Oh, that wasn't directed at you, saber. Apparently, when someone "promotes" or "qualities" a vid that hits #1 (or top-15), the promoter is supposed to get an "Assist" achievement badge thing. No one at Videosift ever bothered to describe the exact requirement for these achievements...which makes it fun to guess what they might be: is it #1 only? Top-15? How many are required for each achievement? It's a big mystery.

Now, if you wanted to upvote some vids in my personal queue (say, all the 9's) then I wouldn't stop you.

http://videosift.com/member/shuac/pqueued



In reply to this comment by saber2x:
whats a Assist achievement and how does one give one?

In reply to this comment by shuac:
Alright, where's my Assist achievement?

In reply to this comment by Hybrid:
Congratulations on that ruby! :

Thanks go to you for being the crucial vote!

Ah, kids today. They really do the darnedest things.

In reply to this comment by campionidelmondo:
*promoteThanks for the promote!

In reply to this comment by marinara:
>> ^shuac:

Sorry, but I made an oath to downvote all these Downfall-with-new-subs videos because I find them blissfully entertainment-free.
Nothing personal, of course.


if you didn't watch it, dont downvote it. Don't downvote it for my sake.

For your sake? I think I'm missing something. Your situation (other than having an awesome profile pic...love all things Venture) is unknown to me.

I included why I downvote these vids: because they are a very tired meme unworthy of the name.

In reply to this comment by redyellowblue:
S.T.A.L.K.E.R anomaly. Bet there's so good artifacts hopping around down there that will sell for good money.I was thinking the same thing. Lemmee equip a fireball first before I jump down there.

Don King better watch his back with all the promoting you're doing lately! Thanks a mil!

It's all good, Emu.

In reply to this comment by gourmetemu:
First of all it's rather petty to downvote something that could easily be fixed by shooting over a message so I could correct it if it was really going to bother you that much.

Secondly, I naturally went through your PQ to downvote things for whatever the tiniest reason I could only to fucking upvote 10 of your videos because of the awesome content. So now I hate you even more than before.

Also you should put quotes around "hits" for, you know, grammatical reasons.

Sorry this the best I could do to vent since you have to go and sift stupid enjoyable videos. <shakes fist in anger>

In reply to this comment by shuac:
Downvote for misspelling hits. Oh, wither education?

I love it but then I have a soft spot for post-apocalyptic settings. The thing I like the best about the Stalker series is that it's a living world where things happen whether you're there or not, even in other maps. This is why tasks sometimes cancel themselves: the NPCs go about their business, it's not just an act for you to witness. Nothing is scripted.

Shooters are way too linear and if that's all you're used to (like Yahtzee seems to be) then it'll be interpreted negatively. So you fail a task here and there: the earth will still spin, I guarantee it.

And yeah, it's a tough game...the Russian developers are not about spoon-feeding anything to anybody, much less spoiled Americans. hehe.

There are bugs, no doubt, and the devs probably should have taken another month to playtest the thing. They're good about releasing prompt patches.

I'd recommend it but only if you have a good, stable PC.

In reply to this comment by GeeSussFreeK:
^he seemed to nearly say it was worth picking up then. Is it fun?

Ahh, I see. Thanks for the reply.

In reply to this comment by lucky760:
If a video has the logo of the video host rather than a frame from the video, the invocation will cause siftbot to try to locate a true thumbnail from the video host.

It would be a ridiculous waste of our resources (load, most of all) for us at most any user's will to download an entire Flash video onto our servers then parse it looking for a few frames just so you could have one of your choosing. I guess no one else has suggested it because they realized it's not very feasible and is worth much less than the problems it would create. The most common similar suggestion has been that people snap their own screenshot, crop it, and upload it for the video. This is a better solution but opens a gaping hole for abuse.

If the video host has the thumbnail, we should be able to get it. There are only a couple approved hosts we can't retrieve thumbnails for. And sometimes the thumbnail fetch just fails at video submit time but will work later for a *findthumb.

(It doesn't always not work.)

In reply to this comment by shuac:
How, exactly, does this invocation work? Does it actually DO anything? Where does it look for thumbnails? Seriously, where is it looking?

Can't it sample a bunch of frames from the flash video itself, offer those samples, and allows us to choose one?

