Posts for Dada


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I'd love to come, but I simply can't. If it's not during a vacation time, I'm unable to just leave for a few days. It'd be cool to go to Finland sometime, though. How close is Turku to Helsinki? Some people who I've been meaning to meet for a long time live there.
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Just grab one from my fileserver and resize it. There's probably about 50 of them in there.
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FODA wrote:
for DVD playback i'd recapture the videos.
Yeah, this. The videos on this site are usually compressed with the Internet as medium in mind, in a lower quality setting. You will get a much better image by redoing the capturing from the emulators, and this will also save you the trouble of having to work with MP4 files.
Post subject: Google AdSense article on Slashdot (with link to NESVideos)!
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http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/05/0139247 Looks like it was finally posted. And there's even a link to the site! EDIT: I haven't read any kind of a rational explanation for us being thrown out of the program yet. Maybe we need to e-mail Google again.
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Well, when you sign up for their services, you have to abide by their rules. Regardless if emulators are legal or not. Maybe they just want to prevent emulation sites from appearing since they might turn into ROM sites later. They have every right to terminate your account if you violate what you signed to agree with when you purchased their services. Same with click-wrap licenses and all other forms of disclaimers, agreements and policies.
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Yes, it's awful how sometimes they try to make you believe that. It falls in the same street as the RIAA's criminalizing a range of normal user activities, such as making a dump of music CDs that you bought. An information leaflet by the Dutch organisation against piracy also once stated that "copying software is strictly prohibited". Of course, they totally ignored free software or even the now old-fashioned shareware.
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Well, that's his problem. I still firmly believe that speedrunners are sickeningly impressive in their own right. It's just very difficult to compare the painstaking work of frame-advancing through a game and even programming a bot to play part of it for you in a certain way to the painstaking practice that these players have undergone. If Dennis Fong beats his opponent in the final match of a Quake 2 tournament with 56 to -1, then that is impressive. If Nal_rA decides to turn around a match by using a Corsairs and Dark Templar strategy against Mondragon's upgraded Zerglings and Ultralisks, which Mondragon cannot react to because his opponent also decided to go after his Overlords with his Corsairs, and wins the match even though he got more than half his base destroyed in a massive attack, then that is impressive. If gakousei's Sakura manages to take off more than 70% of evil's Sagat's health in a risky varicom while his health is at 1%, then that is impressive. And similarly, if someone manages to make a performance that's even slightly similar to some of the runs that are on this site, then that's impressive, too. But it's not impressive because he was able to copy any tool-assisted run up to a certain degree of accuracy. It's impressive because he practiced hard to be that good and also manages to show that to us in a run he recorded. I have a hard time believing that something as different as this (while still so similar, arguably) could ruin their party. If anything should be discouraging, it should be the unassisted speedruns, which have already been made for lots of games and are difficult to improve upon. EDIT: like Nach said, it's about climbing the mountain. I do seem to believe in competition more than he does, but I definitely agree with everything he's said in his post.
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Wow, that's amazing. The dinosaur comics are awesome. They're also pretty much the last comic on earth I'd think would reference to speedruns. And to think they'd reference to how stupid the "unassisted versus tool-assisted" debate is... looks like the guy who made it (Ryan North) has been around for a while!
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Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Pflug is Radix, right? In that case, I'm not surprised.
Yeah, Nolan Pflug is Radix.
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That was a pretty decent read, although there was one thing that bothered me: "My basic thought is 'don't like them, haven't made them, don't watch them,' " said Nolan Pflug, who oversees Speed Demos Archive, a Web site that houses traditional runs. I just wish that people like Nolan, who lead large sites such as SDA, would be able to say something nice about tool-assisted speedrunning. They don't actively take part in the bad-mouthing, but they don't seem to dislike it either from what I can tell. Of course, it's possible that I'm completely wrong about this, and in that case, feel free to prove me wrong. And although he didn't really say anything bad about tool-assisted speedruns in that article, it would kind of be nice if he could for one time acknowledge that they're not evil but that he genuinely prefers the unassisted runs to them (instead of respectlessly saying "DON'T CARE"). But whatever, I don't mean to say anybody should start saying things they don't want to for political reasons, because that's nonsense. In the end, the article was a pretty good read.
