I enjoyed your comments on intellectual property (though I know you don't want to call it that, I think it is a fitting generalized term because it is generally accepted by those who know the nuances of the limited monopolies the term implies). In any case, I see strategies as a trade secret until they are revealed. The only way a strategy can be owned is by keeping it a secret, otherwise it is like a patent with no vesting period -- immediately known and with unlimited usage.
Thanks. :) I'm pretty sure it cannot qualify as a trade secret, either. According to Wikipedia, while the precise definition of what constitutes a trade secret varies with jurisdiction, there are certain common factors, namely (quoting):
1. is not generally known to the relevant portion of the public;
2. confers some sort of economic benefit on its holder (where this benefit must derive specifically from its not being generally known, not just from the value of the information itself);
3. is the subject of reasonable efforts to maintain its secrecy.
1. may or may not apply here; 2. most certainly does not, and 3. also doesn't, I think, at least as long as the person finding a new strategy doesn't keep it secret (which would pretty much defeat the purpose of looking for new strategies - namely, to be able to record new, faster movies).
But IANAL (not at all!), so I should probably shut my big yap before I say something stupid. ^_~
I am super seeding. It is getting out as fast as possible, I'm a really slow uploader.
It also doesn't help that people with unique pieces quit the swarm.
Looks like it's out for good now, though. Yay! ^_^
you could send the file just to one person, with a good upload. that'd help.
maybe worth trying next time ^^;;
Actually, in situations like this, you should just use super-seeding (assuming you aren't already). It's a good way to get out the complete file as fast as possible and keep the initial waiting time as low as possible.
Perhaps German names are different then. I can determine if a family name is Swedish or not quite easily, because most of them fit into three large groups.
Schmidth is Schmeid, yes (compare to Smith in English). And Kohl means cabbage, doesn't it? Brandt exists in Swedish too, meaning steep. Otherwise I'm kind of lost... but the ones you listed seem to consist of German phonemes, at least. Or maybe not Simonis.
Meh, I don't know, it's your language, YOU deal with it. ;)
Heh, yeah. :) And yeah, "Kohl" means "cabbage", but I'm not sure whether that really means anything; it could just as well be related to "Kohle" (coal), or something else entirely.
As opposed to being an imported name? Fitting into the language's morphology as moozooh said is probably a good start. If the meaning of the name is unintelligible to a native speaker of that language, that's also a good pointer. (But this requirement doesn't fit well with first (personal) names and I can't really say why.)
I don't know... there are tons of German names where I don't know what they mean. Take a random sampling of German politicians (well, not quite random really - these are merely the first I thought of); you might have Merkel, Schröder, Kohl, Brandt, Schmidt, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, Genscher, Platzeck, Müntefering, Stoiber, Koch, Simonis, and so on.
OK, "Koch" is obvious, and "Schmidt" most likely means "Schmied". But the rest? I have no idea.
Unfortunately it desyncs for me despite having the right checksum, AESUTIIZ, and FCEU 0.98.13. This isn't the KKKZSPIU code so I'm curious as to what this movie might show. Is AESUTIIZ the only code you have turned on, and what is the release date on your 0.98.13?
Where does it desync for you? I've watched until the end of world 1 so far with the 2005-12-04 release, and it hasn't desynced yet. :)
Couldn't be that painter a russian with german ancestry?
Yes, of course - although "ancestry" is a relatively elastic term - if somebody's family is originally from $COUNTRY, what keeps you from digging even deeper until you find out that at some point, they immigrated from $OTHER_COUNTRY? And so on, ad infinitum (almost)...
In a related question, what makes a certain name a "German" name or a "Russian" name or anything like that?
Ok, I'm german and swedish descendant. Can anyone guess my hair's color?
"Exter" could be the German version of the Russian surname "Экстер", I think.
Eh? Экстер can't originate from Russian, it doesn't even sound alike. Most of the russian surnames end with -ов/-ова (-ov/-ova), -ев/-ева (-ev/-eva) or -ин/-ина (-in/-ina), and a significant part of them originate from one of the common russian first names (Ivan -> Ivanov). I.e. my surname is Сергеев, transliterated as "Sergeev" or, which is more accurate, "Sergeyev"; it originates from the first name Сергей (Sergey). Sometimes you can see strange russian surnames which originate from certain russian words, but that's pretty uncommon. The pattern descripted above is right in about 95% of cases.
Mmm. May be, too - I'm not an expert on Russian names. I just happened to remember that there was a Russian painter of that name (Александра Экстер / Alexandra Exter). ^_~
Currently there are a few runs which have been sitting on Accepted status for a while without anyone encoding them. Perhaps we should get more encoders first.
