Posts for Pointless_Boy

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Posted: 7/22/2010 3:16 PM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
McHazard wrote:
  • The flagpole glitch's entertainment value is a ridiculous excuse. I feel that if it were possible in NTSC without any setup, the improvement would be accepted despite any "entertainment loss."
This is certainly true. Also -- and I am surprised I have to point this out -- this site serves as the definitive repository for videos of games being played as fast as possible. Even those movies (such as the recent Brain Age run) whose sole purpose is entertainment through humor are executed impossibly quickly with inhuman precision, because that is what we interpret as being the single biggest indicator of a runner's commitment and ability to create a run of consistently exceptional quality. It's boggling that anyone seriously wants this run not to exist on this site, whose primary function is to display runs of this type. Anyone who says otherwise is being disingenuous. I have no way of knowing or proving this, but I suspect all we are seeing is a bunch of butthurt people who really wish they'd figured this out before MUGG did, and are looking for any excuse to invalidate his incredible effort. Special request for MUGG: please remake this run and remove whatever inaccuracies people are claiming to have seen. (I don't see them but that doesn't mean they aren't there.)
Posted: 7/22/2010 2:57 PM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
How do I go about getting my name changed to Link That Only Uses Sword When Necessary?
Posted: 7/22/2010 4:54 AM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
adelikat wrote:
Swordless link likes your swordless link movie sorry, I had to point out the awesomeness of that.
NO YOU ARE WRONG IT'S ONLY AWESOME IF HIS FORUM NICKNAME WAS "MOSTLY SWORDLESS LINK" OR "LINK THAT ONLY USES SWORD WHEN NECESSARY" :o
Posted: 7/21/2010 6:13 AM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
The last four versions of this run all improved upon the previous version by less than a second (and in one case the improvement was just 4 frames!) Until moments before this submission I could have asked any of you "hey can SMB PAL be run faster than SMB NTSC" and to a man you all would have said "lol what of course not SMB is one of the most optimal runs on the site". This run is astonishing. The only thing more astonishing is how pig headed so many of you are being. The run is awesome. It's got an awesome ROM specific glitch. It's crisp, it's cool, it colors dinosaurs, cures cancer, and solves a problem like Maria faster than we ever thought possible.
Posted: 7/21/2010 5:26 AM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
sgrunt wrote:
It must either obsolete another run (which I can't necessarily see being warranted) or be rejected altogether.
Let's be careful with our false dichotomies, good sir. Another valid option (among many) is for this excellent run to be published in addition to the NTSC version. How phenomenally interesting it is that the conversion to PAL resulted in easier performance of that flagpole glitch! I would be greatly saddened if this run were suppressed (as it seems so many people unfortunately and irrationally desire.) Information wants to be free, but it requires free minds to reside in. Close your eyes. Breathe deeply. Free your mind. Visualize people from all the world's nations, holding hands and freely sharing runs of the great ROMs they grew up with and grew to love. PAL and NTSC, living together in harmony ... we've done it!
Posted: 7/20/2010 5:33 AM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
spweasel wrote:
"Swordless" implies that the sword is either never obtained or never used, not that it is never used except when absolutely necessary.
It seems irresponsible to talk about the implications of certain words without realizing words are meant to have certain meanings in certain contexts, and you are intentionally (annoyingly, pedantically) misrepresenting that context when making your evaluation. As adelikat mentioned, "swordless" is understood to have a certain meaning with respect to this game, and this run is consistent with that understanding. Since joining this site I have often wondered why people such as yourself bother to vote (and vote no) on runs like this. Whereas other people vote no when a run can be shown to be more or less objectively bad, you vote no because you don't think it's valid that anyone should be entertained by this run of obviously very high quality. Is that your decision to make?
Posted: 7/19/2010 6:28 PM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
[ ] Like it! [ ] Love it! [x] Gotta have it!
Posted: 7/9/2010 12:19 PM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
Randil wrote:
I'm looking for a general expression for a combinatorics problem, it would be great if someone could provide an expression and a motivation for it. The problem is: You have n integers a(1), a(2), ..., a(n) where a(i)>=1 for all i, a(i)>=a(i-1) (i.e. they are sorted in descending order) and a(1)<=b where b is a positive integer. How many possible combinations of a(1),...,a(n) can you create? If possible, express it as an explicit function of n and b.
