Well, it's been , but it's been 8 months and it hasn't got any easier. Epic is by far the hardest silver badge. Only 103 of them have been awarded so far. The majority of gold badges have a higher count; except Copy Editor (80), Reversal (49) and duh - Legendary (30).* Should the requirements be lowered? (Disclosure of interest: I have 38 &quot;exceeded&quot; days). * (Not counting the new badges Announcer, Booster and Publicist).
I was just curious, why is epic a silver badge if only 73 users have been awarded with it?  For example: Silver Epic - 73  Gold Electorate - 193    Edit: My point was to reduce the level of epic, like "hit the daily reputation cap on 30 days" so it becomes some what at par with other silver badges.
How do I use the Natural Earth SQLite DB with QGIS? I just downloaded the Natural Earth data in SQLite format from . I had assumed that this would be a SpatiaLite database, but it appears not to be! QGIS is failing to recognize it as a spatial database. OGR supposedly supports reading geometries even when stored in a plain SQLite database, but maybe QGIS doesn't use OGR for SpatiaLite?  The SQLite database does have geometry_columns and spatial_ref_sys tables. Is there some way to convert it to a full SpatiaLite database? How do I time a method's execution in Java? How do I get a method's execution time?   Is there a Timer utility class for things like timing how long a task takes, etc?     Most of the searches on Google return results for timers that schedule threads and tasks, which is not what I want. Taking the second derivative of a parametric curve finding the index of a max value in R Android cancel Toast when exiting the app and when toast is being shown Can $n!$ be a perfect square when $n$ is an integer greater than $1$?  Clearly, when $n$ is prime, $n!$ is not a perfect square because the exponent of $n$ in $n!$ is $1$.  The same goes when $n-1$ is prime, by considering the exponent of $n-1$. What is the answer for a general value of $n$?  (And is it possible, to prove without Bertrand's postulate. Because Bertrands postulate is quite a strong result.) Let consider the power series $$ \sum_{k=1}^\infty a_kx^k. $$ We know that it converges when  $$\lim_{n\to \infty }\sqrt[n]{|a_n|}|x|&lt; 1\quad\text{or}\quad |x|&lt; \frac{1}{\lim_{n\to \infty }\sqrt[n]{|a_n|}}$$  But D'Alembert test tells us that it converges if $$|x|&lt; \frac{1}{\lim_{n\to \infty }\left|\frac{a_{n+1}}{a_n}\right|},$$ so since the radius of convergence is unique, we should have that $$\lim_{n\to \infty }\sqrt[n]{|a_n|}=\lim_{n\to \infty }\left|\frac{a_{n+1}}{a_n}\right|.$$  I tried to prove it, but this result looks strange to me. So if it doesn't work always, how can we have those to limit as radius of convergence? I guess the equality of those two limit should be true most of the time.  So under what conditions is it true? Can i use the /testfor command to check for certain words in chat? Isn't the const modifier here unnecessary? What is Ambient Occlusion? What is Ambient Occlusion and what are some of it's uses? I see it is used in creating what might be called "shadow catchers" in the following node tree setup: There are $2n+1$ people. For each $n$ people there is somebody who is friend with each of them. Prove there is a "know-them-all" person. I have a following problem.     There are $2n+1$ people in the room. For any group of $n$ people there is a person (different from them) who is friends with each person in this group. Prove that there is a person, who knows all $2n$ other people.   One can easily see, that $\min_v \deg v = n$. From this we can get a lower bound for number of edges $N_e$: $$ N_e = \frac{1}{2}\sum_v \deg v \geq \frac{(2n+1) \cdot n}{2} $$ I do not know where to move from this point (and do not think, that this is the right direction) and pretty stuck right now. Can you give a hint? People seem to believe that one's consciousness is a "different" consciousness than that of others, but the "same" consciousness as the one that has been in one's body in the past and the one that will be in one's body in the future. How likely is this to be true and why?   Also, I have almost no knowledge about neuroscience, so please refrain from using neuroscience jargon if feasible. Origin of "Fits [x] to a T"? The above phrase is something I've known for as long as I can remember, though I don't know from where. What is its origin and usage? Example: &quot;While Android products aren't quite what I need, iOS devices fit my needs to a T.&quot; Matrix with labels nested in braces Batch export Photoshop layers to individual PNG files What is the correspondence between the conserved canonical energy-momentum tensor, which is $$ T^{\mu\nu}_{can} := \sum_{i=1}^N\frac{\delta\mathcal{L}_{Matter}}{\delta(\partial_\mu f_i)}\partial^\nu f_i - \eta^{\mu\nu}\mathcal{L}$$ (the four conserved Noether currents corresponding to four possible spacetime translations)  where $\{f_i\}_{i=1}^N$ are the $N$ matter fields in the theory, and we assume $f_i\mapsto\alpha^\nu\partial_\nu f_i$ for translations,  and stress-energy tensor from the Einstein-Hilbert action, which is: $$ T_{\mu\nu}\equiv-\frac{2}{\sqrt{-g}}\frac{\delta\mathcal{L}_{Matter}}{\delta g^{\mu\nu}} $$   In particular, how do you get that the two are equal (are they?) for Minkowski space, for which there is no variation in the metric? Is stopwatch benchmarking acceptable? Does anyone ever use stopwatch benchmarking, or should a performance tool always be used?  Are there any good free tools available for Java?  What tools do you use?  To clarify my concerns, stopwatch benchmarking is subject to error due to operating system scheduling.  On a given run of your program the OS might schedule another process (or several) in the middle of the function you're timing.  In Java, things are even a little bit worse if you're trying to time a threaded application, as the JVM scheduler throws even a little bit more randomness into the mix.  How do you address operating system scheduling when benchmarking? This may be a simple question, but how do I use files starting with "-" with command line programs?   For example,  I am trying to use pdfgrep on a file named -2013-01-01.pdf but it complains that there are no options defined for 2, 0, 1, 3 and so on.  Changing the filename to something that does not start with "-" solves it, but this is not an option since the files aren't created by me. I simply want to check for a specific change I know is coming. Python List vs. Array - when to use? Closed form for $\int_0^\infty\frac{1}{(1+x^2)^s}\,dx$ when $s\in (0.5,\infty)\setminus\mathbb{N}$