Sindbad was a rich and a famous sailor.   Sindbad was a rich and famous sailor.   Which of these are correct? What is the general rule for using articles before a noun with two adjectives?
In the following example, is it appropriate to use a or an as the indefinite article, and why?     He ate __ green apple.   I know that in the case of just "apple", it would be "an apple," but I've heard conflicting answers for "green apple," where the noun is separated from the article by an adjective.  Also, which is more appropriate in this case:     He ate  __ enormous Pop-Tart.
Electric monopoles do exist, but why cannot magnetic monopoles exist?    The question is closed because I need to clarify it, but I don't know how I could ask it another way. However, I've recieved many answers that were appropiate and added something to my knowledge, so I consider it answered. "Contact us"... and then what? Random test data: How to do it right? Several months ago I started an experiment in test automation. Each test, before it starts, picks up random test data. For instance, when my test requires a user with administration privileges, I draw a random account and then I from a group of admin users for this account I draw a random admin user.  The reason for using random test data was two-fold:    First, when we were using static, i.e., hard-coded test data, sometimes tests started to fail, because test data no longer existed in DB, e.g., a user has been removed from the database (we're having production dump in our test DB, so I guess the user has been deleted in production). When we started to find such users at runtime, the problem disappeared.  Second problem was that it was not really clear why certain test data were used for a certain test. We have inherited tests from the other team and couldn't understand their intentions behind, for instance, using user "xyz@awesome.com". By writing queries to find data, we started to explicitly state what type of test data we want, e.g., that we want a user with administration privileges.   While my approach solved both problems, it introduced also some new issues:   Tests occasionally fail, because they pick up wrong test data. This is because queries are sometimes incorrect. For instance, once a test drawn a random account that had no administrators at all. Good thing about that is that this way I keep learning new things about the system under tests, e.g., that there must be business reasons to have accounts without administrators. Test setup becomes more and more complex, as queries start to grow and thus tests seems now a bit more complex to understand.   I was also hoping to increase coverage and find more bugs by using random test data just like it is done in fuzz testing. Instead, I mostly found bugs in my test and learned how little I know about the system under test. Finally, ROI doesn't seem big. Before the change there was a cost of maintaining static test data (updating test data if they were outdates). Now I have to maintain complex queries when the test takes "wrong" test data and this tends to occur more often than outdating of static test data previously.  I wonder whether using random test data really makes sense and how to do it right? Why doesn't backpropagation work when you initialize all the weight the same value (say 0.5), but works fine when given random numbers?   Shouldn't the algorithm calculate the error and work from there, despite the fact that the weights are initially the same? Why directory with large amounts of entries does not shrink in size after entries are removed? Close vote notice: While the linked duplicate asks same question, the comments and the only answer do not provide an answer which draws from authoritative source. The , does in fact provide the answer I've been seeking. Thus the proposed duplicate isn't helpful, however Thomas's answer here is proper.  According to the  and personal account , directories that have large amount of entries get to a size over 4096 bytes (which can be seen with ls -l output), but once the entries are removed - the number never goes down.   The question is "why" ? Is it due to how ext4 filesystem configured to retain directory metadata ? Obviously removing the directory and recreating it isn't a solution, since it deletes original inode and creates a new one. What can be done to decrease the number manually ? Why isn't my website in Google search results? It's been sometime and Google has yet to index my site. How can I get Google to index my website? (Ubuntu/Linux)"find" command gives different results based on quotation marks I was using   find -iname *prib*   and getting only one result "./prib09jack.pdf" with   find -iname "*prib*"    I get many more results that I was looking for such as  ./Dir1/PRIB09/prib09jackTFF1.pdf   and many more, but why did it matter that the quotation marks were around "prib"?   