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Everything posted by Nephil Thief
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BoE assembly language? I like it. An awful lot, actually. (Reading real x86 ASM makes my eyes bleed, but treating BoE nodes as if they were instructions for a really weird CPU seems like a fantastic approach. Might just be the late hour though.) Edit: you wrote a header file? OMG OMG you are so awesome. Thank you, I'll see if I can't contribute something to the Github repo this weekend when I'm not horribly busy...
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Compiling against winelib, the sequel: it works!
Nephil Thief replied to Nephil Thief's topic in Blades of Exile
Cool! How complete is GCC's support for C++11 though? -
Hi SkeleTony, just FYI I've reported the post above. I understand where you're coming from but IMHO this is not the sort of board where such things should be posted, at least not without some sort of warning for readers... I'll see what the moderators have to say on it though.
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Compiling against winelib, the sequel: it works!
Nephil Thief replied to Nephil Thief's topic in Blades of Exile
The Windows code does not depend on Boost, which is probably a good thing (for now anyway). Compiling against third-party libraries on Windows is rather involved. -
Compiling against winelib, the sequel: it works!
Nephil Thief replied to Nephil Thief's topic in Blades of Exile
Okay, for the BoE game itself, some code changes are needed. 1. boe.combat.cpp, around line 3359: all the casts to (long) are incorrect. They should be removed. 2. boe.fileio.cpp, around line 1758: itoa() is deprecated and should not be used, and the newer _itoa() seems not to be available in the version of Wine I'm using. One could probably hack around this with std::stringstream for now, I guess? I'll post more as they come... -
I was just able to get the character editor compiled against winelib, and yes, it actually works. The makefile needs the following modifications: CPP = wineg++ CC = wineg++ WINDRES = wrc Additionally the output filename must not contain any spaces, not even with quotes. There seems to be an upstream bug somewhere that messes things up otherwise. Also note that there will be a ".exe.so" file that must be in the same directory as the .exe file, with the same name. Changing the names after they're built will make them not work. But yeah, that's it. I'll see if I can also get the game and scenario editor working too.
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What have you been reading recently?
Nephil Thief replied to Emmisary of Immanence's topic in General
I read those books in high school, but still remember them pretty vividly. Fantastic setting and fantastic characters. -
First off, you might want to use something like Process Explorer: http://technet.micro...s/bb896653.aspx to see where the bottleneck occurs. It might be RAM like you're thinking, or it might be something like disk I/O, or something more obscure like CPU cache misses. Re the browser, I'd encourage using a Javascript blocker extension, or disabling Javascript for all sites except trusted ones (Chrome and Opera can both do this). Javascript is responsible for most of the memory and CPU load on modern websites, and third-party JS content is also one of the largest security risks. Edit: err, I didn't realize Dark Souls II was released this year. What are the specs on your laptop? At a guess, I'd say the hardware may simply be inadequate for a graphics-intensive game.
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Alternatively you can invoke it with 'wine start /unix' instead of just 'wine'. That works on Linux anyway.
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... I have to say I'm a little disturbed by the combination of specificity ("defend the Constitution") and vagueness ("against all enemies, foreign and domestic") in that oath. With that wording, it seems like almost any civil rights activist could be considered a "domestic enemy" if they supported a Constitutional amendment.
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@Harehunter: I would consider it less an expansion of rights, and more an increase in coverage of those rights. That's... kind of the point. You can't guarantee that people will be happy, but you can give everyone a roughly equal shot at it.
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Playing all older games on linux possible with wine
Nephil Thief replied to Travisbmoore's topic in General
Classic BoE (the open source version) should work, more or less, with almost any version of Wine. I use Linux almost exclusively, so yeah. Original BoE, and the Exile games, did not work last I tried. Used to be you needed to set the sysctl vm.mmap_min_addr to 65536 or less, so as to avoid breaking 16-bit support in Wine; now that doesn't seem to work either. Not sure what the issue is. One might do better using Windows XP in Virtualbox. -
What have you been reading recently?
