Thank you for your patience over the last 15 weeks whilst we build this road   Can I replace the over by during or in and if I can, is it making any difference then?  The previous question in this regard didn't get a thorough explanation about over and during being used with a period of time. Some indicated when during are used with a period of time, it has connotation that thing happened intermittently, but in fact I can find many instances contradict this viewpoint, saying, wages have fallen by more than twenty percent during the past two months...and interesting thing is we have a analogous sentence in which over is used, the number of attacks on the capital had gone down over the past week...  My goal is to make the difference between them clearer rather than ambiguous results got in that post.
Microsoft has steadily improved its operating cash flows in the past three years. Microsoft has steadily improved its operating cash flows in the last three years. Microsoft has steadily improved its operating cash flows for the past three years. Microsoft has steadily improved its operating cash flows for the last three years. Microsoft has steadily improved its operating cash flows for the past three years. (&quot;for&quot; omitted) Microsoft has steadily improved its operating cash flows for the last three years. (&quot;for&quot; omitted) Microsoft has steadily improved its operating cash flows during the past three years. Microsoft has steadily improved its operating cash flows during the last three years. Microsoft has steadily improved its operating cash flows over the past three years. Microsoft has steadily improved its operating cash flows over the last three years.  Which of them are idiomatic and preferred? Are they interchangeable?
Cooking steak in frying pan, problem with oil splatter Prove $e^x - e^y \leq e |x-y|$ for $x$ belonging to $[0,1]$ I'm not sure how to go about this. Does it involve using MVT?  I got as far as saying $e = \frac{e^x - e^y}{x-y}$. 401k withdrawal abroad and state taxation? From what I know about 401k's, when it's time to retire, we take our 401k money and pay federal and state tax. Some states don't have taxes on 401k's — Florida is a good example. So many people move to Florida for a retirement, not to pay taxes (that's why people call it heaven's waiting room). The question is - how does it work if a US citizen permanently moves to another country for a retirement (retaining citizenship, but not living in any of the US states)? Are there any state taxes? If yes, then why? What tools (ideally affordable ones) would folks recommend for creating a website wireframe? How to guess a curve distribution from count data I have a sample composed by 2500 count data values. I've plotted in R the corresponding histogram and ecdf. I've run the One-Sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to check if the distribution is either exponential or poisson, but I got negative results.  Is it possible that the One-Sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, it's not the correct test to work with this count data.  What is the best way to identify a distribution for this kind of data? Why don’t photons interact with the Higgs field and hence remain massless? ubuntu 18.04 how do I install drivers for my NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050? Show that f(x) = inf{g(x1)+h(x2)} is convex subject to x1+x2=x and where g(.) and h(.) are convex functions.  Can I just go about this by using the regular definition of a convex function or which properties should I use? I know that the sum of convex functions is convex, but the infimum part confuses me. Thank you How much creative independence are the Show runners accorded in Game of Thrones? Since Season 3, we have been observing that the show was taking a different direction than the books. Many important characters never made it into the show, others who are still alive were killed off.   As we know the show is supposed to be based on the books, not to be direct adaption of the books from print to television media, there's bound to be a certain degree of creative independence accorded to them by the author of the series, George R.R. Martin.   The question is, how much independence do they have? Do they still have to take GRRM on board with whatever changes they might intend to make? By "they" I mean D&amp;D and the whole writers crew for the show. Given the number of significant changes they have made, I reckon the answer would be a lot. Has GRRM or HBO ever commented on that? Why do employers require you to spread your 401(k) contributions throughout the year to get the maximum match? I think the title says it all. I can't see any reason employers have to incentivize employees to contribute to their 401(k) evenly throughout the year. Instead couldn't they use a relatively simple formula that is based on how much of their income the employee has contributed to their 401(k) thus far for the year? If that or their current contribution is over the threshold, they get the match this pay period, even if they didn't contribute anything.  