In other words, how many monotone sequences of length n are there consisting of integers from 1 to b? Here is a way of thinking about it that may help you: A monotone sequence is given by having k1 1's, k2 2's, k3 3's, ..., kb b's, such that the sum of the k's is n. (The k's may be 0.) So consider placing k1 white balls, then a black ball, then k2 white balls, then a black ball, etc., remembering that you can have 0 white balls between 2 black balls. Each way of ordering the balls uniquely determines a sequence, and each sequence uniquely determines a way of ordering the balls. Then you have a sequence of n+b-1 balls, b-1 of which you choose to be black. Thus, (n+b-1)C(b-1) is the answer. This combinatorial trick commonly goes under the stupid name of stars and bars.
Posted: 7/9/2010 11:11 AM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
Hahaha, very nice. I like videos like this that are entertaining even if you aren't familiar with the game. I watched it twice!
Posted: 7/9/2010 10:55 AM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
0
    - Abuses programming errors.
Posted: 7/7/2010 4:49 PM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
I don't know much about the site or the community but for what it's worth when I saw the casino link the first time I thought it had to have been a malicious edit put in by the owner of the casino page, and tried to figure out how to edit it away. Then in the edit history I saw some comment like "stop removing this link" so I didn't do anything to it, but it seems pretty disingenuous and lame. Then again I don't manage the site or pay for upkeep and maintenance.
Posted: 7/6/2010 4:15 PM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
Warp wrote:
If you are in a small room, that gradient is probably so small that it would probably not be measurable (probably even physical limits come into play, such as the Planck length; although I'm not a physicist, so don't quote me on that).
Oh, a number of systems based on MEMS pendulums or laser-cooled atomic interferometry accurate enough and small enough for your purposes exist today. You can also use superconducting sensors (which require some cooling apparatus, but those aren't so big nowadays) to measure test-mass displacement to very fine degrees on something akin to a conventional spring scale. I also remember a long time ago in university I wrote a paper about how you could use the resonance frequency of an exceptionally tiny "springboard" to measure field gradients of all sorts (assuming the springboard had a known something on its tip that interacted with the field being measured) and as I recall I calculated such a method should be precise enough for your purposes. Given that no one has ever seriously considered something like my obvious design (as far as I know), doubtless the other methods are even better.
Posted: 7/3/2010 6:29 PM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
Warp wrote:
2) In this situation, is there any way of determining whether you are in such a spacestation or on Earth?
I assume that in this situation there is also the limitation that you are stuck in a small room or some such, so you can't make obvious observations such as the behavior of the horizon and objects approaching it. Anyway, Einstein notwithstanding, there actually is a way to differentiate between gravitational acceleration and things such as fake centrifugal gravity and linear acceleration due to a rocket, or some such. Namely, the gravitational field around a massive body follows a gradient, which can be measured with precise enough instruments. Linear acceleration has no such gradient, while fake centrifugal gravity has a different gradient. (This doesn't actually contradict relativity since we're cheating by making certain assumptions and measuring at multiple points.)
Posted: 6/28/2010 11:50 AM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
upthorn wrote:
Your other challenge is misstated, it should be "accept if A mod B = 0". "Accept if A = 0 Mod B" should mean you accept only if A is equal to 0. I hope this does not come off as pedantic, because "X % Y == 0" and "X == 0 % Y" are very different conditions.
A combination of things are in play, here. I used shorthand for "A ≡ 0 (mod B)" and you assumed I meant MOD to be an operator. Neither of us is wrong, really. Simplest would have been to say A is a multiple of B, but I ran out of textspace and I didn't want to change the Manufactoria author's preamble, to maintain flavor. Anyway, naturally following Robowitness! comes:
http://pleasingfungus.com/?ctm=Robodetectives!;ACCEPT:_With_blue_as_1_and_red_as_0,_accept_prime_binary_strings!;br:*|bb:*|bbr:x|brbb:*|bbbb:x|bbbbb:*|brrrrb:x|brbrbrb:x;15;3;1;
Posted: 6/28/2010 9:17 AM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
nitsuja wrote:
Also, apparently the game lets you increase the board dimensions 2 past the usual maximum on custom levels (to 15x15) but I wonder if that's enough for this: 
http://pleasingfungus.com/?ctm=Manufactorial!;OUTPUT:_With_blue_as_1_and_red_as_0,_output_the_factorial_of_the_number!;r:b|b:b|br:br|bb:bbr|brr:bbrrr|brb:bbbbrrr|bbr:brbbrbrrrr|bbb:brrbbbrbbrrrr;15;3;1;
I doubt I'm ever going to try to make it, but I'm fairly confident it's possible. Perhaps you should lead people on a logical progression of difficulty by starting them out with:
http://pleasingfungus.com/?ctm=Roborabbits!;OUTPUT:_Read_the_tape_as_two_numbers,_A_and_B,_split_by_a_green:_output_A_*_B!;bgbrb:brb|bbbgr:r|brgbbrb:bbrbr|brbgbb:bbbb|brrgbrbr:brbrrr;15;3;1;
Of course, there's a factorial algorithm by Moessner that uses only additions, so maybe a multiplication device isn't needed ... Anyway, here are some new challenges:
http://pleasingfungus.com/?ctm=Roboreligion!;OUTPUT:_Given_any_input,_output_RGYB!;:rgyb|bbrb:rgyb|yygyr:rgyb|brygbryg:rgyb|bbyygyb:rgyb|rgrbrgbr:rgyb|yrbyyrybr:rgyb;13;3;0;
http://pleasingfungus.com/?ctm=Robowitness!;Read_the_tape_as_two_numbers,_A_and_B,_split_by_a_green,_ACCEPT_if_A_=_0_MOD_B!;brbgb:*|bbgbrbb:x|brrgbr:*|brbgbb:x|brrbgbb:x|bbbgbbb:*|bbbgbrrb:*|bbrrbgbrb:*;13;3;1;
Posted: 6/27/2010 3:34 PM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
Warp wrote:
It's a pity that nowadays with a little ingenuity, computer trickery, or both, one can fake such feats extremely realistically, so it's really hard to tell if they really did throw the ball like 50 times until they got it in, and then used that shot, or if they used fakery. It would be nice to know for sure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FlRUAajnzI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69-4R1TS7Z0 Yes, these could be fake, too, but why not just believe we live in a world where people really do ridiculously awesome stuff.
Posted: 6/27/2010 2:57 PM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
flagitious wrote:
BTW what was your first challenge (I'd probably want to start with it)?
Hah, your latest Ophanim algorithm shows you've already solved it:
?ctm=Machine_Guns!;Convert_a_binary_string_to_a_yellow_unary_string!;:|b:y|br:yy|brbb:yyyyyyyyyyy|bbrrr:yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy;13;3;1;
But I used it as a component in Roboalchemist! so I proposed it first. It turns out converting numbers to unary first leads to very simple and natural (if long-winded) processing devices ;)
Posted: 6/27/2010 4:27 AM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
flagitious wrote:
I went though and compared our list (update) to xkcds and the results were surprising, they managed to beat us in many levels that appeared optimal. Here is the summary of the differences. I have not had time to find the links to their solutions (it is possible they were not actually posted, but if you find them let me know please)
If you're just looking for smaller solutions from any source, the Kongregate forums also have some winning devices: Police! (29 parts) by yaichi, modification of barbrady1978 
?lvl=19&code=y12:2f3;g12:3f3;g12:4f3;c12:5f3;i12:6f5;c12:7f0;i12:8f4;q11:7f0;q13:6f2;p10:7f2;b10:8f1;r10:6f3;p14:6f0;b14:5f3;r14:7f1;y13:5f0;y11:6f2;c13:7f3;c13:8f3;g12:9f1;c14:9f0;i13:9f1;c11:8f2;q13:11f3;p13:10f3;b12:10f1;r14:10f1;c12:11f3;c12:12f3;
Ophanim (39 parts) by yaichi 
?lvl=30&code=y11:5f0;c10:5f0;p9:5f4;q9:4f2;r10:4f3;b10:6f1;q9:6f6;q11:6f1;b12:6f0;r9:7f3;r11:7f1;g9:9f2;q11:8f0;p11:9f6;q11:10f4;y11:11f0;c10:9f2;b10:8f3;r10:10f1;c12:9f3;c12:12f3;c12:11f3;c12:10f3;b8:8f2;q9:8f7;q9:10f4;y9:11f1;c10:11f0;c10:3f2;g9:3f2;q11:4f2;g11:3f3;p12:4f4;r12:3f3;b12:5f1;p8:10f6;b8:9f3;r8:11f1;y12:2f3;
Metatron (46 parts) by yaichi 
?lvl=31&code=c12:10f3;c12:12f3;c12:11f3;b10:3f2;g10:4f2;c10:5f1;g10:6f1;p11:3f3;q11:4f1;r11:5f2;q11:6f1;c11:7f2;r12:3f0;y12:4f3;c12:5f3;p12:6f7;q12:7f7;p12:8f3;q12:9f4;r13:3f3;q13:4f0;b13:5f0;q13:6f5;r13:8f0;r14:6f2;q15:4f3;r15:5f2;q15:6f6;b15:7f1;p16:4f1;c16:5f1;g16:6f1;r16:7f2;q17:4f7;b17:5f0;q17:6f7;p17:7f1;y18:4f3;c18:5f3;y18:6f0;b18:7f0;y12:2f3;b11:8f2;b14:4f0;c16:3f0;c15:3f3;
It is noted by yaichi that his Metatron solution fails on the null string, but the malevolence engine has no problems with that. Anyway, even though no one has tackled my first challenge yet, I've got another one that I think is considerably more fiendish:
?ctm=Roboalchemist!;OUTPUT:_The_nth_Fibonacci_number!;b:b|br:b|bb:br|brr:bb|brb:brb|bbr:brrr|bbb:bbrb;13;3;1;
Posted: 6/25/2010 3:20 PM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
The absolutely brutal abuse of 7-1 was the most shocking moment of this TAS for me. That was probably in the previous version but it was new to me :0 Anyway, this TAS was a blast and as far as I can tell the playing was very technically proficient. Yes vote!