Nephil Thief replied to Emmisary of Immanence's topic in General
So, Unspeakable Things is an amazing, thought provoking, harrowing, maybe life changing read. And I'm not even halfway through yet. Penny has been there, done that, got the T-shirt; and also happens to be a very skilled writer. If you are over 18, and are not cisgender and/or male, you might want to read this book. If you are over 18, and are cisgender and male, you need to read this book (if you haven't already). The more people who understand the scale and scope of the problem, the better, IMHO. -
What have you been reading recently?
Nephil Thief replied to Emmisary of Immanence's topic in General
Just finished: The Left Hand of Darkness (Le Guin). I last read this in high school, and I had forgotten how good it was. I'm just a little sad that it's over now. Just started: brain candy, The Rhesus Chart (Charles Stross). Hmm... The Computational Demonology conceit is starting to wear a bit thin, especially now that it's been tempered with more typical magic. Bob Howard is starting to irritate me (I know he's supposed to be very Joe Average, but still). And vampires, feh... Because urban fantasy trends, more feh. But hey, it will probably be entertaining, which will help with the next item... Waiting for it to arrive: anti brain candy, Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies, and Revolution (Laurie Penny). I will read this. Really. The whole thing. Might take a while, but I need to know this stuff. I will face my fear, I will let it flow through me, etc. etc. -
Apocalypse, no, but it's already a humanitarian disaster. Over 3000 deaths, and last I heard the projected death toll 6 months from now was something like 40,000. Mind, this is in countries that already have terrible healthcare and infrastructure, and just the quarantine measures etc. are making life even harder. (The Onion recently ran an article about how we're still "50 or so white people away from an Ebola vaccine." I thought that was depressingly accurate.)
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What have you been reading recently?
Nephil Thief replied to Emmisary of Immanence's topic in General
Gah, sorry about that! To be sure it's still a fun read, I just don't feel it's up to the amazing measure of the earlier books. -
What have you been reading recently?
Nephil Thief replied to Emmisary of Immanence's topic in General
Well The Hydrogen Sonata turned out to be pretty Hollywood. I mean, it was an entertaining read, but I feel kind of sad how far that series fell since the first few novels. -
Uhh yeah, I think it's important to step in here and say that the existence of an oligarchy doesn't negate other forms of social privilege. Edit: also not sure where you get the idea about "large and diverse groups." I'm not in the habit of deliberately prejudging people, regardless of privilege. Whatever, I'd better shut up before this veers off topic.
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Personal experiences, hmm. I took a Soc/WS class in my (roughly) third year of college. It grabbed my attention to the exclusion of pretty much everything else, and led to me studying some of the ideas on my own; particularly radical feminist concepts, e.g. that hetero relationships in a patriarchal society pose inherent ethical problems. I've always been a... progressive, I guess? A humanist, sort of? And I've always been kind of disgusted by the way men tend to treat women. (Very, very long story there.) But I didn't realize quite how far it extended, I took certain things for granted; and moreover, I didn't realize how much I was part of it, and how utterly hypocritical and damaging I was. I basically got progressively more depressed until, around the start of the next semester, I became pretty much suicidal and got myself admitted to a mental institution. I wound up getting diagnosed (incorrectly) with a mood disorder, and jettisoned from the place one week later. I spent the next few years largely nonfunctional, doing volunteer work and such in my better moods. Eventually I got a temporary job, then a full-time one, which I'm still (thank whatever) holding on to. These days, I don't know where I am. I'll admit some anger towards the philosophical concepts that did me in, so to speak, but that's useless; once you've seen truth, you can't unsee it. It's not the fault of those advocating those ideas, it's my fault for having been unethical (and, sometimes, still being unethical). I sometimes entertain a glimmer of hope that those ideas are wrong, but I know I'm fooling myself. I'm still basically a wreck, but I think I'm a better person for it. Even if the only people who seem to understand that are a very small minority of personalities I correspond with online. Most people either think I'm being "irrational," displaying symptoms of mental illness, brainwashed, being overly hard on myself, being a drama llama, showing off a martyr complex, etc. ... Also people keep telling me not to feel guilty, in spite of everything, because that won't help anyone. Well, yeah, but "don't feel guilty" in the face of being a serial exploiter of other human beings is a pretty tall order, IMO. There are still days when I still feel like the planet would be a better place without me. Not so often now, but yeah. So there is my maybe-too-personal story. Hope it's useful. It would be nice if people could be educated about this stuff without being injured in the process like I was.