I can't possibly be the first person to think of this.

In reply to this comment by siftbot:
A different thumbnail image for this video could not be found for findthumb request by shuac.

No, it's not. It's the Bo Donaldson version. But hey, change it, don't change it. I don't give a shit.

In reply to this comment by lucky760:
I'd better leave it because I think I confused you! The version I posted is Paper Lace's.

In reply to this comment by shuac:
I didn't know anything about Bo Donaldson until you told me. Apparently, both versions were made in 1974 but you should probably remove the Paper Lace tag lest someone get confused.

In reply to this comment by lucky760:
Oh I see. Actually, according to my research, this is the original. Paper Lace wrote and originally performed the song in 1974. The later "remake" was by another band called Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods.

Is the other version the one that was the more popular one? (I'm assuming you're old enough that you were around for the song's popularity.) It did sound better to me, but the original is the only one with the good music video.

In reply to this comment by shuac:
In reply to this comment by lucky760:
What do you mean? The song is "Billy, don't be a hero." Am I misunderstanding your question? Is there something wrong in my post?

In reply to this comment by shuac:
Yes, that's all fine, but what is THIS song?

This is not the original vintage tune from the 70's, is my meaning. This is a really bad remake of "Billy."

I didn't know anything about Bo Donaldson until you told me. Apparently, both versions were made in 1974 but you should probably remove the Paper Lace tag lest someone get confused.

In reply to this comment by lucky760:
Oh I see. Actually, according to my research, this is the original. Paper Lace wrote and originally performed the song in 1974. The later "remake" was by another band called Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods.

Is the other version the one that was the more popular one? (I'm assuming you're old enough that you were around for the song's popularity.) It did sound better to me, but the original is the only one with the good music video.

In reply to this comment by shuac:
In reply to this comment by lucky760:
What do you mean? The song is "Billy, don't be a hero." Am I misunderstanding your question? Is there something wrong in my post?

In reply to this comment by shuac:
Yes, that's all fine, but what is THIS song?

This is not the original vintage tune from the 70's, is my meaning. This is a really bad remake of "Billy."

In reply to this comment by lucky760:
What do you mean? The song is "Billy, don't be a hero." Am I misunderstanding your question? Is there something wrong in my post?

In reply to this comment by shuac:
Yes, that's all fine, but what is THIS song?

This is not the original vintage tune from the 70's, is my meaning. This is a really bad remake of "Billy."

No problemo, Swampy. I enjoyed the exchange.

Although...the word agnostic comes from "gnōsis" which is Greek for knowledge. So if we're to ignore the contemporary parlance for agnosticism (as an interim position between atheist and believer) and use the correct definition, agnosticism relates to knowledge where atheism relates to belief in god.

In short, an agnostic believes that the existence of god cannot be known. It says nothing about the belief (itself) in god.

The two terms are mutually exclusive. So a person can be one of the following: a gnostic theist, an agnostic theist, a gnostic atheist, or an agnostic atheist.

Related to your comment about "belief system," one would be tempted to call the above codification as exactly that: a belief system. But "belief" is the wrong word, I think. It certainly shares a similarity to the scientific method: where things are categorized & codified all the time. So it's probably a system, all right, but it's more of a knowledge system, less of a belief system.

To a scientist, knowledge or fact is the seed of belief. More and more, lately, belief is the seed of knowledge and we think that's a very dangerous path to be on.

I'm reminded of the Royal Library of Alexandria, Egypt, which was founded in the 3rd century BC by Ptolemy II. It has been said that it contained as many as one million books (or scrolls) before it was burned to the ground by those in power (political, military, etc). Efforts to rebuild the library were ultimately for naught because by the 8th century AD, it was no longer a significant institution and had ceased to function in any important capacity.

So it took an entire 1100 years for mankind to go from an all-encompassing thirst for knowledge to complete apathy. That's a long, slow change in attitude. What value will we assign to knowledge one thousand years from now?

Anyway, forgive me for this tangent. See you on the sift!

regards,
-Shuac

In reply to this comment by swampgirl:
I was a bit defensive for the underdog here because I am a former Christian. I suppose I would call myself agnostic now. Thanks for the polite and sincere replies.