I once had a guy bring in a PowerBook 180c for repairs, the power systems were fried, it was 2 weeks old. He wanted it replacedunder warranty. Then he showed me the power cable. He'd considered the transformer on the end of the cable too bulky, so he'd cut it off and fitted a standard 3-pin plug to the end. 240v straight into the PB, no filtering.
I had an extremely difficult time explaining that there was no way Apple would cover this under warranty, regardless of the fact that it was 2 weeks old.
Have a GameCube. Have a dozen or more games for it, the last one I bought was Animal Crossing, and I've been waiting for the new Zelda. The biggest problem is I got a copy of WoW for Christmas...
Sitting in front of a Trinatron screen myself right now. I remember having numerous debates with customers in the early '90s trying to explain that the horizontal line(s) was not a flaw in the screen but was intended to be there. It was generally easier to point it out to them BEFORE they bought the screen that argue it with them later.
Some of the early Apple Powerbooks (PB100 for example) had service replaceable backlights. They were about 5 mm in diameter (from memory) and extremely fragile. I don't even want to think about end users replacing these on a regular basis.
I routinely conduct asset audits on printers as part of my job, even with access to the physical device, the corporate purchase records and the vendor sales records we have dificulty uniquely identifying when most devices were sold and to whom.
As stated elsewhere on this thread, this techology will be used like DNA is currently used - to confirm/deny the validity of a suspect, not to generate a suspect list in the first place.
If you don't work for the same company I do, it would be one of only a small handful of others. I am well aware that all our colour capable devices have anti-counterfeiting technologing on board (the yellow dots).
If the EFF have a problem with a technology which was designed to prevent counterfeiting, do they also have a problem with serial numbers on genuine currency?
It may have changed, I used to work in a computer service workshop that also serviced Epson printers, the Epson certified tech used to either replce the printheads or soak them in Isopropyl Alcohol
and flush them through.
Typically the parts and labour to repair a printer was more than the cost of replacing the printer - unless it was something like a SC300 with Postscript kit installed.
Check out a Xerox DocuProof 1250 - they're about A$50k a pop depending on the RIP. The next generation devices are about to hit the streets, better image quality and 4 times the colour output speed.
With digital colour, it's all about the RIP, you get noticable differences in output from the same device if the print job is sent via a different RIP.
The DC1250 in our showroom has 3 different RIPs available for demo purposes. The DocuProof varient (which uses a specific RIP, which must be correctly configured) is one of a few devices currently certified in Australia for offest proofing.
Laser has a smaller gamut than inkjet - but is perfectly acceptable if the photo is for business presentation type applications rather than a photolab replacement. Dye Sublimation craps on both of them for photographic printing, and is used by some insta-print applications.
There is a whole spectrum between 'strict system games' and 'system-less' games (where all decisions about the game world are determined soley by the GM with no reference to any other source of structure.
The closer you get to systemless the more arbeitrary the game becomes. Some players perceive this as good, they trust the GM to not bias outcomes against them without good reason, but this can also lead to a sense of betrayal among the players if things go against them and they do not accept/understand the GMs reasoning (greater good, narrative reasons)
Some players prefer strict rules based systems, where the world may be inherently inconsistent in some ways, the issues are transparent and in the hands of the fates, GM biases do not direct the final outcome.
The reality of tabletop gaming is that most games sit somewhere between the two extremes, GMs choose when to force a roll - or not. They may decide to conceal rolls and change the result. They may do some sections of the game as a cinematic, and others as miniatures and probability math.
The trick is to find a gaming group where you are all happy with the degree of strict vs. arbeitrary
How does the fact that they've adopted terms from folklore affect this? An obvious example would be the use of the word "Nosferatu", which most certainly pre-dates WhiteWolf in the entertainment industry.
Has anyone else here read any books by Jasper Fforde, I'm reading one at the moment, and was just getting my head around the idea or genetically resequenced and resurrected Neaderthals...
On Computers I play WoW, some puzzle games (like Bejeweled), previously played Myst/Riven, Journeyman Project, 7th Guest, etc...
On Console, we have several generations of Nintendo hardware, Zelda, Mario adventures, Animal Crossing, Gex, Quest, Bomberman, Mario Party, Eternal Darkness.
Tabltop, currently play and run D&D, have run CyberPunk 2020, White Wolf, GURPs, Tales of the Floating Vagabond, Paranoia, and many many more [tm].
Board Games and Card Games - Fluxx, Mystery at the Abbey, Chess, Mahjong, Bolivia, Guillotine, Cascassone, Cathedral, Settlers (multiple varients), Munchkin, Chez Geek, and many many more [tm]
(some) Women play plenty of different types of games, personally I don't 'get' FPS, but I have female friends who do.
Possibly what you state is true, but certainly there have been plenty of studies that confirm that even in a relationship where the woman works full time and the man doesn't, the woman in the relationship (in Australia at least) does the majority of the 'unpaid' work around the house - add children and the disparity increases.
Your assumption about married women presumably applies to stay-at-home-moms, I make this assumption because I personally know no women who get more time to play around than their partners in any other circumstance.
What you 'don't get' is that regardless of whether your designing for women or 'mature men with responsibilities', these are things which impact on their abilties to play games - but which is statistically (in Australia anyways) a bigger impact on women - a market they say they have difficulty understanding.
If you say that men experience the same problems with the games, then addressing these issue would potentially increase their marketshare/space beyond getting a few more girl gamers and get some more of the casual gaemrs who don't want to spend that kind of money.
It may not be gender specific to females, but they are the prime issues I experience as a female gamer detract from my ability to play a game to it's fullest extent that my husband doesn't experience in the same way.
My personal hit list for what makes a game enjoyable:
Co-op mode - chances are, I won't get as much screen time to perfect my 12-step awesome combo moves, so playing competative just leads to me getting my ass kicked every time we play. That gets boring fast. Besides which, I'm probably in a relationship WITH you, and am playing the game to do something WITH you not AGAINST you.
Support for casual players - I have lots of responsibilities outside of a game, sometimes I need to drop everything at a moments notice. Making me work for an hour before I can find a save point means I will have to keep replaying bits I've already done because I didn't make it to the save point before having to stop last time. This gets boring pretty soon.
Alternate forms of advancement is good, e.g. crafting options. Sometimes I want to play a support class and be valued.
If I do decide the play a tank of somekind, how about an avatar that doesn't look like a covergirl from Dragon magazine from the middle of the chainmail bikini era. I may not know much about real combat, but even I know a thong isn't going to protect me - unless there is some kind of 'distract' bonus to dodge AC.
I like to see my character progress in some way that I perceive as meaningful. It probably doesn't mean a bigger gun. I liked the progresion in Civ II (size of territory, fitting out of the throne room), I like getting new skills in WoW or Diablo II. Not dying in Doom didn't really do it for me.
Let me play my own way. I like to explore worlds in WindWaker or WoW. I sneak around stealthed just to see what's around the next corner, I may not engage everything I see in combat. Give me alternate ways of resolving a situation which may not require slaying everything in my path. Have the game remember how I solved my problems and respond to that - the bad guy is still alive, he's dead and his allies hate me, whatever.
I'm rambling a bit now, but hopefully there are a few valid points there.
Unsure about other companies, but I know that Xerox is going down the route of using SNMP to actively monitor the state of it's networked devices and notify central support centres based on the procedures specified in the individual client contracts.
Don't assume you know everything about a given technology, they can evolve while you're not looking.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Apple doesn't cover user stupidity in Apple care.
I once had a guy bring in a PowerBook 180c for repairs, the power systems were fried, it was 2 weeks old. He wanted it replacedunder warranty. Then he showed me the power cable. He'd considered the transformer on the end of the cable too bulky, so he'd cut it off and fitted a standard 3-pin plug to the end. 240v straight into the PB, no filtering.
I had an extremely difficult time explaining that there was no way Apple would cover this under warranty, regardless of the fact that it was 2 weeks old.
I don't need to imagine it, it's here already...
Have a GameCube. Have a dozen or more games for it, the last one I bought was Animal Crossing, and I've been waiting for the new Zelda. The biggest problem is I got a copy of WoW for Christmas...
Sitting in front of a Trinatron screen myself right now. I remember having numerous debates with customers in the early '90s trying to explain that the horizontal line(s) was not a flaw in the screen but was intended to be there. It was generally easier to point it out to them BEFORE they bought the screen that argue it with them later.
Some of the early Apple Powerbooks (PB100 for example) had service replaceable backlights. They were about 5 mm in diameter (from memory) and extremely fragile. I don't even want to think about end users replacing these on a regular basis.
I routinely conduct asset audits on printers as part of my job, even with access to the physical device, the corporate purchase records and the vendor sales records we have dificulty uniquely identifying when most devices were sold and to whom.
As stated elsewhere on this thread, this techology will be used like DNA is currently used - to confirm/deny the validity of a suspect, not to generate a suspect list in the first place.
If you don't work for the same company I do, it would be one of only a small handful of others. I am well aware that all our colour capable devices have anti-counterfeiting technologing on board (the yellow dots).
If the EFF have a problem with a technology which was designed to prevent counterfeiting, do they also have a problem with serial numbers on genuine currency?
Brunt Cookies?
It may have changed, I used to work in a computer service workshop that also serviced Epson printers, the Epson certified tech used to either replce the printheads or soak them in Isopropyl Alcohol
and flush them through.Typically the parts and labour to repair a printer was more than the cost of replacing the printer - unless it was something like a SC300 with Postscript kit installed.
Check out a Xerox DocuProof 1250 - they're about A$50k a pop depending on the RIP. The next generation devices are about to hit the streets, better image quality and 4 times the colour output speed.
With digital colour, it's all about the RIP, you get noticable differences in output from the same device if the print job is sent via a different RIP.
The DC1250 in our showroom has 3 different RIPs available for demo purposes. The DocuProof varient (which uses a specific RIP, which must be correctly configured) is one of a few devices currently certified in Australia for offest proofing.
Laser has a smaller gamut than inkjet - but is perfectly acceptable if the photo is for business presentation type applications rather than a photolab replacement. Dye Sublimation craps on both of them for photographic printing, and is used by some insta-print applications.
There is a whole spectrum between 'strict system games' and 'system-less' games (where all decisions about the game world are determined soley by the GM with no reference to any other source of structure.
The closer you get to systemless the more arbeitrary the game becomes. Some players perceive this as good, they trust the GM to not bias outcomes against them without good reason, but this can also lead to a sense of betrayal among the players if things go against them and they do not accept/understand the GMs reasoning (greater good, narrative reasons)
Some players prefer strict rules based systems, where the world may be inherently inconsistent in some ways, the issues are transparent and in the hands of the fates, GM biases do not direct the final outcome.
The reality of tabletop gaming is that most games sit somewhere between the two extremes, GMs choose when to force a roll - or not. They may decide to conceal rolls and change the result. They may do some sections of the game as a cinematic, and others as miniatures and probability math.
The trick is to find a gaming group where you are all happy with the degree of strict vs. arbeitrary
How does the fact that they've adopted terms from folklore affect this? An obvious example would be the use of the word "Nosferatu", which most certainly pre-dates WhiteWolf in the entertainment industry.
I thought real men played RIFTS (and REEL men played Noir)
Has anyone else here read any books by Jasper Fforde, I'm reading one at the moment, and was just getting my head around the idea or genetically resequenced and resurrected Neaderthals...
On Computers I play WoW, some puzzle games (like Bejeweled), previously played Myst/Riven, Journeyman Project, 7th Guest, etc...
On Console, we have several generations of Nintendo hardware, Zelda, Mario adventures, Animal Crossing, Gex, Quest, Bomberman, Mario Party, Eternal Darkness.
Tabltop, currently play and run D&D, have run CyberPunk 2020, White Wolf, GURPs, Tales of the Floating Vagabond, Paranoia, and many many more [tm].
Board Games and Card Games - Fluxx, Mystery at the Abbey, Chess, Mahjong, Bolivia, Guillotine, Cascassone, Cathedral, Settlers (multiple varients), Munchkin, Chez Geek, and many many more [tm]
(some) Women play plenty of different types of games, personally I don't 'get' FPS, but I have female friends who do.
Possibly what you state is true, but certainly there have been plenty of studies that confirm that even in a relationship where the woman works full time and the man doesn't, the woman in the relationship (in Australia at least) does the majority of the 'unpaid' work around the house - add children and the disparity increases.
Your assumption about married women presumably applies to stay-at-home-moms, I make this assumption because I personally know no women who get more time to play around than their partners in any other circumstance.
What you 'don't get' is that regardless of whether your designing for women or 'mature men with responsibilities', these are things which impact on their abilties to play games - but which is statistically (in Australia anyways) a bigger impact on women - a market they say they have difficulty understanding.
If you say that men experience the same problems with the games, then addressing these issue would potentially increase their marketshare/space beyond getting a few more girl gamers and get some more of the casual gaemrs who don't want to spend that kind of money.
It may not be gender specific to females, but they are the prime issues I experience as a female gamer detract from my ability to play a game to it's fullest extent that my husband doesn't experience in the same way.
My personal hit list for what makes a game enjoyable:
Co-op mode - chances are, I won't get as much screen time to perfect my 12-step awesome combo moves, so playing competative just leads to me getting my ass kicked every time we play. That gets boring fast. Besides which, I'm probably in a relationship WITH you, and am playing the game to do something WITH you not AGAINST you.
Support for casual players - I have lots of responsibilities outside of a game, sometimes I need to drop everything at a moments notice. Making me work for an hour before I can find a save point means I will have to keep replaying bits I've already done because I didn't make it to the save point before having to stop last time. This gets boring pretty soon.
Alternate forms of advancement is good, e.g. crafting options. Sometimes I want to play a support class and be valued.
If I do decide the play a tank of somekind, how about an avatar that doesn't look like a covergirl from Dragon magazine from the middle of the chainmail bikini era. I may not know much about real combat, but even I know a thong isn't going to protect me - unless there is some kind of 'distract' bonus to dodge AC.
I like to see my character progress in some way that I perceive as meaningful. It probably doesn't mean a bigger gun. I liked the progresion in Civ II (size of territory, fitting out of the throne room), I like getting new skills in WoW or Diablo II. Not dying in Doom didn't really do it for me.
Let me play my own way. I like to explore worlds in WindWaker or WoW. I sneak around stealthed just to see what's around the next corner, I may not engage everything I see in combat. Give me alternate ways of resolving a situation which may not require slaying everything in my path. Have the game remember how I solved my problems and respond to that - the bad guy is still alive, he's dead and his allies hate me, whatever.
I'm rambling a bit now, but hopefully there are a few valid points there.
Or possibly "wary", as in careful... :)
Universal Access was a function of Mac OS 7.5, way back around the release of Windows '95. It was fairly buggy, but it was there...
The problem was that you weren't meant to 'hold it in your hand', you were meant to flick it around with your fingertips like a hockey puck.
Most people I know don't have shirt pockets that will accomodate a 5.25" drive...
Unsure about other companies, but I know that Xerox is going down the route of using SNMP to actively monitor the state of it's networked devices and notify central support centres based on the procedures specified in the individual client contracts.
Don't assume you know everything about a given technology, they can evolve while you're not looking. :)
Disclaimer - Fuji-Xerox Australia employee
But then we'd have to duel to the death over who gets Cay and who gets Fangtooth?
Beware - don't slashdot the Murloc