I tried leaving a comment on  that says 'What have you tried?', but was unable to post my comment. I've seen this comment posted on other questions where the OP requests code to be spoon fed to him so I assumed it was proper etiquette, but apparently not.  I've noticed one of two things will happen:   People will post quick and dirty code to get the easy rep There will be several comments between the OP and commenters about elaborating on the details of the question, what he's tried, etc.   I see this comment: How about you go and attempt this yourself instead of being lazy and just asking someone else to do it? StackOverflow expects you to show any attempts made, which is clearly a more inflammatory way of saying 'What have you tried'?  Can anyone elaborate on this?
Statistics  () In Q1 of 2012 - 0.0134 such comments per question (~1.33%) In Q2 of 2012 - 0.0167 such comments per question (~1.66%) In Q3 of 2012 - 0.0169 such comments per question (~1.68%) In Q4 of 2012 - 0.0193 such comments per question (~1.92%) In Q1 of 2013 - 0.0223 such comments per question (~2.22%)  The vast majority of these questions need serious help.  Unfortunately, there is a growing trend towards abuse Along with the good, comes some bad -- as usual in life. These comments are bad when  Posting &quot;what have you tried&quot; multiple times per question is severely obnoxious Posting &quot;what have you tried&quot; when the user has clearly shown that they have tried to solve it on their own  It is becoming increasingly common to see &quot;what have you tried?&quot; comments in these scenarios. Some examples     Workarounds Flagging Comments - It is considered a good thing to be liberal with comment flagging -- that helps us clean up after the fact. &quot;Too Chatty&quot; is a no-brainer here. Unfortunately, that only cleans up after the damage has been done. All signs point toward the continued increase of the trend of using &quot;what have you tried&quot; comments. I spend a lot of time editing and cleaning up bad questions. This trend came up on my radar toward the end of last year and it is getting worse. So, I thought at the very least that I'd raise some awareness.
"On their back" or "on their backs"? After the therapy, eight children (43%) became able to crawl/move on their back.   Or should I use "on their backs"?   Singular because each child only has one back, or plural because we're dealing with eight backs? I know many master's students who get an opportunity to talk to their potential PhD advisors well before applying. In most cases this opportunity is available by the professors with whom they worked for their master's. Moreover, there are many others who establish a contact with professors by mailing them and enquiring about PhD vacancies.   My questions are:   How important is knowing an advisor prior to applying for PhD?  Does an email interaction play a vital role when the department makes its admit decisions? If email contact is important, can a student send out mails to 2-3 professors (working in the same area) in case one of them does not bother to reply? To sum up, is applying of any use (especially in top universities) when you have no contacts and only your credentials to bank on? I have used Windows since childhood, and when I hear the phrase "Windows filesystem" I think of directories (folders) within directories, a folder called SYSTEM, a folder called PROGRAM FILES etc. Is this what the system is? Just the layout of the folders?  And then I recently started using Linux, and my reference book says in the linux filesystem everything starts at root and branches off from there. How is that really different from Windows? I mean, it seems the linux system and the windows system are just two ways of setting up a directory tree.  Is this what file system means? I've got a project where I'm looking to tweak the standard lead conversion process.   Triggers and lead conversion has always been funky in past projects so I was hoping to start the design off by reviewing the order of execution, but after a long google search I'm coming up empty handed.   Anyone out there know the specific trigger order for lead conversion?    Edit: I'm not asking about trigger execution order for any object, but all the objects created in the lead conversion process.  I'd think it would be something like this:        Lead Before Update Triggers (isConverted = false, convertedAccountId = null, convertContactId = null, convertedOpportunityId = null)         Account Before Insert Triggers (not fired if merged with existing account)   Account After Insert Triggers (not fired if merged with existing account)   Contact Before Insert Triggers (not fired if merged with existing contact)   Contact After Insert Triggers (not fired if merged with existing contact)   Opportunity Before Insert Triggers (not fired if no opportunity) (OpportunityContactRoles null)   Opportunity After Insert Triggers (not fired if no opportunity) (OpportunityContactRoles = convertedContactId)   Lead After Update Triggers (isConverted = true, convertedAccountId = XXX, convertedContactId = XXX, convertedOpportunityId = XXX) What is the role of NS records at the apex of a DNS domain? $ORIGIN example.com. ; not necessary, using this to self-document  $TTL 3600 @        IN     SOA   ns1.example.com. admin.example.com. (                       1970010100 7200 1800 1209600 300)  @        IN     NS   ns1.example.com. @        IN     NS   ns2.example.com.  @        IN     A    198.51.100.1 ns1      IN     A    198.51.100.2 ns2      IN     A    198.51.100.3  sub1     IN     NS   ns1.example.edu.  sub2     IN     NS   ns1.sub2 ns1.sub2 IN     A    203.0.113.1 ; inline glue record   The role of a NS record beneath the apex of a domain is well-understood; they exist to delegate authority for a subdomain to another nameserver. Examples of this above would include the NS records for sub1 and sub2. These allow the nameserver to hand out referrals for portions of the domain that it does not consider itself authoritative for.  The purpose of the NS records at the apex of a domain, ns1 and ns2 in this case, seem to be less understood by the internet at large. My understanding (which may not be holistic) is as follows:   They are not used by caching DNS servers in order to determine the authoritative servers for the domain. This is handled by , which is defined at the registrar level. The registrar never uses this information to generate the glue records. They  used to delegate authority for the entire domain to other nameservers. Trying to do so with software such as ISC BIND will not result in the "expected" referral behavior at all, as the nameserver will continue to consider itself authoritative for the zone. They are not used by the nameserver to determine whether it should return authoritative responses (AA flag set) or not; that behavior is defined by whether the software is told to be a master or a slave for the zone. Most nameserver software will quite happily serve apex NS records that disagree with the information contained by the upstream glue records, which will in turn cause well-known DNS validation websites to generate warnings for the domain.   