Joined: 5/2/2006
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Location: Boulder, CO
Oh, he's got dyslexia, let's be considerate and give him less reading assignements than the rest of the class. Let's send a mail to all of our friends, but him I'll phone, so he doesn't have to read, which he's bad at. I think the more sane approach is to make him read more, so he could get to a more normal level and ultimately have less difficulties in everyday life, but maybe you think that's an immature approach. Maybe you think it's more mature to keep reading his emails to him because we should be considerate. Please explain to me how your logic is more mature, I doubt you can.
So you think that dyslexics just don't try hard enough?
Dyslexia is a real disability, and if reading more can help them to function better, it is not your place to force them to do it.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Requiring at least 2 tetrominos, The answer is 3, using the colors of the tetrominoes you show, it would be a 3X4 rectangle filled with an orange "L" a green "s" and another orange "L".
#0##
#00#
##0#
You can prove that this is at least tied for the optimal solution, because any solution with fewer tetrominos (again, ignoring the examples of 1 tetronimo) would have to have 2 exactly, making the total area 8.
That means that the rectangle it would have to fill would be either 2 by 4 or 1 by 8. the 1 by 8 could only include 1x4 tetronimos, so the two would touch. The 2 by 4 case you either be 2 long thin ones, 2 squares, or 2 orange "L"s. In all of these cases, two like tetronimos would touch.
Are your requiring that all tetronimos appear in the solution? in that case this answer is no good.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Not to confuse the matter worse, but does anyone remember the controversy surrounding a run (by FODA possibly?) that "beat" SMB1(J) using the minus world, which (invisibly) set a flag that is usually associated with beating the game.
The problem was that setting this flag without any of the visuals that would normally come with it made the run feel incomplete.
I kinda think it sets a bad precedent to accept that a game is beaten based on some internal value, and not something more visible.
None the less, voting yes. Note sure what the correct criteria is for "complete" here, but this feels like it passes to me.
Joined: 5/2/2006
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Not to pile on or anything, but I agree. I just don't see the point in tasing a rhythm game.
If there were some strategy, route planning or something, I might see it differently.
Joined: 5/2/2006
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Location: Boulder, CO
The lack of a verification movie is a problem, but one that I believe could be rectified. I really do believe that swordless is on the up and up, so I don't think that it should be rejected for this reason at this time.
The problem that I have is that I think that the whole premise of this run (as well as the category that accepting it would create) is against the spirit of what a time run is.
So /agree with everyone who suggested that the completion time include the time required to make the other save file.
Sorry swordless.
Joined: 5/2/2006
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Location: Boulder, CO
Big yes vote here.
I especially like that you included detailed descriptions of the technique.
I actually really like this format, and hope it will get some support to be used in MK/MK64 as well. Jumping off of computer players was fun to see, but I really just want to see the minimum time trial times.
Joined: 5/2/2006
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I don't really like the idea of publishing a run of a game that is not in some sense "published".
Not to imply that it would be a huge deal either way, just my 2c.
Joined: 5/2/2006
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Location: Boulder, CO
Warp wrote:
Marx wrote:
Morimoto's smb3 is legendary.
It was amazing for famtasia standard.
Not to diminish the worth of it, but I wonder if there isn't quite a bit of nostalgia filtering attached to that particular run. It has the notoriety of being one of the very first TASes of an emulated game and therefore it's historically quite important, but is it really all that good? After all, it even got obsoleted later by another faster Famtasia run (IIRC)...
Just like all art, it isn't just about the piece itself, context counts too.
That run was created at a time when the whole idea of a tas was still in its infancy, so I would be in favor of giving it an extra special double sized star, even if we didn't give one to the runs that obsoleted it.
True innovation is a rare and precious thing.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Mitjitsu wrote:
adelikat wrote:
I found this movie entertaining, strong yes vote. There were some glitches and optimization tactics. Very nice.
The glitches in the run were the intended method. I just played through the game before watching this so yes vote.
I don't know anything about the game, but it looked very glitch-ey when he went under the sea kelp thing while inside what looked like the floor. Is that just some game mechanic that isn't used anywhere else?
Joined: 5/2/2006
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I really, really do wish that there were another game you could write, then beat in the usual tas fashion.
Semi unrelated question: wasn't the procedure to "jailbreak" a wii kind of like this? Didn't the usual method involve changing the horse's name so that it overwrote a function pointer to point to an area of memory that you had control over?
Joined: 5/2/2006
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Location: Boulder, CO
This is the first tas in years that has recreated the wonder hat I felt the first time I watched a tas. The impossible seems possible.
This deserves more than a star. In my mind there should be some even more elite category: runs that change what can be achieved in the medium. I can only think of a few things that did this:
1. the original mario 3 run
2. the first use of the robot that shows some tases are reproducible on the console
3. this run
4. bisqbot? -- not sure this was the first, but writing a bot to play a game rather than just using re-records to play perfectly was a game changer.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
moozooh wrote:
Twelvepack wrote:
This problem has a simple solution; using digital signing. This would prove the identity of the person who submitted your vote was you, and it would be impossible for anyone to change the vote.
Well, that's cute! Unfortunately, this solution introduces more logistical problems than it solves as explained by Warp, but most importantly it doesn't alleviate the main problems with voting that happen outside the actual voting process; i.e. the part where you go into a booth or its digital alternative.
For what its worth, I agree with you completely. It does add some logistical challenges, but they are nothing more insurmountable than what is created when someone decides to use an ATM.
I have no illusions that digital encryption will somehow cure manipulation or abuse on any large scale, but I do think it would solve some problems, namely ensuring one vote per person and possible tampering or intentional miscounting.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Derakon wrote:
So, two issues:
1) The machines running the voting are still subject to tampering and are functionally impossible to validate. The creators of voting machines are notoriously closemouthed (relying on security through obscurity to hide how bad a job they do in the design phase). Even assuming you could design an open-source voting machine, how do you prove that the software on the machine is the same software that passed review? An untrustworthy machine can cast votes however it pleases, and there's no way for the user to detect it; how are they supposed to know that the random string of hex the machine generated is the proper encryption of their vote? Are you expecting every voter to learn how to perform their own encryption?
A user can prove that the hex generated by the machine is their vote by decrypting it using the public key. Remember that in digital signing, the private key encrypts the message, and the public key is used to decrypt it.
This means that you need to be the voter to actually construct a vote, but anyone with the public key can read the vote.
Derakon wrote:
2) Nothing stops a malevolent actor from scattering extra votes in. How do you prove the votes are fake? You'd have to decrypt them -- which requires the private key.
Reading them only requires the public key. The only purpose the private key serves in a digital signing scheme is that it is needed to generate the encrypted form of the vote. The public key is all that is needed to read what the vote actually says.
And extra votes are probably better controlled in this system than the current one-- it would be easy to show that only one vote was cast per keypair. If a vote does not correspond to a valid key, it could be thrown out.
The fact that manipulation of data on a grand scale (as necessary to throw an election) is much harder if that data exists in the real world instead of as a bunch of bits.
This system would actually be able to prove the validity of every vote.
Like it or not, a lot of voting security relies on it simply being harder to undetectably do things in the real world than it is on a computer system. So no, paper ballot are not 100% authoritative -- they can be altered. But to do so on a large enough scale to steal an election, you need a massive number of people, spread over a huge area (so the tampered ballots aren't all obviously in one place) which makes it much harder to hide.
I agree it would be hard to hide the level of fraud needed to steal an election in the current system, but if every vote were digitally signed, it would become a physical impossibility.
In order to fake 1 vote, you would need someone's private key. To get a private key, you would either need to steal it from them in person (much harder than stealing a ballot because any idiot can open a mailbox), or calculate it from a public key.
Calculating them from the public keys would take between centuries and millennium (or longer if need be) depending on the key length used, and doing this for enough votes to steal an election would take long enough that our brightening sun would have turned earth into a waterless wasteland before you are done.
Joined: 5/2/2006
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Location: Boulder, CO
Derakon wrote:
But the second issue is that there's no paper trail. If someone does find a way to change your vote, then there's no record of what your vote was originally, no authoritative, trustworthy fallback option.
This problem has a simple solution; using digital signing. This would prove the identity of the person who submitted your vote was you, and it would be impossible for anyone to change the vote.
Besides, what makes a piece of paper authoritative but an unalterable, traceable computer record wouldn't be?
Derakon wrote:
Assuming that you can make a system secure enough that votes cannot be changed is absurdly overconfident;
I don't think it is. I think you could actually argue that this way would be more secure, because on paper there is no way of knowing if someone tampered with the ballot, while with digital signing a different vote could not be fabricated without access to the private key.
Pros:
Instant, complete and exact count of votes. No recounts needed.
Tamper resistance. A vote could not be changed after submission.
Most likely a lower overall cost because counting the votes would be easy.
Cons:
It is hard to convince people that don't understand or trust modern cryptography that the system is secure.
Joined: 5/2/2006
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I know I'm late to the party on this one, but I still wanted to say that I really like this whole concept.
Actual minimum-frame records instead of entertainment is something I have wonted to see for a long time.
Joined: 5/2/2006
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Location: Boulder, CO
What do you mean by symbols then?
given r a real number, we can write a symbol for it. There are uncountably many symbols in this naming scheme, so it should not surprise that each real has a symbol in the scheme.