Before…

After…

Stardock’s new killer app: Fences. Download it, it’s free!

https://www.stardock.com/products/fences

http://www.financialweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090203/REG/902039977/1003/TOC

Barney Frank supports legislation that would put a cap on executive pay at all US companies.

Now, I happen to think that if the government is handing out bailout money to a company that the government has every right to attach any strings they want. The company, after all, can decline said bailout if they don’t like the strings attached.

But the idea that the federal government should have a say over how much executives make in general is ridiculous.

For instance, congress wants to limit executive pay at any company receiving TARP funds to $500k a year.  Okay, if they want to do that then that’s between them and the companies receiving the money.  I happen to think it’s probably a bad idea but whatever.

What people tend to forget is that $500k is not a lot of money when you’re talking about the cream of the crop.  $500k is less than what many TV stars make per episode.  The TV show “Friends” had each actor making $1 million per episode.   The minimum you can pay a first-season NFL player is $200,000. That’s the NFL’s minimum wage.

So if you want the attract the best and brightest to run these multi-billion dollar companies, you are going to have to pay them extremely well.

But let’s talk about entrepreneurs.  If I knew my pay would be capped by the government, I never would have bothered to have my company in the first place.  People who have never started and built their own successful company have no conception of what it takes to do it. It’s a combination of consistent hard work over a long period of time, consistent, sometimes painful personal sacrifice and of course the right combination of relevant skills in order to have a successful business.

So I’d be rather appalled at the idea that my skills and work and sacrifice were somehow treated by society as being less valuable than what a TV actor makes in a single week.

If the government were to suddenly tell me how much I and my team could be paid, that would definitely be the thing to cause me to either move out of the country or sell out and live on the accumulated wealth.

So I’ve started loading up my new Windows 7 machine with stuff. 

First thing I loaded was Impulse which gives me access to a lot of the programs I own.  I’ve also put on Incredibuild which we use to help make builds a lot faster.  I’ve got Office 2007 installed, various version of Visual Studio, Adobe Acrobat, Skype, VMWare Workstation, Adobe Photoshop, Beyond Compare, WinCVS, and so on.  I tried to install Corel Draw X4 but don’t have enough activations left (GRRR) (I wish there was an easy “de-activate other installations) since I only have the one copy in use.

Of course at this point my desktop is starting to get a lot of junk on it.  So just in time, I am installing the first generally available Community Tech Preview version of Stardock’s killer new app: FENCES. 

At the risk of hyperbole, Fences is probably the single most significant piece of desktop software to be released since…well I don’t know how long. I predict Fences will become one of the most popular programs out there in a short amount of time. 

Let’s see how well this runs on Windows 7 because it is an amazingly powerful program that integrates deeply into the OS.

Installing Fences on Windows 7.

On first-run.

It creates some default fences to clean up my desktop:

Now my desktop has some fences on it that let me organize my icons easily.

For my next trick, I exclude the recycle bin from quick-hide (which I’ll show next).

Double click on my desktop and…

A clean desktop other than my recycle bin.

What’s nice about Fences is that it lets me organize my desktop easily without having to create bunches of folders. It enables my cluttering rather than trying to force me to organize.

Anyway, so Fences is working in Windows 7 which is no small feat.  Windows 7 64-bit for that matter!

BTW, for you power users you’ll love this:

SSD? Bah.  64-bit with lots of RAM = mega speed because everything ends up in the disk cache.  Of course, having a Core i7 is nice with 8 virtual CPUs is helpful too. It’s a long day from the OS/2 SMP days.

I’m running the BETA of Windows 7 and it’s been running so well that I’ve decided to make it my quasi-production machine.

Windows 7 is a massive usability upgrade from any previous version of Windows.  Much of the changes are just minor in terms of effort but just make the whole system feel a lot better designed.

For example, if I want look at my connected devices I see this:

Notice I don’t see a bunch of crap. I just see the stuff actually connected to the machine. It’s a very nice change from what has been in Windows before.