EDIT: To clarify, my employer matches 100% of the first 3% of my contribution and 50% of the next 2%. The match is added every pay period along with my contribution. I am pretty sure there is no "true-up" feature, so if I were to hit the $17.5K limit early, and not be able to contribute at least 5% of my salary, I would not get the full match. So I have to be careful to make my contributions evenly throughout the year to get the maximum match. Just trying to figure out my employer's motivation for requiring this. Is it possible to hide curves' guides in edit mode? What are FML and BWSS? I see this ad sometimes and I would like to know what the acronyms are. How do you minimise hand washing between every step to keep tools clean? Say you cooking beef steak:  You have to unwrap the beef from its packaging, lay it down, get blood on your hands, wash hands, sprinkle salt, wash hands, grind pepper, rub the seasoning into the beef, wash hands, grab the tongs etc..  Is it normal to wash hands after every step or is there a trick to avoid getting all the tools dirty?  If you watch TV, they don't ever wash as much as I do. Difficulty in creating macro '\newcommand' for the beginning and end of frames in Beamer I would like to create a Latex macro for my beamer presentations. I use beamer frequently, and want to make macros for the \begin{frame} and \end{frame} to require fewer keystrokes. At the beginning of the document I have:  \newcommand{\bfrm}{\begin{frame}}%start new frame \newcommand{\efrm}{\end{frame}}%end new frame   Which compiles fine. I then test the first of the two macros for the beginning of the frame:  \bfrm{New frame testing}     blah blah \end{frame}   Which produces the result I am looking for. I then test the second of the macros:  \bfrm{New frame testing}     blah blah \efrm   Fails to compile, saying that there is a runaway argument. What is the reason for the failure? Duplicity Backup Browse I have made a duplicity backup with Ubuntu 14.04 in another laptop of my home directory.  I copied all duplicity back files to my current laptop to "/home/user/Ubuntu-backup"  How do i browse the content of that backup see if it is worth restoring? I want to restore how do i restore from those files. Complex integration with a $\mathcal{C}^1$ function $f$ What is the difference between single-quoted and double-quoted strings in PHP? I am recording videos on iPhone and uploading them to my Linux server. Users can see these videos on website. If users are seeing videos on mac or iDevices the video is looking fine but when users are seeing that video on windows systems these videos are getting rotated.   I am assuming this is because of some apple's flag in the recorded video which Windows systems are not able to read. Can I record videos in some way so they don't get rotated on Windows systems? Or is there any way I can re-encode videos with proper interface orientation using FFmpeg?  I am open to both FFmpeg or iOS way. Should we allow adding rep to bounties to extend their duration? There are a few variables here that I was thinking about:   Spend rep to extend a bounty for a certain amount of time Allow the rep spent to extend duration to add into the original bounty Create minimums on the amount necessary to extend dependent on how long it has been up   These are just ideas and can be tweaked as necessary, but the idea in whole is to encourage people to spend more on rep and avoid "wasted" rep because there wasn't a good answer to a question while minimizing the amount of possible abuse. This was part of the idea to spend a small amount of rep to extend duration without adding to the rep so that you wouldn't have to spend the whole amount over again for a couple more days.  The typical use case that I am thinking of is when you create a bounty and it still gets no attention. I think it would be cool if you could then add onto it to turn it into a higher bounty instead of having those points completely gone.  Possible abuses:   Keeping bounty questions alive for inappropriately long times. There is already an answer but the author does not want to award the bounty.   For 1, you can resolve this by increasing the amount necessary to keep a question alive exponentially similar to what is already in place. You could also halve the amount of extended duration per extension. For 2, this is a problem with the existing system as well, but the author does not have a positive incentive not to award the points since he himself still cannot get them back. General relativity is expressed in terms of differential geometry, which allows you to do interesting things with the coordinates: multiple coordinates may refer to a single point, eg. the  has whole lines at the top and the bottom that correspond to the North and South poles, respectively; or a single coordinate may refer to multiple points, for example by using inverse geometry the origin refers to all the points infinitely far away.  So, is the singularity just a single point in the curved spacetime, or can it be a more extended object, described by a single coordinate?