I am using SQL Server 2008.  I am trying to leave number without rounding after data gets retrieved from .NET website.  For example, the number I get from the website is 10.7658234  I would like to leave the number as 10.76 instead of rounding it to 10.77.  Currently, the data type in SQL Server is numeric(11,2).  How do I go about doing it?  Thanks.
I'm trying to determine the best way to truncate or drop extra decimal places in SQL without rounding.  For example:  declare @value decimal(18,2)  set @value = 123.456   This will automatically round @value to be 123.46, which is good in most cases.  However, for this project, I don't need that.  Is there a simple way to truncate the decimals I don't need?  I know I can use the left() function and convert back to a decimal.  Are there any other ways?
Double vs. BigDecimal? Commutator subgroup and cyclic normal subgroup How long can you say "the late so and so"? When you refer to the deceased, you say "the late so and so." How long can you say that? Is JFK referred to as the late John F. Kennedy? How about Abraham Lincoln? I have this annoying problem in Gmail. Spammers are by-passing the Gmail spam filters and are so clever that I am not able to create a manual filter of my own to block them. They are sending me junk mails from e-mail IDs of the form:  Jewelskart@greatestjewels.in via watchstore.cleanmail.in  Shoppingkart@shoppers.in via watchstore.cleanmail.in   In general,  something@somethingelse.in via watchstore.cleanmail.in   Now, I cant set a filter for each and every mail as they are from different IDs. The common part is the via address which is watchstore.cleanmail.in. But when I try creating a filter with watchstore.cleanmail.in in From field, Gmail doesn't list these emails. In short, the filter is not able to detect via addresses.  Report Spam/Unsubscribe options aren't working.  How can I get rid of these annoying spammers? What to do when you discover a mistake in the archived copy of your PhD thesis? I've just defended my PhD in mathematics and started a postdoc. While working  on an improvement of one of the results of my thesis, I realized that there are several minor mistakes and a big bug in a proof that invalids a minor result in the thesis (about 3-4 pages out of 110). Unfortunately neither I nor my advisor or referees figured it out the mistake. Though the result is minor, it is announced in the introduction and the manuscript is on-line on an ArXiv-like server, so that I could publish a new version but not cancel the one on-line.   What is the best thing to do? Upload an errata? Upload a "revised" version of the thesis?  Publish a "revised version" of the thesis on my web-page?  Can this damage my future career, making me look not "reliable" as a researcher? Can I enter other Schengen countries with EU residence permit but without passport? I have some travel plans to go from Netherlands to France by car. I possess Dutch residence permit, but I am non-EU citizen. The problem is that I might need to submit my passport to get visa to another country I plan to go to later. So I have: residence permit and photocopy of my passport. Is it    legal to cross borders by car with this set of documents what are possible fines and other repercussions if police or other authorities ask for my documents in France or Belgium? Near the beginning of the definition of the amsmath environments aligned and gathered (and also mathtools' multlined) there's an explicit thin space \,. This often  has to be cancelled  with  \!, as has been observed  various  times:         I'd like to know why this explicit \, is there &ndash; what would go wrong without it?    From amsmath.dtx:  \newcommand{\start@aligned}[2]{%     \RIfM@\else         \nonmatherr@{\begin{\@currenvir}}%     \fi     \savecolumn@ % Assumption: called inside a group %    \end{macrocode} %    The \cs{null} here is to keep the \cs{,} glue from causing the %    invocation of the clause in \tex/'s built-in tag placement %    algorithm that can cause an equation to be shifted all the way over %    to the margin. %    \begin{macrocode}     \null\,% Are parallel calls to send/recv on the same socket valid? I have a .net client application which is connected to a remote database. Is it safe to keep a single connection open for the lifetime of the client (hours)? Does the answer hold if I have multiple (10 or 100) clients running? $e^{mx}$ in solving second order differential equations In a book I am reading on differential equations, the author writes about the solution to a homogenous, linear, second order differential equation with constant coefficients. The author says something like, "Let us suppose that the solution is of the form $y=e^{mx}$ " . After this the author introduces the characteristic equation of a differential equation of the form mentioned above, and proceeds to describe how to solve it w/ undetermined coefficients, variation of parameters, etc.   How did mathematicians first come up with this "assumption" that the solution was of the form $y=e^{mx}$? And, are there any other forms of solutions for these types of equations? How do I create an invisible character? I cannot remember how to create an invisible character in LaTeX, i.e. I want to put a space that has the width of a particular character, say `M'. I know there is a command for this, and this is a really dumb question, but my Google-fu has failed me. What is the purpose of the Character Table in style files? What is the reason to insert the code below at the beginning of a style file? For example, the code below can be found on lipsum.sty.   %% \CharacterTable %%  {Upper-case    \A\B\C\D\E\F\G\H\I\J\K\L\M\N\O\P\Q\R\S\T\U\V\W\X\Y\Z %%   Lower-case    \a\b\c\d\e\f\g\h\i\j\k\l\m\n\o\p\q\r\s\t\u\v\w\x\y\z %%   Digits        \0\1\2\3\4\5\6\7\8\9 %%   Exclamation   \!     Double quote  \"     Hash (number) \# %%   Dollar        \$     Percent       \%     Ampersand     \&amp; %%   Acute accent  \'     Left paren    \(     Right paren   \) %%   Asterisk      \*     Plus          \+     Comma         \, %%   Minus         \-     Point         \.     Solidus       \/ %%   Colon         \:     Semicolon     \;     Less than     \&lt; %%   Equals        \=     Greater than  \&gt;     Question mark \? %%   Commercial at \@     Left bracket  \[     Backslash     \\ %%   Right bracket \]     Circumflex    \^     Underscore    \_ %%   Grave accent  \`     Left brace    \{     Vertical bar  \| %%   Right brace   \}     Tilde         \~} %%   What is it for? Easy way to write contents of a Java InputStream to an OutputStream I was surprised to find today that I couldn't track down any simple way to write the contents of an InputStream to an OutputStream in Java. Obviously, the byte buffer code isn't difficult to write, but I suspect I'm just missing something which would make my life easier (and the code clearer).  So, given an InputStream in and an OutputStream out, is there a simpler way to write the following?  byte[] buffer = new byte[1024]; int len = in.read(buffer); while (len != -1) {     out.write(buffer, 0, len);     len = in.read(buffer); } HP laptop F1-12 keys inverted with Fn I recently bought an HP laptop. I'm pleased with it, save for one thing.  All the F1-12 keys are inverted. I mean the following:  All the F-keys have a symbol on it. Normally you would press Fn + your to use it. On this laptop, it's reversed. The symbol is what you get when you press the button normally and you have to press Fn + F-key to get the usual action.  So, if I want to refresh a webpage, instead of just F5, I have to do Fn + F5  I want to change this to regular behavior. Anybody know how I can do this?  Running Win7 Home premium, 64-bit. Cannot find Background Images feature to add in a photo in Blender 2.8  Where is it? Big-O proof showing that t(n) is O(1) Let t(n) = $\sqrt{n^2+100n} - n$  Show that $t(n)$ is $O(1).$  I tried solving this using the formal definition of O( ) but am not getting anywhere. Quite confused on how to tackle this question. Let $R$ be a Artinian commutative ring with $1 \neq 0$. If $I$ is prime, then $I$ is maximal. Prove: Let $R$ a Artinian commutative ring with $1 \neq 0$. If $I$ is prime, then $I$ is maximal.     I got stuck on this. I understand that every ideal is generated by finitely many elements. Here is my approach:  It's enough to prove the following implication: $$ R/I \ \text{is a domain} \quad \Rightarrow \quad R/I \ \text{is a field}$$ Then only finding an inverse is left. So let $x \in R$ in arbitrary. We have to find an inverse element of $x+I \in R/I$, that as an element y so that $x \cdot y \in I+1$. We denote $I = (x_1, x_2, \cdots, x_n)$.  Now I have to find y so that $xy -1 = r_1 x_1+ r_2 x_2 + \cdots + r_n x_n$. This is where I no more knew what to do.   Your advise will be appreciated. How to test for equality of means for proportions? And two-sided or one-sided? I have the following problem: two groups A and B.  The proportions of married and single are ($p_1$) and ($p_2$) respectively, and the standard deviations ($s_1$) and ($s_2$). The sample consists of  ($n_1$) A and  ($n_2$) B observations.  Now I want to test whether the proportions are equal. I use the following formula to compute the z-statistic:  z = $abs(p_1 - p_2) / \sqrt{ \frac{p_1(1-p_1)}{n_1} + \frac{p_2(1-p_2)}{n_2} }$  and test the hypothesis: h0: $p_1 \neq p_2$  An alternative approach I tried is to estimate the t-value based on the standard deviations (hence just comparing means), that is by the formula (assuming unequal variances):  t = $abs(p_1-p_2)/\sqrt{ s_1^2/n_1 + s_2^2/n_2 }$  My question are:    do you agree with my approach or; should it be two-sided or one-sided?   Thank you. What sequence of documents should I read to know "all of" TeX and then LaTeX? While working in a Java app, I recently needed to assemble a comma-delimited list of values to pass to another web service without knowing how many elements there would be in advance. The best I could come up with off the top of my head was something like this:  public String appendWithDelimiter( String original, String addition, String delimiter ) {     if ( original.equals( "" ) ) {         return addition;     } else {         return original + delimiter + addition;     } }  String parameterString = ""; if ( condition ) parameterString = appendWithDelimiter( parameterString, "elementName", "," ); if ( anotherCondition ) parameterString = appendWithDelimiter( parameterString, "anotherElementName", "," );   I realize this isn't particularly efficient, since there are strings being created all over the place, but I was going for clarity more than optimization.  In Ruby, I can do something like this instead, which feels much more elegant:  parameterArray = []; parameterArray &lt;&lt; "elementName" if condition; parameterArray &lt;&lt; "anotherElementName" if anotherCondition; parameterString = parameterArray.join(",");   But since Java lacks a join command, I couldn't figure out anything equivalent.  So, what's the best way to do this in Java?