Interesting, but they unfortunately don't tell you where the surnames actually come from (both in terms of meaning and geographical origin), just where people with those surnames immigrating into the USA lived before doing that. :)
Must be some rare names in Germany. Because I life in Germany and was born here. But I never hear from these names or see them anywhere. And they don't sound german.
But I can't know all names which exist in Germany.
"Exter" could be the German version of the Russian surname "Экстер", I think. "Kotter" or "Kötter" seem to be German surnames after all - maybe related to these?
And yes, I already knew what it means. :) (Though I don't know what Exterckötter means, and it may be spelled wrong, as my uncle's name is spelled Exterkotter, and some other persons in the family have Exterchotter and other things like that, so it probably got corrupted somewere in time... but I think the right way is Exterkotter, because I've heard that it's a fusion of the families Exter and Kotter, and I've found some info on those.)
None of these (Exterckötter, Exterkotter, Exterchotter) give even so much as a single hit when you search for German websites mentioning them on Google. o.o I'm not aware of "Exter" or "Kotter" as surnames, either (although that of course doesn't mean they don't exist).
Are you sure it's German?
The hole thing i meant is that small improvements like this that doesn't add anything visually new to the run shouldn't be interesting at the moment for this site. I think there are higher priorities than taking the time to encode these insignificant improvements.
That's something I like about the proposed "grace period" that'd allow others to come up with even better movies (or at least start to work on them) before a movie is published - if this was done for all new submissions now, there'd be a while where no newly-submitted movie would be published, which would allow for the current backlog of submissions to be decided upon and (if they're accepted) published. :)
Two birds killed with one stone.
there is no skill involved in the making of this movie, just time and patience to use the tools, so it's quite normal a human player can't do those.
I don't agree with the "no skill" part - there is skill involved, but it's a different kind of skill, just like formula 1 racing requires different skills than sprinting/running. ^_~
But yeah, it is important to keep in mind that the movies here are tool-assisted - some quite heavily so, too, with things like frame advancing and luck manipulation. It'd be practically impossible to play the same way on a real console, EVEN with superhuman reflexes.
But my point is, How can a movie be entertaining if it doesn't add anything really "New". If it LOOKS like the previous movie, how can that be considered entertainment. No doubt, 19 frames is a great improvement, but that isn't the question.
Huh? Of course that's the question. Maybe not the question asked in the poll, but I think you're putting too much significance on that one instead of on the site itself, the stated goals, and the way these things have been handled ever since.
FODA wrote:
All runs are improveable. So it would be really easy to take one of the many run on the site and improve it by 10 frames.
No, that's not true. If a current movie has X frames, then it can obviously be improved at most X times (in reality, the amount of times it can be improved will be much lower, but an upper bound is sufficient to show that you're not right).
The movie must be watched whithout frame count and be decided if it's better than current movie, or not. If it looks the same, then the <0.1% total time difference is insignificant.
Also not true. Whether a certain gain (given either in absolute or relative terms) is significant - or, rather, *how* significant it is - cannot be determined without looking at the history for the game in question. The closer to the theoretical limit you get, the more significant even a small improvement would be.
You cannot say "the improvement is not significant because it's only X frames" - that's like saying "the improvement of the 100 metres world record is not significant because it's just 0.01 seconds".
I had a feeling someone would say that.
I didn't mean he owns the method to the game, he just has a right to reclaim what was his when someone copied him.
And yes, everyone is able to attempt to be the current movie, however the old title holders are specifically queried if they are still around.
A legal right... no. A moral right... sure, but then, everyone does. :) I think the grace period before a new movie is published should be there to make sure that the movie won't be obsoleted again in a few days already, but that's about it.
Oh well. Sorry for nitpicking. ^.^
2) The new movie is usually based on tricks of the old one, just improved in some ways, the person who contributed the brains behind the previous one should have a small amount of time to protect his intellectual property (gameplay strategy).
I pretty much agree with everything else you said otherwise (although I think that not only the old record holders have a "right" to try and beat the new movie; everyone does), but the idea that gameplay strategy could be considered "intellectual property" [1] is just "out there", if I may say so. :)
1. Itself a meaningless term - there exist copyright, trademarks, patents, and similar things, but to lump them all together as "intellectual property" not only blurs the lines between several very distinct concepts but also fails to recognise that *none* of these even *are* property in the same sense that physical objects can be. Patents and copyrights are time-limited monopolies granted by the state as part of a deal (i.e., in order to encourage the creation of creative works and technologies; and copyrights also only apply to specific creative expressions, not ideas), and trademarks, while not inherently time-limited, have to be actively used and defended in order to remain trademarks.
