I am trying to remember a novel from when I was younger. Oh about late 1980s to early 1990s. The book could be older than that. It just seems my Google-fu cannot break the author or title barriers.  The book I remember reading was actually an omnibus. I believe it came out about the same time as The World of Tiers and The Book of Swords. Of the stories in the omnibus, I remember three story parts.   The first story described a world where people hibernated during the winter that would last until the sun came again and lone girls would stay awake. The world itself, other than the hibernation, seemed more fantasy than sci-fi. These girls would take dangerous quests to see if they they had "sun powers". In all of this was a young boy who appeared at the castle and quickly learned things. He was a good person but he was actually a plant for a planet raiding pirate band. In the end the native girl and the pirate plant defeated the pirates leaving behind other clones of the boy who was also a clone of a traveller that was captured by the pirates years ago.  The second story in the omnibus described a daughter of these clones going out from the valley to find her father who had started living with the desert people. She too developed "sun powers" and the father had with him multicolored silks that their colors reflected equal emotions back at the wearer; red equals anger, etc. the silks also seemed to contain memories.  The third story in the omnibus describes the journey of the daughter from the first story going out on a quest to find the origins of these silks. In this she does and discovers creatures that weave silk, emotions, and memory all into each piece of silk. During this journey, she too develops "sun powers".  Could someone identify this book?
I read this set of stories in the 80's.  What I recall is this:  A planet where the ruling caste was made up of humanoid women.  These women would, as almost pubescent girls, go out into the wilderness with only a spear and attempt to kill an animal in a life or death struggle.  When it happened, they would burst open a DNA packet in themselves that caused them to rapidly mature, their skin to become bronze colored, and give them some kinds of other "powers", I think over fire.  They were called "Bahronas", I think.  The population of this planet was primitive, but they were in contact with an advanced humanoid species, I think of actual homo-sapiens, who were there observing and advising them.  The advanced species wasn't allowed to intervene, just advise and watch.  The main character was a castaway boy, crash landed on their planet and stranded.  He became friendly with the ruling family of Bahronas and entered their confidence.  We find out through the course of the story that he's been genetically engineered and is not a normal boy.  At some point, the advanced species notices him and explains that he is a clone of a famous explorer and a spy, and they explain that they won't do anything in front of him.  The central part of the story is something of a blur, but, the final part of the story is told in a dramatically different style and shifts to a planet populated by catlike creatures who live in boughs of silk scarves, some of which sing.  THey are recording devices which play back the songs.  On this planet, there is another silk scarf, a white one, which doesn't play a song at all.  The cat creatures are greatly disturbed by it when they hear it's message, which they don't understand.  The narrator then goes on to say that it's a spoken word recording, made by the explorer which the boy was a clone of, explaining that he is captured and held hostage on the planet which makes the scarves, and forced to help make them (I think.)
If a Windows shop moves "everything" to the cloud, does it still need Active Directory? Taking a spin off of this question:  in a new direction for 2014.  Taking into account a basic Windows infrastructure:   domain controllers Exchange 2007/2010/2013 Sharepoint SQL File Servers / Print Servers AD Integrated DNS AD authenticated 3rd party devices (let's say 802.1X for networking and maybe some content-filtering, etc.) AD/LDAP authenticated "administrative" functions on IT apps/hardware/etc. perhaps some KMS stuff throw in a CA if you'd like home grown apps 3rd party in-house apps   Now, let's rip it all out and decide we are going to the cloud.  We've contracted to move Exchange/Sharepoint/File Services to Office 365.  SQL will now be hosted as well on  something like Azure.  We've gotten away from the need for AD-DNS and simply run everything via a simple Windows DNS server.  We still need 802.1X and would like SSO if possible to our various cloud apps.  Home grown and 3rd party in-house apps would likely stay, but have the ability to use internal user databases instead of AD authentication  The question is...do we really need Active Directory at all?  