Thursday, October 22, 2009

Another update.

Version 00g . I forgot to package some latest Linux libraries with 00f, which I had installed but which didn't make it into stable versions of most distros yet (also compiler update related). Thanks for the reporting!
In progress: I did raise requirements to GLSL 1.2 a while back - mostly to detect cards which really *cannot* run the game - and turns out some cards which can run polynomial do not have GLSL 1.2 . I'll try to make some fallback.

Now I only need some reports from Mac users ;-) .

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Bugfix update.

Fixed 00f version bug, should work fine now.

technical: I found that GCC 4.3.3 has same problem except it crashes much less often, so I workarounded the issue by not using exceptions. From what I can see, thread local storage (which doesn't work in mingw) is used to store jump address for setjmp and longjmp.

mingw gcc 4.4.0 fails hard

As i just found out, gcc 4.4.0 for windows (mingw) really doesn't like threads. A well tested piece of code in The Polynomial which worked with gcc 4.3.3 no longer works with gcc 4.4.0 , presumably due to this bug . I use threading for interactive editing and for in-progress display of level fractal as it is being generated. Apparently, exception handling is not threadsafe in mingw/gcc 4.4.0 even with -mthreads. End result is, The Polynomial crashes when switching levels.
Thanks for reporting the crashes, I'm reverting to gcc 4.3.3 for now, the fix will be released soon.

Polynomial Update (00f).

Update. A lot of extra functionality:
  • Music
  • Lua scripting for levels (not used for anything really impressive yet, but stay tuned)
  • Mostly different sounds (tell me if you like them or not)
  • Improved sound sliders (exponential rather than linear)
  • User interface improvements. Automatically toggles to editor mode when you select editor panel. Instant view when you toggle levels.
  • Lot of bugfixes.
  • Maybe some new bugs (report them!)
The music is here mostly for test. It's being worked on.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Neuroscience and the law.

Just came across some rather interesting legal discussion about neuroscience and laws and responsibility and free will and brain disorders:
http://www.bioethics.gov/transcripts/sep04/session1.html

I think the 'problem' discussed - the collision between law and science, neuroscience in particular - is entirely specific to punitive justice and to religion disguising itself as atheism and reason.
Just look at the article. Typical punitive approach: pondering religious and philosophical questions like what punishment Herbert Weinstein deserves for killing his wife in the heat of argument while having a freaking cyst in the brain that he wasn't aware of - and even whenever him without the cyst should be kept responsible for actions of him with cyst. I'll say it right now I've no freaking clue what punishment he "deserves" and see no reason why such questions should even be considered. Idea of "deserving" itself is a root cause of most homicide - whereby murderer suddenly decides that victim "deserves" to die. There's nothing rational or logical about it.

On other hand, if you consider the laws as means to protection of people, all the questions which come up are factual rather than metaphysical, and the law perfectly integrates with modern science and technology. You need to consider what action would be best for everyone. The questions are whenever he's dangerous after treatment of cyst (which he also would be if cyst was irrelevant to the murder), that's neuroscience question. Whenever he has to be locked up anyway for sake of deterrence (probably not because its inconceivable that cyst in brain would be abused as common excuse), that's also a rational question, effectiveness of deterrence could be studied with statistical methods.

Sidenote:
I were actually searching for articles about brain parasites (This article isn't really relevant to parasites). I find brain parasites which alter behaviour of the host - and especially the evolution - very fascinating (in the 'eww' way). I even blogged about 'em before.

Taking claims at face value, killing someone because of cyst in your brain, that sounds as horrible as becoming a zombie (and very plausible if cyst is substantially big and located in critical regions responsible for self control). Surely that's a lot of punishment in itself. Imagine your dog got infected with rabies, acute phase, too late for vaccination. You'll have to kill the dog due to lack of treatment, but you'd still be sorry and you'd rather treat the dog if possible.
Human nervous system differs a lot from dog's, so humans don't go on biting others when infected with rabies, because rabies is not evolved enough with humans. Yet, its not impossible in principle for a virus or other parasite to have that kind of result on humans.