4. Actually, though, I think that counting button presses but not frames held is not as interesting as counting each button/frame. We're talking about minimal input, why should we be incentivizing holding extra unnecessary buttons?
I'd say that the idea of counting in each frame how many buttons are pressed, and the total "score" of the run being the sum of all those counts is not completely sensible for one reason: It doesn't distinguish between having one button pressed for several frames and alternating button presses on each frame.
In other words, suppose we are counting a segment of 10 frames, and during all of those 10 frames the A button is pressed (and nothing else). The total count would thus be 10. However, assume that instead the A and B buttons are alternated on each frame. Again, if we counted like above, we would still get a "score" of 10. However, alternating between A and B 10 times is intuitively a lot more input than just keeping A pressed for 10 frames.
Was that an argument that unless someone makes a better version, yours should be published?
Just because someone else is not doing a better version is not a good-enough reason to accept a submission with known deficiencies.
Well, while the concept of TASing being "cheating" and "fake" has largely been eradicated, there is still a relatively widespread opinion that tool-assistance is a bit of a lower form of speedrunning because, according to their view, it "doesn't require skill".
While that's technically true (in the sense that it doesn't require the same type of playing skill and reflexes as regular speedrunning does), what they usually mean by that is that they think that creating TASes is easy, if not even trivial, and that there's almost nothing impressive in the creation process itself. The end result might look nice and enjoyable, but they don't appreciate the creation process.
It could perhaps be compared to the debate between rock and techno music. Many fans of the former don't regard techno very high, and often the arguments are very similar: Making techno "doesn't require skill" and is "just pressing some buttons while a machine does most of the work". Many don't consider techno to be music at all (similarly to many not considering TASing to be speedrunning at all). Some still might enjoy techno music, but they still consider it some kind of "lower form" of music because they think the creation process is trivial.
Information regarding rerecord data is easily changed via hex-editor, so unless a speed-runner took uninterrupted video of the actual run being played, with the screen and controller in view at all times, it'd be impossible to verify whether things like slowdown, frame-advance, or savestates were used.
Even then it would be possible to create a fake video. In other words, what is seen on screen is the emulator replaying a pre-recorded run, and the person has simply practiced to make his button-pressing of the controller look convincing enough (plausibly synchronized to what is happening on screen). That second part might require a bit of practicing, but could plausibly be done.
By the way, I forget now why the U version is preferred over the E version of games, unless there's a good reason to use the E version. The rules don't seem to state what the rationale is.
I think this run was quite charming. (No, I don't know why that adjective was the first one to come to mind.)
It demonstrates what TASing is all about, and it's not too long.
Note that if you pick an envelope with $1000, you're absolutely correct to say that switching is advantageous.
I don't understand why switching would be advantageous. It being advantageous would result in a contradiction (because once you switch, switching again would also be advantageous by the same reasoning).
Suppose that you have to choose between two envelopes, one contains X dollars and the other 2X dollars. After choosing an envelope with A dollars, you're given the chance to switch to the other one. To see if it's worthy, you assume that there's 50% chance the other one will have A/2, and another 50% that it'll have 2A. Summing, your expected gain will be 3A/2, thus it's better to switch. However, since that's true for every value, switching before even choosing the envelope would rise your expected value, and this is absurd.
I think there's an extremely simple reason why it makes no difference if you switch or not. This would be a proof by contradiction:
Let's assume that switching to the other envelope is advantageous, so you switch. However, now you are in the exact same situation as before, just with the envelopes switched. If the original assumption were correct, it would now also be advantageous to switch to the original envelope, which is a contradiction (because we started with the assumption that switching from the original is advantageous).
Or stated in other words: If it were indeed advantageous to switch, each switch would increase the probability of getting the larger sum ad infinitum, so you should switch as many times as possible to "increase" your odds. Which makes no sense.
One reason for obesity is this: You need to go to the grocery store to buy some basic essential food products. You don't intend to buy anything else. However, on the store you are flooded by the sight of delicious-looking bakery products, candy, potato chips, soft drinks, etc. The packages are made to look alluring (the people who design packages use all the tricks in the book for this). Most people can't resist the temptation (especially those with existing weight problems), perpetuating the problem.
(For the record, that realization is not originally mine.)
It has always amused me why Microsoft considers open source software to be such a huge threat to them, requiring propaganda campaigns like that one, while at the same time emphasizing how open source software (eg. Linux itself) has an extremely marginal market share (which it does; eg. Linux has a market share of less than 3%) and how Microsoft products dominate the market (which they do; eg. Windows XP and newer have a market share of over 90%).
This is rather curious (and strange) considering that eg. MacOS X has a larger market share than Linux, yet you seldom see Microsoft making propaganda campaigns against it.
As for that video in question, I also like how it presents a false dichotomy: As if MS Office and OpenOffice were the only two alternatives.
This brings up a question which I have actually been thinking for a long time.
When simplifying equations, people will carelessly perform simplifications like x^2/x -> x. However, that equality holds only for values of x different from 0. Wouldn't that mean that from that point forward you would have to start dragging the "x != 0" condition for all the subsequent simplifications? I have seldom seen this being done anywhere.
(seriously through, Millionaire or any other trivia game isn't good game to choose, as with perfect timing it's easy to do that in splits of seconds, but I find it ever bigger surprise you know it's bad TAS and it's bad game choice)
The Family Feud TAS getting the Most Innovative and Funniest awards of 2009 kind of disproves that claim big time, given that Family Feud is kind of a trivia game. The point is that you really shouldn't generalize: There may some specific types of trivia game which are completely unsuitable for TASing, but that doesn't mean all of them are.
no, it doesn't assume unlimited ram. Since each computational step can only write to O(1) memory locations, memory complexity is always bounded by computational complexity.
Computational complexities always assume an unlimited amount of input and an unlimited amount of available RAM. This is because if you set an upper limit to either one, your (terminating) algorithm becomes O(1): There's a fixed amount of steps that the algorithm will take at most, in other words, it's an O(1) algorithm. The algorithm becomes larger than O(1) only if there's no assumed upper limit.
Of course saying "all algorithms are O(1) in a physical computer because the available RAM is limited" is not a very useful statement. The computational complexity which you get when you assume unlimited RAM is useful information even in a limited setting.
On the other hand it's trivial to find an algorithm that uses no more than O(1) memory, but does not have a computational bound, even with 100% chance of termination.
If the amount of memory is fixed, there's a finite amount of states that the program can be in, and hence there's a finite, fixed amount of computations it can perform at most. Hence there's an upper limit to the amount of steps it can take, making it O(1) (basically, "any input will cause the algorithm to perfom at most n steps, regardless of what that input is" where 'n' is a constant, which is kind of the definition of O(1).) If the algorithm performs more steps than this, it will inevitably be a non-terminating algorithm.
Another option: Make large code blocks be inside scrollable areas. I have seen this solution in other (programming) forums. This way even large pieces of code won't make the size of the article on screen excessively large.