Or more to the point, AD on-premise or even hosted via Azure or similar (ADFS) or running ADDS on a hosted VM through Azure or similar.  Could/Should we look to something else like a 3rd party SSO option such as  or similar that can provide SSO functionality even if it is as simple as LastPass or similar for each user?  What kind of legitimate needs does AD fulfill if everything else in the cloud?  Could a MS-centric infrastructure get away with not having AD at all if they move everything that previously relied on AD to SaaS offerings that didn't rely on AD authentication? Proof verification of a number theory problem involving sequences. How large would the steam explosion at Chernobyl have been? So the  of the HBO series began to cover the  that led to them sending three divers into the water below the reactor to drain the tanks.  This occurred after the initial explosion that destroyed the reactor, and after the fire in the core had been put out. But at this point the decay heat and remaining fission reaction kept the core at more than 1200°C, causing it to melt through the concrete floors below the reactor.  And below the reactor were water tanks which contained 7,000 cubic meters of water (according to the TV show. If anyone has a real figure, I'd love to hear). When the lava of the melted core hit it, it would cause an enormous .  Finally, my question: About how large would this explosion have been? The character in the show says "2-4 megatons" (of TNT equivalent, I assume). I'm pretty sure this is absurd and impossible. But real estimates are hard to come by. Other sources vary wildly, some repeating the "megatons" idea, and others saying it would've "". This still seems crazy.  tl;dr:  I know a lot of it hinges on unknowns and the dynamics of the structures and materials involved, so I can simplify it to a constrained physics question:  Assuming 7,000 cubic meters of water instantly flashes to steam, how much potential energy is momentarily stored in that volume of steam occupying the same volume as the water did?  I don't know what to assume the temperature of the steam is. There were hundreds of tons of core material at temperatures near 1200°C, so worst case scenario you could assume all the steam becomes that temperature as the materials mix. Best case scenario, I guess we could assume normal atmospheric boiling point (100°C)? What to do with cross-site duplicates? What's the right course of action for cross-site duplicates?  There are two flavors:   A question is posted which belongs on another site and ends up already having been asked there. I can't find an example right now, but it's bound to happen soon if it hasn't already. The same question is posted in two places at the same time. Take  for example, which is a duplicate of , posted within a half hour of each other by the same user.   Possible actions:   Move it to the proper site and close it once it gets there as a duplicate. Provide a way to close it right away as a cross-site duplicate, without moving it first. Flag it and let a moderator merge them. Close it as "no longer relevant" or something else.   Additionally, flavor 2 is a bit of a special case; perhaps the question really spans both sites in terms of content and intended audience. Should multiple-postings in this case be allowed? If so, should they somehow be linked to each other? If not, how do we avoid a migration war? How to factor polynomials in $\mathbb{Z}_n$? How to factor a certain polynomial over $Zn$.  for example factor the following polynomial into irreducible polynomials in $Z5$:  $X^3+X^2+X-1$  or factor the following polynomial into irreducible polynomials in $Z2$:  $X^4+X+1$   is there a certain method (algorithm) I can follow?  Please help I'm stuck and i really need the help!  thank you in advance!! I have tried reading up on WMS on wiki and other sources but haven't managed to get my head around a couple of points.   1) Using WMS is it possible to get a local copy of the raster data (say a tiff image tile). The reason, I ask is, I need to use his raster data in a secondary process that needs a local copy of the file.   2) I am primarily interested in allowing users the option of downloading orthoimagery and elevation from the USGS repository. I've tried using the Seamless viewer but I am thinking more along the lines of user specifying a coordinate (or four corner coords) and getting the orthoimage and elevation data corresponding to that. I thought WMS (Geoserver being my first option) is the way to go for this, but not certain. So wanted to get your advice.  Thanks in advance.  Sincerely, ST. Combinatorial argument to prove the recurrence relation for number of derangements Give a combinatorial argument to prove that the number of derangements satisfies the following relation: $$d_n = (n − 1)(d_{n−1} + d_{n−2})$$ for $n \geq 2$.  