a guy claims that in American English it's proper to use the singular form for conjugating the predicate of group terms such as company, band, team etc. In British English, he claims, it's more common to use the plural form for there.  My question is threefold.   Is it true that it's not the intended meaning that governs numerus? If so, how profoundly rooted is that difference in the dialects? If it is, how does one formulate the following in American English?      -- The diversity level amongst the people you've hired must be low?     -- No, our staff is/are actually quite different individuals.
Which one of these two statements is correct?     Our staff do ...      Our staff does ...   And is staffs ever correct?
Group of order 15 is abelian How do I prove group of order 15 is abelian?  Is there any general strategy to prove that a group of particular order(composite order) is abelian? Is there any easy LINQ expression to concatenate my entire List&lt;string&gt; collection items to a single string with a delimiter character?  What if the collection is of custom objects instead of string? Imagine I need to concatenate on object.Name. Per line text gradient (ala beeline reader) Consider the symmetric group $S_5$. I would like to find how many elements of $S_5$ are of order 5, and how many are of order 6. I would also like to determine what the maximum order of an element in this group would be.  Here is what I have so far: elements of order 5 are the 5-cycles. Elements of order 6 (since a 6-cycle is impossible for 5 elements) must have at least an even cycle and a cycle of length divisible by 3, and 2 + 3 = 5, so elements of order 5 are a combination of 2-cycles and 3-cycles.  How can I find the total count of such elements of order 5 and order 6, and the maximum order? I'm not entirely sure where to go from here. Why do wheels appear to revolve opposite to the direction they are rotating? When viewing cars that are driving along side of us, sometimes their wheels appear to be turning backwards even though they are traveling in the same direction as our car. Why do they look that way? What's a word for someone who is constantly asking for same thing? Hi I'm looking for a word for someone who is constantly asking for something and keeps wanting updates about it. The closest words I can think of is pushy and, to a lesser extent, annoying. But clearly these words don't directly mean what I intend. Is there an open source alternative to "Adobe Digital Editions"? For the moment I run Adobe Digital Editions under Wine to download ebooks burdened with ditigal restriction management. I only use it to open .acsm files supplied by ebook-shops, which contain authentication information required to download the actual DRM'ed ebook files, which I then transfer to my reader-device with calibre. My question is, if there exist open source alternatives to Adobe Digital Editions. They don't need much functionality. I just want to put the .acsm-file in and get the .epub out (no, I don't want to remove the drm, that'd be illegal afaik). How to list the properties of a JavaScript object? Suppose there are two face down cards each with a positive real number and with one twice the other. Each card has value equal to its number. You are given one of the cards (with value $x$) and after you have seen it, the dealer offers you an opportunity to swap without anyone having looked at the other card.  If you choose to swap, your expected value should be the same, as you still have a $50\%$ chance of getting the higher card and $50\%$ of getting the lower card.  However, the other card has a $50\%$ chance of being $0.5x$ and a $50\%$ chance of being $2x$. If we keep the card, our expected value is $x$, while if we swap it, then our expected value is: $$0.5(0.5x)+0.5(2x)=1.25x$$ so it seems like it is better to swap. Can anyone explain this apparent contradiction? How to Draw 2 Functions In Tex SQL Server 2008 server cannot connect to itself with alias name or "localhost" We have a SQL Server 2008 ENT 64bit SP3 server running Server 2008 R2 Standard SP1 64-bit.  This is also a windows/sql clustered environment.  There is the cluster alias for the server, and then we have 2 AD DNS aliases as well for the server  Suddenly I can't connect to the sql instance in Management Studio, or with a Powershell Invoke-SQLcmd IF I am doing it from that actual server, when using one of the dns alias names, or "localhost".  If I use the Cluster alias name it works and if I use the other dns alias name it works.  Using management studio with the non-working dns alias I get "Login failed. The login is from an untrusted domain and cannot be used with Windows authentication."  