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Guinness Strips Billy 'King of Kong' Mitchell's World Records (engadget.com)
In February, legendary arcade gamer Billy Mitchell was accused of cheating his way into the record books for high scores in Donkey Kong. As a result, he was stripped of his 1.062 million score on the Donkey Kong Forums. Today, Kotaku reports that "Guinness World Records will remove Billy Mitchell's Donkey Kong scores, as well as his records for Pac-Man, from their database following Mitchell's disqualification from the Twin Galaxies leaderboards yesterday." From the report: Mitchell is one of the world's most famous arcade game players, at one time holding world records in Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, and Pac-Man. Yesterday, all of Mitchell's records were removed from the leaderboards at Twin Galaxies, an organization that tracks video game records and high scores. The decision came after a lengthy arbitration process determined that Mitchell used the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) to achieve some record scores that had been said to be performed on arcade machines, a violation of Twin Galaxies' rules. In light of this, Guinness World Records will also remove his records.
"The Guinness World Records titles relating to Mr. Mitchell's highest scores on Donkey Kong have all been disqualified due to Twin Galaxies being our source of verification for these achievements," a representative of Guinness told Kotaku via email. Mitchell did not return request for comment. Guinness continued, "We also recognize records for First perfect score on Pac-Man and Highest score on Pac-Man. Twin Galaxies was the original source of verification for these record titles and in line with their decision to remove all of Mr. Mitchell's records from their system, we have disqualified Mr. Mitchell as the holder of these two records. Guinness World Records will look to update and find the appropriate holder of these records in the next few days."
"The Guinness World Records titles relating to Mr. Mitchell's highest scores on Donkey Kong have all been disqualified due to Twin Galaxies being our source of verification for these achievements," a representative of Guinness told Kotaku via email. Mitchell did not return request for comment. Guinness continued, "We also recognize records for First perfect score on Pac-Man and Highest score on Pac-Man. Twin Galaxies was the original source of verification for these record titles and in line with their decision to remove all of Mr. Mitchell's records from their system, we have disqualified Mr. Mitchell as the holder of these two records. Guinness World Records will look to update and find the appropriate holder of these records in the next few days."
I see Slashdot is right on top of the important things in tech!
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Cause I beat PacMan high-score by a factor of 10... and practically every esoteric Atari 2600 game that nobody has on-hand, etc.
Because there are more Americans than there are Germans and that's how statistics works. You can make similar statements about China.
But I do think there is a cultural difference between some Europeans and typical Americans. I've had Scandinavians express surprise when I stated that most Americans don't report everything on their taxes and generally skip anything they think the IRS doesn't already know about. Like the voluntary reporting and payment of sales tax for internet purchases for California State tax is kind of a running joke.
I think Americans take a certain pride in being scofflaws. Or at least tolerate such behavior in others.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Itâ(TM)s what lord Hillary would want
I for one welcome our new I.T. closet cleaner overlord.
Perhaps this is all planned drama so there is enough new material for a sequel to "The King of Kong" movie. Frankly, nobody would have heard of this guy or Twin Galaxies if not for the international sucess of that film.
The top achievement in the PacMan android app happens to be titled "Be Like Billy!".
Something tells me this app might be updated soon...
Nope, not all Americans are corrupt morons. You're rationalizing justifying being a criminal apologist, aren't you Trumpy?
Serious question, why is it always the Americans who cheat, lie, meddle, and get caught in this kind of thing?
Why is it always the AC who overgeneralizes?
Protip: it isn't... that just how it seems.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Twin galaxies have been giving settler to both Billy and Todd for over 20 years. Now that the truth is out TG is treated as if nothing has happened.
Those two were helping each other to have their records verified without any proof for so many years and nobody from TG suspected anything.
Billy and Todd have milked the cow that they were offered by those fake scores, they earned money, they f'ed itches, and they had a good life.
What about TG? TG is still here, they have taken no blame from various famous speedrunners so far and we are just waiting for the next Todd or Billy to be born.
I'd suggest the speedrunners to form a different platform and separate ways with TG and their business.