I am able to prove this algebraically but not able to see the combinatorial example. How to solve differential equations of the form $f'(x) = f(x + a)$ What could one do to find analytic solutions for $f'(x) = f(x + a)$ for various values of $a$?  I know that $c_1\sin(x + c_2)$ is solution when $a = \frac{1}{2}\pi$, and of course $c_1e^x$ when $a = 0$.  For instance, is there a function satisfying $f'(x) = f(x + 1)$?  What about negative or imaginary $a$?  Is there possibly a generalization? Let $A$ be a ring that is not a field and $M$, $N$ modules over $A$. What conditions on $M,N$ (and maybe also on $A$) guarantee that $\operatorname{Hom}_A(M,N)$ is finitely generated? Is it enough to assume $M,N$ finitely generated? \varepsilon vs. \epsilon Are there critical hits for spells? According to PHB p. 194 you always score a critical hit on any attack roll.  Does this rule also apply to magical attacks, e.g. the  spell? Install a .NET windows service without InstallUtil.exe Algebraic proof of $\sum_{i=0}^k{{n \choose i}{m \choose {k-i}}}= {{m+n}\choose k}$ I can't figure out an algebraic proof for the following identity:  $$\sum_{i=0}^k{{n \choose i}{m \choose {k-i}}}= {{m+n}\choose k}$$  Combinatorical solution:  We can see that as choosing some from $n$ and the rest of $k$ from $m$, thus $k$ in total.  Or we could just choose $k$ from the union. Is the Schrödinger equation derived or postulated? I'm an undergraduate mathematics student trying to understand some quantum mechanics, but I'm having a hard time understanding what is the status of the Schrödinger equation.  In some places I've read that it's just a postulate. At least, that's how I interpret e.g. the following quote:     Where did we get that (equation) from? Nowhere. It is not possible to derive it from anything you know. It came out of the mind of Schrödinger.    -- Richard Feynman   (from the Wikipedia entry on the Schrödinger equation)  However, some places seem to derive the Schrödinger equation: just search for "derivation of Schrödinger equation" in google.  This motivates the question in the title: Is the Schrödinger equation derived or postulated? If it is derived, then just how is it derived, and from what principles? If it is postulated, then it surely came out of somewhere. Something like "in these special cases it can be derived, and then we postulate it works in general". Or maybe not?  Thanks in advance, and please bear with my physical ignorance. Proving $T$ and $U$ are equal if I know $(X,T)$ and $(X,U)$ are hausdorff and compact This question is from Wayne Patty Exercise 4.2  Let $T$ and $U$ are Topologies on set X. Suppose $ (X,T) $ and $(X,U)$ are compact Haurdsorff Spaces. Prove that $T=U$ or $T$ is not a subset of $U$ or $U$ is not a subset of T.  I thought of proving it by this way: Assuming that if $T$ is a subset of $U$ or $U$ is a subset of $ T$ then $T=U$ must be true. But I was unable to think on how to use compactness or hausdorff property and was unable to proceed. Well, also this question was asked before on this website. But I am unable to understand how the solution will work despite trying to understand it for a fair amount of time as it was just outlined. So, I am looking for a detailed solution. 101 positive integers placed on a circle A Pigeonhole Principle problem:     101 positive integers are placed on a circle whose sum is 300. Prove   that it is possible to choose from these numbers some consecutive   numbers whose sum is equal to 200.   (I don't know if the word 'consecutive' is appropriate in this case ,I mean that these numbers follow each other on that circle) Is there a "best practice" or standard to make a few iptables rules permanent? I mean: automatically applied upon a system reboot?  I am using a VPS with Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx).  Thank you.  BIG EDIT: I don't want ANY rule to be persisted (like iptables-persistent package does). I want only my own specific set to be reloaded... if other rules are eventually added by running iptables, these should be discarded... Let $trcA=0$.why $A=M+N$ where $M$ and $N$ are nilpotent matrices? How to identify if a webpage is being loaded inside an iframe or directly into the browser window? I am writing an iframe based facebook app. Now I want to use the same html page to render the normal website as well as the canvas page within facebook. I want to know if I can determine whether the page has been loaded inside the iframe or directly in the browser? Do I have to leave the Schengen area if I have a short term (C) visa that will expire right before my National Visa (D) officially starts? If I have a Type C visa from the Norwegian embassy valid for February 9-28, and my Type D national visa from the German embassy valid from March 1 - August 31, 2017, do I need to leave/fly out of the Schengen area on the 28th and fly back on the 1st day of March?