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It's indeed pressing up+down that will make you fly up the ladder so quickly. It's similar to the Legend of Zelda 2 movie. I'll add it to the tricks page.
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I bet it'll cost an arm and a leg to be able to legally encode with it.
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I guess that now might be a good time to ask for donations? Bisqwit's donation page contains a PayPal link as well as an IBAN number and BIC code, so you can make international transactions to him easily.
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By the way, [[Speedrun]] has been promoted to good article. That's pretty great! It's not a featured article yet, but I think it'll become that in due time. It still needs a lot of work, though. Especially the Super Mario and Mega Man sections.
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I really would like to see the StarCraft 64 run finished. It surprises me how cool that game looks. I was expecting a really bad port. I can't wait to see the highest cursor speed used to its full potential.
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I've submitted this story to Slashdot. Maybe they can give some sort of clue as to what our problem could have been. If it's accepted, that is! But it's interesting news, and about Google, so I think that it might. EDIT: no, just got rejected, unfortunately.
  • 2006-04-11 08:11:48 The Nonsense About AdSense (Your Rights Online,Google) (rejected)
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Well, I rather think it's the fact he downloaded the Javascript. That seems more likely than this topic, seen as how many forums post about their new Google Ads. A lot of blogs also mention it when they get them.
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Truncated wrote:
>3. Communications Solely With Google. You agree to direct to Google, and not to any advertiser, ... Can't be this, because we are not advertisers.
They say that all talk about Google Ads must be directed to Google, and not the advertisers. That doesn't mean that we're free to talk about it at all, since they explicitely mention that you must direct any talk to Google in any case. There's no provision that says you can talk about the Google Ads if you're not an advertiser. These terms of use must always be followed to the letter. There's no "but what if they mean this?" or "but it kind of sounds like they mean this..." Their terms of use state that talk about their program goes only through them, and we're not Google.
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Well, strictly speaking, you did violate section 3 and possibly 15. 3. Communications Solely With Google. You agree to direct to Google, and not to any advertiser, any communication regarding any Ad(s) or Link(s) displayed in connection with Your Site(s). By making this topic, you started a discussion about the Google Ads with someone else than Google. That's technically a violation of the terms of use, although I've seen many sites make a topic on their forum about the ads, so I don't think that this would be the cause. 15. Google Rights. You acknowledge that Google owns all right, title and interest, including without limitation all Intellectual Property Rights (as defined below), in and to the Program (including Google's ad serving technology, search technology, referral technology, and Brand Features, and excluding items licensed by Google from third parties), and that You will not acquire any right, title, or interest in or to the Program except as expressly set forth in this Agreement. You will not modify, adapt, translate, prepare derivative works from, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise attempt to derive source code from any Google services, software, or documentation, or create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product through use of or access to the Program or proprietary information related thereto. You will not remove, obscure, or alter Google's copyright notice, Brand Features, or other proprietary rights notices affixed to or contained within any Google services, software, or documentation (including without limitation the display of Google’s Brand Features with Ads, Links, Search Boxes, Search Results, and/or Search Buttons, as applicable). "Intellectual Property Rights" means any and all rights existing from time to time under patent law, copyright law, semiconductor chip protection law, moral rights law, trade secret law, trademark law, unfair competition law, publicity rights law, privacy rights law, and any and all other proprietary rights, as well as, any and all applications, renewals, extensions, restorations and re-instatements thereof, now or hereafter in force and effect worldwide. By trying to download the Javascript, I believe they might have thought you were trying to get it for the purpose of modifying it ("You will not modify, adapt, translate, prepare derivative works from, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise attempt to derive source code from any Google services, software, or documentation, or create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product through use of or access to the Program or proprietary information related thereto."). Just downloading it alone might constitute "attempting to derive the source code of". All in all, though, I still find it very strange and wrong that they terminated your account.
