I remember reading this story many years back, and I vaguely started to recall it the past few weeks.  Here is the image that jump-started the recall process—    But for the life of me, I can't recall much else than what I've written below. It's starting to get on my nerves now, halp!   The story is set in the future, but the story describes space-war as if it was written a few decades back, so think more like Star Wars/Star Trek style writing rather than, say, Avengers/Guardians of the Galaxy. (I know I'm using movie analogies to describe a book, sorry, they are the best examples.) Protagonist is a run-of-the-mill soldier. (I think) Humans are at war with aliens, quite a prolonged war. (I think) He is suddenly thrown into an arena, where is made to fight aliens, one-on-one. Arena doesn't mean a colossuem-style building, its more like a empty grassland/marshy patch of land. Aliens also aren't like your typical little-green-men(this I'm quite sure of). I think they were different, maybe invertebrates the size of a large dog(But this could also be the image biasing my memory.) He begins with nothing but minimal clothing, and starts using sticks, stones and other things he finds around. I also think he fashions a sort of knife. He ultimately prevails. Finds himself back with his squad, and humans ready for their last stand, in an all-out face-off in space. Human ship fires first salvo, and hits one alien ship. But this blast jumps from ship-to-ship, destroying all alien ships. Protagonist realises he is the cause of the human victory, but I think he decides not to disclose it.   That's it. That's all I can remember. Anyone else remember reading anything like this?
From a collection of short stories I read at least 30 years ago. :/  This is going to be incredibly vague, so apologies in advance.  A human and alien (blob/octopus-like...I think) from warring races are captured by an unidentified higher intelligence and put in an enclosure (more like a zoo habitat rather than a prison cell). They are separated by an invisible barrier and can see each other.  I think they were both trying to escape or trying to figure out how they could kill the other first. There was a bulldozer/loader type vehicle they could use at one point to build a shelter (or something).  I believe they were crafting makeshift weapons as well. There was no communication between the two as far as I remember.  The main tension in the story seemed to be was the race to get to the other first.  This has been stuck in my head forever. I know its a very common theme.  The short stories may have included Asimov.
Understanding Clip Warning 000117 for Polygons? This error makes little sense because 95% of the time this works without any problem, but here is the situation:  I am clipping polygon A by polygons B-H.  While most of the time this works perfectly, occasionally this happens:   All layers are from the same coordinate system, and the processing extent is the same as polygon A when I setup the clip. Polygons C-H clip just fine without any errors, so it is usually polygon B that has the issue; however, most of the time there are no issues whatsoever. The polygons do overlap each other. I have repaired the geometry, but the results are the same.  Given that it isn't a coordinate problem, a processing extent problem, or even a geometry problem, what else could it be causing this error, and what would I have to do to resolve this problem?  UPDATE:  The error happened again with my largest set of Polygon A; however, I then deleted 75% of the Polygon A set and it worked just fine. So my question now is: how limited is the Clip feature when it comes to large areas, and is there a way around this without having to divide the Polygon A shapefile into several segments? Blog Overflow database error , which is linked from site-specific blogs, says  Error establishing a database connection  I believe this is an error. Scoring when two triple word squares are covered in one play The word QUAGMIRE is on the board vertically, with the Q on the top row, second column. The next player creates SQUEEZED horizontally, landing the S on the triple word square in the top row, first column, and remaining UEEZED landing to the right of the existing Q, ending with the D on the triple word square in the eighth column. Since two triple word squares are covered in this one placement, how would it be scored?  Letters:   S: 1 Q: 10 U: 1 E: 1 x 2 (double letter) E: 1 Z: 10 E: 1 D: 1   27 Total for letters. Do you then multiply by 3 for the first triple word square, and then multiply that result by 3?  27 X 3 = 81, 81 X 3 = 243  Bonus for all 7 tiles placed:  243 + 50 = 293 How do I create silhouettes in a studio environment? The trick to creating silhouettes in the field, as far as I know, is to use spot-metering and to expose for the background. However, this is a bit more difficult in a studio environment. What is the key to creating "artificial" silhouettes?  One solution that I'm considering is placing a bright flash directly behind the subject - would that work? How do I summon a named mob? In Java Edition, I can name a mob by using NBT tags like this: /summon zombie ~ ~ ~ {CustomName:'{&quot;text&quot;:&quot;TheUndead&quot;}'}  But in Bedrock Edition, I've heard NBT is not accessible from commands. What can I do to summon a mob with a custom name tag using the /summon command? I'm having problems understanding the following situation. Suppose two 1-tonne cars are going with the same orientations but opposite senses, each 50 km/h with respect to the road. Then the total energy is   $$\begin{eqnarray}E=E_1+E_2&amp;=&amp;\frac{1\mathrm t\times(50\mathrm{km}/\mathrm h)^2}2+\frac{1\mathrm t\times(50\mathrm{km}/\mathrm h)^2}2\\&amp;=&amp;1\mathrm t\times(50\mathrm{km}/\mathrm h)^2\\&amp;=&amp;2500\frac{\mathrm t\times\mathrm{km}^2}{\mathrm h^2}.\end{eqnarray}$$  Now if we look at it from the point of view of one of the cars, then the total energy is   $$\begin{eqnarray}E=E_1+E_2&amp;=&amp;\frac{1\mathrm t\times(0\mathrm{km}/\mathrm h)^2}2+\frac{1\mathrm t\times(100\mathrm{km}/\mathrm h)^2}2\\&amp;=&amp;\frac{1\mathrm t\times(100\mathrm{km}/\mathrm h)^2}2\\&amp;=&amp;5000\frac{\mathrm t\times\mathrm{km}^2}{\mathrm h^2}.\end{eqnarray}.