Best. Prove $\gcd(a+b, a-b) = 1$ or $2\,$ if $\,\gcd(a,b) = 1$ I want to show that for $\gcd(a,b) = 1$ $a,b \in Z$   $\gcd(a+b, a-b) = 1$ or $\gcd(a+b, a-b) = 2$ holds.      I think the first step should look something like this:      $d = \gcd(a+b, a-b) = \gcd(2a, a-b)$   From here I tried to proceed with two cases. 1: $a-b$ is even, which leads to $\gcd(a+b, a-b) = 2$ 2: $a-b$ is odd, which leads to $\gcd(a+b, a-b) = 1$  My main problem I think is, that I do not know how I should include $\gcd(a,b) = 1$ in the proof.  Any help is appreciated. Thx in advance. Cherio Woltan Make the search box return results from all StackOverflowian sites? How can I utilize the whole terminal, like htop or emacs do? I want to write a program that can "draw" in the terminal the same way as htop or emacs. By that I mean "get rid of the prompt and make the output dependent on the current size of the terminal".   To make this a bit more clear:   I want to use the terminal this way:     in stead of this way: I have just updated Windows 7 to Windows 10.  My touchpad scolling (right-side) is not working anymore.    I have no idea how to fix this in Windows 10.  I have hit the start button and typed "synaptic", but have found nothing useful.  I used to have an icon on the taskbar that showed where I was touching the touchpad.  I used to be able to right-click that icon to change settings, but Windows 10 has not brought that icon over.  Also, the asus website has no synaptic touchpad drivers available for Windows 10.  I have tried the enaltech drivers, but upon the installation atempt I am told that my hardware is not correct. Can Muggles publicly establish the existence of a magical community? How to get the filename without the extension from a path in Python? How to get the filename without the extension from a path in Python? For instance, if I had &quot;/path/to/some/file.txt&quot;, I would want &quot;file&quot;. I'm trying to go into an irb session with specific environment variables from a file with this command:  $ env $(cat env.sh) irb   But when I try press Tab after I type env. to complete it, I get this following error:  $ env $(cat env.-bash: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `)' -bash: syntax error: unexpected end of file   Another interesting thing is that if I'm logged in as root, this error does not occur.   Here's the output of find ~ -uid 0:  $ find ~ -uid 0 /home/(redacted)/.rpmdb /home/(redacted)/.rpmdb/Group /home/(redacted)/.rpmdb/Conflictname /home/(redacted)/.rpmdb/Installtid /home/(redacted)/.rpmdb/Sha1header /home/(redacted)/.rpmdb/Providename /home/(redacted)/.rpmdb/__db.002 /home/(redacted)/.rpmdb/Requirename /home/(redacted)/.rpmdb/Sigmd5 /home/(redacted)/.rpmdb/__db.001 /home/(redacted)/.rpmdb/Obsoletename /home/(redacted)/.rpmdb/.dbenv.lock /home/(redacted)/.rpmdb/Name /home/(redacted)/.rpmdb/Basenames /home/(redacted)/.rpmdb/Triggername /home/(redacted)/.rpmdb/Packages /home/(redacted)/.rpmdb/Dirnames /home/(redacted)/.rpmdb/__db.003   Can anyone explain to me why this is happening and if so, how do I fix it in when I'm not a root user? The cow in the field problem (intersecting circular areas) What length of rope should be used to tie a cow to an exterior fence post of a circular field so that the cow can only graze half of the grass within that field?  updated: To be clear: the cow should be tied to a post on the exterior of the field, not a post at the center of the field. In cricket how does someone become an umpire at international level? Is there some procedure for this? How are they selected and what is the criteria for this? What does "off of" mean? I have read a sentence from “Diary of a Wimpy Kid 4”:     The teachers have really been cracking down on kids copying off of each other this year.   How to understand "off of"? Please parse it. Is drinking water during or after a meal better? How to prove that a limit does not exist? Let $x \in \mathbb{R}$ and let $\lfloor y\rfloor$ be the largest integer less than or equal to $x$. $$ f(x) = \frac{1}{x} - \left\lfloor\frac{1}{x}\right\rfloor$$ How does one prove that the $ \lim_{x\to 0} f(x)$ does not exist by using a Epsilon Delta proof? There is a hint given that you can use a proof by contradiction. In Windows 7, How to query times, when the computer was locked? Is there a way to get a list of the following times:  whenever windows is locked (using windows+l combo)  whenever windows is unlocked in the past week?   I've tried poking in the event log, to no avail. Many thanks!