Perhaps some (non-strict, flexible) rules of thumb could be outlined, to aid in deciding whether a run deserves the "notable improvement" tag or not?
Something like the run meeting one or more of these:
- The run is at least 10% shorter than the previous version.
- It uses new notable glitches or techniques that are very visible.
- It uses a drastically different route.
- It may be of great interest to the community, or to the fans of the game.
x264 is probably the best there is.. not many are using x265 yet so x264 is way way better than xvid and wmv probably like half the size with more quality
Since the episode Scare Master will be shown out of order (it should have been episode 15, but will be shown as episode 21), it will be interesting, related to the above discussion, if we will see the CMC without their marks.
I don't think Tiara is good, she only learned how to use her talent to get what she really wants with alternative methods. She tried really hard to use her talent of giving orders to become president but it completely backfired and lost her everything. She then learned why her methods weren't getting her good attention and decides to try helping. She used her talent to get her peers what they want and in exchange got the attention she always wanted. She isn't good, she is just being good when it is in her best interests.
I don't think the show is that cynical. I really think the intent was for her to be genuinely redeemed. (If they are a bit realistic, like they oftentimes have been, she might lapse into her old self for brief periods of time, but that's about it.)
I think we're conflating Information with Intelligence again.
I'm not a physicist, but I'd conflate intelligence with, ultimately, entropy.
Of course "intelligence" is an ill-defined, subjective notion. However, it can be argued to be closely related to ordering and patterns, which are directly related to entropy.
Total entropy never decreases, but locally it can (as long as it increases by at least that much somewhere else) and it does. There is zero controversy here.
Perhaps the simple act of changing the word "technical" to "effort" might in fact be enough. The latter gives a much better idea of what the rating is about than the former. And using one single word. I like it.
I don't think what I suggested would require changing the existing code, just adding a new functionality somewhere that would calculate the ratings a bit differently. It ought to be a relatively simple database query and some simple math, to display some field somewhere.
Well, that was unexpected.
Edit: At first I was rather "meh" about the whole episode, especially the crux of it, but the more I think about it, the more I'm warming up to the notion that the writers actually handled the plot point quite well. I'm not saying this was the best possible outcome they could have come up with, but on the other hand, there's a million ways they could have done it a lot worse.
Likewise, about the cutie marks themselves I was also at first quite "meh", and didn't even like them, but in retrospect, I think they are kind of cool after all. Perhaps a bit odd and maybe a bit out-of-place in terms of style, but I don't think they are that bad.
There are lots of parallels between this episode and Magical Mystery Cure, but I think this one was handled a lot better than that one.
It's an end of an era (and perhaps the beginning of a new one), but I suppose it had to come at some point.
I have an idea: What if the ratings were weighted according to player points? Or at least the technical rating.
With this I don't mean that the weighted rating would replace the current way of calculating it (which is just a simple average). It could be shown in addition to the normal rating, in some manner.
Also, the weighting wouldn't necessarily be linear. It could use some kind of cumulative normal distribution (so that people with very low player points would weight about the same between themselves, and people with very high player points would weight about the same between themselves.)
The reasoning is that experienced TASers have more experience in evaluating the technical quality of a run, and thus their rating is (hopefully) more informed and less biased.
(Also, the minimum weight, ie. people with 0 player points, wouldn't be 0, but something larger than 0, so that everybody's rating contributes, even if by a little.)
Of course this will give good results only if there's a significant amount of ratings by people with lots of player points.
Btw, the last 3 minutes of the latest Ep were really sweet - I want to see more of that.
Many of these general plotlines are really common in all kinds of long-running TV shows (both live action and cartoons), and most often than not they tend to be really boring, or even cringeworthy.
Yet, somehow, this show manages to make them interesting.
A "babysitter" episode is really common, and almost always cringeworthy. Yet MLP:FiM's version of it was quite enjoyable and fun to watch. The basic premise in this "Brotherhooves Social" episode also sounds extremely cringeworthy, yet somehow it wasn't. They have this rare talent of making even stupid ideas work, somehow.