If I use localhost, I get "A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 - Could not open a connection to SQL Server) (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 2)"    Shared Memory and TCPIP are enabled in SQL Server Config manager but named pipes is not.  But we've NEVER had named pipes enabled, and don't have it enabled on any of our other sql servers and they're set up the same (clustering, dns aliases...etc) and are having no issues.  I've Googled around and had a view people suggest listing what other SQL servers it can see (cmd prompt sqlcmd -L)  If it do it from a good server I see all other servers on my network including the "bad" one.  If I do that command from the "bad" server, I get no results at all.  Pretty much checked everything from this blog and it's all ok except the sqlcmd -L issue I just mentioned above.    Windows firewall is not enabled.  This was working just fine for a couple of years.  I'm not sure when this started happening, but I know that at some point, it was not happening.  And the other kicker...it's only happening locally to this server.  If I connect with management studio or run a powershell Invoke-Sqlcmd from another machine, or my local machine connecting to the "bad" server, it works fine no matter what alias I use.  I'm stumped.  I think it sounds like an issue with the AD alias (there are 2 ad aliases, 1 works locally the other doesn't)...but not being able to connect with localhost makes me question that.  any help is greatly appreciated. Powershell Parameters remove files when name does NOT contain some words How to set QGIS language other then OS Explanation behind Second Derivative of a Parametric Equation Formula I am looking to find out how the second derivative formula works.  I can blindly apply it but I don't have a grasp of what is going on or why. The first derivitive has the formula $\frac{dy}{dx} = \frac{\frac{dy}{dt}}{\frac{dx}{dt}}$. I told this was because if you divide them you cancel out the dts and get dy/dx. The second derivative has the formula $\frac{d^2y}{dx^2} = \frac{d}{dx} \left(\frac{dy}{dx}\right) = \frac{ \frac{d}{dt}\left(\frac{dy}{dx}\right) }{\frac{dx}{dt}}$. Is this something that can be explained with only a knowledge of calculus or is this something I would have to take on faith until I learn more. Any help would be greatly appreciated. What is the difference between Newtonian and Lagrangian mechanics in a nutshell? What is Lagrangian mechanics, and what's the difference compared to Newtonian mechanics? I'm a mathematician/computer scientist, not a physicist, so I'm kind of looking for something like the explanation of the Lagrangian formulation of mechanics you'd give to someone who just finished a semester of college physics.  Things I'm hoping to have explained to me:   What's the overall difference in layman's terms? From what I've read so far, it sounds like Newtonian mechanics takes a more local "cause-and-effect"/"apply a force, get a reaction" view, while Lagrangian mechanics takes a more global "minimize this quantity" view. Or, to put it more axiomatically, Newtonian mechanics starts with Newton's three laws of motion, while Lagrangian mechanics starts with the Principle of Least Action. How do the approaches differ mathematically/when you're trying to solve a problem? Kind of similar to above, I'm guessing that Newtonian solutions start with drawing a bunch of force vectors, while Lagrangian solutions start with defining some function (calculating the Lagrangian...?) you want to minimize, but I really have no idea. What are the pros/cons of each approach? What questions are more naturally solved in each? For example, I believe Fermat's Principle of Least Time is something that's very naturally explained in Lagrangian mechanics ("minimize the time it takes to get between these two points"), but more difficult to explain in Newtonian mechanics since it requires knowing your endpoint. BJT Astable Multivibrator While reviewing First Posts on Super User, I noticed that I couldn't edit this question (see below). Clicking the &quot;edit&quot; link simply does nothing. Editing is not possible for me right now because I have already five suggested edits pending. It used to be the case that the link would've been grayed out (and the reason shown as a popover). , and while I'm not sure it's an improvement, the current implementation needs some fixing at least.  This bug appears regardless of the actual reason that the edit isn't possible; for instance,  is another user experiencing the same bug who couldn't suggest an edit because of an already pending one. Apparently, I'm far from the only one who experiences this issue. As of last Sunday morning,  have been posted networkwide (and are still alive) and  is #16. How to test if a player is near coordinates in 1.13? Should we @Override an interface's method implementation?