I've been brought up believing that most of the words that have suffix with '-ize' or '-ized' is the American English form and the British English forms use (most of the time) '-ise' or '-ised' as the equivalent.   Two questions:  1) What is the rule, if any, around exception cases, i.e. choice of one or the other in a single form (dialect?) of English?  2) I have read recently, on Wikipedia admittedly, that the etymology of these terms is such that the correct form anyway, for all English from Greek roots, is '-ized' using the 'z'. This contradicts what I see, and what I've been brought up to know. But is that correct - it was from this site:    and the Wikipedia page.  I am not saying it is wrong, but I wanted to verify if this is the case...as I say, it runs contrary to what I know, but came across it by chance and it is a  very difficult habit to get out of. I don't want to do it (as a British person, using '-ise' all the time) to the American English version, when actually it would be wrong.  On a more pragmatic matter, I wonder if doing this is a bad idea anyway in the UK, since most people are told the 's' version is correct.  Finally, etymologically, what is the reason for this shift across, whatever the reason is? And is it something that is 'wrong' or more 'the development of language over time'.   I don't understand why America would revert to 'z' after the development of English in Britain towards 's', given that Greek is the origin. I understood British people discovered America and brought British English over there. Unless, and probably quite likely, I haven't got a clue re the history between the two nations (and this is not meant to offend, I just have a confused understanding - sorry if it does).
What is with words that have forms that end both in -zation and -sation, such as localization and localisation?  Many spell checkers recommend -zation.
Which expressions can be used to close an email? At the end of written communication like emails and letters, it is customary to use a closing . Which formal and informal expressions can be used to end emails? Sometimes when I'm making a sauce or soup that needs to be a bit spicy, I have no troubles spicing how I want to.  But if the dinner party is a bit late, or I made the sauce in advance to really draw out all the flavors of the spices, vegetables and meat, sometimes I end up with a way too spicy/hot dish.  You can always pour a bit water and try to dilute it a bit, but that also takes away all of the good flavor. So is there some trick that I'm missing I can use, when this happens to me (other than being more careful or using the spices later)? What is the fastest way to convert float to int on x86 What is the fastest way you know to convert a floating-point number to an int on an x86 CPU.  Preferrably in C or assembly (that can be in-lined in C) for any combination of the following:   32/64/80-bit float -> 32/64-bit integer   I'm looking for some technique that is faster than to just let the compiler do it. Mac asking for password for some files when deleting This happens not for all files. When I move or delete some of the files on my external drive Finder will ask for password. Is it due to permission set on these files ? Can I use something like Sudo when running Finder to prevent these pop ups ? The reason I'm asking is that sometimes I leave the mac running to move some files from one disk to another, just to find it on the password prompt a few hours later. Thank you. How to download and use any other kernel than the one which is installed by default Simple series convergence/divergence: $\sum_{k=1}^{\infty}\frac{2^{k}k!}{k^{k}}$ What is the recommended way to empty a SSD? I've just received my new SSD since the old one died. This Intel 320 SSD supports TRIM. For testing purposes, my dealer put Windows on it, but I want to get rid of this and install Kubuntu on it.  It does not have to be a "secure wipe", I just need the empty the disk in the most healthy way. I believe that dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda just fills the blocks with zeroes and thereby taking another write (correct me if I'm wrong).  I've seen the answer , but it looks like it's suited for clearing empty blocks, not wiping the disk.  hdparm seems to be the program to do it, but I'm not sure if it clears the disk OR cleans empty blocks. From its manual page:     --trim-sector-ranges           For  Solid State Drives (SSDs).  EXCEPTIONALLY DANGEROUS. DO NOT           USE THIS OPTION!!  Tells the drive firmware to discard  unneeded           data  sectors,  destroying  any  data that may have been present           within them.  This makes those sectors available  for  immediate           use  by  the firmware's garbage collection mechanism, to improve           scheduling for wear-leveling of the flash  media.   This  option           expects  one  or  more  sector range pairs immediately after the           option: an LBA starting address, a colon, and  a  sector  count,           with no intervening spaces.  EXCEPTIONALLY DANGEROUS. DO NOT USE           THIS OPTION!!              