Nintendo president apologizes for bulky day-one Wii U firmware update

As we noted in our first impressions, Nintendo’s (NTDOY) Wii U is charting new ground with its wireless GamePad and touchscreen controls that engage gamers in the living room like never before. But before you can even set up the Wii U, a mandatory firmware update is required upon power up. Gamers everywhere were frustrated to learn that the firmware update, which is pegged anywhere between 1GB and 5GB, takes hours to download and could even ”brick” new consoles if the power was cut off. In an email conversation with IGN, Nintendo’s global president and CEO Satoru Iwata said was “very sorry” that Wii U owners were experiencing network issues and that other services such as Nintendo TVii weren’t available at launch. Iwata said he believes “users should be able to use all the functions of a console video game machine as soon as they open the box.” 

Gone are the days when electronics are sold as finished products with set features out of the box. It has become normal for today’s connected electronics to require frequent firmware updates and patches to fix compatibility with other gadgets and to add new features. At what point should consumers stop tolerating devices that don’t work immediately after unboxing? The way we see it, the answer might be “never,” as it’s hard to argue against the fact that new software updates breathe new life into aging consoles.

Iwata also explained that the Wii U’s “Miiverse” online service isn’t meant to replicate existing services such as Xbox LIVE.

“We have not thought that offering the same features that already exist within other online communities would be the best proposal for very experienced game players,” Iwata told IGN.

Nintendo fans can read more Nintendo nuggets over at IGN’s feature that includes mention of a new 3D Super Mario and Zelda game.

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Dennis Quaid Officially Files for Divorce From Wife Kimberly

Despite an attempt to salvage their rocky marriage in April, actor Dennis Quaid has officially filed for divorce from his wife of eight years, Kimberly Quaid. 

Related: Dennis Quaid's Wife Files for Divorce

In court filings obtained by ET dated November 30, Quaid blames "irreconcilable differences" for the pair's split, listing their date of separation as October 1, 2012. Joint legal and physical custody has been requested of the former couple's five-year-old twins Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace.

Last March, Kimberly filed for divorce explaining in court papers that the marriage had "become insupportable because of discord or conflict of personalities." A month later she withdrew the divorce papers so they could work on their marriage.

The pair married in 2004. It was the third marriage for Quaid, who was married to Meg Ryan from 1991 to 2001, and actress P.J. Soles from to 1978 to 1983.

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60 seconds with Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster

Q: How do you know that women have more problems with women than with men in the workplace?

Katherine Crowley: One study showed that women feel they have to compete 90 percent of the time with other women rather than men. There’s quite a bit of research done which shows women feel they are targeted by other women.

Q: What happening here?

Kathi Elster: It’s a socialization issue. We’re not interested in perpetuating this myth that all women are bitches. But there is a “mean girls” syndrome. We compete in a covert way because we really need one another. We’re very relationship-oriented and we care very much about other women, but when you get to the workplace and you have to compete with them, conflict arises. On the one hand, we want to be friends. On the other hand, we want to win something.

Katherine Crowley (left) and Kathi Elster

Crowley: The other thing is the workplace is fundamentally changing. Women comprise almost 50 percent of the workforce. The likelihood of a woman working for a woman is much higher than it’s ever been.

Q: What types of women typically go after other women in the workplace?

Elster: One of the worst are ice princesses. They’re equally mean to everybody. The problem is they don’t have the ability to feel for other people.

They’re kind of narcissistic. They attack by shutting out, like if you walk in the room, they just walk out. That’s how they handle another woman. They send this horrendous energy.

Q: What’s the best way to handle an ice princess?

Crowley: You have to take extreme self-care. It’s a toxic environment you’re in.

You’ve got to seek out people who really value and appreciate you. Take care of yourself until you find a way to get out of that situation.

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The business behind the artist: Miami’s art gallery scene still evolving

This week, thousands of art collectors, museum trustees, artists, journalists and hipsters from around the globe will arrive for the phenomenon known as Art Basel Miami Beach. The centerpiece of the week: works shown at the convention center by more than 260 of the world’s top galleries.

Only two of those are from Miami.

While Art Basel has helped transform the city’s reputation from beach-and-party scene to arts destination in the years since its 2002 Miami Beach debut, the region’s gallery identity is still coming into its own.

“Certainly Miami as an art town registers mightily because of the foundations, the collectors who have done an extraordinary job,” said Linda Blumberg, executive director of the Art Dealers Association of America. “I think there’s a definite international awareness there. But the gallery scene probably has a bit of a ways to go. That doesn’t mean it’s not really fascinating and interesting.”

