You do not understand crimes of man against God, since you do not believe in one
Nowhere have I said I'm an atheist. It's just that since you quite clearly seem to believe the entirety of the Bible to be the moral standard by which humanity should live, you should know the (quite justifiable) objections to that notion, as some of the laws given there are in drastic contradiction with the most basic notions of human rights and proportionate punishment for crimes. In order for you to claim that the punishment is morally right, you have to change your own views of what is right and wrong, what is proportionate and disproportionate punishment. (You said that you honestly think deep inside that capital punishment for breaking the sabbath is ok, but I hope you don't get offended if I don't believe you. I think that deep inside you do not think like that, but you are deliberately and actively shutting up that doubt.)
Arguing that "the punishment is ok because God says so" does not make the punishment any less inhumane, disproportionate and barbaric.
This conversation would be "going somewhere" if you and I were on the same page about views of existence.
In an honest conversation both parties try to understand what the other is saying and tries their hardest to not to misinterpret, distort, exaggerate or make a mockery of the other person's position. Your "I can say that of any punishment. Why punish anyone?" was a clear indication to me that you are not willing to have this kind of rational, understanding discussion, but instead want to resort to argumentative fallacies and distortions. That's why I wrote that.
Everyone is so fixated on the term "brute-force" here. If I even remotely understand what crollo is saying, he's not suggesting creating a framework for brute-forcing various games; he's suggesting that we combine our resources to run heuristic algorithms instead of just using our own computers.
You make it sound like coming up and implementing a good heuristic algorithm for solving a game would be easy. Or that making it distributed is trivial.
I'd say that in the vast majority of cases by the time you have developed, implemented, fine-tuned and run your heuristic to solve the game, you could have made a TAS of the game in the traditional manual way, and probably better than your heuristic ever could. (And this assuming that the heuristic is easily parallelizable, which isn't a given.)
Coming up and implementing a good heuristic is in itself a hard task. Making it distributed can be even harder. In most games the actions you take earlier in the run will affect the outcome of later parts of the run (the most common and obvious case is the RNG, which can be greatly affected by even one single button change in an earlier part of the run). This means that usually you can't simply give level 1 to one computer, level 2 to another, and so on.
Another possible approach is that each computer starts from the beginning, but starts searching for one possible branch (eg. computer 1 starts with running right, computer 2 with a jump to the right and so on). The problem with this is that such search branches can end up in the same states, after which they will perform the same searches as other computers are already doing, thus needlessly doing the same tasks. Communicating between computers (especially over a network) to avoid duplicated search branches can be overwhelmingly slow.
And of course all this must result in a better run than a human could do in a reasonable amount of time (which isn't a given either), or else the whole project will be completely moot.
Btw, should this movie be exempted from the (unwritten, but seemingly rather strict) rule of "no unpublications", and removed from the site?
Reasoning: It was published by the author himself immediately after submission by abusing his judge powers, bypassing the regular voting process, which could have well been negative, deducing from its current rating (the lowest-rated movie of the entire site).
I called Nintendo of America customer service yesterday, and they said using an emulator is illegal, and that you will get a huge fine if you do.
Either you are misquoting (I'll be nice and assume that you did indeed call them rather than invent this whole story), or Nintendo is claiming rights they don't have.
There's no law in existence that would make using an emulator illegal. An emulator is a piece of software written by someone, and that someone owns the copyright to that piece of software. It's this author's own decision what the usage license of the software is. Nintendo cannot hijack the rights to this software for themselves.
At most the technology being emulated could be patented in some countries, which would grant legal protection for Nintendo against emulators. However, Nintendo's older consoles are so old that any possible patents on them have long since expired. IIRC the maximum time one can hold a patent even in the US is something like 20 years and eg. the NES is older than that. (It might be different with newer consoles.)
What is illegal is taking software from Nintendo and using it without permission. This breaks copyright. This includes the console's ROM and any game software owned by Nintendo. However, this is completely different from using an emulator. Nintendo cannot hijack the rights to using a third-party software that does not use any copyrighted material from Nintendo.
Now, the interesting question is: If you legally own, for example, a physical NES and a physical game cartridge, are you allowed to download the same game from the internet and play it with an emulator? AFAIK this depends on the country. For example in Finland you are completely allowed to do this (because you own the legal right to play the game regardless of the format in which it might be stored; no usage license can override this basic right). It becomes illegal only if you don't legally own the game.
