Good point. I actually had a counter argument in the back of my mind RE: Left 4 Dead, which uses a director system to ramp up the difficulty of the game, by playing with the size of and timing of the zombie hordes, and supply of health and ammo. A person that sucks at FPSs and a veteran can play the same game with wildly different difficulties, with the same end result: having to fight through a massive amount of zombies and just barely surviving to the safehouse.

I can imagine the same could be said for Dwarf Fortress. From what I know, the core experience of the game is going to be similar, with similar situations and encounters, even if the difficulty varies.

So you might be right. I still think the less strategic and more "arcadey" a game is, the less this will hold true. But it's just a feeling, and probably fueled not a little bit by some grognard standards I have for gaming difficulty now versus the "good old days". :)

Totally agree. As we talked about on my podcast, I want to know people were in the deep shit with me. When I talk about NES-era Ninja Gaiden with a fellow aging geek, and I see the look of pain flash on his face? I know. I know he knows. And I know he knows that I know. You know? That experience has currency.

If it had some kind of sliding difficulty scale, and he says "what do you mean? I thought the game was easy." What does that mean? Is he a god of gaming? Does he suck and the game took mercy on him? There is a shadow* of the same feeling war veterans get talking with fellow soldiers who spent time in the same conflict together. Well designed but brutally difficult games can spark that kind of "Band of Brothers" conversation in groups of gamers.

* A small shadow. A shade. Like, on an overcast day.

The single "best" story of zombifying parasites have to be the Sacculina barnacles. Read this to lose some sleep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacculina

The basics: Barnacle attaches itself to crab. Weaves tendrils throughout crabs central nervous system to take control of the crab and also leach neutrients from it. The crab stops growing and molting at that part. It will not engage in normal behavior like regrowing lost limbs. Anything behavior that does not serve the parasite is suppressed If the crab is a female, the barnacles sprouts an internal egg sac at the exact place a crabs would be and causes the crab to care for the eggs as if it is its own.

If the crab is a male? IT REWIRES THE CRABS INTERNAL PLUMBING AND *MAKES* IT A FEMALE!!

Truly insane stuff. I remember first reading about them in the book Parasite Rex (highly recommended, btw), and one biologist recounts the crabs behavior when it feels the parasite latch on to a joint in its armor. At first, the crab is panicked, flailing around, trying to scrape the damn thing off. Then, as the hours go by, and the parasite takes over its system, it slowly stops its resistance, until it becomes a zombie crab. It will then be used up and discarded.

Pretty horrifying, if you ask me. No crab deserves to go out like that. :)

One of the coolest moments at this years inaugural PAX East was getting my hands on an original Vextrex machine to play frogger and moon lander. It was lovingly maintained and restored, and the detail and some of the effects they pulled off were amazing. Don't get me wrong, it was crude as hell, but the effect of your frog dying, how it kind of shriveled up and deformed into a single point of light was the kind of awesome you're never going to see again.

Indeed. And when lipos go, they don't just go up in flames, or at least the ones in RC models don't. They produce an intense, almost blowtorch like flame that can cut through, melt, and ignite materials instantly. See the following video for an example of a 4000mah battery. That would be sufficient to power a 1/8th scale car for 10 minutes or so, or a 1-2lb stunt plane for a similar time. Now imagine something sized big enough to power a car.

There are containment devices sold that effectively (basically a kevlar/asbestos bag, although I don't think it was asbestos. Similar materials, though) prevents the discharge from destroying the surrounding environment. So I think you could engineer around this, but yeah. The dangers are very real.

As a power user I hated the ribbon for about four weeks, until I actually quit bitching and moaning about it and started using it. Now I prefer it, and don't like the former interface. Even for relatively advanced spreadsheet tasks involving remote data access with cubing and other analytic voodoo, I find that the ribbon is faster and easier to use for every task I use Word, Access, and Excel for, and on the rare occasions I have to use a new feature it is easier to guess at what category of task they filed it under than the old nested menu bar. Even our oldest, gnarliest, set-in-their-ways troll-beasts in accounting have grudgingly accepted and even begun to admire the ribbon.

Even worse, many standards business are forced to live with (PCI-DSS for one) require the kind of account policies you and the article decry. You can either require ridiculous password policies and be compliant or not and risk significant fines and penalties. The decision is completely out of the admin's hands. On the whole I think PCI has lead to good things overall with bringing many companies kicking and screaming up to base line security competence, but some of the requirements seem to cause as many problems as the solve.

And the United States, a self-confessed democracy over its existence, managed to kill at minimum one out of 50 of its own citizens in a civil war, eradicate a substantial fraction of its native population, forcibly import a substantial number of people for servile labor, imprison a large number of citizens based on coincident heritage of one combatant party during a mid-century war (but ignoring those of coincident heritage of other combatants), and expend a significant amount of post-war energies persecuting those who made the mistake of agreeing with the governing philosophy of a nation we had made an erstwhile ally of that conflict.

Goddamn what a great country! USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!