The gallery business, especially where newer artists are concerned, is a game of risk, faith and passion. Once a gallery takes on an artist who shows promise, they become an evangelist on their behalf, showing their work in-house and at fairs, presenting it to museums and curators and potential collectors and bearing the cost of that promotion.

For contemporary artists, most galleries take work on consignment, meaning they get a cut of as much as 50 percent when works sell. While local art galleries have been growing in number and popularity in the last several years — just try to find parking during the monthly art walk in Miami’s hot Wynwood neighborhood — even some of the area’s top art dealers say that while business overall is good, they struggle in the local marketplace.

“Our problem is that we have to do lots of art fairs in order to connect with the market that we need to connect with to sell the work that we have,” said Fredric Snitzer, a Miami-Dade gallery owner for 35 years. “The better the work is, the harder it is to sell in Miami. And that ain’t good.”

A handful of serious collectors call Miami home and store their own collections in Miami, including the Braman, Rubell, Margulies and de la Cruz families. But outside a relatively small local group, many gallerists say, their clients come from other parts of the country and world.

And some gallerists point out the troubling reality that even the powerhouse Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin could not stay open in Miami for more than a few years.

“The fact that big galleries have not been able to sustain their business models in South Florida tells you we’re obviously not at this high established point,” said gallery owner David Castillo. “It’s not like we’ve arrived, let’s sit back and watch Hauser & Wirth open down the street.”

Still, Miami’s gallery business has come a long way since the early 1970s, when a few dealers on Bay Harbor Island’s Kane Concourse were selling high-end pieces but the local scene was hardly embraced.

Virginia Miller, who owns ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries in Coral Gables, first opened in 1974 to showcase Florida artists, though her focus soon added an international scope. She and other longtime observers credit several factors for Miami’s transformation, including the community’s diversity, the establishment of important museums, the Art Miami fair that started 23 years ago, the presence of major collections and, of course, Art Basel Miami Beach.

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Marie: a little girl’s death by bureaucratic callousness, medical neglect

Even after Marie Freyre died alone in a nursing home 250 miles from the family that loved her, Marie’s mother had to fight to bring her home.

In March 2011, state child protection investigators took 14-year-old Marie from her mother, Doris Freyre, claiming Freyre’s own disabilities made it almost impossible for her to care for Marie, who suffered from seizures and severe cerebral palsy. A Tampa judge signed an order that Marie be returned to her mother, with in-home nursing care around the clock.

Florida healthcare administrators refused to pay for it, although in-home care can be demonstrably cheaper than care in an institution .

Child welfare workers ignored the order completely.

Two months later, Marie was strapped into an ambulance for a five hour trip to a Miami Gardens nursing home, as her mother begged futilely to go with her. Marie died 12 hours after she arrived.

“Since the state of Florida took custody of my daughter, I would like the state of Florida to bring me back my daughter,” Freyre said at a May 9 court hearing, 12 days after her daughter died.

“They kidnapped my daughter. She was murdered,” said Freyre, 59. “And I want my daughter back.”

The last days of Marie Freyre, chronicled in hundreds of pages of records reviewed by The Miami Herald, are a story of death by bureaucratic callousness and medical neglect. The episode sheds significant light on an ongoing dispute between Florida healthcare regulators and the U.S. Department of Justice. Though the state claims that the parents of severely disabled and medically fragile children have “choice” over where their children live and receive care, federal civil rights lawyers say Florida, by dint of a rigged funding system, has “systematically” force-fed sick children into nursing homes meant to care for adults — in violation of federal laws that prohibit discrimination against disabled people.

Doris Freyre had no choice.

Civil rights lawyers are asking the state to allow a federal judge to oversee Florida’s Medicaid program, which insures needy and disabled people. The program will pay as much as $506 a day — twice the rate for frail elders — to put a child like Marie in a nursing home, but refuses to cover lesser or similar amounts for in-home care.

Late Friday, state health regulators wrote their final letter to the Justice Department in response to a deadline. The state, they wrote, “is not in violation of any federal law” governing the medical care delivered to needy Floridians, and cannot “agree to the demand …that a federal court take over the management of Florida’s Medicaid service-delivery system.”

The nursing home industry has insisted that some children are so disabled or medically complex that their needs can best be met in a nursing home.

However, court records filed last week suggest children fare worse in nursing homes than in community settings.

