Nintendo's Genre Innovation Strategy: Thoughts on the Revolution's new controller

Nintendo’s Genre Innovation Strategy: Thoughts on the Revolution’s new controller

Good observations here. Nintendo seems very willing to take risks, and I agree that’s important to keep gaming fresh.

The Plague

So apparently in World of Warcraft there’s a plague spell that Hakkar, the boss of the new dungeon Zul’Gurub, casts on players. It does a reasonable amount of damage every 2 seconds, and spreads to nearby allies. Though it was obviously intended to just be a part to make the fight against Hakkar more challenging, a player managed to get our of the dungeon and inside a city while infected, and now the entire city is has the plague! NPCs are getting it and dying, but not before passing it to other NPCs. Low-level players who can’t survive it can’t even entire the town. Of course, Blizzard didn’t see it coming, so now they’re I’m guessing laughing really hard instead of trying to figure out a way to fix it.

[This, sadly, is not my screenshot. If it hits my server I will try to snap one.]

Update: they tried to fix it over the weekend but couldn’t:

It appears that the hotfix remedy concocted to combat the recent Azerothian outbreak has not yielded desired results. At this time, our medical staff is continuing to develop an effective cure. We look forward to ensuring the health and vitality of the citizens of Azeroth in the near future.

Revolution Controller Finally Revealed

Revolution Controller Finally Revealed

Interesting.

"Seperate but Equal" Education for Katrina Evacuees

I can see this creating horrible ghettos full of evacuees who aren’t getting good education and can’t make money to move away:

The Wall Street Journal reports that Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings will ask Congress to waive a federal law that bans educational segregation for homeless children. The Bush administration is arguing, along with states like Utah and Texas, that providing schooling for evacuees — who, in this case, are likened to homeless children — will be disruptive to public school systems, so they want to have sound legal backing for creating separate educational facilities for the 372,000 schoolchildren displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The State of Mississippi is opposed to waiving the Act because they argue the law helps evacuees enroll in schools without red tape. (Think Progress)

I’m sure if I had a better grasp on history I could point to very similar circumstances where this has gone awry in other countries. We’re lucky not to have major disasters as often, but I think we can do better.

The Greatest Games of All Time: Final Fantasy II

The Greatest Games of All Time: Final Fantasy II

They’re right about the storytelling. This was one of the first games to do it right.

TiVo 7.2 OS Adds Content Protection, Blocks Transfers, and Auto-Deletes Some Show

TiVo 7.2 OS adds content protection, blocks transfers, and auto-deletes some shows | PVRblog

Is calling this “heartbreaking” over the top? It really upsets me that they’re caving like this.

UVA Computer Science: The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia

UVA Computer Science: The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia

Kottke linked to this today. Guess I heard about it years ago in Charlottesville because I was connected by a small number of degrees to the programmer.

How My Life Became a Game

How my life became a game

Kevin Bacon on the six degrees of Kevin Bacon game.

On Redesigning Icons, Superman and Politics...

On redesigning icons, Superman and politics… (plasticbag.org)

See also all the links in this article.

The Ten Stupidest Utopias

The Ten Stupidest Utopias

It’s like they wrote an article just for me to enjoy.