E.g.  hdparm --trim-sector-ranges 1000:4 7894:16 /dev/sdz   How can I make all blocks appear as empty using TRIM? Subsetting a 2D numpy array Isn't every subset of a compact space compact? Let $\mathfrak{C}$ be an open cover of a topological compact space $X$, and let $\mathfrak{B}\subseteq \mathfrak{C}$ be its finite subcover. Then every subset of $X$ also has the same cover and subcover! Shouldn't every such subset also be compact then?  Motivation: I read somewhere that every closed subset of a compact space is compact. I wonder why it shouldn't be the case for every subset of $X$, rather than just the closed ones. Can we opt for fast track service after the refusal? Last Saturday, I got a refusal from BHC due to lack of funds and my reasons to come back to India. I am planning to visit my family who are settled in the UK. I am married and planning to visit my family along with my husband. My father is sponsoring our whole trip. But we got a refusal as we didn't show much funds in our account. We thought that if my father is sponsoring, we should show his documents only. But now I have applied again with a fast track service. Will BHC will consider it under the fast track process? This time I have cleared all their doubts which they mentioned in the refusal letter. Convert all text from uppercase to lowercase and vice versa? Convert list of ints to one number? What does my internet provider know about my online activities? What does my internet service provider know about my online activites in these cases?   plain server (www, ftp, whatever) connection and provider's DNS secured (e.g. TLS) server connection and provider's DNS plain server (www, ftp, whatever) connection and an non-provider non-logging DNS secured (e.g. TLS) server (www, ftp, whatever) connection and non-provider non-logging DNS   In case 4) does my provider know anything more about my online behaviour than "IP w.x.y.z was assigned to Foo Bar between connect-time and disconnect-time" (i.e. only the duration my router was connected)?  What traffic does need to go through the provider's infrastructure to make my connection work at all? In case, if I get a multiple-entry Schengen visa in one of the embassies in Ukraine, Kyiv - should my first trip be to the country which issued the visa?  Any there any requirements of this sort? Does this condition vary depending on embassy which issued the visa?  What are the possible consequences on not visiting that country first? Does it somehow depend on country where the embassy is (i.e. non-Schengen and not EU members)? Distribution of orbital velocities in a disk galaxy for N-body simulation? I'd like to write an N-body simulation in which I collide two disk galaxies. To give you an idea of the accuracy I'm trying to achieve, I'm aiming to make this my screensaver at 30fps on my work desktop. Think Euler's method, large epsilons in denominators to prevent blow up, all that lazy stuff.   One place I don't want to be lazy, however, is in the initial construction of the galaxies I'm trying to collide. I want to design a galaxy that will at least sort of hold together by its own gravity until it smash it into another one.   How might I go about selecting the orbital velocities for each of the bodies composing the galaxy? Assume there is a public-key encryption scheme $(KeyGen, Enc, Dec)$ with perfect correctness (i.e., for all messages M and valid key-pairs (PK,SK), we have $Dec_{SK}(Enc_{PK}(M))=M$).  Will there always be a function $A$ such that for all messages M and valid public-keys PK, $A_{PK}(Enc_{PK}(M))=M$?  In other words, can a computationally unbounded adversary decrypt the message, having only the public key? What is scientific mind? How can you define scientific mind? What i think , it is a bend of mind that can be developed by any person(also one not related to field of science).This mind is fulfilled with abilities to observe clearly and sceptical about what he sees.It means the person will be keen to dig out truth and did not reaches to a conclusion easily. He utilizes facts enhance them with logical reasoning and fills the gap with their imagination.  Is there any disadvantage or any kind of limitation with scientific mind? Symmetric powers of modules Double line spacing I would like to typeset a draft of my document with double linespacing so that my collaborators have space to write in their edits (with a pen).  How do I do it? Trying to understand what is a p value I am trying to understand what a p value is and what is its importance in statistics, from this example.  For $50$ specimens of alloy steel the rock hardness scale measured an average of $62$ with standard deviation $8$ he manufacturer claims that the alloy has average strength of $64$ at significance of $0.01$ can you refute this?  Well I did this problem and saw no at this level you cant refute it , I use the null being that the hardness was $64$ and the alternate that the hardness was less then $64$. From the data we observe a $z=-1.7677$ but the chart is $z=-2.33$ and so we cant refute null at this level.  But now I want to understand what the p value would be ,  I thought it was that the p-value is the probability of getting the observed value of the test or a value with even more evidence against the null if the null is actually true. So using that I just look on the z chart, the probability of seeing Z greater then $1.7677$ is $0.0384$, so is that the p value?