With this being the case, what are we left with? Why are we defining this information if it doesn't appear to be consumed by caching DNS servers on the internet at large? The screen of my phone is physically broken, so it doesn't display anything, but the touch aspect does seem to be working, as I can unlock my phone, and get haptic feedback.  Before I go to get it replaced, I'd like to back up some personal data from the built-in memory to the SD card. I'm fairly certain that if I can get adb to recognize the device, then I can use  to see where I am touching the screen and do what I need to do. Problem is, when I plug it in, it's not recognized, while my emulator is.  I suspect that I might not have USB debugging enabled, which I think is necessary for adb to work. If this is the case, can someone give me screenshots of their Droid X (running 2.3.X) going from the home screen, through all the menus, to activating debug mode? Hopefully I can do it by dead reckoning and adb from there.  Edit: I haven't changed anything about the ROM or launcher; it's all stock. What's the meaning of a dot before a command in shell? While following android eclipse debug tutorial, I encounter following commands.  cd /path/to/android/root  . build/envsetup.sh  lunch 1     make        emulator   My problem is what the dot before build/envsetup.sh means? $\mathbb Z[1/2]$ is not finitely generated ?   Maybe I misunderstood, what finitely generated means.  it says, we need finitely many elements and I think $1$ and $1/2$ suffices as generators.  But , at the end of Proposition $5.1.4$, from the fact that $\mathbb Z[1/2]$ is not finitely generated it is concluded that $1/2$ is not integral. Which is the right way to do something like 'description' list but with customizable and fixed-width labels? I.e. something like this:  Label:         Text text text text text text                text text text text. Longer label:  Text text text text text text                Text text text text.   The way I see it to use two-column table (first columt for labels and second column for descriptions), but this solution seems ugly. Is there any other way? What should I do to avoid ear pain when flying? How can I deactivate Bluetooth on system startup? How can I deactivate Bluetooth on system startup? Basis for Skew Symmetric Matrix I'm trying to find a basis for the kernel for the following mapping:  Considering the linear transformation T: $M_{33} \rightarrow M_{33}  $ defined by $T(A) = .5(A + A^T)$. I know that this is basically asking for the basis under the condition that $T(A)=0$ which means that $A+A^T=0$ so $A^T = -A$.  I found that matrices that fit this condition are Skew Symmetric Matrices.  However, I'm not sure how to find the basis for the kernel of these matrices. Does Gentle Repose work on a Circle of Spore Druid's Fungal Infestation Ability? The Circle of Spores Druid feature Fungal Infestation states:  If a beast or humanoid that is Small or Medium dies within 10 feet of you, you can use your reaction to animate it, causing it to stand up immediately with 1 hit point. The creature uses the zombie statistics. It remains animate for 1 hour, after which time it collapses and dies.  Circle of Spore druids also gain access to the  spell, which states:  You touch a corpse or other remains. For the duration, the target is protected from decay and can’t become undead. The spell also effectively extends the time limit on raising the target from the dead, since days spent under the influence of this spell don’t count against the time limit of spells such as raise dead.  There seem to be some good arguments that they cannot work together:  First, Gentle Repose states the target cannot become undead, which would seem to preclude Gentle Repose working on a fungally infested creature that appears to be in some sense raised from the dead. Second, gentle repose states you touch a corpse or other remains - one could argue that using the zombie statistics, the fungally infested entity is neither a corpse or remains, but an undead zombie.  However, there are also some reasonable arguments that they could work together:  First, the Fungal Infestation does not say that the creature is undead or a zombie, but that it uses the statistics of a zombie, which might leave room for a RAW interpretation that the features could work together (for example, it could be considered a fungally infested corpse or fungally raised remains). Second, Gentle Repose says that it extends the time limit of raising the target from the dead and makes reference to spells like Raise Dead, which in flavour are similar to what happens with Fungal Infestation.  RAW, can a player cast gentle repose on a zombie created by Fungal Infestation? Proving that $\lim\limits_{x \to 0}\frac{e^x-1}{x} = 1$ Table of contents numbering is strange Why close and not migrate? How do you type a single backslash, code-formatted, in a comment? Is there a way to type something in a comment that renders like this?     You'll need to escape it with a backslash - that is, the \ character.   I've tried various combinations, but a single backslash formatted as code seems to be impossible. Can this be fixed, or can I be enlightened please?  And to clarify: I expect this:  You'll need to escape it with a backslash - that is, the `\\` character.   to work properly, but it doesn't. Instead, one backslash escapes the ` and I'm left with a mess. How to distinguish between American Indians and Indian Indians in native English (language) parlance? How to distinguish between American Indians and Indian Indians in native English (language) parlance?  Can I say Indian Indian to say Indian from Asia compared to the Native Americans? scope of clause within complex sentence If I said, &quot;I will run, not if it is snowing, if I my shoes are comfortable.&quot; Does the &quot;if my shoes are comfortable&quot; modify the &quot;I will run&quot; clause? I agree the sentence would be clearer with the addition of &quot;and&quot; in place of the comma. However, without the &quot;and&quot; is it still clear that the &quot;if my shoes are comfortable&quot; clause modifies the &quot;I will run&quot; clause? I saw this in a  and am putting it here for posterity.  Problem: Let $A$ and $B$ by square matrices and set $C=AB-BA$. If $AC=CA$, prove $C$ is nilpotent.