Assume someone's name ends with x. If we want to refer to one of his belongings, should we say ---x's or ---x'es?  The problem here is that if the pronunciation follows spelling.
1) Alex's house      2) Alex' house     When the noun ends with the letter 's' or 'x', do I need to put 's' after an apostrophe or not?  I remember I read some rules related to this in my school grammar book, but now I've forgotten it.
90s (or earlier) movie with experimental, invisible, teleporting, time-traveling ship How do I change the full background color of the console window in C#? Upper bound on the number of charts needed to cover a topological manifold If $M^n$ is a compact topological manifold (not necessarily with additional structure), is there an upper bound on the number of charts needed to cover $M$ ? Does this bound depend on the dimension of $M$ ?  Thanks in advance...  Cheers Say I have two points. One at $A = (0, 0)$ and another at $B = (0, 10)$. I wish to derive an equation for a line that, for any point $P$ on the line, would equal a set ratio for the distance $P$ to $A$ and $P$ to $B$.  This is easy if the predetermined ratio for $A:B$ is $1:1$. I would create a line from $A$ to $B$, find its midpoint, then create an orthogonal line at the midpoint. Then at any $P$ on the line I know that the ratio distances from $P$ to $A$ and $B$ will be $1:1$.  But what if the ratio for $A:B$ is something like $11:18$?  This is for a positioning algorithm I am implementing - not for homework :)  EDIT: Note - If an exact formula is not possible, an approximation of the line out to $\pm 200$ from $A$ or $B$ is acceptable as values further from $A$ and $B$ will not be utilized anyway. A linear equation for the final result/approximation is ideal for speed in running multiple computations. MySQL: "UPDATE command denied to user ''@'localhost'" Is there some rare language construct I haven't encountered (like the few I've learned recently, some on Stack Overflow) in C# to get a value representing the current iteration of a foreach loop?  For instance, I currently do something like this depending on the circumstances:  int i = 0; foreach (Object o in collection) {     // ...     i++; } How can I use "." as the delimiter with String.split() in java Which nvidia driver from additional drivers option should I choose? I have NVIDIA Geforece 7025 / nForce 630a integrated gfx card on my UBUNTU 12.04.And I have 4 options in Additional drivers:    NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (version 173)   NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (post-release updates)(version current updates)  NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (version current)[Recommended]  NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (post-release updates)(version 173 updates)   I am currently using the First option.  My Problem is there I can't update the version 173 to the latest version of drivers using xswat PPA. Whenever I do it and reboot but the NVIDIA xserver sttings always shows me the same version.  Which option would allow me to update my drivers to the current version? Here is the blender window I have:    As you see, it doesn't have the menu that is usually displayed at the top of the screen.  How can I get the menu back? How can I merge properties of two JavaScript objects dynamically? I need to be able to merge two (very simple) JavaScript objects at runtime.  For example I'd like to:  var obj1 = { food: 'pizza', car: 'ford' } var obj2 = { animal: 'dog' }  obj1.merge(obj2);  //obj1 now has three properties: food, car, and animal   Does anyone have a script for this or know of a built in way to do this?  I do not need recursion, and I do not need to merge functions, just methods on flat objects. Is there a function $f\colon\mathbb{R}\to\mathbb{R}$ such that every non-empty open interval is mapped onto $\mathbb{R}$? I wonder  whether there is a function $f\colon\Bbb R\to\Bbb R$ with the folowing characteristic?   for every two real numbers $\alpha,\beta,\alpha\lt\beta$,  $$\{f(x):x\in(\alpha,\beta)\}=\Bbb R$$   I can't  say such a function does not exist, neither can I construct a example  Thanks a lot! Why is ScreenToWorldPoint always giving same coordinates with mouse position? Whenever I use ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition) and display the output in console this always gives me the same coordinates. MyCode: Vector3 screenToWorld;  void Update() {     screenToWorld = Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition);     Debug.Log(screenToWorld); } Selecting a database in mysql with spaces in its name I want to select my particular database in mysql console, but the problem is that my database name has a space in between and mysql ignores the part after the space. For instance, when i give the command:  use 'student registration'   I get the message:  cannot find database 'student' This is a spin-off question from .   says this on the subject of storage order (clustered index) and the output order     A lot of people believe that a clustered index guarantees a sort order on output. But that's not what it does; it guarantees a storage order on disk.   See, for example, .   I've read the blog post by Hugo Kornelis and understands that an index doesn't guarantee that the sql server reads the records in a specific order. Yet I have a hard time accepting that I can't assume this for my scenario?  CREATE TABLE [dbo].[SensorValues](   [DeviceId] [int] NOT NULL,   [SensorId] [int] NOT NULL,   [SensorValue] [int] NOT NULL,   [Date] [int] NOT NULL, CONSTRAINT [PK_SensorValues] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED  (   [DeviceId] ASC,   [SensorId] ASC,   [Date] DESC ) WITH (     FILLFACTOR=75,     DATA_COMPRESSION = PAGE,     PAD_INDEX = OFF,     STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF,     SORT_IN_TEMPDB = OFF,     IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF,     ONLINE = OFF,     ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON,     ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON)   ON [MyPartitioningScheme]([Date])   My original query was this:  SELECT TOP 1 SensorValue   FROM SensorValues   WHERE SensorId = 53     AND DeviceId = 3819     AND Date &lt; 1339225010   ORDER BY Date DESC   But I suggest that I could as well use this one (read below for my explanation):  SELECT TOP 1 SensorValue   FROM SensorValues   WHERE SensorId = 53     AND DeviceId = 3819     AND Date &lt; 1339225010   As you can see, my table rows are small (16bytes) and I've got only one index, a clustered. In my scenario, the table consists of 100.000.000 records at this moment (and this will most likely increase tenfold).  