Is it be legal to publish a Noughts and crosses game?
Most games build on other games' successes and many are downright clones. Where is the limit of imitation before legal issues come into play? Is it down to literary or graphic work like characters and storyline that cause legal problems, or can someone actually claim to own gameplay mechanics?  There are so many similar clone games out there that the rules are probably very slack or nonexistent, but I'd like to hear the views of more experienced developers / designers.
Silencing "Your disk is almost full" notification "SELECT *" why is it an antipattern On multiple questions here and on stack overflow i saw people saying in the comments and answers that select * from table is almost always an antipattern without any explaination why. Althrough I can sort of deduce why it is an antipattern. I may be looking over a detail that someone else with better understanding of the issue noticed.  So here is my question, why people say that select * is an antipattern. I am curious about whether $|x|^p$ with $0&lt;p&lt;1$ satisfy $|x+y|^p\leq|x|^p+|y|^p$ for $x,y\in\mathbb{R}$.   So far my trials show that this seems to be right... So can anybody confirm whether this is right or wrong and give a proof or counterexample? I'm new to Linux (currently running Ubuntu 10.04) and I have just finished setting up SSH access to my Linux Machine.  Currently, I have to use ssh root@x.x.x.x to connect but would much rather be able to swap the IP for the computer name (like in Windows with \\name) or a domain name (like computername.example.com). I don't really know where to start so any help would be most appreciated.  Please go slowly, as mentioned - I am still new to this.  EDIT 1 Completely forgot to mention that I am trying to connect from Windows 7 (via PuTTY) - sorry. I have read several questions regarding how to fix an already enabled desktop cube or the problems it had in 11.04. But in 11.10, how can I correctly enable desktop cube in Unity 3D? Why can't I transform faces, edges, or vertices without transforming the whole object? My problem is that I sometimes lose the ability to independently translate or otherwise transform any parts of a single mesh. If I try, for example, to just translate several faces, edges, or vertices, then the entire mesh will stretch and displace itself in order to follow the translation. Or, alternatively, if I try to translate just one face then the whole mesh will move as if I'm translating in Object Mode.  I'm not really sure I know how to describe this problem properly. I don't even know how to reliably reproduce it. It seems to happen to any given mesh at random, and it doesn't stop happening to that mesh unless I delete and remake it.  I assume that I must be doing something wrong to cause this to happen. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks. Why should one use EM vs. say, Gradient Descent with MLE? Mathematically, it's often seen that expressions and algorithms for Expectation Maximization (EM) are often simpler for mixed models, yet it seems that almost everything (if not everything) that can be solved with EM can also be solved with MLE (by, say, the Newton-Raphson method, for expressions that are not closed).  In literature, though, it seems that many favour EM over other methods (including minimization of the LL by, say, gradient descent); is it because of its simplicity in these models? Or is it for other reasons? How do I calculate the resistor value for a simple LED circuit? What is a wizard that makes them non-Muggle? Or, more directly, what ancestry does the witch/wizard gene follow? Is there a patriarchal wizard (or matriarchal witch) that Muggles have no part in? Elves perhaps? Stop reading here.  Purpose of the Question/History/Don't Read There seem to be solid consequences associated with being Muggle, or Muggle-related. A dominant theme in the novels is discrimination against the non-gifted race, but, when read into, the wizard bloodline doesn't appear all that well defined. JKR indicates that wizard-ness is genetic, or inherited:  &quot;Muggle-borns will have a witch or wizard somewhere on their family tree, in some cases many, many generations back. The gene resurfaces in some unexpected places.&quot;  By the above, it stands that a family that produces a squib (non-magical born of magical parents) must be a half-blooded family in some way, since half-blooded only requires one non-magical ancestor. Of course, we are dealing in magic genetics. Any other form of genetics would make this inherited, seemingly recessive trait (or squibs couldn't exist), never appear at all. Unless they were XMen. If it is so important, what does the wizard-bloodline follow? Other Mythos In other literature a wizard can be nearly anything, but magical powers are typically inherited as well as learned. Merlin of the Arthurian Legend (also mentioned in HP) is Cambian, meaning he is born of demonic intervention; this explains his source of enchantment. Gandalf of Middle Earth is a Maiar, as are all Wizards of Middle Earth. Wizards in Harry Potter seem to follow a bloodline, and it has been mentioned (in the question Gabe linked) that genetics have a heavy play in it, meaning that squibs and parents of Muggle-born wizards should