I accidentally ran badblocks on my entire 320 GB disk instead of a single partition:  sudo badblocks -s -v -n -f /dev/sda   It's been running for 42 hours now. How can I tell when it will be finished? Can I interrupt it safely with Ctrl+C?
I'm running badblocks to check for bad segments on an external drive, and it's been about an hour and it has not yet finished. Now, I need to go and consider cancelling. Is this somehow risky? Should I avoid this?   Clearly, I will need to start again from scratch; I just want to know if this is somehow risky to abort midway.
Finite Sum $\sum\limits_{k=1}^{m-1}\frac{1}{\sin^2\frac{k\pi}{m}}$ Does "the same number of people" behave as singular or plural? This hurts my eyes to read it and my ears to say it, but the writer stands by          About the same number of people was awarded bachelor's degrees in 2010 as filed for personal bankruptcy (1.6 million).   Is the subject in this sentence singular or plural? Triangle Inequality question with fractions Given $a, b \in \mathbb{R}$, prove that   $$\frac{|a + b|}{1 + |a + b|} \le \frac{|a|}{1 + |a|} + \frac{|b|}{1+|b|}$$  When does equality hold?  The only useful thing I could get (using the triangle inequality) is:  $$\begin{align}1 + \left|\left(a + \frac{ab}{2}\right) + \left(b - \frac{ab}{2}\right)\right| &amp;\le 1 + \left|a + \frac{ab}{2}\right| + \left|b - \frac{ab}{2}\right|\\ &amp;\le 1 + |a| + |b| + |ab|\\ &amp;=(1 + |a|)(1 + |b|)\end{align}$$  But it seems to be inapplicable! Any ideas? I can type:  dirname ~/home/blah/file.zip   for instance, and this works fine alone, but when I use this syntax as the parameter for some command it always reads 'dirname' as the desired directory. i.e.:  cd dirname ~/home/blah/file.zip bash: cd: dirname: No such file or directory   Basically, how do I get 'dirname file' to be read as one entity? I need to customize my references in the following style using biblatexs Alpha style having the columns Label, Author, and Title and Other Information.    Till now with your help I could already change the square brackets to slashes.   My code so far is:   \documentclass[12pt]{scrartcl}  .  .   \usepackage[% natbib        = true, backend       = bibtex8, %bibtex, biber style         = alphabetic, %citestyle     = alphabetic, maxcitenames  = 2, mincitenames  = 1, %bibstyle      = alphabetic, %authoryear, %draft, %, sorting       = nyvt, maxbibnames   = 6, minbibnames   = 6, language      = ngerman, date          = long, backref       = false, backrefstyle  = none,  % none, three, two, two+, three+, all+ firstinits=true  ]{biblatex}    \usepackage[babel,german=quotes]{csquotes}    \bibliography{input/literatur}      \newrobustcmd{\mkbibslashes}[1]{/#1/}      \DeclareFieldFormat{labelalphawidth}{\mkbibslashes{#1}}    \DeclareFieldFormat{shorthandwidth}{\mkbibslashes{#1}}     \DeclareCiteCommand{\cite}[\mkbibslashes]    {\usebibmacro{prenote}}    {\usebibmacro{citeindex}% \usebibmacro{cite}}    {\multicitedelim}    {\usebibmacro{postnote}}    \renewcaptionname{ngerman}{\refname}{Literaturverzeichnis}   .   .   .   Thanks again Possible Duplicate:          I've added myself back into the admin's group I think, by following   But I still can't do commands like:  sudo aptitude update   I get the message  oshirowanen is not in the sudoers file.  This incident will be reported.   How do I add myself into the sudoers group now that I am in the admin group? Explode MULTILINESTRING into individual segments in PostGIS 1.5 I have a MULTILINESTRING in PostGIS consisting of several LINESTRING's. Consider each LINESTRING to have a set of POINT's      P1, P2, ... PN   forming the line segments     L1, L2, ... LN-1   where LX is the line segment connecting PX to PX+1.  Using PostGIS 1.5 how can I explode the MULTILINESTRING into individual line segments of each LINESTRING? Prove that $\frac{(n-2)s^2}{\sigma^2}\sim \chi^{2}_{n-2}$ Is there a word to describe a person who likes chaos? I am wondering if there is a word to describe a person who likes chaos. By this I mean a few specific things:   The person is pleased to hear when chaos is created, or confusion emerges The person will take opportunities to create chaos or confusion The person enjoys taking part in chaotic or disorganized situations.   I can't seem to think of a word to describe the type of person who would act in this way.  I hope this question is clear.  EDIT: Below gbutters sums up nicely:     What I wonder is if there is a word for a generally good-natured person who just likes some good old-fashioned chaos. It seems like any person that thrives on chaos would have to have some extra baggage. heredoc for Windows batch? Using a java library from python I have a python app and java app. The python app generates input for the java app and invokes it on the command line.  I'm sure there must be a more elegant solution to this; just like using JNI to invoke C code from Java.  Any pointers? (FYI I'm v. new to Python)    Clarification (at the cost of a long question: apologies) The py app (which I don't own) takes user input in the form of a number of configuration files. It then interprits these and farms work off to a number of (hidden) tools via a plugin mechanism. I'm looking to add support for the functionality provided by the legacy Java app.  So it doesn't make sense to call the python app from the java app and I can't run the py app in a jython environment (on the JVM).  Since there is no obvious mechanism for this I think the simple CL invocation is the best solution. Proving this relation is transitive Let $r$ be a relation on $A \times A$ such that $(a,b) r (c,d) \iff ad = bc.$ How can I show that this relation is transitive, ie. $(a, b)r(c,d)$ and $(c,d)r(e, f) \implies (a,b)r(e,f)$?  I tried to say that $(a,b) r (c,d)$ means that $c=ka$ and $d=kb,$ $k$ a coefficient, such that $ad = bc \iff akb = bka,$ and going on from there, but I'm not sure this is valid for all values of $a, b, c,$ and $d$. How can I show the transitivity of the relation? Email SMTP validator I need to send hundreds of newsletters, but would like to check first if email exists on server. It's called  validation, at least I think so, based on my research on Internet.    There's several libraries that can do that, and also a page with open-source code in  (), but I have hard time reading ASP Classic, and it seems that it uses some third-party library...    Is there some code for SMTP validation in C#, and/or general explanation of how it works? The exact phrase from the book of Swan (the context is choosing the words permit or allow) -      The passive structure with it is only possible with permit   Having said that...     It is not allowed to smoke in the kitchen - incorrect     It is not permitted to smoke in the kitchen - correct   I feel absolutely fine for the incorrect sentence.   Your inputs please. Make me understand this. If "clearly evident" is redundant, what word or phrase suggests being indisputable but not readily apparent? A  asks whether the modifier "clearly" changes the meaning of "evident". I would have said, prior to examining a few dictionaries, that evident did not necessarily mean readily apparent, but to my surprise it does.  This brings me to ask what word or expression would mean something can be taken as a true fact, but not through an easily constructed (not obvious or readily apparent) rationale?   For example, if Sherlock Holmes says something is true while everyone else is still sitting on their hands, then it is evident to Holmes, but not to the rest of the world. So, from everyone else's point of view, it is not readily apparent, and (by definition) apparently it is not evident, clear, or clearly evident at all, based on the dictionary definitions. But (let's stipulate) it is true and deducible from the observable evidence. What would we call this?  Update  An update is highlighted above. I can see from some of the answers and comments that I may have gone off my mark with the phrase "not through an easy-to-follow rationale”, and I have modified the question to correct this. I understand that there can be rationales, arguments, or proofs that, once explained, may or may not be easy to follow. What I intend is that the rationale to support the indisputable conclusion is not (initially) easy to recognize or construct (not readily apparent) in the first place. I apologize for the confusion. (The original can be seen in the change history.)  Update 2  Shortly after offering a bounty to this request, I recalled a single word that I now believe is a very good match to the parameters specified in this inquiry as it is stated above. That word has not yet been suggested (or approached) by any answer or comment (active or deleted) at the time of this edit. This request is changed to a single word request. (However, if you feel a single word fits well but not without some additional supporting words, please offer your thoughts in an answer.) While my curiosity for the term has already been met, the request and bounty remain as an open challenge. I will post my own answer once the bounty has expired and been awarded. What is the default PATH environment variable setting on fresh install of Windows 7 Is it common to review papers assigned to your supervisor? Is it common to supervisors to email their students papers to review (which were apparently assigned to the supervisor, and not to the student). The field is Computer Science, but I  would also like to hear from the other fields. How can I find $f(0)$, $f'(0)$, and $f'(x)$ given that  $f(x+y)=f(x)+f(y)+x^2y+xy^2$  and  $\lim_{x\to0}\frac{f(x)}{x}=1$. How to connect to Oracle as "SYS" from SQL*Plus in Java Integer reciprocals in arithmetic progression Let $m_1,m_2,\ldots,m_k$ be $k$ positive integers such that their reciprocals are in AP. Show that $k&lt;m_1+2$. Also find such a sequence.     Whatever way I tried, whichever formula I used, I could not eliminate the $m_k$ term, which I reckon would be the ideal scenario to find the solution. I am exhausted of any further ideas, please help. Thank you.