I would have to admit that my choice of server was based entirely on what server my friends were playing on as they had been playing for a month or longer before we bought copies of the game. It's a fairly high pop server (Proudmoore) but it's also a server with a lot of Aussies on it, so there are generally people around who understand when I say it's bedtime - for us it really is and I really have to go.
It does mean that I rarely adventure during in game daytime, it's normally the few hours before dawn in game. So I haven't seen many of the zones by day yet. And when you have a problem, GMs never seem to be around - I get a response by mail when I next log in.
If they moved our whole guild to another server, it might be OK, but part of playing in a multi-player game is being able to play with your friends if you want to - and if they're all on a given server, chances are you'll play on that server too. The more people you talk to who want to play too, the more people there'll be on your server - it's a vicious circle, but it's happening.
I would have agreed with you... until I played WoW. I have VERY few complaints about this game, and the ones I do are all perihperal and aesthetic in nature.
In the last decade I have noticed a significan tincrease in the number of women involved in roleplay conventions, largely due to an increase in games that focus more on characterisation, political machinations and problem solving over dice rolling and simply slaying things.
Which is not to say that us chicks don't enjoy a bit of hack-n-slash from time to time, but overall we don't find it particularly compelling hour on hour.
Oddly enough, games that apparently did well in the female demographics were games like Myst and The Sims. They focus more on relationships and problem solving and not so much on killing stuff. They were also games that appealed to non-gamers generally.
They were also games that support picking them up and playing for a few minutes if that's all you have, but will also let you play for hours if you can. As someone with lots of other responsibilities in my life, it can be incredibly frustrating to playing a game and being unable to find the save point before you have to leave the game to deal with something more important. A good example would be one section in the middle of Sphinx last year where it was about an hour between save points the first time through in one area, with complex jumps, stealth sections, pattern based puzzle sequences and several combats. As another example, in WoW my primary character is Lvl 27, my husband's is Lvl 36, we started on the same day but I do most of the housework because he can't drag himself away from the computer.
Most women who game probably class themselves as casual gamers rather than hardcore, if they want to capture the femlae market it's possibly more important to focus on that aspect rather than how much cleavage the female characters are showing.
There were a number of studies done recently in Australia that showed that men also get side-tracked career wise if it looks like they will put their family first at any stage.
Australia is one of a number of supposedly first world countries that doesn't currently have a fertility rate that is anywhare approaching replacement levels. One of the major issues is that people put off having children and one of the more frequently given reasons are economic.
At some point we need to wake up to real across the board family friendly policies in the workplace for men and women - unless of course we want to outsource our population generation to the 3rd world along with all our jobs.
The 'trick' is the ISP's definition of excessive downloads, read the fine print of most "Unlimited" TOS, and most will say that unlimited downloads are not acceptable. We called our ISP before switching to an unlimited plan, their definition of Unlimited was 100Gb or so.
Compared to the LC, I didn't think the LC II was too bad, my parents still have my old one, it ran pretty sweetly under Sys 7.1 when properly tweaked.
While on the topic of Systems, 7.6 was fine (in fact I think I still have a PM 8100 kicking around on 7.6.1) if you comparted it to the adbomination which was 7.5. Much of Apples poor service reputation actually cam from the combination of 7.5 which was rushed out to 'compete' with Windows '95, and the quality issues of the Performa/PM 52xx/62xx family devices and the PB190/5300 devices.
I'm not sure what this says about me as a Mac user - I used eWorld, typeset a book on a Macintosh Portable, and still have a Dalmation Spotted iMac at home as a file server for our wireless powerbooks.:)
Trackpads work by reacting to the elctrostatic charge from your skin.
High humidity or a build-up of sweat/grease on the trackpad can significantly increase the sensitivity of the unit - I have used one in a service workshop which would follow my hand as I waved it about an inch above the unit.
Usually you can adjust the sensitivity of the trackpad in software on the laptop in question, other things you can do are as follows:
* Clean the trackpad regularly with a damp cloth - either warm water or perhaps Windex (nothing stronger). Make sure you thuroughly dry the trackpad before trying to use it.
* Some users find placing a small self adhesive mailing label over the trackpad reduces the sensitivity without disabling the unit
* Keep a clean cloth nearby for wiping your hands if they become sweaty - not a tissue, as the alcohol in the tissue will trigger increased oil build up on your hand to protect them from drying out.
* Try not to use the unit in excessively humid environments.
i only use the paper clip when the software eject methods (including the keyboard button, you know) don't work
Have you also tried holding down the (one) mouse button at restart - it 'should' eject all removable media before loading the system. One way of getting around a system where you can't get it to forget booting from a CD (for example)
Probably the original logic for disabled parking was the in addition to being close to the entrance of the faciltiy, they are normally somewhat larger allowing for the loading and unloading of wheelchairs.
It is not always the driver who necesitates the use of the disabled status.
My mother-in-law got a ticket earlier this week for parking in a disabled spot at a hospital - while the disabled permit was on clear view on the dash.
She was taking two extremely movement impeded parents to see doctors at the time
The fines aren't that rare depending on where you are.
It also means that one bad drug interaction will stay on your file - hopefuly meaning you don't get given it again. I could also identify people who are perscritpion farming - going from doctor to doctor requesting scripts for restricted drugs. I could potentially make it easier to get confirmation that you really DO need access to a particular perscription if you are travelling
The trick to any system is to allow simple access to people who need it while denying it from those who don't.
i just dont see mum and dad making databases for fun, and hence a database application has no place in iWork
I had to convert an old SuperCard file into a small FM Runtime app for my mother a few years back - it was her Christmas Card tracking file - it listed addresses, who she sent a card to and who she received one from, and what years.
She also uses Reunion to track the family tree, which is a pre-build DB application.
Bizzarely enough we had major downtime for both WoW and LJ this week.
Maybe it's a conspiracy to see if they can force all the computer geeks ut of the house and into the sunshine for a few hours this month?
300,000 deaths misrepresented
on
Newsy Numbers
·
· Score: 1
A common statistic you frequently see thrown around in the popular press is that 300,000 preventable deaths in the US per year are caused by obesity.
You even see this statistic being used in supposedly serious scientific and medical journals. So what's the problem?
The original study from whence this figure come from actually says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating that poor diet and lack of physical activity contribute to up to 300,000 preventable deaths per year
Note is says "contribute" - not "cause".
Note it says "poor diet" not being "obese".
Note how "lack of phyisical activity" frequently gets ignored entirely.
By the way, the revised version of the study now says up to 400,000 deaths, comparable to smoking related deaths at 430,000, so expect to see inflated misrepresentation at a media outlet new you some time soon.
I had planned on linking to some references, but unfortunatley all the sites that debunk these figures are blocked from work, where sites that use the 'caused' version are freely accissible. Go figure. Here's a reference on who frequently the figure is bandied around, and here's one on the recently revised figures.
*nods* I'm an extremely light sleeper, my husband has severe apnea (we are waiting for the next hospital admittance for the next round of tests/treatment/etc...), it takes me at least 30 minutes to get to sleep, he falls 'asleep' in about a minute.
The biggest difference is that he is 'waking' over 60 times per hour on average - that's once every minute, all night.
He does try to exercise, but it's difficult when physical stress causes him to have seizures.
Sleeping less means more time available for eating!
Having watched my husbnd put on significant amount of weight from side effects over the recent years as he was put on one medication after another for a condition that has been misdiagnosed as bi-polar disorder (bring on the lithium) and then epilepsy (yah epillium) before finally being identified as severe apnea (less than 4% of sleep time being deep sleep and only 63% oxygen intake) I would have to say comments like that are dangerous simplifactions of extremely difficult problems.
I wonder if Ms. Flower has read any romance novels or seen any romatic movies and if she's offended by the objectification of the sexes there - especially the "handsome, tall, muscular" man.
I was thinking - this would go neatly next to the GCN as a media centre, put an airport Card into it and hook it up into the home theatre system for playing back video we have downloaded (the have just started playing season 6 West Wing over here - they were making a big deal in the press the other day about Zoe being found *sigh*, yes we get TV by BT). I do most of the admin of my old iMac from my PowerBook anyway, it shouldn't be any more difficult to run the Mini-Mac the same way.
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I would have to admit that my choice of server was based entirely on what server my friends were playing on as they had been playing for a month or longer before we bought copies of the game. It's a fairly high pop server (Proudmoore) but it's also a server with a lot of Aussies on it, so there are generally people around who understand when I say it's bedtime - for us it really is and I really have to go.
It does mean that I rarely adventure during in game daytime, it's normally the few hours before dawn in game. So I haven't seen many of the zones by day yet. And when you have a problem, GMs never seem to be around - I get a response by mail when I next log in.
If they moved our whole guild to another server, it might be OK, but part of playing in a multi-player game is being able to play with your friends if you want to - and if they're all on a given server, chances are you'll play on that server too. The more people you talk to who want to play too, the more people there'll be on your server - it's a vicious circle, but it's happening.
I would have agreed with you... until I played WoW. I have VERY few complaints about this game, and the ones I do are all perihperal and aesthetic in nature.
I don't usually call uptime an aesthetic issue.
In the last decade I have noticed a significan tincrease in the number of women involved in roleplay conventions, largely due to an increase in games that focus more on characterisation, political machinations and problem solving over dice rolling and simply slaying things.
Which is not to say that us chicks don't enjoy a bit of hack-n-slash from time to time, but overall we don't find it particularly compelling hour on hour.
Oddly enough, games that apparently did well in the female demographics were games like Myst and The Sims. They focus more on relationships and problem solving and not so much on killing stuff. They were also games that appealed to non-gamers generally.
They were also games that support picking them up and playing for a few minutes if that's all you have, but will also let you play for hours if you can. As someone with lots of other responsibilities in my life, it can be incredibly frustrating to playing a game and being unable to find the save point before you have to leave the game to deal with something more important. A good example would be one section in the middle of Sphinx last year where it was about an hour between save points the first time through in one area, with complex jumps, stealth sections, pattern based puzzle sequences and several combats. As another example, in WoW my primary character is Lvl 27, my husband's is Lvl 36, we started on the same day but I do most of the housework because he can't drag himself away from the computer.
Most women who game probably class themselves as casual gamers rather than hardcore, if they want to capture the femlae market it's possibly more important to focus on that aspect rather than how much cleavage the female characters are showing.
There were a number of studies done recently in Australia that showed that men also get side-tracked career wise if it looks like they will put their family first at any stage.
Australia is one of a number of supposedly first world countries that doesn't currently have a fertility rate that is anywhare approaching replacement levels. One of the major issues is that people put off having children and one of the more frequently given reasons are economic.
At some point we need to wake up to real across the board family friendly policies in the workplace for men and women - unless of course we want to outsource our population generation to the 3rd world along with all our jobs.
The 'trick' is the ISP's definition of excessive downloads, read the fine print of most "Unlimited" TOS, and most will say that unlimited downloads are not acceptable. We called our ISP before switching to an unlimited plan, their definition of Unlimited was 100Gb or so.
We were getting latency of 4000 to 8000 over the weekend to WoW, apparently in part due to the SingTel router outage
Compared to the LC, I didn't think the LC II was too bad, my parents still have my old one, it ran pretty sweetly under Sys 7.1 when properly tweaked.
While on the topic of Systems, 7.6 was fine (in fact I think I still have a PM 8100 kicking around on 7.6.1) if you comparted it to the adbomination which was 7.5. Much of Apples poor service reputation actually cam from the combination of 7.5 which was rushed out to 'compete' with Windows '95, and the quality issues of the Performa/PM 52xx/62xx family devices and the PB190/5300 devices.
I'm not sure what this says about me as a Mac user - I used eWorld, typeset a book on a Macintosh Portable, and still have a Dalmation Spotted iMac at home as a file server for our wireless powerbooks. :)
My husband still has his Tangerine iBook/300, even though he has a AL PB17" to replace it, the Tangerine iBook is still his sentimental favourite
Trackpads work by reacting to the elctrostatic charge from your skin.
High humidity or a build-up of sweat/grease on the trackpad can significantly increase the sensitivity of the unit - I have used one in a service workshop which would follow my hand as I waved it about an inch above the unit.
Usually you can adjust the sensitivity of the trackpad in software on the laptop in question, other things you can do are as follows:
* Clean the trackpad regularly with a damp cloth - either warm water or perhaps Windex (nothing stronger). Make sure you thuroughly dry the trackpad before trying to use it.
* Some users find placing a small self adhesive mailing label over the trackpad reduces the sensitivity without disabling the unit
* Keep a clean cloth nearby for wiping your hands if they become sweaty - not a tissue, as the alcohol in the tissue will trigger increased oil build up on your hand to protect them from drying out.
* Try not to use the unit in excessively humid environments.
Hope this helps.
i only use the paper clip when the software eject methods (including the keyboard button, you know) don't work
Have you also tried holding down the (one) mouse button at restart - it 'should' eject all removable media before loading the system. One way of getting around a system where you can't get it to forget booting from a CD (for example)
Probably the original logic for disabled parking was the in addition to being close to the entrance of the faciltiy, they are normally somewhat larger allowing for the loading and unloading of wheelchairs.
It is not always the driver who necesitates the use of the disabled status.
My mother-in-law got a ticket earlier this week for parking in a disabled spot at a hospital - while the disabled permit was on clear view on the dash.
She was taking two extremely movement impeded parents to see doctors at the time
The fines aren't that rare depending on where you are.
As a left-hander, using a mouse with my right hand means I can use a pen in my left at te same time. :)
It also means that one bad drug interaction will stay on your file - hopefuly meaning you don't get given it again. I could also identify people who are perscritpion farming - going from doctor to doctor requesting scripts for restricted drugs. I could potentially make it easier to get confirmation that you really DO need access to a particular perscription if you are travelling
The trick to any system is to allow simple access to people who need it while denying it from those who don't.
I suppose the best way to check is to look at it and see if the word "yellow" starts to form in your mind looking for something to attach itself to...
The secret is to bang those rocks together guys...
i just dont see mum and dad making databases for fun, and hence a database application has no place in iWork
I had to convert an old SuperCard file into a small FM Runtime app for my mother a few years back - it was her Christmas Card tracking file - it listed addresses, who she sent a card to and who she received one from, and what years.
She also uses Reunion to track the family tree, which is a pre-build DB application.
Bizzarely enough we had major downtime for both WoW and LJ this week.
Maybe it's a conspiracy to see if they can force all the computer geeks ut of the house and into the sunshine for a few hours this month?
A common statistic you frequently see thrown around in the popular press is that 300,000 preventable deaths in the US per year are caused by obesity.
You even see this statistic being used in supposedly serious scientific and medical journals. So what's the problem?
The original study from whence this figure come from actually says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating that poor diet and lack of physical activity contribute to up to 300,000 preventable deaths per year
Note is says "contribute" - not "cause".
Note it says "poor diet" not being "obese".
Note how "lack of phyisical activity" frequently gets ignored entirely.
By the way, the revised version of the study now says up to 400,000 deaths, comparable to smoking related deaths at 430,000, so expect to see inflated misrepresentation at a media outlet new you some time soon.
I had planned on linking to some references, but unfortunatley all the sites that debunk these figures are blocked from work, where sites that use the 'caused' version are freely accissible. Go figure. Here's a reference on who frequently the figure is bandied around, and here's one on the recently revised figures.
They're tring to work out if he also has narcolepsy or whether the symptoms are 'merely' severe apnea. :/
*nods* I'm an extremely light sleeper, my husband has severe apnea (we are waiting for the next hospital admittance for the next round of tests/treatment/etc...), it takes me at least 30 minutes to get to sleep, he falls 'asleep' in about a minute.
The biggest difference is that he is 'waking' over 60 times per hour on average - that's once every minute, all night.
He does try to exercise, but it's difficult when physical stress causes him to have seizures.
Sleeping less means more time available for eating!
Having watched my husbnd put on significant amount of weight from side effects over the recent years as he was put on one medication after another for a condition that has been misdiagnosed as bi-polar disorder (bring on the lithium) and then epilepsy (yah epillium) before finally being identified as severe apnea (less than 4% of sleep time being deep sleep and only 63% oxygen intake) I would have to say comments like that are dangerous simplifactions of extremely difficult problems.
I wonder if Ms. Flower has read any romance novels or seen any romatic movies and if she's offended by the objectification of the sexes there - especially the "handsome, tall, muscular" man.
Stereotype much?
*nod*
I was thinking - this would go neatly next to the GCN as a media centre, put an airport Card into it and hook it up into the home theatre system for playing back video we have downloaded (the have just started playing season 6 West Wing over here - they were making a big deal in the press the other day about Zoe being found *sigh*, yes we get TV by BT). I do most of the admin of my old iMac from my PowerBook anyway, it shouldn't be any more difficult to run the Mini-Mac the same way.