have identical genetics. This bloodline must come from somewhere. Magical Creatures In Harry Potter it is common for magical creatures to &quot;mingle&quot; with humans, these beings are typically somewhat magical. Elves have been described to have very strong magic, but are for some unreasonable reason subservient to humans. I may be mistaken, but believe it was hinted that elves and the wizarding lineage had intersected at one time. Maybe I'm imagining this. Genocidal Allusions Voldemort hates muggles, and half-bloods, and whatever else is non-wizard. The presence of this theme, suggests that this wizardly bloodline must be at least defined if the main antagonist is so obsessed with keeping that mysterious bloodline pure. Since Slytherin himself was said to be a supremacist (circa a really long time ago) it suggests that this bloodline should have existed long before he was around, especially if he founded a school with people he was not related to, but were also magical. How do I sort a two-dimensional (rectangular) array in C#? I have a two-dimensional array (of Strings) which make up my data table (of rows and columns).  I want to sort this array by any column.  I tried to find an algorithm for doing this in C#, but have not been successful.  Any help is appreciated. In the annual rep league, why isn't the difference between rep earned this year and total rep always the same? In the  here on Meta Stack Exchange, it shows that I've earned 9,876 rep this year, and 10,359 rep overall. (It's updated every day at 0:00 UTC, and I so far have earned 1 rep today, since an answer I downvoted a while ago was deleted.)  The difference between my total rep and the rep I earned this year is 483, which means 483 of the rep I've earned is rep I earned in 2017 or earlier. This amount normally never changes, though I can see some reasons why it might change, such as if rep is recalculated and something affects a rep event occurring in a previous year (e.g. a vote from last year was invalidated due to user deletion, a post I made at that time was deleted or undeleted, etc.)  This amount, 483, was a recent change; it used to be 461. Ordinarily, I'd chalk this up to a rep event from last year being recalculated, but I've gone through my full rep history and I can see nothing of the sort happening. On the other hand, on the same day that this number changed from 461 to 483,  was undeleted, recalculating my rep and giving me back 22 (which happens to equal 483-461). It therefore makes sense if that post was from a previous year. However, the post is from this year, so it doesn't make very much sense.  Is there a bug in the way yearly rep in the rep league is calculated, in that rep regained from an undeleted post made the same year is not re-added to the rep earned this year (while it is subtracted properly upon deletion)? Or is there some other event that occurred in the three weeks before 2018 that I had my account that caused this difference to change, that I'm not seeing, and the change being equal to that is just a coincidence? How prove this $\frac{a}{(bc-a^2)^2}+\frac{b}{(ca-b^2)^2}+\frac{c}{(ab-c^2)^2}=0$ Example:  A tall(,) green pole.   says that cumulative adjectives don't need comma. In my example, &quot;tall&quot; describes shape, and &quot;green&quot; describes color. So they are cumulative adjectives. But  says that &quot;tall&quot; and &quot;green&quot; are equivalent and coordinate adjectives ... I'm confused. Should there be a comma or not? I never want my PNGs to be interlaced. So I wish I could set a bunch of option defaults in the application so that I am saving time when outputting a lot of images as PNG over the course of a day working in Photoshop.  Does anyone know if this is possible in Photoshop without using Actions OR the Save-for-Web option? Space between 2 paths in Illustrator How can I align 2 paths perfectly? No matter what I do I get a little space (gap between the 2 paths I create, and they are straight lines not as I saw in other questions with pixel problems)  An example:    Between every triangle is a little space, like in the example. It isn't obvious and it doesn't bother, but if I use the image (as an SVG or something) it is really obvious. Why does Blender use so much memory for large textures? Now that experience does something besides render regions of a server uninhabitable due to  orb lag, what's the most efficient and safe way to get those excellent enchants?  A mob farmer may rank highly, but what about without tons of setup? Is it appropriate to buy a "thank you" gift for a PhD supervisor? I am nearing the end of my PhD and I would quite like to buy a "thank you" gift for my supervisor (although, she's the socially awkward type who I'm sure will be greatly embarrassed to receive one).  I'm just wondering whether a gift is the done thing? And if so, what sort of gift seems appropriate? I suppose a bottle of wine would be a safe choice? How to get the size of a JavaScript object? How do I tell a script to wait for a process to start accepting requests on a port? I need a command that will wait for a process to start accepting requests on a specific port.    Is there something in linux that does that?  while (checkAlive -host localhost -port 13000 == false)   do some waiting  ...