So yes, if you don't legally own a game and you download and play it, you are breaking copyright. However, that doesn't mean that using an emulator is illegal. That's just BS.
Bobo the King wrote:
First, we don't distribute ROMs, so nothing we do on this site is technically illegal.
Not true. Distributing copyrighted music is technically illegal. (Whether the copyright holders will pursue is a different story.)
Looks like SM really deserves 5 branches. Or did I miss something?
I don't see a problem with that either. And even if for some reason the number of branches is kept to four, it would probably be better to replace one of the existing branches with this one. Some of the existing branches look extremely similar. If any of the branches don't deserve to exist, IMO, it would be separate in-game-time and real-time branches.
According to the trial procedure I linked you to, where the person has to be warned there will be a capital punishment moments before? Yes, I would advocate it.
I assume you understand why many people have a problem with that, and why they consider it disproportionate, inhumane and barbaric.
Dare I also assume that in reality, deep inside, you find this problematic as well, from a moral perspective? Some of the laws given in the Bible are in drastic contradiction with your own sense of morality. Now, be completely and absolutely honest: Would you personally think that the punishment is not disproportionate if the Bible didn't have this law?
Have you actually read what I linked you to? The burden of proof is so high, that the odds of someone actually being killed for one of these crimes is miniscule.
Didn't you read what I wrote? I said that having capital punishment for something like breaking the sabbath seems inhumane and out of proportion regardless of who enacts it and how it's enacted. "It's done very rarely" is just a cop-out from the actual question.
If a close friend or family member of yours clearly and unambiguously breaks the Sabbath, would you advocate capital punishment for this person? Would you say it's morally acceptable?
(Some Christians resort to the cop-out that the law in question was only given to the Hebrews and it does not apply to gentiles. That doesn't really change anything. Just assume that your friend is Jewish. Would you advocate capital punishment?)
And note that I'm asking your personal opinion, not the opinion of a religious institution or dogma.
I must join the crowd that says this is one of the best TASes in a long time. Also, the frozen bridge trick was awesome.
One of the good things about this run is that it's pretty clear even to the casual viewer who has never played the game why it's challenging.
Suggestion: Rename the branch name "glitched" to "glitchfest". Sure, it sounds enormously more informal, but is this site even supposed to be all that formal and technical?
If possible, make the branch name a link to the glossary entry that explains what it means (or perhaps make it one of those mouseover help texts).
I think that a distinction should be made between "contains speed/entertainment tradeoffs" and "sloppy play".
The former usually means putting some artificial constraint to the run (such as "don't use this glitch" or "collect this optional item"), but then completing the game as fast as possible within that constraint. (Other artificial constraints that are used for entertainment include things like 100% completion or using an alternative (but slower) playable character.)
The latter means that frames are wasted for no good reason. This is usually frowned upon, because TASes aim for perfection. Wasting frames for no good reason is not perfection.
In the former case putting a constraint for entertainment is not compromising in perfection. The run is still perfect; it's just that it's abiding to some deliberately chosen constraint to make the run more interesting.
It's understandably difficult to grasp how much processing power a brute-force approach would require, and why simply throwing more computers at it will not solve the problem. This is because exponential growth is hard to grasp.
Assume we have a console with one single button to play the game, and the only decision at each frame is whether to push the button or not. This means that at each frame we have only two choices.
I'll just skip all the boring mathematical details, and go right to an example: Assume that we have a million computers, each capable of testing a million combinations per second. How long would it take them to test all the possible combinations for 60 frames (ie. a one second segment)? Answer: Approximately 13 days.
Doesn't sound really bad, does it? Well, how long would it take for them to test by brute force a 2-second segment (ie. 120 frames)? The result might be a surprise: It would take over 40 thousand million million years. Doubling the number of computers would only halve that time.
And this was with a hypothetical console with one single button. Now consider that eg. the NES has at least 6 buttons (more if you count the start and other buttons).
It might help to also realize the depths of proof required before killing someone within the community you described.
I think the objection is to the idea of capital punishment for such "crimes" as homosexuality, adultery or breaking the sabbath. It doesn't really matter who judges and enacts this capital punishment or how. The very idea of capital punishment at all, much less from such "crimes" as breaking the sabbath, seem inhumane and completely out of proportion. And this even if you are an advocate of capital punishment for capital crimes (ie. murder).
