Why is it "runners-up", as opposed to the naïve "runner-ups"?   Is there a rule to remember for these situations?
This is purely a curiosity, but I'm fascinated by mid-word pluralization, even if the word in question is a compound word.  For example, passersby or standersby.  No others have occurred to me. Can you provide other examples, or a link to a resource that enumerates them?  I'm particularly interested in compounds that do not include spaces or hyphens.
Black and white beads on a circle There are $n$ beads placed on a circle, $n\ge 3$. They are numbered in random order as viewed clockwise. Beads for which the number of the previous bead is less than the number of a next bead are painted in white color,and others - in black.  Two colourations that can be made equal by rotation are considered identical. How many different colourations can occur?  I've write a programm and for $n=3...11$ I've got answers $2 , 1 , 6 , 7 ,  18 , 25 , 58 , 93 , 186$ I am new to Ubuntu and want to install VMWare Player. What is the step by step procedure to install that? Comma — a punctuation error? Consider:     This book provides a solid psychological understanding of these experiments, and adds a few expansions and conclusions of its own. It also provides …   My question regards the comma. I have been told that having the comma there is an error.  According to  this seems to be the case according to “some style guides”. The reason is that the stuff after the comma is not independent; it’s dependent on what comes before.  What do you think? It would seem to me the comma helps a lot, because those two “and”s without any comma make the sentence rather cluttered. That’s why I put the comma there. So I’m not sure. I want to remotely control my Android device from my PC without rooting it. Is this possible? Test if a package (or package option) is loaded [french]{babel} (aka frenchb) is incompatible with some other packages, such as tikz, since it tries to insert \thinspace before semi-colons.  In order to make these two play nice, you have to call \shorthandoff{;} in the document.  Now I have a package that uses tikz and I would like to locally disable the semi-colon for babel, instead of disabling it for the whole document. I could hack the .sty of the package to do that, knowing that I'm using frenchb, but I would rather make something clean and portable.  Is there a way in my package that I can test if frenchb is loaded and disable semi-colon management with babel locally, so the package doesn't have to be hacked?  Edit:  Martin's solution gives me something like this in general:  \RequirePackage{ifthen} \newcommand{\@babel@loaded}{0} \AtBeginDocument{\@ifpackageloaded{babel}                                                    {\renewcommand{\@babel@loaded}{1}}                                                         {\renewcommand{\@babel@loaded}{0}}                                                       } \newcommand{\somecommandusingsemicolon}{   \ifthenelse{\@babel@loaded=1}{\shorthandoff{;}}{}     % code with semi-colon here }   and in the specific case of tikz:  \AtBeginDocument{\@ifpackageloaded{babel}   {%     \g@addto@macro\tikz@installcommands{%       \shorthandoff{;}%     }     \g@addto@macro\tikz@uninstallcommands{%       \shorthandon{;}%     }   }   {\relax} } How to run both Intel and Nvidia graphics card driver on dual monitor setup? I'm trying to get Intel and Nvidia graphics card working together with two monitors. One monitor should use the Intel card and the other the Nvidia card. Of course, I want to use only one keyboard and one mouse to switch between both screens. Bumblebee didn't work for me.  I don't want to use the xserver-xorg-video-all package because I need the Nvidia card for gaming and I can't use only one graphics card because I need one for KVM virtualisation and the other one for my Linux desktop  So I tried to install the drivers and to configure the Xserver manually. The Nvidia driver is working and I get a video output. But I don't get a video output with the Intel card.  I followed   The config files: Compute the integral $\int\frac{dx}{(x^2-x+1)\sqrt{x^2+x+1}}$ I am getting the following error in a Drupal 8 site.     The following module is missing from the file system   It looks as if a custom module was installed and deleted without uninstalling it.   How can I fix this error? How can I mitigate edge halo when darkening skies in post-processing? How to ask great questions As programmers we are daily faced with having to get requirements, test things out, etc.  It's practically half our job to know what questions to ask, and how to ask them to get the most concise, actionable answer possible, especially from reluctant users/managers/customers/etc.  How do you ask questions that get answers? Derivation of a generalization of Mertens' Third Theorem. One of Mertens' Theorems states $$\prod_{p\le x}(1-\frac{1}{p})\sim \frac{e^{-\gamma}}{\ln(x)}.