When the database server queries this table it has two ways of finding my rows, either it seeks the primary key and thereby reading and returning my values in desc. order of Date, or it has to do a full table scan. My conclusion is that a full table scan on all those records will be way too slow and the database server will therefore always seek the table via its primary key and thereby returning the values sorted by Date DESC Intuition behind the Definition of Conditional Probability (for 2 Events) What is some intuitive insight regarding the conditional probability definition: $P(A\mid B) = \large \frac{P(A \cap B)}{P(B)}$ ? I am looking for an intuitive motivation. My textbook merely gives a definition, but no true development of that definition. Hopefully that's not too much to ask. Collapsible fieldsets error for previous dates Is it possible to reconstruct the Hamiltonian from knowledge of its ground state wave function? Is it possible to "construct" the Hamiltonian of a system if its ground state wave function (or functional) is known? I understand one should not expect this to be generically true since the Hamiltonian contains more information (the full spectrum) than a single state vector. But are there any special cases where it's possible to obtain the Hamiltonian? Some examples would be really helpful. tl;dr  Due to the special nature of Meta and the high rate of "lost souls", should we try out the Ask a Question Wizard here on Meta Stack Exchange too?  General idea  In case anyone doesn't know yet, . It guides new users towards writing better questions.  I think that such a question wizard would be useful on Meta Stack Exchange too, for three main reasons:   . There are four types of questions on Meta, each represented by the different required tags: , ,  and . Especially bug reports can often be split into a certain structure (what's wrong, how to reproduce, why I think it's wrong, examples). The same holds true for feature requests. Such a structure is ideal for a question wizard. Quite a few users  and . While the Meta community is well prepared to deal with these posts quickly, they lead to an less-than-ideal first impression by the new users and they distract the community from more important issues. Site-specific questions are often off-topic. This  since nowhere is it hinted at in the help pages (and there are a lot of old, not-yet-closed SO-specific questions from a prior era of this site) and can lead to unnecessary drama. If we add an honeypot into the wizard to catch this case (and ideally redirect them to the proper meta site), we could prevent this.   As Sonic said, there's an  new users need to read and confirm. However this doesn't really prove effective right now and we might need to try stronger tools (e.g. question wizard).  Therefore I think that we should test the Ask Question Wizard here on Meta too.  Implementation details (help welcome)  I think the wizard should have six main entry points:   I want to discuss a specific post or action from any Stack Exchange site. (-> honeypot, redirects to the appropriate per-site meta) I have a question regarding the use of Stack Exchange sites (-> support mode) I think I found a bug while using the Stack Exchange sites  (-> bug mode) I have an idea for improving the Stack Exchange sites  (-> feature request mode) I have a discussion I want to start about Stack Exchange communities or their rules  (-> discussion mode) I have some other (e.g. programming) question  (-> honeypot, redirects to )   Coming from these choices, the user would either be redirected to a landing page explaining, why this is not the right community and offering some alternative choices or they would follow the guided assistant.  For 1. the user might be asked on which site the post/action is. Maybe the system could show the three sites where the user was recently active/has the highest reputation on.  support mode would ask the user for these details:   what do you want to achieve? what have you tried? what is your current problem?   bug mode would ask the user for these details:   bug description how to reproduce the problem why do you think that this is wrong? (possibly) examples   feature request mode would ask the user for these details:   what is your goal? how do you think could this be achieved? why will the community benefit from this change? (possibly) details   discussion mode would ask the user for these details:   which rule do you want to propose/clarify (optionally) examples/why is this rule required?   Note: the above implementation details probably require some revision. Feel free to edit/suggest improvements for both wording and details. Solving $\sin x\cos3x+\cos x\sin3x=\sqrt{3}/2$ in the interval $[0,2\pi]$ Solve the following trig equation: $$\sin(x)\cos(3x)+\cos(x)\sin(3x)=\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}$$ in the interval $[0,2\pi]$.  Using trig identities, it is now at $$\sin(x+3x)=\sqrt{3}/2 \tag{1}$$ Next, it has become $$\sin(x+3x)=\sin 60^\circ \tag{2}$$ leading to $$\sin(x+3x)-\sin60^\circ=0 \tag{3}$$ From there, it is unclear what to do. I have two Xbox 360's, one WiFi and the other wired through the same Linksys E3000 router with DD-WRT (v24-sp2 (04/13/11) std-usb-nas firmware).   Mine (the wired one, though hers has been wired in the past and it didn't appear to help) always seems to be open (green), and hers is either moderate or closed (oj/red)  Even with the original router firmware I've never been able to get both consoles into "open nat" mode, and it makes playing certain games together almost impossible for me and my wife  because we can't seem to get into the same game.   I have uPnP enabled and the DMZ disabled, and some minor port forwarding to allow for a Minecraft server (Ports 25565 and 25566 for a testing copy of the server), but other than that the settings are mainly at their default, on the xbox's and the router.   Are there any settings I can configure to allow this to work properly?