$$  I know that kinetic energy is supposed to change when I change the frame of reference. But I understand that then there must be some other kind of energy to make up for it so that the energy in the system stays unchanged. But I don't see any other kind of energy here. I only see two total energies of the same system that seem to be different. Could you explain this to me?  Please note that while I don't understand any physics, I do understand college level mathematics, so if necessary please use it. (I doubt anything more than high school maths should be needed here, but I want to say this just in case.) The number of different ways to choose $k$ out of $n$ unique items:   Without repetition and without order-significance: $\binom{n}{k}=\frac{n!}{k!(n-k)!}$ Without repetition and with order-significance: $\binom{n}{k}\times k!=\frac{n!}{(n-k)!}$ With repetition and with order-significance: $n^k$ With repetition and without order-significance: $?$   Thank you! $$\lim\limits_{x\to 1}\frac{\sqrt x-x^2 }{1-\sqrt x}$$  I'm not entirely sure how to go about this, since rationalizing anything doesn't quite work for me. Just looking for some help. I read this short story about 20 years ago, and I'd love to find the title and author. This is what I can recall about the story:   It takes place in a classroom full of kids (around 10 years old?) The planet always gets rain The kids lock the main character (a girl, I think) in the closet during the very rare occurrence of sunlight and she misses the entire event.    I know it's not much to go on, but I hope it rings a bell for someone! What is the word for the emotion I feel when I see someone being humiliated? When I see someone else being embarrassed / humiliated, for example a singer forgetting their words in a concert, I would say something like "I feel embarrassed for them". But is there a better word to describe this feeling?  I would say it's a mix of:   Empathetic discomfort for someone else's humiliation Tension; hope that spectators will be forgiving Frustration that I cannot help them   Other scenarios I would feel the same emotion:   Seeing someone make a presentation, the slides are all out of order, and their face gets red with embarrassment while there's a tense silence in the room. Seeing someone make an embarrassing social blunder in front of unforgiving people. Seeing a speaker who keeps making a distracting and annoying gesture, and they don't realize that the whole audience is annoyed. Seeing someone be taken advantage of, like seeing someone naively and happily accept a terrible offer on a car. Seeing a person of strong image (for example the CEO of your company) do something like accidentally leave their webcam on after a conference call, and employees see him/her let out a big burp and pick their nose or something.   In these cases it's important that the audience is not forgiving, even if they don't confront the person about it. The person may or may not know they are being humiliated.  "Pity" as proposed in an answer seems very close, but I think it lacks a few components. I think "pity" has a chronic connotation - that you are referring to the general state of things rather than a specific event.  I think "pity" also depends on the subject suffering, but in my example they are often oblivious.  It could very well be that there is no word for this at all.  NOTE: Some people do not feel the same way I do in this scenario, so you may not think this question makes any sense. How does a lurker gain reputation to receive privilege for commenting? I have been reading Stack Exchange for years - mostly not logged in, and have never posted (this is my first). I'm simply not very talkative, and very good at googling.  Recently a few occasions have come up when I've wanted to comment on a question.  I wanted either to ask for, or provide, clarification which did not warrant a new answer.  How do I gain enough reputation to comment without:   asking questions which have already been answered or that I can figure out on my own, or posting my comment like as an answer (i.e. being  rude)? How do you install Google Chrome on Ubuntu? Why are we in love "with" someone? Convergence of non increasing and non decreasing sequences to the same limit How do I handle the window close event in Tkinter? I think I have heard that the following is true before, but I don't know how to prove it:     Let $A$ be a matrix with real entries. Then the minimal polynomial of $A$ over $\mathbb{C}$ is the same as the minimal polynomial of $A$ over $\mathbb{R}$.   Is this true? Would anyone be willing to provide a proof?    Attempt at a proof:  Let $M(t)$ be the minimal polynomial over the reals, and $P(t)$ over the complex numbers. We can look at $M$ as a polynomial over $\Bbb C$, in which case it will fulfil $M(A)=0$, and therefore $P(t)$ divides it. In addition, we can look at $P(t)$ as the sum of two polynomials: $R(t)+iK(t)$. Plugging $A$ we get that $R(A)+iK(A)=P(A)=0$, but this forces both $R(A)=0$ and $K(A)=0$. Looking at both $K$ and $R$ as real polynomials, we get that $M(t)$ divides them both, and therefore divides $R+iK=P$.   Now $M$ and $P$ are monic polynomials, and they divide each other, therefore $M=P$.  Does this look to be correct?    More generally, one might prove the following     Let $A$ be any square matrix with entries in a field$~K$, and let $F$ be an extension field of$~K$. Then the minimal polynomial of$~A$ over$~F$ is the same as the minimal polynomial of $A$ over$~K$. How can I subdivide this plane into even squares? I'm looking for a way to insert continuous colour legend for a raster layer.  I managed to create discrete symbols with values along the bar, but I would like to have a continuous bar with some values on the bar, similar to the old plugin "One-Band Raster", that it doesn't work with the QGIS version higher than 1.7  I tried to set in properties->style, where I selected the  Render Type "Singleband pseudocolor" and see the "generate new color ramp" box.  I tried both "Continuous" or "Equal interval". However, in the Composer the legend always is displayed with discrete symbols.  Is there any way that can make QGIS Composer to display a nice continuous band for a raster layer? Session lost when switching from HTTP to HTTPS in PHP When sending the user to a checkout page, they are switched from http://sitename.com to https://sitename.com.  As a result, $_SESSION variables are lost.  The site has a valid SSL certificate which may or may not be of some use. 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!