$$ I have seen a generalized version that states  $$\prod_{m&lt;p\le x}(1-\frac{m}{p})\sim \frac{c(m)}{(\ln(x))^m},$$ where $m$ is a positive integer and $c(m)$ is a real number that depends on $m$. How can I derive this result? Is there a way to find what the values of $c(m)$ are? Thank you very much. Why L1 norm for sparse models how to run the dialog command with proccess Please look on my code – ( bash script )  I want to display both dialogs on the screen on the same time,   one dialog display the:  tail –f from - /var/log/proccess1.log  ,   and the second dialog display the:  tail –f from the file - /var/log/proccess2.log     but the sad fact is that I can display only one dialog and not both dialogs ( because when I run the first dialog , the second dialog will activate only if the first dialog will killed )   So I create process on the second dialog ( ….. ) &amp;    , in order to display both dialogs    But …. the second dialog create process number but not create the second dialog GUI , ( seems that when we create dialog with process , the process not send the dialog to standard output )  So how to  run the second dialog with process but send the dialog GUI to screen ? , or other solution in order to display both dialogs on screen  My code       #!/bin/bash       # this dialog will locate the tail box on the top of the screen      dialog --begin 15 10  --tailbox   /var/log/proccess1.log  13 125         # this dialog will locate the tail box down in the screen      ( dialog --begin 37 10  --tailbox   /var/log/proccess2.log    13 125 ) &amp; Very similar to , except for Java.  What is the recommended way of encoding strings for an XML output in Java. The strings might contain characters like "&amp;", "&lt;", etc. Is there a proof of existence of time? It seems to me that there is no such thing as time. There  is only movement in the universe and we compare our own movement to a different object to have a sense of time. It can be a clock or a atomic vibration.  Does this view of time work within the current framework of phsics?  Do physicists have an explanation/proof about time's existence? Computer doesn't boot up, shows PXE error and/or "operating system not found", "no bootable device", "insert boot media", or other similar error My computer no longer boots Windows or the installed operating system. Instead, I may get this error:  PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable -or- Check cable connection!  PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM.   and/or one of the following messages or similar:  Operating System not found  No boot device available- No bootable devices--strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility  No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key  No Boot Device Found. Press any key to reboot the machine  Default Boot Device Missing or Boot Failed  Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device   What does this mean and what can I do?     This question comes up often and the answers are usually the same. This post is meant to provide a definitive, canonical answer for this problem. Feel free to edit the answer to add additional details. Can I leave South Africa before my 90 days expire, and return after a few days to stay for another 90 days? How many times can an Australian leave and re-enter South Africa (90 days at a time without a visa) in a year, and do they need to be out of the country for a certain period of time before they re-enter?  I want to be in South Africa for as long as I can, however as an Australian without a visa I can only stay for 90 days at a time. What I would like to do is simply leave South Africa and go to another country in Africa for a few days, before returning with a new 90 day allowance.    Is this possible, or must I wait a certain period before re-entering South Africa/is there a limit to the amount of times I can do this in one year? What is the importance of the Diophantine inequality $\frac{1}{p} + \frac{1}{q} + \frac{1}{r} > 1$? In Humphreys' book  Introduction to Lie algebras and Representation Theory(3rd printing, p.62), the Diophantine inequality $$\frac{1}{p} + \frac{1}{q} + \frac{1}{r} &gt; 1$$ appeared while classifying all Coxeter graphs of irreducible root systems. Under the assumption $p \geq q \geq r \geq 2 $, the possible triples turn out to be $(p,2,2), (3,3,2),(4,3,2),(5,3,2)$, which correspond to the Coxeter graph $\text{D}_{p+2}, \text{E}_6, \text{E}_7, \text{E}_8$, respectively.  It seems quite straightforward to solve the inequality in positive integers, but Humphreys said that      This inequality, by the way, has a long mathematical history.   without further comment. So I want to know if this Diophantine inequality has any important significance, or if it has appeared in other context (maybe relevant history) before. Why are two permutations conjugate iff they have the same cycle structure? This has been , but a long time ago, and got closed for a rather confusing reason (converting comments to answers is not an "exact duplicate" of converting answers to comments), so I'm going to bring it up again.  I think it makes sense to have a user (not asker) option to convert a comment they posted on a question to an answer on the question, if it turns out it led to the asker figuring out the answer. We've all seen askers reply to comments with "@foo Hey, that was it! Post that as an answer and I'll accept it"; why not make it simple for the user to do that? It seems trivial to implement, and there's no formatting issues like there is going from answers to questions. I'm not sure how it could be "abused", because you need less rep to answer a question than to comment on it. I don't know if the answer's post time should be the time of the comment or the time it was converted; I think probably the latter. I also don't know if the comment should be deleted, left alone, or replaced with a link to the answer; again I think probably the last