How Can a Lich Look Like a Human Without Magic?

Are they likely to detect magic? Can you set things up so they probably won't?Depending how the details of lich-ing work, is it possible he was in the process of becoming a lich, and was human when he met them?For all these answers, be aware of how revelations often unfold in roleplaying games. Ideally have a few pieces of information they might eventually learn (he's a lich, what his plan is, etc) And some clues which might or might not lead there. E.g. "you detect an illusion spell on him but don't know why".

And then, don't try to force the plot to make sure they don't find out, try to make it work so that if they twig immediately that he might be a lich, then praise them, and work on a different big reveal later. They won't get ALL of them

• Related Questions

Sounds to me like Charlie is trying to use his religion as a "get out of jail free" card here; he's not competent to do his job, so he says "I'm not competent because of my religion, therefore you can't fire me because it would be discrimination". IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that's not how it works. You can't say "We don't allow people who fast at this company", or "We don't allow people of xxx religion at this company", but you most certainly can say "We don't tolerate people who make as many mistakes as you make at this company". Unless Charlie can reliably make a link between how his fasting is a direct cause of his incompetence, I have trouble believing you will have any blowback. And no, "I'm fasting therefore I don't have enough energy therefore I can't think properly therefore I make mistakes" is likely not good enough (IANAL); as others have said, there are plenty of people who fast and don't make mistakes.It sounds to me like Charlie simply doesn't care about his work, and he knows that he doesn't need to care because he can just play the religion card if anyone looks at him the wrong way. It sounds like management at your company needs legal advice to determine where protection based on religion ends, because until then Charlie can basically do anything, and if management doesn't like it then he can say "I have to do this because of my fasting"

------

Are there any serious investigations of whether mathematicians do their best work when they're young?

I think it depends on the person: everyone's brain works and develops differently over time. Some people are 'child prodigies' (if we must use such a term) and then never drop in creativity throughout their lifetimes, but there are others who do their best work when young and then drop off. This misconception that it is a young man's game only comes from Hardy, but the list of examples he gives is very misleading because they all died young and so obviously could not go on to contribute anything further anyway! He also conveniently forgets some famous counterexamples like Euler and Weierstrass. Cramer, for example, could be classed as a young prodigy, since he obtained his PhD equivalent at age 20, but the work for which he is known today was done when he was into his 40s.Probably more important than 'physical' age is 'career' age. This is discussed in an interview with Yuval Ne'eman in a science documentary. Ne'eman was well into his 30s when he obtained his PhD but went on to make very significant contributions to elementary particle physics. He states that the important thing is probably to be 'young in the field' rather than physically young, since if you haven't thought of something 10 years into study of a subject, you are possibly not going to think of it given another 10 years. This is backed up by data on 'late starter' academics who tend to have exactly the same creativity trajectory as early starters, the only difference being that the trajectory has been given a shift to the right in the time variable.

------

Should I sandbox web application?

It is an established method for improving security to give application only the privileges they are expected to need. This way the impact of a potential security issue is limited. Sandboxing using pledge, seccomp or similar technologies is one way to limit the privileges an application might abuse but it is not the only way. Typical other technologies are different users for different tasks, SELinux, containers, virtual machines etc.These technologies differ in the overhead, the protection they offer, how hard they are to use etc. If any of these technologies are used and which one(s) therefore depends on the actual requirements, i.

e. typically a balance between the required security, the needed performance and the amount of money available to implement and run it. For the usual web application sandboxing all the application using seccomp or pledge is in my opinion not that easy. A better and easier separation is probably offered in this case with containers or virtual machines. Also, running known to be problematic steps like image processing in a restricted setup (process with different user, sandbox, container, VM...) separated from the rest of the application will increase the security. Thus in summary: yes you should probably restrict your web application on the server side to limit the impact of a potential security problem. But if you use process based sandboxing using pledge or seccomp or if you use different technologies or if you combine multiple technologies depends on the actual requirements (security, performance) and limits (money and time available for development and maintenance)

------

Can we install puppet without touching the servers?

