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steve_v

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Everything posted by steve_v

  1. steve_v
    It does. It reverts it to some horrible pink thing. Why do we need some random space-wasting bandwidth-wasting image on the profiles anyway? What purpose does it serve? Indeed. This is suboptimal at best though, as it doesn't stop a pointless image from loading, or reclaim the wasted space at the top of the page. I don't want a "cover photo". I don't want a "profile photo" either for that matter. Other forums work just fine without such frivolous waste. This new forum fails the Taft test, miserably.
  2. steve_v
    Hmm, sounds good to me. Here you go, job done. Just never ask me to debug it, debugging is hard.
  3. steve_v
    Agreed. Likewise. But adding rep for negative reactions breaks this completely, I'd prefer no rep system at all to a -rep function that does the opposite.
  4. steve_v
    Yay, let's add more silly interactions and make forum reputation even more pointless. If one were to add a "-rep" to the existing "+rep" function, at least the reputation counter might serve some purpose. But counting "dislike" reactions the same as "like"? What would be the point? I thought rep might serve as a guide to how reputable a member is (i.e the concept it is named for), and therefore how likely to be useful a post is, but we seem to have been diverging from this into "random meaningless forum cookie" territory for some time... How about we just do away with it altogether, and stop showing a pointless and misleading "reaction counter" on every profile?
  5. steve_v
    Yes. There's no button in the top left. If you mean the button in the top right labelled "Cover Photo", there's an "upload photo" button, but there's no "remove wasted space, I don't want a photo or a default eyesore" button... Ed. This? Or is there some other "remove" button I can't find?
  6. steve_v
    Honestly, this is about what I'm getting from all this as well. "Bugs? What bugs... Look, more stuff for the DLC!" *Half-baked releases to hit an arbitrary PR-dictated DLC launch date are bad. *Half-baked patches focusing on DLC content and introducing regressions in the base game are bad. *Delayed half-baked patches focusing on DLC content while withholding fixes for regressions in the base game are worse. @SQUAD Please stop doing these things and make sure the game we paid for continues to work properly. Introducing additional content is a secondary goal.
  7. steve_v
    Are my eyes going funny or did the forum just get even uglier? * Activity page has acquired a "The search index is currently processing" space-waster at the top, does this mean anything at all? Is it going to go away? * What's with this "Newsletter" thing that pushes all the actual content to the left? What's wrong with RSS? Can I turn this off? * Why has the "[foo] liked a post in [bar]" notification become "[foo] reacted to a post in [bar]", despite "like" remaining the only possible "reaction"? * My profile (and the username mouseover preview) is now adorned with some hideous abstract art space wastage at the top of the page, what is the purpose of this? Can I turn it off? Can I nuke it from orbit?
  8. steve_v
    Indeed. And many were shocked at the single beta release that preceded it. Many cried out "It's not ready for 1.0" . Squad has learned nothing, and continues with testing on live data. Our save data, to be precise. Instead of "Here's a beta, it might fix stuff, but treat with caution. Okay, that didn't work, try this build" we get "Look, awesome new release! All ready to use (so buy our DLC)... Oops, we broke the toys again." And again... And again. Dunno 'bout you, but I'd have preferred the former - even if it did delay the grand 1.4.0 reveal. On release day, there'd be more people commenting on how fun the DLC is, and fewer focusing on the gamebreaking bugs that were also in the box. Same goes for 1.0. Forgetting the parachutes is forgiveable in a beta release... It's pitchfork territory for a grand opening. Just because Squad has done this in the past doesn't make it a good release model, and the "we can always patch the bugs later" defence only works if you patch them quickly - before too many get fed up with it and leave.