Among children aged 3 or older, the death rate for medically fragile children in nursing homes is 50 percent higher than for children who receive care at home, according to a detailed analysis of state records filed in federal court by a Miami civil rights lawyer, Matthew Dietz, who first sued the state in an effort to free children from institutions. Kids three or older living at nursing homes are three times more likely to die than children who receive nursing care at a medical day care center during the day, but return at night to their parents.

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Bachelorette Ashley Hebert and JP Rosenbaum are Married

Ashley Hebert is a bachelorette no more!

The 28-year-old dentist and her construction manager fiancé J.P. Rosenbaum, 35, walked down the aisle on Saturday in Pasadena, California, reports People Magazine.

The ceremony, officiated by Bachelor and Bachelorette host Chris Harrison, was attended by familiar faces from the series including Ali Fedotowsky, Emily Maynard, and Jason and Molly Mesnick.

Video: 'Bachelorette' Ashley Hebert and Fiance J.P.'s Passionate PDA

Ashley and J.P.'s exchanging of vows will be televised December 16 on a two-hour special on ABC.

The season seven sweeties will be the second Bachelorette couple ever to televise their walk down the aisle, following in the footsteps of Trista and Ryan Sutter, who married in December 2003.

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Booked for the holidays

Hollywood Unseen

ACC Editions

Talk about your familiar faces in unfamiliar situations: Boris Karloff in monster garb and makeup for “Bride of Frankenstein” drinking a cup of tea, very civilized; W.C. Fields dressed for tennis; young Marilyn Monroe reading the LA phone book; Humphrey Bogart snapping a picture of his dog, Sluggy. While the photos in this fine collection might look candid, most were in fact shot by studio lensmen tasked with showing the “ordinary lives” of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Particularly popular: holiday-themed pictures they could give to magazines, like this Fourth of July look from Jayne Mansfield. Taken from the archive of the John Kobal Foundation, it’s filled with gorgeous pictures — long-hidden — of the gorgeous people from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs

Random House

If you’re crazy about canines, bark yourself on the couch, grab a treat and crack open this volume. A James Thurber story leads off each of the book’s sections: “Good Dogs,” “Bad Dogs,” “Top Dogs” and “Underdogs.” And you can enjoy Roald Dahl on greyhound racing, Susan Orlean on Rin Tin Tin, and other rover revelations by the likes of E.B White, Roger Angell and Ogden Nash.

Art of the Dead

edited by Philip Cushway

Softskull Press

Almost as much as their music, the posters inspired by the Grateful Dead left their mark. Coming from the streets of San Francisco starting in 1965, they showed influences of Japanese wood blocks, the Belle Époch era, beatniks and acid-droppers. The five most-noted artists — Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Wes Wilson and Victor Moscoso — are profiled and interviewed.

Elizabeth Taylor

A Shining Legacy on Film

by Cindy De La Hoz

Running Press

The violet-eyed beauty has been in the news of late, thanks to a cheesy cable flick with Lindsay Lohan as Liz. But here, you can get your fill of the real deal. Film historian De La Hoz goes through Taylor’s filmography, beginning with her part as a pudding-maker’s daughter in “There’s One Born Every Minute” (1942) and ending with the 2001 TV movie “These Old Broads.” For each film, we get photos, credits, review excerpts and off-screen tidbits. Liz’s love life also gets a nod, with a 10-page (naturally!) photo timeline.

Reporting the Revolutionary War

Before It Was History, It Was News

by Todd Andrlik

Sourcebooks

Newspaper archivist and historian Andrlik’s book gives us original reports from the Boston Tea Party in 1773. American papers at the time, such as the Boston Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal (The New York Post didn’t start publishing till 1801), helped fan the flames of rebellion against the British. He reprints news from the Battle of Bunker Hill, the First Continental Congress and Valley Forge. Read all about it the way Americans did when it happened.

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Boat Show may block Miami’s 2016 Super Bowl bid

This winter, the biggest NFL match-up in South Florida might be Super Bowl versus Boat Show.

As South Florida readies a bid for the 2016 Super Bowl, it must contend with a major potential conflict on the tourism calendar. The National Football League may move the Super Bowl to Presidents’ Day weekend, already home to the five-day Miami International Boat Show since the 1940s.

It’s a significant enough conflict that, in the past, local tourism officials have declined to pursue a Super Bowl if it fell on boat show weekend. But this time around they may have no choice. For the first time, the NFL is requiring that potential host cities agree to a Presidents’ Day weekend Super Bowl if they want to pursue the big game at all, said two people who have seen the NFL request for Super Bowl bids.

The NFL “invited South Florida [to bid] knowing there was going to be an issue with Presidents’ Day weekend and the boat show,” said Nicki Grossman, Broward’s tourism director. “In the past, South Florida has not responded to a Super Bowl date that included Presidents’ Day weekend. This package is different.”