Posted: 6/24/2010 1:34 PM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
Patashu wrote:
The Malevolence Engine seems to have a bone to pick with me. If I reuse my solution to robo-children which I put back on page 1, it finds no flaw but then calls me a cheater on the success screen and gives me no score.
The developer mentions that for some reason that level "is and forever will be quite hopeless" for the malevolence engine, I'm not sure why. Source: http://pleasing.tumblr.com/post/721139032/malevolence-engine-complete
Posted: 6/24/2010 12:53 PM
(Edited: 6/24/2010 2:07 PM)
Post subject: Done! Longest Tennis Match in History
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
The epic match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon is about to get started ... for the third straight day! I'm watching it live at espn3.com. (Sorry if that only works for Americans, other countries probably have streams I don't know about.)
Wikipedia wrote:
Since 22 June 2010, at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships, French qualifier Nicolas Mahut and American 23 seed John Isner have been engaged in what has become the longest match in tennis history, both in terms of time and games played. Currently the match has featured 163 games (barring a default or retirement, it will finish with at least 165) and at the end of play Wednesday had been played for 9 hours and 58 minutes. The players have both set and broken numerous other Wimbledon and tennis records, including the Croatian Ivo Karlović's record of 78 aces in one match, which both players have surpassed. At the end of play Wednesday, Isner had 98 aces to Mahut's 95.
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isner%E2%80%93Mahut_match_at_the_2010_Wimbledon_Championships Edit: It's all over now. John Isner wins the final set 70-68.
Posted: 6/22/2010 12:18 PM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
henke37 wrote:
Legal means: Only red and blue allowed.
So if a robot has any number of yellows or greens, reject, otherwise accept?
Posted: 6/22/2010 12:02 PM
Post subject: Re: Henke37's custom puzzles
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
Sorry I haven't put up any more optimization walkthroughs, I've been feeling really lazy lately. I really like all the custom levels you guys have been posting. But what does "only legal input color robots" mean? Here's a challenge of my own, it shouldn't be too hard :) 
?ctm=Machine_Guns!;Convert_a_binary_string_to_a_yellow_unary_string!;:|b:y|br:yy|brbb:yyyyyyyyyyy|bbrrr:yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy;13;3;1;
Bisqwit wrote:
?ctm=RoboCalculators;Accept:
Only_evenly_divideable_by_three!;bb:*|br:x|brr:x|bbbbr:*|bbbrbrb:*|bbbrbbb:x|bbrrbrbbbbrbb:x;9;3;1;
Oh dear. That requires thinking!
Here's a hint that might help: the divisibility rule for 11 in base 10 also works for 11 (3) in base 2!
Posted: 6/19/2010 3:45 PM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
klmz wrote:
Rocket Planes! in 2:23 using only 14 parts: ?lvl=27&code=r12:6f3;y12:7f3;p12:8f7;q12:9f4;b13:8f0;q12:5f4;r11:9f1;r11:4f3;p11:5f2;b11:6f1;y12:4f3;c11:7f1;p11:8f6;c12:10f3; Could it be smaller?
Exceptional, and I doubt it.
Bisqwit wrote:
... Officers ...
I'll probably make a walkthrough for Officers today or tomorrow, but until I do, a hint for simplifying your algorithm: which is easier, propagating a carry flag, or merely indicating at the end of a string that one or more carries has occurred? Consider adding 1 to something like 10111: A hard way: 10111 -> 1011c0 -> 101c00 -> 10c000 -> 11000 An easier way? 10111 -> 1011c -> 101cc -> 10ccc -> 11ccc -> 11000
Posted: 6/19/2010 12:23 PM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
I would watch this, especially if the streamer was using fancy tools and whatnot.
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