One thing that I will be very happy if added in Stack Overflow is a Private Message system like in forums, because there's some things that you want to be in private with your internet friends.
There has been quite a few times that I wished I could send a message to another user on SO - not ask a question for everyone to see, but just a short message informing them of something or requesting them to do something.  Are there any plans to allow this to happen in the future?  Related:
On Stack Exchange, users may gain a certain level of reputation.  What does reputation do? How can a user gain or lose reputation?   See also   in the Help Center  - Maximum amount of votes a user can use in a day and reputation requirements to vote.  - How to get an exact overview of the actions that got you your reputation.  - A full list of all privileges granted at each reputation level on all sites. I would like to install Ubuntu alongside Windows 7 on a HP G62 Notebook. Although I have installed  Ubuntu in a dual-boot many times before, I found out that this model has already four partitions.    Partitions:   SYSTEM (NTFS, 199MB, used 66.59MB) Partition without any tag: NTFS (579GM, used 129GB)  RECOVERY (NTFS 16.74 GB, used 2.42GB)  HP_TOOLS (FAT32, 103.34 MB, used 13.23MB)   Since I am not an expert with partitions I would like to get advice on how to do this.  My first idea is this one:   Free some space from /dev/sda2 (I don't know if could also free some other space) delete the HP_Tools partition (I have already created a backup) create an extended partition with the free space in #1 containing three parititions: swap (1gb); / (EXT4, 30GB);  /home (EXT4, 120GB)   Another option is to use wubi instead.  What do you think? Is there any other way to achieve this?  PS: I really think this HP policy of using 4 partitions is not a coincidence  PS: I tried using gparted from the live CD and I got a warning message saying that if I freed some space from /dev/sda2 I could create serious issues in the system Execute a program at login How can I install packages without starting their associated services? As you're probably aware, by default when you install a package on a Debian or Ubuntu based system, if the package contains a service, that service will generally be enabled and started automatically when you install the package.  This is a problem for me.  I've found myself needing to manage templates for building LXC containers. There are several containers, each corresponding to a Debian or Ubuntu release. (There are also Red Hat-based containers, but they aren't relevant here.)  /var/lib/libvirt/filesystems/debian6_template /var/lib/libvirt/filesystems/debian7_template /var/lib/libvirt/filesystems/ubuntu1004_template /var/lib/libvirt/filesystems/ubuntu1204_template   Occasionally I will find that the templates have a missing package or need some other change, so I will chroot into them to install the package. Unfortunately when I do that, I wind up with several copies of the package's service running!  By way of example, I found the templates didn't have a syslog daemon, so I installed one:  for template in /var/lib/libvirt/filesystems/{debian,ubuntu}*_template; do     chroot $template apt-get install rsyslog done   And promptly wound up with four copies of rsyslog running. Not to mention two copies of exim4. Oops!    I read somewhere (though I can't find it again now) that it's not supposed to start services when running in a chroot, but that clearly isn't happening here.  One potentially viable  calls for temporarily replacing the various commands which actually start services, such as start-stop-daemon and initctl, though this is a lot more work than I really wanted to do. If I have no other choice, though...  The ideal solution here would be for Debian-based systems to stop doing this crap, but failing that, perhaps an obscure or undocumented command line option for apt-get?  In case it wasn't clear, I really want to keep anything related to managing the templates outside the templates, if possible. What is the string concatenation operator in Oracle? What is the string concatenation operator in Oracle SQL?    Are there any "interesting" features I should be careful of?    (This seems obvious, but I couldn't find a previous question asking it). Suppose we have a magnetic field directed into the computer screen. Assume that there is no gravitational field. Now suppose we have a stationary positively charged particle in the magnetic field. The magnetic force is given by $$\mathbf{F}=q\mathbf{v}\times\mathbf{B}$$  Since $\mathbf{v}=0, \mathbf{F}=0$.  Now pick a reference frame moving to the left with constant velocity. In this frame, the particle is moving to the right with constant velocity. So, the magnetic force is directed upwards.  From what I've learnt in physics, forces are independent of choice of reference frames as long as the frames are inertial. But in the 2 inertial reference frames I have chosen, I get 2 different magnetic forces. How do we reconcile this? Invalid field count when uploading CSV to a data extension I tried uploading non-English text to my Data Extensions but the system is throwing error named &quot;Invalid Field Count&quot;. Cite_key instead of a number, what is going on? I have the following problem: I correctly obtain a numbered bibliography at the end but along the text the cite_key appear instead of a number. How to fix this problem?   \documentclass[11pt]{book}  \usepackage[]{biblatex} \begin{document} %some text  ... \cite{ABKM2015}... %some text  \begin{thebibliography}{99} \bibitem{ABKM2015} Arroja, F. and Bartolo, N. and Karmakar P. and Matarrese, S. (2015). \newblock The Two Faces of Mimetic Horndeski Gravity             \newblock {\em ArXiV}, 1506.08575 (2015). \end{thebibliography} \end{document}   After compiling I get ... [ABKM2015] ... while I want for example  [1]. Closing a Java FileInputStream How can I iterate over an enum? Remount drive without physically disconnecting? So I have unmounted a usb external hard drive but I went to re-mount it.  