I will detail my comment here, with my actual suggestion.My main assumption is that you don't want to install Puppet on the client nodes because of their sheer number. If you can't "touch them" because of a permissions issue, then I doubt you can push configuration at all, whether via Puppet or any other method.

You can configure ssh to log in to a machine without a password using ssh-keygen like so:Make sure to leave the passphrase empty (so the script using this ssh will need no password).As a second step, you need to copy the public key to all of the hosts:where I assume hostnames_file has one host name per line listing all the hosts you want to configure.This script will most likely ask for your password as many times as there are hosts but this will happen only once when you're setting up the keys.

If your user happens to have their home directory shared among all clients (via NFS for example), you can instead do this:Now you should set up passwordless sudo access to the apt-get command (or yum or pacman or whatever package manager you choose) for the user you have just configured passwordless ssh for. Now it's as simple as:Note that you can use this method as a rudimentary form of configuration management as well*, but it's much more fragile than using Puppet or Chef or similar.(*) Just replace sudo apt-get install puppet with whatever command(s) you wish to run on all your nodes.

------

What explosive mines discriminate against hovercraft?

If you want to deny hovercraft access to an area, you don't need landmines. I suggest the article "The Most Effective Weapon on the Modern Battlefield is Concrete." Area denial can be more effective than indiscriminate explosives.

RampsMuch like our commander-in-chief, the hovercraft runs into trouble when faced with a ramp. Tanks, by contrast, are designed to navigate a variety of terrain. Check out this video of an Abrams climbing a steep ramp. No way a hovercraft is going to do that from a standing start. According to the Handbook on Drowning, "Generally the maximum continuous slope that can be tackled is in the order of 1 in 10." A HMMWV has a maximum grade that's six times that steep. So if you engineer a 20% grade, your tanks and trucks will be able to climb it while rendering the area hovercraft-free.Pointy sticksThe skirt is a weak point in a hovercraft. Install pointy sticks with blades on the ends of them and the hovercraft will not be able to pass over.

Vehicle access gatesI live in Washington DC. We have a lot of obstacles installed across the city to prevent vehicle-based attacks. Fixed barriers like this and moving gates like this will stop your hovercraft. And your machine guns and grenade launchers won't get you through. A tank could blast through many of these barriers or climb over them (depending on the barrier) but a hovercraft with limited weapons will be stuck. Even a series of flower planters will stop your hovercraft.

------

Variance of Negative Binomial Distribution (without Moment Generating Series)

I do like The Cryptic Cat's answer. I was also trying to find a proof which did not make use of moment generating functions but I couldn't find a proof on the internet. So I made an attempt.Given

$$P(X n) sum_ngeq r n-1choose r-1 (1-p)^n-rp^r,$$

where $ntextnumber of trials$ and $rtextnumber of successes$.You have already to managed prove that

$$E(X) mu fracrp$$Since expectation is a linear operator, rather than computing $E(X^2)$, it will be easier to find$$beginalign

E(X(X1)) & E(X^2X) E(X^2)E(X)

& sum_ngeq r n(n1)n-1choose r-1 (1-p)^n-rp^r

& sum_ngeq r fracn(n1)(n-1)!(r-1)!(n-r)!(1-p)^n-rp^r

& sum_ngeq r frac(n1)!(r-1)!(n-r)!fracr(r1)r(r1)(1-p)^n-rp^r

& fracr(r1)p^2 sum_ngeq r frac(n1)!(r1)!(n-r)!(1-p)^n-rp^r2

& fracr(r1)p^2 sum_ngeq r n1choose r1(1-p)^n-rp^r2

endalign$$Since

$sum_ngeq r n1choose r1(1-p)^n-rp^r2 1$,

$$E(X^2)E(X) fracr(r1)p^2$$This implies that

$$E(X^2) E(X^2)E(X)-E(X) fracr(r1)p^2-fracrpp^2 fracr(1r-p)p^2$$Therefore,

$$Var(X) E(X^2) - E(X)^2 fracr(1r-p)p^2-fracr^2p^2 fracr(1-p)p^2$$