  9. steve_v
    At which point one can say "It's a prerelease, and you agreed to the disclaimer". Much like what you see in mod threads when someone asks for prerelease compatibility - namely, "No". There's no accounting for stupidity, and you get this kind of thing whatever you do. At least with a beta period, somebody is going to spot the really brain-dead obvious oversights that otherwise "somehow" get through into hype-train .0 "OMG DLC" releases. In a perfect world, Squad would have the resources to spot these internally... but apparently this is not the case. The only complaints that I saw wrt the last prerelease were: a) It was only available to steam users. and b) Several well-documented bugs that were flagged in the prerelease were still not fixed when Squad suddenly decided to close it and go for a full release.
  10. steve_v
    Indeed, and the accusations of spying need to stop until such activity is actually found. "everyone else is doing it too" does not make it right. So am I. But that doesn't make it OK for companies to claim ownership of everything, past present and future, that they might ever learn about you, or try to stack the legal deck so ridiculously in favour of their position. "We may take back the thing we sold you, at any time, without warning" is not acceptable. Neither is "We may sell any information you give us, knowingly or otherwise, to anyone we like". The practice of writing such things into a document so dense and forbidding that nobody actually reads it until they're already screwed - this needs to stop. Up until recently, KSPs EULA was fairly reasonable (and readable). Then that changed, a whole bunch of new rights were claimed, and people are angry. I get that. TTI may not be able to enforce half the ridiculous clauses in there, they may never try. But that doesn't make them go away, and it doesn't make such "we own your soul" clauses any less obnoxious.
  11. steve_v
    For reference: https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/17984, and https://forum.unity.com/threads/no-joystick-detected.475870/, and https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/171983-ksp-14-joystick-not-found-under-linux/
  12. steve_v
    Apparently, dual booting with secure boot enabled is possible. In an odious "your linux distro needs to have their kernel image (or a shim) signed with a Microshaft key" kind of way. This obnoxious behaviour is (and was) enough to make me simply format my windows drive and use it for something more useful... like cat pictures. If you are okay with Microsoft unilaterally dictating what you can and cannot boot on your PC, by all means use secure restricted boot and Windows 10. I wouldn't touch the thing with a 40' pole.
  13. steve_v
    Try dropping a spanner across the battery posts... Actually, don't try that. Huh, wish it were so over here. The extra line charges murder the efficiency savings at household loads, so only commercial / industrial premises tend to have 3-phase.
  14. steve_v
    Sorry I missed this, and thanks for the workaround. Multiplying the crash tolerance my 10 isn't really a "fix" though, it simply sacrifices a gameplay element (landing legs can be broken on hard landings) to conceal a bug. Balderdash. Defending a buggy release because it's only buggy on one of the 3 supported operating systems is defending a total lack of QA on that supported system. If a bug were occurring only on Arch Linux, with a particular graphics card and driver version, I'd be more than willing to forgive not catching it before release. If it affected the majority of Linux systems, hell no. In the case of the "joysticks don't work on Linux" issue (which is specifically not mentioned for 1.4.3), it's a problem with the game engine that has been known about for nearly a year, and yet Squad went ahead with a release without even attempting to address it. I don't know how anyone can describe this as anything but flat-out "not giving a crap about GNU/Linux users". I, for one, am properly tired of this. @SQUAD: There's going to be a 1.4.4 to address the lack of proper joystick support on GNU/Linux, right? I'd like to buy your DLC, but I won't if I can't use my joystick with it.
  15. steve_v
    Velociraptors!
  16. steve_v
    Apple lost the plot right after this one. Then they lost the PowerPC CPU that was the only thing keeping them from being just overpriced Wintels in a shiny case. As of 2018, there's no reason at all to buy a mac - if you are one of those odd people who like MacOS 10, just build a hackintosh for half the price instead.