While that's the core issue, another problem is the method of execution. In many cases the method of execution is specifically stated as stoning. This is a rather barbaric and inhumane method of execution where the person can suffer unimaginable torment.
I suppose that at some point the runs that complete a game as fast as possible without glitching the game to an unrecognizable pulp became the "normal" or "main" runs, while the heavily glitched ones became some kind of special category, even though the heavily glitched ones were usually faster.
Maybe this could indeed be reversed (ie. the fastest run is the "main" run and all the non-fastest ones are sub-categories). It may be difficult to come up with a short and descriptive name for a run that uses all possible tricks to complete the game as fast as possible except for the extreme game-breaking glitching. ("no-glitch" sounds like it doesn't use any glitches at all, which is seldom the case.)
While making this post I was unable to find a way to easily generate a link to a specific post, and had to do it manually. It would be nice if posts had a self linking button, perhaps right next to the quote button.
The small read/unread indicator to the left of post time links to the post itself (yeah, I know it is not obvious).
It took me a long time for me to discover that as well. Any way of easily making it significantly more prominent?
In fact the official expansion of TAS is "Tool-Assisted Superplay".
Not really. The only place where it's expanded like that that I can find of is in the forum logo (for whatever reason). Everywhere else, eg. in all the articles, it's expanded as "tool-assisted speedrun". I'm not sure where you are getting this "official" thing from. AFAIK there's no official stance on what it means, but by far the most commonly used meaning for the S is "speedrun".
For some reason that I cannot fully comprehend some people here are very insistent that the S must not mean "speedrun". That sounds as silly as someone insisting that the S in "SDA" must not mean "speed" but "super". (After all, there are also alternative categories there, such as 100% completion.)
Yes, there are some runs published in this site where speed is not a goal at all. However, those are the rare exceptions, not the rule.
Not to comment on your actual arguments, but I could let this one pass. Who exactly has claimed that judaism is a "religion of peace"?
(With this I don't mean to say that judaism is violent. I'm just wondering why are you applying the term to them. I have never heard it used in connection with judaism.)
That's ridiculous. I think that no matter what, TASes should aim for the absolute fastest time and entertainment if POSSIBLE! Although, I thought it meant that you do whatever you want while waiting for a certain thing to happen.
That would preclude things like 100% runs or runs that use an alternative playable character. (In those speed is the secondary goal, while the main objective is the primary goal.)
Not organized - hard to know what is current and what is obsolete, what is precise and what is sloppy.
The thing is, without a concrete measurement of "better", how do we determine if a new submission of an existing tool-assisted "let's play" should obsolete the existing one or not? It might easily go to a system where movies are obsoleted by new ones mainly because they are newer ones, not necessarily better ones (because "better" is extremely subjective in this case).
The idea of having different sections in the site for different types of videos (such as separate pure speed and machinima sections) has been tossed around, but the idea never caught.
On the other hand, perhaps it's good that the site keeps focused on doing one thing well, rather than becoming simply a dump bin for any kind of tool-assisted "let's play" videos. We have youtube for that, so there's no need for this site to become one.
An exception to this is usually made for games where speed is inconsequential and there's other aspect that's way more interesting (1-on-1 fighting games are usually like this, especially the ones that have tons of glitches to exploit). However, in general speed should be at the very least the secondary goal of any run.
Warp, I haven't seen any other science than was studied in my university, lectured by the people grown at the times when science just served the religion of atheism, so seeing how narrow-minded these people are (I used to converse with them on topic everytime), I got the impression that all scientists are similar. Looks like this cliché was wrong.
You are still spouting such a creationist propagandist nonsense that I can't figure out if that last sentence was just sarcasm or not.
I just didn't mention how insane work shall be put to become able to feel the right and wrong. This is the subject of one's pure interst - what to achieve from himself. I'm not into true sciense, so I can't argue objectively.
I really think that you should study a bit how the human mind works, and how extremely unreliable it is at assessing the truth on its own. The human mind very easily misinterprets things, deduces things in the wrong way, attributes things wrongly, has very strong biases and emotions that color and distort conclusions, and so on. And this has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence or education (even though the latter, when proper, can considerably diminish the amount of errors that one makes, as one becomes aware of what the typical errors are and learns to recognize them).
"I'm convinced that this is the truth because I can feel it" is just pure nonsense, and this doesn't even have anything to do with science. Feelings are worthless for assessing the truth.