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What have you been reading recently?
Nephil Thief replied to Emmisary of Immanence's topic in General
@nikki. One finds like minds in the strangest places. I have to admit I've gotten less capable over the years of suspending my disbelief for Bradbury's stories - perhaps that's the point? - but I still love his prose. (As for PKD, I read part of Androids once and it completely freaked me out, so I know the guy was doing something right... Oh, might I also recommend "Faith of Our Fathers"? Though it's been a while since I've read it, for probably obvious reasons.) Anyway, for mine: I finally caved in and bought The Hydrogen Sonata. So far it's surprised me by being much better than I expected, though admittedly I've only been at it for a couple days (and will probably finish it in another few, har har). I'm entertaining hopes that the Culture will redeem itself a bit in my eyes, but to me it's become a very ambiguous utopia indeed. -
I'm not sure about this, for a number of reasons. 1. Rationalization again: "It won't happen to me, I won't get caught!" 2. Heat-of-the-moment crimes. People fire a gun in anger or whatever, they don't for one moment think about consequences. 3. Death of one's self is hard to imagine. 20+ years stuck in a prison is (IMO) more immediately palpable. 4. In the US, at least: statistics. Last I checked on it (which was admittedly a while back), US states instituting the death penalty did not have lower murder rates relative to population size vs. states which opt for life imprisonment.
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On a less depressing note, it's interesting how a bunch of people coming from completely different philosophical (and political) directions can largely agree on personal ethics.
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Fair enough, though I don't even begin to see how Free Will is possible without Dualism. Also I guess I tend to cringe a little at the term "moral failing" in relation to law, because 1. I've personally seen people "fail morally" when mentally ill, or when overmedicated on drugs designed to treat such illness 2. Global society is one gigantic moral failure, to the point that taking both "human rights" and "punishment" seriously would itself present moral problems I can't say I have much sympathy for those who deliberately harm and exploit others, but the fact is that with a little tweaking of brain chemistry, or even the wrong social influences, that could be anyone. Seriously, it is frightening how malleable people are. I guess we agree on that much, though we might have different definitions of punishment. Sorry I jumped the gun, so to speak. I didn't say pedophilia is a special category (see "or any other evildoer"). And I sure hope it didn't come across that way.
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Don't get me wrong, I do consider free will a useful abstract concept (like Newtonian mechanics, c.f. the philosophy thread). But I think it already starts showing its flaws as soon as one starts talking about criminal justice. Edit: maybe a better analogy is software? What I'm saying is, we can build concepts and stuff on top of the physical way that our brains work, but we forget what's underneath all that at our peril. Re "act as if you're the only person in the world with free will," I don't (and I'm not sure it's possible for a human to do so). OTOH I could see where that might, just maybe, work. It sounds like Solipsism Lite, but it's also congruent with "Act as if you have infinite power and responsibility."
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I would strongly disagree with this on the basis that the Free Will required to resist "moral failings" is a social abstraction, and in reality physically impossible. Rationalization is always tempting; but there is no reason that a pedophile - or any other evildoer - couldn't know that his or her impulses were wrong, and nonetheless be incapable of resisting them. People just like to refuse to believe that, because they don't wish to entertain the possibility that the same could happen to them - that they would do something horrible, and be incapable of avoiding it, no matter how much they knew it was wrong. I realize that a legal system which doesn't respect the concept of Free Will might sound horrible, but I don't think it would be necessarily, provided that concepts related to vengeance didn't make their way in