  17. steve_v
    Likewise. Over here, we inherited the MEN system from the poms. Frankly, I find the US electrical system to be a bit... dodgy. But that's just me. I have heard this before, but not from a sufficiently credible source as to put any faith in it. 50Hz mains, 60Hz mains, both will kill you stone dead if you fail to respect them. The zero-crossing is kinda important (and the reason straight DC electric fences are illegal in most countries), as it gives you a window to regain control of your muscles and let go of the live thing. Personally, I find DC to be considerably scarier than AC of the same voltage and current capacity - not only does the zero-crossing make it somewhat less directly lethal, it also aids in extinguishing the arc in the case of a flashover. Less severe burns are generally a good thing. True, but unless you work in the industry (or fall prey to a real cowboy in such) you're pretty unlikely to find yourself as a conductor between two phases. The vast majority of shocks are to ground.
  18. steve_v
    Ooh, me me me! I've seen these things more often than I like, in both software and hardware systems. Races that the additional cpu cycles consumed by logging processes break, noise voltages that vanish into the input impedance of your instruments, equipment that works flawlessly as soon as you remove the covers to get at test points... These things are not rare, and not the exclusive domain of PC-coders. As much as I would love to continue this argument, digressing into SCADA systems running on commodity hardware, operators installing spotify on CNC control machines, IT minions swapping out hardware under automation networks without warning... I think it's time to get back to the topic at hand, and to point out the large grey pachyderm in the room: The bug that is attracting all the heat here is not some hard to reproduce end-user-configuration-dependent transient anomaly. It's quite the opposite - as far as I can glean from the forums, the majority of users here are experiencing it. The same may be said for my other favourite 1.4.x bug as well.
  19. steve_v
    No need, I wasn't offended. I on the other hand, probably offend people all the time. Sometimes I even do it unintentionally. There's a lot to be said for a good argument, and this one's a cracker.
  20. steve_v
    And all the other heroic pilots through the ages as well, regardless of their gender? It'd only be fair... Agreed. Furthermore, I fail to see the point of naming any kerbals after famous historical humans at all. Indeed. There are well-rehearsed checklists for both single-engine landings and cabin decompression. Landing on a river, with no power at all, from ~3000ft... not so much.
  21. steve_v
    That video is pretty good. Why 3 phase? Efficiency, and things that spin. The things in the kitchen that run on 3 phase power will almost certainly be doing so because they have motors in them, and you can't make a nice quiet efficient induction motor without at least 2 phases (or inefficient tricks with capacitors to split phases). Three-phase systems aren't inherently more dangerous, they just tend to be found where more power (and therefore higher fault currents) are available. You don't take chances with any electrical system, and the more energy available, the bigger the boom when the smoke escapes. Even the lowly 12v car battery can vaporise steel.
  22. steve_v
    Nobody I am aware of asked for them to be rolled into (and hold up) a critical bugfix patch.
  23. steve_v
    Haven't got my flight stick set up, because Unitys joystick support on GNU/Linux is still completely FUBAR. Apparently I am going to have to wait for some future (or never, as it's sounding like) patch after this one before basic usb-hid input functionality is restored. What will make me happy is the ability to play the game (preferably with the DLC), with landing legs that don't explode and a joystick that works. Like in 1.3.1.
  24. steve_v
    As do I, if I assume that that is what they are doing... As opposed to tweaking the new and unasked for content while the base game remains borderline unplayable.
  25. steve_v
    If KSP was a DOS program circa 1988, you wouldn't have all those handy OS facilities and abstraction toolkits to do half the work for you. Win some, loose some. Again, "It's complicated" isn't an excuse for releasing code with major regressions. It might, to some extent, explain how they happened in the first place, but that's beside the point. Ed. FWIW, neither is your average CNC system. The last one I worked on had 4 cpus and 3 monstrous FPGAs scattered around in various locations, each running their own code, in different languages, and communicating with at least 3 different protocols, not counting the various microcontrollers. And that one was built in 1988. They're even worse now, as they tend to run on Windows PCs with a stack of large and obscure proprietary co-processing PCI cards. Despite all this complexity, (and running the frontend control software on Windows, of all things) somehow the manufacturers manage to find time to test them sufficiently that they neither produce defective parts, nor kill their operators while swinging 10+ ton components around at 1500RPM.
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