시간과 공간 그리고 진실의 방

You have the syntax wrong; there is no need to place a period inside a double-quoted string. Instead, it should be more like

$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table WHERE the_number LIKE '$prefix%'");

You can confirm this by printing out the string to see that it turns out identical to the first case.

Of course it's not a good idea to simply inject variables into the query string like this because of the danger of SQL injection. At the very least you should manually escape the contents of the variable with mysql_real_escape_string, which would make it look perhaps like this:

$sql = sprintf("SELECT * FROM table WHERE the_number LIKE '%s%%'",
               mysql_real_escape_string($prefix));
$query = mysql_query($sql);

Note that inside the first argument of sprintf the percent sign needs to be doubled to end up appearing once in the result.

You could do:

var numberOfChecked = $('input:checkbox:checked').length;
var totalCheckboxes = $('input:checkbox').length;
var numberNotChecked = totalCheckboxes - numberOfChecked;

EDIT

Or even simple

var numberNotChecked = $('input:checkbox:not(":checked")').length;

You could always add to the original .show() method so you don't have to trigger events every time you show something or if you need it to work with legacy code:

Jquery extension:

jQuery(function($) {

  var _oldShow = $.fn.show;

  $.fn.show = function(speed, oldCallback) {
    return $(this).each(function() {
      var obj         = $(this),
          newCallback = function() {
            if ($.isFunction(oldCallback)) {
              oldCallback.apply(obj);
            }
            obj.trigger('afterShow');
          };

      // you can trigger a before show if you want
      obj.trigger('beforeShow');

      // now use the old function to show the element passing the new callback
      _oldShow.apply(obj, [speed, newCallback]);
    });
  }
});

Usage example:

jQuery(function($) {
  $('#test')
    .bind('beforeShow', function() {
      alert('beforeShow');
    }) 
    .bind('afterShow', function() {
      alert('afterShow');
    })
    .show(1000, function() {
      alert('in show callback');
    })
    .show();
});

This effectively lets you do something beforeShow and afterShow while still executing the normal behavior of the original .show() method.

^{You could also create another method so you don't have to override the original .show() method.}