This is something I read in the mid-to-late 1980s, probably in a thick collection of short stories.  A man who is acting as a spy or maybe just a researcher goes to an alien planet. The aliens of this planet are human-like (or possibly a human colony planet), but are very xenophobic and do not allow what they consider aliens in their society.  The protagonist has become fairly expert at a game that they play on the planet, which for some reason I am thinking had similarities to go (aka weiqi, igo, or baduk), and has decided to participate in a large regional or global competition.  Much is made about the fact that in a critical game against one of the planet's masters, the protagonist attempts a kind of three-pronged attack (called a "triple push"?) when normally even a double-pronged attack is considered nearly impossible to pull off. He ends up losing the game but comes close enough to winning that it causes a stir, and as a result he is discovered by the local authorities. I think it's revealed that they've known he was an outsider for some time but tolerated him for reasons I can't recall.  The only other thing I remember is that, while being taken somewhere in a vehicle on the alien planet (on the way to the tournament?), the protagonist is deeply frightened by the experience of being on a highway due to the apparent insanity of the traffic system, which has rules he doesn't understand.  I posted this on a different forum, and several people suggested Iain M. Bank's "The Player of Games", but I don't think that's it because I'm fairly sure this is a short story and not a novel, and ISFDB doesn't show "The Player of Games" being included in any collection. The two things that stand out most in my dim memories are the "triple push" gambit (which fails) and the part about being terrified in the vehicle -- does anyone recognize either or both of those?
Space faring human race encounters one highly advanced spaceship.  The one ship tells the human space fleet to go away and leave them alone. We don't listen and our ships are destroyed.  Human spy is sent to the alien world. Aliens look virtually identical to humans except they have no cartilage in their nose and the 'females' are only capable of mating every seven years. The human spy tells this story and is a brilliant tactician. He enters into a game tournament where they play a very complicated version of chess.  Human spy interacts with a higher ranking military officer who has a human female wife.  Human spy gets caught and when he is ultimately returned to Earth he advises humanity to unconditionally surrender to the alien race.  Humans eventually win because the alien males take human wives and their alien DNA is diluted in the vast human gene pool.  Looking for the title and author if anyone can recall them.  06/15 - update  I found the anthology. 'Second Game' was in 'The Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels' which came out in 1980 and 1981.  I did read the original story from 1958 which was actually a nominee for the Hugo Award for Novelette in 1959.
possessive apostrophe for two things or persons What is the difference between the two sentences below? Are they the same or different in meaning?     Jack and Laura's new house is almost ready.      Jack's and Laura's new house is almost ready.   To my perception, the first says two of them have one house and the second says each one has a (different) house (which is almost ready). Is my perception correct?  EDIT: If I don't use "houses" instead of "house" (for my second interpretation), does it mean the sentence is wrong? Big O, how do you calculate/approximate it? How to make a simple app from an applescript! I've got an applescript that I use to open files such as test.txt in vim, using the terminal.  I usually open a file by right-clicking it an selecting the service open in vim (this service is created by me and basically runs the applescript).  How do I build an actual program, that can be set in the "open with" option for a file?  This way, when I double click test.txt, the applescript gets run and the file gets opened in my vim in terminal.app.  I would also like to create custom icons that will be applied to all files I open using this app (using the "Change All..." button).  Where would I begin? Is this easy, because I'm just a novice -although I love programming and would spend much to to get to know all that is needed to do this.  the code is:  on open this_item      tell application "System Events"         if (count (processes whose name is "Terminal")) is 0 then             tell application "Terminal"                 activate                 do script with command "vim " &amp; (POSIX path of this_item) in front window             end tell         else             tell application "Terminal"                 activate                 tell application "System Events" to tell process "Terminal" to keystroke "t" using command down                 do script with command "vim " &amp; (POSIX path of this_item) in selected tab of the front window             end tell         end if     end tell  end open What is included in Wolfram Extras? Is the cube root of a prime number rational? List extending strange behaviour Render looks "brighter" than in viewport preview Somehow my viewport preview shows darker result than what comes out in render (check out in corner of the pic)  World strength is at zero and ambient occlusion is also disabled.  Floor is using bump and roughness from picture. Wall has adaptive subdivision surface  modifier.  All lit using planes with emission shaders.  I wanted to play around with render layers and maybe I screw some setting there, hope this helps. I updated some entries in the  at C:\WINDOWS\System32\drivers\etc.  As a test, I decided to make Google point to 127.0.0.1.  # Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual # lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol. # # For example: # #      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server #       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host  127.0.0.1       localhost ::1             localhost 127.0.0.1       google.com   This works fine on Windows Vista, but not on Widows 7. When I type google.com into my browser, it goes directly to Google's website.  I am not using a proxy server, and I think there might be some temporary DNS settings that need to be flushed, but I'm not sure.  Does anyone know how to fix this? I engaged with some enemy NPCs, and accidentally shot a civilian in the head (though not sure it would've mattered if I hit them somewhere else or not) as they ran across my screen. As a result of this, I was alerted by the game that the NCPD (the police) were automatically en route to 'investigate', and that I could avoid them by leaving the area and &quot;lying low for a while&quot;. How long does it take for the police to stop searching for me, and is there any kind of visual information on the HUD that alerts me to when NCPD is or is no longer looking for me? How do I enable Remote Desktop connection on Xubuntu 11.10? How can I check if my (unlocked) phone will work with a particular country's SIM cards, for 3G and calls? I've used my phone overseas with local SIM cards a lot, but recently had a surprising experience where one local SIM card simply wouldn't work with my phone but did work first time on my partner's, even though both were similar (unlocked Android phones) and another SIM card from a different local provider did work. Looking into it, it looks like there are various different standards around, but it all gets very technical very quickly.  Is there any simple way of looking up which SIM cards in a particular country will work with a particular model of phone, for calls, texts and internet access? How to prove $3^\pi>\pi^3$ using algebra or geometry? It's a question of a some time ago test, I've found a way to solve the problem using calculus, but always I've thought that exist a solution with algebra and geometry.  Thank you for your time. How to redirect stderr to a file Classify orbits of conjugating action on $GL_2(\mathbb{C})$ I have understood how ridge regression shrinks coefficients towards zero geometrically. Moreover I know how to prove that in the special "Orthonormal Case," but I am confused how that works in the general case via "Spectral decomposition." How do RAM and processor speed affect overall performance on Android? Since Android can be installed on wide range of devices, I'm wondering how important RAM and the CPU speed are to the performance of a device.  There are always tradeoffs when something is increased and another one decreased!  Is more RAM or a faster processor better for general browsing and less mulititasking?  What if I'm interested in gaming or doing lots of things at once?  Will more RAM make up for a slower processor or vice-versa? I think it would be very useful.  I have a question that I have an open bounty on. Putting up said bounty brought my reputation below the point where I am allowed to comment on other peoples' posts. It's so frustrating not to be able to comment and give feedback on the answers given!  Especially since it would be helpful, for them, me, and the readers, to know particularly what is good and isn't good about their answer, and therefore give some better guidelines to future answerers on how they can win the bounty. Why does String.split need pipe delimiter to be escaped? how to get line spacing greater than one and half spacing and less than double space Does anyone know how to get line spacing in a paragraph to be greater than one and half spacing and less than double spacing? I tried \renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{value} but it did not work. Non-https links to other StackExchange sites in User profile when using https