Speedrunning for a lot of people is a hobby and when business is involved, wild Todds and Billies appear.
Just my two shekels, I don't speedrun... I am just a fan.
He beat Pac-Man on camera at Funspot. That record is not in doubt.
Serious question, why is it always the Americans who cheat, lie, meddle, and get caught in this kind of thing?
I'm going to guess it's because you have selective attention.
It's not like a bunch of Russian Olympians got banned from the last Olympics. Or a German auto maker got caught cheating on diesel emissions. No members of the EU fudged their financial numbers in order to get admitted into the EU. Do I need to keep going? There are plenty of liars and cheats in most countries. In many cases we elect them as our leaders, sadly.
Corruption is not indicative of nationality. It's indicative of SPECIES.
What was it like?
Actually the Americans don't have a cheating culture, so cheaters are outliers and exactly because there is no cheating culture they are not caught easily. I can give you an example. I am European myself, so call me an independent third-party. I was at a US state university with a good CS postgrad program. About 1/3rd of the postgrad students at the time were from India, and this is how I found out what "cheating culture" and "world class bullshitting" means. Examples:
- I was hiring for tech support (I was a GA), so I was receiving resumes. Every single Indian had won a mathematics olympiad in a place I had not heard of. Some of them had done a major project, designing an airline reservation system. I recognized those guys from my intro db class, where one homework project was a simple program with origin/destination fields that gave you flights with intermediate stops as results (the sql being the point of the exercise). And similar "significant projects" from other simple class homework.
- In the aforementioned homework, I had a small, rather cosmetic issue in the UI and got 98 or 99% instead of 100. I was a bit annoyed because that was not the point of the exercise (it was about the sql). I gave a try to the (Indian) TA's home directory on the CS grad server and, sure enough, it was world readable (it was for some reason the default, so you could tell who was familiar with unix systems from just an ls -l), and had an excel sheet with all the grades. Opening it, I found he did give several 100% grades to Indian-looking names. The first of those 100% students who had a world readable home directory and also had her homework stored there, was an Indian girl I knew. I checked her work... NO SQL. She had actually HARDCODED the results of the correctness test examples the homework specified. It was obvious to anyone glancing at the code, so the TA knew. But, the Indian cheating culture also seems to include collusion in its arsenal. So, 1/3rd of Indian students means about 1/3rd of TAs Indian (in reality more like half, the other large group of students - Chinese - had more RAs than TAs) and they helped their fellow Indian students. The professors (apart from a couple who were Indian) were not familiar with the concept of blatant academic dishonesty, so they never seemed to suspect anything.
- Which brings me to the most interesting example, which happened a year after I graduated. An Indian student was caught cheating in an exam and got a warning. He tried cheating again and the Professor took his sheet and told him he will get an F in class. The student responded "why do I get an F in class, when all the students submitted the same course project?". I assume at this point the professor's eyes might have opened wide, both figuratively and literally, and he checked the homework that the (Indian) TA had graded. Sure enough, almost all the Indian students had submitted the same project. There was talk about expulsions, but in the end they gave the people involved an F for the class if I remember correctly.
Now, I've also known a few great Indians who were not cheaters (you don't really need to cheat if you are great), but they did know about the culture and they even showed me videos of exams in India with parents climbing to the windows of the exam centers to pass solutions to their children.
So, I'd say, compared to other cultures, Americans are fine.
Except it turns out the Russian thing never happened with is why the Olympic Committee had to sheepishly let them back in while pretending that they never screwed up by demanding they perform under the Olympic flag and not the Russian flag, and it turns out the VW thing was lead by US engineers.
But nice try.
What possesses people to post garbage like this. Projection?
A big fat phony!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNGZo5gn_tc
I like how you refer to someone who is presumably from California as being a "Trumpy."
Let me guess, this is Trumps fault as well.
Killing a mod
Who is reminded of the character in movie Pixels that was found to have cheated on PacMan??
Funny you should mention students. Is Adderall cheating? How about those web sites that you pay to write your essays for you?