Given that, I'm not sure what kind of "intellectual property" a strategy for a game should be at all - none of the above can be applied to game strategies in any meaningful way. Of course, acknowledging the giants on whose shoulders you're standing should go without saying really, but the idea that there is a strict legal requirement to do so... that's quite bizarre. :)
Ok folks. from now on. Take all the entertainment out of movies and just go for speed. Make all the movies 1 frame faster. they should be accepted right schneelocke? "its faster!"
Well then. If everyone felt that way about Phils run, why did it get published. But that is totally off topic and about a different movie. Last time i should have voted and commented, but I never. This time i am. And i was no more entertained with Donamers or either Phils run. I was in fact entertained by Sleepz run. But I guess it also depends a persons opinion of entertainment. If a couple frames improvement seems like entertainment to some people, I guess they will vote yes.
I think that's a moot question, myself. Donamer's run is as entertaining as Phil's run is as entertaining as Sleepz' run - I simply don't see the big difference. On the other hand, though, Donamer's run is faster than Phil's run is faster than Sleepz' run.
Why shouldn't it be published?
And even if Phil's or Sleepz' run was somehow more entertaining... Donamer's is still faster. Make no mistake, I think it's perfectly acceptable to say "we won't publish this just yet so that Phil/Sleepz/just about anyone have a chance to work on an even better version"; so if someone does that, great! (Of course, the same thing should apply to that new run then, too - Donamer should be given a chance to come up with a better version again as well).
But if noone does that (for whatever reason), then I think you cannot justify not publishing Donamer's run.
I just don't like to welcome the atmosphere where your hard work of making a entertaining 10-minute movie will be forgotten because someone else made a movie that's 0.3 seconds faster than yours.
It depresses authors easily, especially for newbie authors, who are not confident about "frames" and perfect timing. Knowing that someone can easily beat your work by just making it a frame or two faster (which is always a possibility as long as there are uncertainty sources, such as the precise speed the characters walk and jump), why make a movie at all?
Phil and Sleepz are hardly newbies, though, are they? Quite the opposite - if anything, what you seem to be proposing is, in essence, that newbies can't (easily) obsolete movies done by seasoned players without those seasoned players getting an extra opportunity to keep their records.
But as I said, it's not really the "put the movie on hold for a while so the current author has a chance to beat it again" I find objectable, anyway; it's the apparent idea that this should only apply to veterans. *If* there has to be an imbalance (which I overall think shouldn't be the case), shouldn't it be in favour of the newer players so that they have a better chance of getting something published and will be more motivated?
Maybe I'm just misunderstanding you, of course. :)
To sum up my position, I think that:
a) If a new movie is faster, it should be published, unless it obviously can still be improved (for example, if a new glitch is found, then a movie exploiting that glitch in a sloppy way shouldn't be published even if it is faster; rather, someone should do so in a (near-)perfect way and then submit that.)
b) Entertainment value is good, but it's a very subjective thing; I don't think it should trump time when it comes to evaluating whether a movie should be published. In the specific case of SMB2 (U), I think all the recent movies are more less equally entertaining, anyway; and if a movie is clearly less entertaining than an existing run even though it is faster, somebody (the author of the current published run, for example) can always go and record an improved version that matches the new time but retains the entertainment value of the old run. If that's not possible or if nobody wants to do that... tough luck; then noone should complain about the old movie being obsoleted by the new, less entertaining one, either.
c) (EDITED TO ADD): The question of who recorded a run (whether it's the old or the new one) is completely irrelevant for the purpose of judging the movie and determining whether it should be published or not.
EDIT: On a side note, BTW, I didn't mean to start a heated argument about this - sorry for that. :)
Indeed. I intend to hold this submission until some previous author, such as Phil or Sleepz, at least attempts to beat this record (*).
I don't like allowing people to take honor from others with mere few-frames improvements on a movie that has so much effort invested in like SMB2u.
It seems to me that the fact that there's been so much effort invested in this game already is a *reason* why improvements these days are only on the order of a few frames.
And I also don't agree with the notion that *who* submitted a movie should be taken into consideration when determining whether to publish a movie or not - judge the movie on its own merit, not on who did it.
That being said, there's nothing wrong IMO with holding it for a while to allow further improvements, but the same thing should also be done if Phil or Sleepz submit a new version, then. :)