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Bladegash wrote:
http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=speedrun&word2=%22speed+run%22
Hmm, well, that's true. It's strange, though, since I pretty much always see "speedrun" used on SDA. And here on NESVideos, too. In fact, pretty much every official documentation that I've seen uses this variant, except for the Internet Archive repository. Maybe it should be changed to "speed run", I'm not sure. That would make our runs "tool-assisted speed runs", not exactly too charming, in my opinion. Whatever is more correct, I guess, but I'm going to wait for a while before renaming the articles.
Post subject: Re: [[Tool-assisted speedrun]] improvement drive
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Bisqwit wrote:
Omega wrote:
while maintaining a NPOV attitude, of course, since I'd hate to see this article reduced into an outlet for propaganda
That's why I don't think I can contribute in the article majorly. I'm too biased :)
Actually, even if you don't contribute, the text that has been written on your wiki is already pretty useful. And to be honest, it's usually pretty encyclopedic as well, even though it doesn't have to be. Gigafrost: yeah, I think that it should be mentioned how it used to be called a "timeattack", and just maybe there might be a possibility of mentioning how a different community prefers to call it a "cyborg run" (in the upcoming "controversy" section, maybe). That's a good idea. TheAxeMan: that's also a good idea. I'm not sure exactly how, though. I'm thinking in the form of a glossary. Bladegash: I'm not sure whether it should be "speed run" or "speedrun". The latter is the dominant terminology, although the former may be more correct in a sense. I'd rather use the most-used version, though.
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Bag of Magic Food wrote:
...It's good enough. Just leave it.
I don't think it is. It's very small right now and only outlines the basics of tool-assisted speedrunning. It makes no mention of some very important aspects of the phenomenon and doesn't portray its significance (proved by, for example, the interviews Bisqwit and Phil have done for game magazines, and the attention the Zelda tool-assisted speedrun got when it was published on Slashdot).
Post subject: [[Tool-assisted speedrun]] improvement drive
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For a while now, I've been making a lot of edits to the Speedrun article on Wikipedia. It's really large and informative already, so I consider it nearing to completion. Since tool-assisted speedruns are so important in the speedrun society, it was decided (not by me, although I agree with it) that it should have its own article and that the speedrun article should contain a summary of that article. For a long time, the speedrun article had an elaborate small summary of what tool-assistance is all about, but now it is moved into its own article. So now might be a good time to ask this community to help me improve this article to a good status. If you would like to help out, simply check out the article and start writing, whether you have an account or not! Some things that I think should be in it:
  • An elaborate history section that starts with early Doom "tools-assisted speedrunning" or "built demos" and ends with the current state of the community which is mainly about playing with emulators.
  • Information about why and how these movies are being produced, similar to the information page on Bisqwit's wiki (although it should not copy anything from there without permission); while maintaining a NPOV attitude, of course, since I'd hate to see this article reduced into an outlet for propaganda
  • Information about why tool-assisted speedruns are sometimes regarded as controversial
Of course, we've got plenty of material to illustrate the article with, as well as many graphics of techniques and glitches that we can use, like the BisqBot graphic that is up. I hope that you'll come around and fix the article up with me, since right now it's very basic and I'm not sure if I'll have that much time to do it all by myself. And, afterall, collaboration is fun. Be sure to cite your sources. PS: the Speedrun article could also use some improvement, especially in some smaller areas (Super Mario series, Half-life, Mega Man series), since it's far from perfect yet. But that's less important right now, I believe.
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FractalFusion wrote:
A little problem. The rolls that the CPU's make are highly dependent on random variables. You can't just start up the game and expect it to be the same every time. Unless you ran it from a movie.
Or unless you use the same input to begin it (e.g. optimizing the amount of frames to start the game with eight computer players).
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That sure is surprising. Maybe someone thought it would be a good idea to support you by clicking the ads a million times in a row.