South Florida vies with New Orleans as the top Super Bowl host, with government and tourism leaders touting the game as both a boon to the economy and a publicity bonanza. But the notion of accommodating both Super Bowl and boat show — not to mention a major arts festival in Coconut Grove — strikes some top tourism officials as a bad idea.

“There is not sufficient hotel inventory available in Miami that weekend to host a Super Bowl,” said William Talbert, president of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We have taken a close look at that weekend, and it’s not physically possible in Miami to host Super Bowl during the Presidents’ Day weekend because of the boat show and the Coconut Grove Arts Festival. The hotel inventory is all being used for these two great events.”

His comments are at odds with the region’s top Super Bowl organizer and reflect the burden that the boat show may be to South Florida’s Super Bowl hopes for 2016 and 2017. The NFL invited Miami and San Francisco to bid for the 2016 Super Bowl by April 1, with the loser vying with Houston for the 2017 game. Talbert said the bid package states both decisions will be made in May.

For now, South Florida’s Super Bowl organizers face a largely hypothetical challenge, because the current NFL schedule has the Super Bowl occurring two weeks before Presidents’ Day weekend. The bid requirements for the ’16 and ’17 Super Bowls include three consecutive weekends as possibilities for the game, with the latest falling on the Presidents’ Day holiday.

Still, possible logistical hurdles may combine with political obstacles if the Miami Dolphins resume their push for a tax-funded renovation of Sun Life Stadium, the Super Bowl’s South Florida home.

Last year, the Dolphins proposed that Broward and Miami-Dade counties subsidize a $225 million renovation at Sun Life as a way to keep the region competitive for Super Bowls and other large events. The renovation includes a partial roof that would prevent the kind of drenching Super Bowl spectators suffered in 2007 when a rare February downpour hit Miami Gardens.

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Palmetto reopens to traffic after crane crash shuts down roadway

A crane on top of a semi struck an overpass on the busy Palmetto Expressway Friday evening, creating a messy parking lot on one of South Florida’s busiest thoroughfares.

Traffic had to be diverted away in both directions on State Road 826 and Northwest 27th Avenue, causing major delays and detours during rush hour traffic.

The bobcat crane was sitting atop the tractor trailer traveling north on 27th Avenue when the accident occurred around 4:15 p.m. causing significant damage. Engineers from the state Department of Transportation were called out to inspect the overpass and determine the extent of the damage while crews worked to clean up the debris.

Later in the evening, after getting clearance from the structural engineers, the Florida Highway Patrol reopened the street, allowing traffic to flow again in both directions.

Around 8 p.m., FHP trooper Joe Sanchez, a spokesman for the patrol, gave the good news: “The Palmetto is open, thank God almighty.”

However, two lanes of Northwest 27th Avenue remained closed while crews worked into the night to repair the damage and finish the cleanup.

There were no injuries or reports of damage to any other vehicles.

“Our precaution is to get this open as quickly as possible,’’ Sanchez said. “But we have to be able to make sure it safe so cars don’t fall down onto 27th Avenue.”

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Zynga shares slide after privileged status with Facebook ends

(Reuters) – Shares of gaming company Zynga Inc fell as much as 10 percent, a day after the “Farmville” creator reached an agreement with Facebook Inc that reduces its dependence on the social networking giant.

The companies reported in regulatory filings on Thursday that they have reached an agreement to amend a 2010 deal that was widely seen as giving Zynga privileged status on the world’s No.1 social network.

Zynga gets a freer hand to operate a standalone gaming website, but gives up its ability to promote its site on Facebook and to draw from the thriving social network of about 1 billion users.

“Although Zynga investors have reacted negatively to Thursday’s announcements so far, we view them as a long-term positive for both companies,” Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said in a note to clients.

“Zynga now has an advantage to offer more payment options which could result in additional subscribers who are not Facebook users,” he said, maintaining his “outperform” rating and price target of $ 4 on the stock.

Both internet companies have been trying to reduce their interdependence, with Zynga starting up its own Zynga.com platform, and Facebook wooing other games developers.

In recent quarters, fees from Zynga contributed 15 percent of Facebook’s revenue, while Zynga relies on Facebook for roughly 80 percent of its revenue.

Francisco-based Zynga’s shares were down 7 percent at $ 2.44 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.

Facebook shares were down more than 1 percent at $ 26.98.

(Reporting By Aurindom Mukherjee in Bangalore; Editing by Don Sebastian)

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