So it's completely ok to show their games, but not their artwork (even though the games themselves show a thousand times more of the game artwork than some still images that are shown for a couple of seconds)?
The rationale behind this baffles the mind. I don't even.
I assume every picture is interpreted as some answer (rather than being just rejected). Wouldn't it thus be enough to just choose from the available pictures one that gives the correct answer?
Of course this wouldn't allow showing the pictures in the desired order, but...
Question: How does Brain Age interpret those images? In other words, what numbers do they correspond to? Can this be chosen somehow (other than, you know, using that misleading trick of drawing off-screen)?
Since I find the Atheist thread stupid and I'm not religious, I decided to make this topic.
Would you say: "I believe that a god exists."
If you would not say that, then you are an atheist by definition. It's that simple. You can deny it all you like, but that doesn't change the facts.
"I'm not an atheist, I'm an agnostic" is an oxymoron. It's like saying "I'm not European, I'm German." You can be an agnostic and an atheist at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive. They just deal with different questions. (And in fact, most atheists are arguably agnostic.)
That question is rather nonsensical. It's no different from "is there any evidence for not collecting stamps?" There's a category error here, making the sentence nonsensical.
In more wider sense atheism also the rejection of belief in existence of any spiritual, supernatural, or transcendental concepts.
You are confusing atheism with skepticism. Not the same thing. (Sure, someone who is one tends to be the other as well, but that's not always so, nor are they in any way synonyms.)
I'd prefer an Agnostic thread myself. Much more to talk about.
There seems to be a very widespread misconception that the range of belief is a linear range, with theism on one and, atheism on the other, and "agnosticism" right in the middle. Especially, there seems to be a widespread misconception that "agnosticism" and "atheism" are mutually exclusive things.
No. Agnosticism is not on the same axis as theism-atheism. The latter deals with one question, and one question only: Do you believe in the existence of a god?
That question is not a binary question. "Yes", "no", "maybe", "I don't know" and "I have no opinion" are all valid answers, but they are still not related to agnosticism.
Agnosticism is related to the concept of knowledge and certainty. Do you know, or do you think that it's possible to to know for certain, about the existence of deities?
That term is not mutually exclusive with atheism, or theism for that matter. "Agnostic atheist" and "agnostic theist" are perfectly valid terms. The former simply means "does not believe in gods, but claims no certainty", the latter means "believes in a god, but claims no certainty".
You can think of it as a two-dimensional graph with two axes. On one axis you have belief in the existence of a god. On the other you have certainty of that belief. You can freely place yourself anywhere in that graph. It's not contradictory.
What atheism (or absence of faith or whatever you want to call it) has that religion lacks is falsifiability.
I'm not sure that sentence makes any sense. Atheism is simply the lack of belief in a god. It's simply not having a certain belief. It's not a positive claim. (Sure, some atheists may make a positive claim with respect to the existence of gods, but that's not generally what the word means.)
It's like saying: What not collecting stamps has that a hobby lacks is falsifiability.
That's a bit nonsensical, don't you think?
While atheists claim to be atheists. Don't many of them still treat other aspects of life as if it were religion? Whether it be money, the state or celebrities.
You seem to be confusing an atheist with a non-religious person. You also seem to have a very skewed view of what the term "religion" means (essentially you are committing an equivocation fallacy here.)
Technically speaking a Buddhist is an atheist, because Buddhists do not believe in a god. Obviously Buddhists can be deeply religious, but they still don't (usually) believe in any gods. (Some Buddhists probably also believe in Hinduism, which has craploads of gods, but that's a mixture. It's not pure Buddhism.)
Technically speaking Raëlians are atheists because they don't believe in a god. Their religion is ufology, and believe aliens created us, but they don't believe in gods.
You are also equivocating two completely different meanings of the word "religion" (probably on purpose): The literal meaning and the figurative meaning.