Maybe the ones who get caught are just not as good at cheating, or can't afford the undetectable methods.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Hmm, even if your English is better than mine, I can still speak at least 2 other languages better than you.
Cheaters are everywhere. We are talking about cheating cultures, i.e. cultures that actively promote cheating (either through parents or the school system).
No, I wouldn't consider Adderall cheating, I would consider it unhealthy.
When you have seen how East Indian are raised, you will understand. They are treated like gods who can do no wrong. They are taught nothing of discipline, and the women do all the heavy lifting. Cheating is the only way such dullards can get anywhere.
Like yourself, I'm not saying all are cheats or duds. But it is a cultural problem to be overcome, for sure.
Except it turns out the Russian thing never happened with is why the Olympic Committee had to sheepishly let them back in while pretending that they never screwed up by demanding they perform under the Olympic flag and not the Russian flag,Â
Um, no. The Olympic committee decided it wasn't fair to ban all of the athletes due to what others had done, but would not let the Russian flag in the opening or closing ceremonies. Nor will Russia be credited for any of the metals that they won. 44 athletes and 2 coaches were still banned from competition. Which was roughly a quarter of their athletes.
and it turns out the VW thing was lead by US engineers.
Do you have a citation for that one comrade? Preferably one that's not in Russia.
Stop the presses! Retard cheats at retarded game! Other retards outraged!
Meanwhile the NWO leads the way to WW3.
You're deeply confused. Citizens of major EU countries such as France and Italy make a sport of not paying taxes.
In the US the vast majority pay every pay check and are happy when they get a refund.
In short, you're an idiot.
"She had actually HARDCODED the results"
I thought that was something programmers only joked about doing.
LOL you're a faaggoot. VW fucked over the world, and none of the people who greenlighted the software mod were US engineers.
Heinz-Jakob Neusser, head of brand development at its core VW brand;
Ulrich Hackenberg, the head of research and development at its brand Audi who oversees technical development across the VW group;
Wolfgang Hatz,
In March 2017, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the ACCC had taken Audi and Volkswagen to federal court and that a voluntary recall for affected cars for software updates and in some cases hardware updates had begun in December 2016.[170] As of January 2018, several class action suits were under way against Volkswagen, Audi and Skoda
As of October 2015, Volkswagen Brazil confirmed that 17,057 units of its Amarok mid-size pickups produced between 2011 and 2012 and sold in Brazil were equipped with the emissions cheating software.
In June 2016, documents leaked to the press indicated that in 2010, European Commission officials had been warned by their in-house science team that at least one car manufacturer was possibly using a NOx-related defeat device in order to bypass emission regulation.
Maybe things have changed in 30 years, or maybe that's the product of a state university? When I was CS in the late 80s, my private US university—also in the south— would have issued nearly immediate expulsions for any type of cheating in any class. An F for the class? You'd pray for that.
It was not just idle threat, either. This was undergrad. In my 2nd year I was still living on campus in the dorms. My next-door neighbor was lazy, young and dumb. Spent too much time partying and let a big project sneak up on him. He ended up stealing code from a study partner and submitting some of it as his own. There was a 2-week enquiry. She failed the class even though she was not complicit in the plagiarism. He was expelled.
Like this is going to be a huge loss to mankind.
GP will probably claim that this was photoshopped.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Every single Indian had won a mathematics olympiad in a place I had not heard of.
I'm a hiring manager and 80% plus of the resumes across my desk are Indians and 80% of them are worthless. They all have tonnes of degrees and certs etc but when most get to an interview they don't know shit.
Maybe it's only an IT thing, but the market is flooded with tonnes and tonnes of useless people of Indian descent, so it's hard not to feel racist.
He didn't reply in detail, but promised proofs in the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
We once had a client tell us they didn't like the length of some pull-down bars in the demo version of the software, and demanded that we take out the actual pull-down and replace it with an image of a shorter pull-down.
"But when you get the final version, it's going to have to be bigger to fit the real contents."
"Oh, we know, but it looks messy now, so just fudge it until the design phase is over with."
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay