This has probably been discussed already a million times all over the internet, but nevertheless I think it would be an interesting question.
At the end of the first Superman movie (1978) there's a ridiculous deus-ex-machina about Superman flying around the Earth and reversing time. Never mind the ridiculousness, I was thinking what actually would happen in this situation?
Assume that Superman were to fly in circles around the Earth at, say, 0.999c. How does this affect his time with respect to the time on the surface of the Earth?
(This ought to have some effect. After all, flying in circles at that speed means he's in constant acceleration. In fact, it's quite an enormous amount of acceleration, but he's Superman so he can withstand it.)
I have no idea what exactly your job is, or how exactly the Pirate Party having their way would affect your job or cause you to lose your job. So I can't really comment there.
Game programming.
Their goal? Everybody must have the right to use any works of art (music, movies, software) freely, and producers shall not be able to restrict it. (Their reasoning? "People are doing that anyway." Yes, that's literally the main reasoning they gave me.) If eg. a software company goes bankrupt because of this, so be it; sucks being them. They should find other ways to make money (their exact words, translated.) When I said that I could lose my job if this happened, I got no sympathy.
I will never vote for a party whose policies would have me become unemployed, and who wouldn't give a flying f about it.
(Sure, I am of the opinion that current copyright laws should be made more sensible and rational, and punishment for copyright infringement made more humane. But that's not the only thing the Pirate Party is rallying for. At least not here.)
Wasn't there also going to be an icon for "fastest world record"? What happened to that?
I suppose the suggestion fell through, mainly because of the difficulty of deciding which one of the several runs of a game ought to be the "official" world record (a discussion that was mainly fueled by the proliferation of arbitrary code execution glitches, and the question of whether those ought to be considered the "fastest WR" or not.)
I still think it would be a good idea, though.
Why? They aren't looking for your best, they are just a short-sighted party with a gimmick.
I will never vote for that party because they want to make me unemployed, and they don't give a s**t. And this is not a prejudiced impression I've got; this is based on a direct conversation with representatives of said party (yes, their response was pretty much "too bad" when I expressed my concerns that if they had their way, I would lose my job.)
Perhaps someone could present some arguments pro and con, so that we can form a more informed opinion and get all the details that may not be clear from the get-go?
(I ask because I don't really understand why someone would oppose this. There may be something I'm missing here.)
Speaking of the Riemann zeta function, I have had for some time now an interest in understanding the Riemann hypothesis. Just out of curiosity, as a little "hobby project". I was wondering if someone could help me with it.
In order to understand the hypothesis, I first need to understand the Riemann zeta function. In order to understand said function, I need to understand analytic continuations. And the topic already becomes really complicated (not to talk about how complicated the zeta function itself is.)
Perhaps someone could guide me into the right direction. Baby steps. Not too much at once. Just a few essentials at a time.
(I understand this isn't a "math challenge" per se. Unless you consider trying to teach such a complicated topic to a layman a "math challenge" of sorts. But perhaps it could be an interesting topic not only for me, especially since there hasn't been a lot of traffic on this thread.)
Posting this here mostly for discussion.
What is the sum of all positive integers? The answer, if there is one, just might surprise you!
Well, some math can be used to come up with the answer -1/12, but the sensibility and meaning of it is up to discussion.
One such method is to use the Riemann zeta function with a value of -1. I'm no mathematician, but the meaning of said function for any complex parameter with the real part less than 1 is not clear-cut.
The Riemann zeta function is based on the infinite series
f(s) = sum(n=1->inf) 1/ns
This function has finite values only when the real part of s is larger than 1. The Riemann zeta function is the analytic continuation of that function for all complex values of s (so that all complex parameters will give a finite value, with the sole exception of s=1.)
While an analytic continuation of a complex function is well defined, it has some quirks to it. One of them is that if s=-1 then you get -1/12, but if you substitute s with -1 in the formula you get the infinite sum 1+2+3+4+...
Are those two things thus equal? I suppose it's up to definition. (Some argue that the equality is as real as eg. complex numbers themselves being "real". After all, it's up to definition whether the square root of -1 "really exists" or not.)
"Rooting" doesn't need to be quoted here, it's a real term. You don't run most of your software as root in OpenSuse, nor do you in Android.
I suppose that if you define it like that, it makes more sense. I was more thinking of the term as meaning to hack the system so that you can run whatever software you want. (The iPhone would be the quintessential example, as it's a completely locked and closed system where you can only install and run approved software that's run in a tight sandbox environment. You can't install a different OS, you can't modify the OS, you can't even downgrade the existing OS, and you can't run whichever program you want.)
Android is open source, but getting a phone with android on it, not so much, because the phone manufacturers control the specific distribution you're getting and what you can do with it.
Given that the OS open source, they can't restrict what you can do with it.
Besides, it's not like Android devices are locked or anything. You can boot to the system recovery menu and do whatever you want there. You can replace the system with whatever you want (even moreso with the Android SDK).
"Rooting" and Android system still sounds like "rooting" eg. OpenSuse.
There's a huge cognitive dissonance in my mind about the concept of "rooting" an open-source OS.
It's a big like saying "you can download a pirated version of Linux for free here!" Duh...
Free mobile gaming is mostly a lost cause.
If there are only three different trackers (ie. a library that records things you do and sends it to some third-party server) in the game, that's surprisingly few. If you get only occasionally a small ad banner, you are lucky (the worst I have seen was a game where full-screen advertisements were disguised as part of the game, they would pop up constantly, and it was unclear how to close them and continue with the game.) If the game doesn't show ads when it's not being run, you are also lucky. If you can actually play the game in a sensible manner without microtransactions, consider yourself extra lucky.
I have long ago completely lost any hope of mobile gaming having any kind of sense or rationality.
I don't think this run should be starred.
The purpose of stars is to showcase everything that's cool about TASing. It should be extremely visual, stunning, awesome, showing incredible superhuman tricks and amazing feats.
Everything in this run, however, happens behind the scenes. The character runs on the first level for a bit, doing seemingly random things and then, suddenly, end credits.
Other than the surprise of the end credits popping up, there isn't exactly anything visually stunning about this run. Definitely not like the "traditional" glitched megaman runs.
I don't know what to vote.
If I go with the "did you find this movie entertaining?" then... well, there wasn't much to be entertained about. A bit of one level, and that's it. Sure, technically speaking it jumps to the credits routines, but from a spectator's point of view this is like a single-level run. Heck, less of a single-level run. A small part of a single level.
Say what you want, in my books this run does not complete the game.
In this sense, my answer to the question presented in the poll would be "no". I suppose I'll vote honestly.
Assume the average modern sedan personal car, and a normal tire pressure.
Also assume said car is sinking in a sweet water lake.
Would it be possible to empty the air of the tires into 2 sporting bags (one for each side of the car), and use those as floatation devices to bring the car to the surface?
The idea behind it isn't completely unfounded. After all, take a filled air tank (those used in diving) and throw it into water: It will sink like a rock. Release its air under water into some kind of balloon of sufficient size, and it will be able to lift the tank back to the surface.
The problem is, of course, that a car weighs slightly more than an air tank, and car tires probably don't have as much air than such a tank (nor is it even nearly as compressed). Probably not even near enough.
Adventure Time has since long surpassed Friendship is Magic in being a quality cartoon, currently at 160 episodes and subpar episodes are the exception rather than the rule. Okay, so the episodes are half the length of Friendship is Magic episodes, but in most cases that's a good thing and there's very few episodes that have had a pacing problem. Something that can't be said about FiM. Maybe it would benefit from 11-minute episodes too.
I can't help but disagree.
I tried watching Adventure Time, and lasted for almost two seasons. The randomness became just boring. It wasn't completely horrible, but perhaps one episode in ten was non-boring for me; even those were more on the "meh" side than on the "enjoyable" side.
Many FiM episodes feel rushed and condensed as they are, lacking proper character development. Cutting them in half would only make it ten times worse. If anything, the episodes should be extended to at least 30 minutes.
Do you really think that people will say : 'Ok‚ we have a 1 minute run where normal gameplay has totally disappeared‚ I don't think we need any other runs for this game' ? I don't think son.
To be completely honest, that's exactly what I fear, and was the major reason why I started the thread. (Yes, the fear may not be completely justified, but still...)
The new Rockman submission might end up proving that my fears are not, after all, completely unjustified...
Runs that jump to the end early on via arbitrary code execution / CPU jump table corruption are marvelous technical achievements and really cool, but not if it comes at the cost of not seeing the game being actually played anymore (especially when we are talking about games like Rockman, which are just marvelous to look at when TASed "normally". Remove all that and you end up with... nothing. All the marvel and awe is gone.)
Complaints like that happen whenever people forget that the show, from the word "go," was created primarily to sell toys. Also when they forget that show is targeted at seven year old girls, and not twenty-something men.
I somehow doubt that the motivation and vision that Lauren Faust had when she produced the show was to sell toys.
Sure, executives might have from time to time pressured the creators to introduce ideas just for the sake of selling new toys, and that's annoying. Damn those meddling executives.
Not sure why you're bringing it up here. Not sure why you're bringing up the license either, as we don't involve the license in judging movies or plagiarism.
Just making a note that cancelling doesn't technically speaking stop the run from being published.
significant amounts of run material has been directly copied without author permission or credit
As I said, by submitting the movie, the author relinquishes his rights to stop other people from using the data in accordance to the license. Other people do not need the author's permission.
And my question was not about "what if someone copies big part of the movie without giving credit?"
It just seems odd to me that someone can effectively "hijack" a game completion by submitting it and then cancelling it, even though the author specifically gave explicit permission to publish it when he submitted, and cannot revoke that permission (according to the very license that he accepted.) If another submission is "too similar" to it, then it may be considered unpublishable on that count (because it uses too much of the original data "without the author's permission", even though you don't need the author's permission.)
We will not publish a run if the author does not want it to be published, even if the license technically allows it. Common courtesy and respect towards the submission author's wishes overrule the letter of the law in this case.
What happens if someone takes the run, modifies it slightly, and then submits it? It will be like 99% identical, and the license allows doing that. Would it be published?
If not, then what if it used 50% of the original? 20%? Where's the limit?
