsilon}$ and neglecting terms above the first order, we obtain $L(|v'|^2)=L(|v|^2)+\frac{\partial{L}}{\partial{|v|^2}}2v·{\epsilon}$ [2.] The second term on the right of this equation is a total time derivative only if it is a linear function of the velocity $v$ $"$  I understand nothing in the quoted part. How do we get [2.]? Why does $\frac{\partial{L}}{\partial{|v|^2}}2v·{\epsilon}$ being a linear function of velocity imply that it's a total time derivative? Let $G = \mathbb{R} / \mathbb{Q}$. Is this an interesting group to study?  Is it isomorphic to any more natural mathematical objects? Quadratic Formula in Complex Variables This post is the continuation of another post related to a . Basically, at this point I'm interested in a robust way to discover the periodicity/seasonality of a generic time series affected by a lot of noise. From a developer point of view, I would like a simple interface such as:  unsigned int discover_period(vector&lt;double&gt; v);  Where v is the array containing the samples, and the return value is the period of the signal. The main point is that, again, I can't make any assumption regarding the analyzed signal. I already tried an approach based on the signal autocorrelation (detecting the peaks of a correlogram), but it's not robust as I would like. I'm looking to cite a number of web pages using bibtex and I was wondering if there was a specific template of the form @&lt;template name here&gt; for doing that. If you could use the following website as an example that would be great These should work by adding spaces or removing spaces from the beginning of the current line or every line between the start and end of a text selection (inclusive).  (edited this question to supplement ) How does the garage system work in GTA V? In previous versions of the OS in the security pane, you are provided an option of:    But in this version there is no option anywhere:    Is there a way that I can turn on anywhere? (via Terminal maybe?) What bike+equipment for a long daily urban commute? In the (distant) past I commuted 6 km (more than half an hour) each way, on a cheap bike with big knobbly tyres.  Soon I'll have a new commute: 18 km each way, daily. That's much further than I've done in the past, and I don't want it to take 2 hours each way; but  suggests that it's feasible:      Most people who reside 10 to 20 kilometres away will also find it quite easy to cycle to work, although the distance in the high end of this range will become a little more demanding.   If I can do it in 80 minutes or even less each way, that would be ideal. I'm 49 years old, 6 foot tall, and weigh 170lb, and I want to commute by bike because otherwise I'd be getting no exercise in my week at all.  I've never bought or ridden anything but a cheap bike.  What equipment should I buy then, to commute 11 miles each way through a city (Toronto) on  flat, paved roads, shared with cars:   Wheels? Tyres? Clipless pedals and shoes? Gears? Handlebars (e.g. flat or dropped)? Frame (size, shape, material)? Mud-guard/fender? My laptop's cable broke and sadly it seems like I need to buy a new power supply.  What I wonder is, I've found that universal power supplies are much cheaper than the official HP ones. Are they really worth it?  Another question: the original supply has these specs: 65W, 18.5V, 3.5A. However the universal supplies are more powerful (90W, 100W) and come in integer voltages (17V, 18V, 19V, etc). Are they compatible? Should I set them to 18V or 19V? Seatpost Overextension I've been riding with my very short seat post extended well past its maximum extension line for quite a while now. Looking at the seat post itself I don't see any signs of deformation or damage other than some very minor surface rust.   Could my bike frame have been damaged? Could the lever force have damaged the frame? I can post some pictures of the frame if needed. My bike is all aluminum. Jack probs with heaphones/earbuds So I already asked this question, but I couldn't respond to the answers. I can't hear out of the left ear of any headphones/earbuds because I have to push the jack towards the Earth to hear out of it. It seems you guys think the jack is the problem when I'm pretty sure it's the computer (my Acer laptop). I also forgot to mention the headphones (PX22 Turtle Beaches) work with both ears, but I have to plug in the usb extension cord in order for that to work (it's also the same cord that enables the mic on my headphones), plus I lost the cord. Thanks 4 hewps. "Try Ubuntu" option is not dislayed How many solutions for an equation with simple restrictions I'm working on an assignment in which I have to count the number of solutions for this particular equation: $$x_1+x_2+x_3+x_4=20$$for non negative integers with $x_1&lt;8 $ and $x_2&lt;6$   I'm aware that this kind of a task isn't that complicated, but I don't get combinatorics in general that well.  So I've tried two following approaches to get this done.  Firstly I tried to substitute the variable x:  $x_1+x_2+x_3+x_4=20 \Leftrightarrow y_1+y_2+y_3+y_4=34$  in which $y_1=x_1+8$ and $y_2=x_2+6$ (casue $x_1=y_1-8$ and $x_2=y_1-6$) Following this approach the total number of possible solutions would be  $${34+3 \choose 3} $$  But I'm not sure if its the right solution.  The second approach is to sum all of the possible values that $x_1$ and $x_2$ could possibly take, also $x_1=0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7$ and $x_2=0,1,2,3,4,5,6$ And then  count all the possibilities for each of the variables $${20 -x_1-x_2+1\choose 1}$$ and sum them together like this: $${21\choose 1}+{20\choose 1}+{19\choose 1}+{18\choose 1}+... $$ and so on...  I'm sure I'll get the correct number with this one, but I'm not feeling like summing all of this possibilities. There's got to be a better, more elegant way to deal with this.  My professor gave me a hint that I should do it using the complement. What happens if light/particles exceeded the speed of light for a particular medium? How do I change the default application for unknown file types? Ever since installing Bless Hex Editor, all unknown files and text files automatically open with Bless instead of gedit. How do I change it back? I don't want to have to manually associate files with gedit, I just want gedit to be the default if there's no other application set up to open the file.  Solution: modify ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list  [Default Applications]  - text/plain=bless.desktop - application/octet-stream=bless.desktop + application/octet-stream=gedit.desktop