Is there a command that I can use to remount the drive?  Only way I know to re-mount a drive is to disconnect the usb cable from my Mac and reconnect it. In Ubuntu ISO MBR, why does a GPT partition overlap the boot partition, and make MBR uneditable? Why English pronunciation differs so much from written language, compared to German? Given that English is derived mostly from German, when Anglo-Saxons (German tribes) migrated to Britain, how do you explain that   although German has a strict correspondence between written language and spoken language (the sounds largely follow 1-1 what is written)... English has sooo intricate pronunciation rules, sometimes directly at odds with what is written? (Too bored to give examples, but it should be obvious).   My pet, tongue-in-cheek theory is that those tribes weren't too literate, didn't have a sound knowledge of the written form of words, so it was easy the pronunciation to follow its own independent path.   Anyone with a more informed explanation? Ways of getting three of a kind in a 52 card deck This question has probably been asked before, but just to be clear here, I am NOT asking for the answer, I know the answer.  What i want to know is why my solution is not equivalent to the actual solution.  Three of a kind in a deck means you draw 3 cards of the same rank, and 2 other cards each of different ranks.  So. The solution in my book is the following: (13 C 1)(4 C 3) * (12 C 2)(4 C 1)(4 C 1)  The logic is the following:  1) Choose 1 out of the 13 ranks, then for the 4 cards in the chosen rank, pick 3.  2) Choose a combination of 2 ranks from the remaining 12, then for the 4 cards in each rank, choose 1.  Total combinations: 54912  My solution is the following:  ((13 C 1)(4 C 3)) * ((12 C 1)(4 C 1)) * ((11 C 1)(4 C 1))  1) My logic for the 3 of a kind is the same as the solution.   2) Choose 1 of the remaining 12 ranks, and 1 card from the 4 cards in the rank.  3) Choose 1 of the remaining 11 ranks, and 1 card from the 4 cards in the rank.  Total combinations: 109824  My solution says that the combinations are exactly double of the book's solution.  I'm just very confused as to why this is. If anyone could explain this to me I would be very appreciative, thank you. Given I have Drupal 9 composer installation with composer-patches plugin and given a contrib module with a stable v8 release, but no v9 release (not even dev branch) and given that contrib module has a working v9 patch in the issue queue  is there any method to install that module + patch in composer? Even if I manually add both, the package and patch, to my composer.json, I still can't require or update this module with composer due conflicting versions. I really want to avoid duplicating /contrib code into my project's /custom codebase. My current workaround is:  forking that module to my own, private git repo applying patch there creating a new composer.json in my private git, and changing the package vendor to my custom_private_vendor adding my private git as VCS repo in the D9 project's composer.json and then composer require custom_private_vendor/contrib_module  This fulfills my goal of not duplicating the contrib module in my project's custom codebase, but every time I do this I feel the urge to wash my dirty hands. Is there something more elegant like composer require drupal/contrib_module --apply-patch-first or can I somehow target drupal.org's git with a specific patch included? I have a midterm coming up and on the past exams the hard question(s) usually involve some form of $\lim_{x\to0^{+}} x \ln x$. However, we're not allowed to use l'Hopital's rule, on this year's exam anyways.  So how can I evaluate said limit without l'Hopital's rule? I got somewhere with another approach, don't know if it's useful:   $\lim_{x\to0^{+}} x \ln x = \lim_{x\to0^{+}} x^2 \ln (x^2) = L$ $= (\lim_{x\to0^{+}} 2x)(\lim_{x\to0^{+}} x \ln x)$ $= 0 * L$   Then I just need to prove that L is finite/exists (which means it must be 0) Can I use SPI for asynchronous serial output? I need a second serial async output channel on the MSP430G2553 and would like to use the SPI USCI to do this.  Is the USCI SPI baud rate stable enough to do this at 300 baud, 2400 baud or 9600 baud? I am currently using the 8 MHz clock.  Is there any other option that can save me from bit-banging?  My current thinking for 300 bd Tx is as follows:   set prescaler to 26666 LSB first load byte into Txbuf load 0x7F into Txbuf to generate stop and start bits repeat 2-3 send final stop bits 0xFF   It might also be possible to send ten bits of data on other members of the MSP430 family that contains a SPI.  Thanks for your responses. 3rd iterate of a continuous function equals identity function show that the interval of the form $[0,a)$ or $(a, 1]$ is open set in metric subspace $[0,1]$ but not open in $\mathbb R^1$ On the metric subspace $S = [0,1]$ of the Euclidean space $\mathbb R^1 $, every interval of the form $A = [0,a)$ or $(a, 1]$ where $0&lt;a&lt;1$ is open set in S. These sets are not open in $\mathbb R^1$   Here's what I attempted to show that $A$ is open in $S$. I have no idea how it is not open in $\mathbb R^1$.  Let $M = \mathbb R^1$, $x \in A  = [0,a)$ . If $x = 0$, $ r \leq \min \{a, 1-a\}, \\\  B_S(0; r) = B_M(0,r)\cap[0,1] = (-r, r) \cap[0,1] = [0,r) \subseteq A $  If $x \neq 0, r \leq \min \{x,|a-x|, 1-x\},  \\B_S(x; r) = B_M(x,r)\cap[0,1] = (x-r, x+r) \cap[0,1] \subset (0,x) \text{ or } (x, 1) \subset A$ Single quotes vs. double quotes in Python According to the documentation, they're pretty much interchangeable.  Is there a stylistic reason to use one over the other?