One of the purposes of this series of articles is to let you know what programs I have problems with, and which ones work right.

Over the coming weeks and months I’ll give you generalized reports on the progress of our software (Stardock’s) running on Windows 7 as well as highlighting cool little touches in Windows 7.

Now, for the purposes of making life hard on Stardock, I’m not just running a beta of Windows 7, I’m running a beta of Windows 7 64-bit.  By the time Windows 7 is released, all applicable Stardock software must run on this machine.

Beta 2D is the last of the Beta 2 builds which were designed to test connectivity.  Over the weekend we spent a lot of time working on the connectivity server – the “magical” feature that Demigod makes use of to make connectivity a lot better and easier than what has been seen in typical RTS.

The release of Beta 2D showed a killer bug in the Impulse Reactor back end that caused it to just fail in setting up connections after a couple hours.  That got fixed (we hope) on Sunday night. We’ll know more soon.

That leads us to dealing with the remaining biggest challenge with regards to connectivity: The peer connectivity.  Right now, it only takes ONE person who can’t be connected to in a given game to cause the infinite “connecting” dialog to come up.

We have to do two things still:

1) We need to improve this substantially.  Beta 2D increases the likelyhood of success to around 80% (needs to be 99% by ship date).  Ironically, my work machine is one of the machines that can’t easily be connected to when it’s hosting.

2) We need a better way to eject players who can’t connect so they don’t hold up everyone else.

But at this point, we’re at a stage where we can start debugging that and move to Beta 3 which has the tournament code and we can really get into the balance part of the game.

We’ve learned a lot from this beta.  One of the things we’ve learned is that we really need to do a better job conditioning beta testers that the Demigod betas are just that – BETAS. They aren’t marketing experiments.  We’ve had lots of posts complaining that the game is (wait for it) “buggy”.  Or comparing the game’s balance or features to some shipping game.

Having shipped the “Strategy Game of the Year” for the past 2 consecutive years (GalCiv II and Sins of a Solar Empire) I would hope that we would get cut some slack that we know something of what we’re doing but then again, it is the Internet.

Here’s an interesting factoid that Sins of a Solar Empire players can tell you:

The economic model in Sins of a Solar Empire didn’t get its final version until GAMMA (that’s after the betas).  Before Gamma 3, asteroids and such ran out of resources (metal and crystal) eventually.  Imagine how different Sins of a Solar Empire would be. There also wasn’t an “unfair” difficulty level in Sins until the gammas.

With Beta 3, we get to start finally getting into the actual balance and game play a lot more.  Obviously, the game isn’t going to radically change in terms of scope. It’s not going to become a first person shooter.

So here are a few things that we’re looking at as a sample:

MY  personal opinions:

• Currencies should increase gold income by a % not a raw amount.
  • Currency I: Increases gold income by 20%
    • Cost increased to $2000
  • Currency II: Increases gold income by 40%
    • Cost increases to $4000
  • Currency III: Increases gold income by 60%
    • Cost increased to $6000
• Experience I
  • Experience I: increases XP generation by 10%
  • Experience II: increase XP generation by 20%
  • Add: Experience III at level 5: Increases XP generation by 30%
    • Cost $2400
  • Experience IV at level 6: Increases XP generation by 40%
• Graveyard
  • Graveyard I moved to war rank 1. Lowers Death Penalty by 10%. Cost 600
  • Graveyard II moved to war rank 3. Lowers death penalty by 20%. Cost 1800
  • Graveyard III. Lowers death penalty by 40%.
• Priests moved to war rank 3.
• Angels should be moved to war rank 10, made a lot tougher, should only be 1 of them.
• Catapultasuri should be moved to war rank 5. Should only be 2 of them but tougher (more HP).
• Giants should be moved to war rank 7.

• Requested new item: Totem of Cancelation: (replaces totem of revelation if necessary)
  • Cost: 200
  • Wipes out any mines or similar things in an area when placed.
• Requested new item: Scroll of Health
  • Cost: 1000
  • Casting time: INSTANT
  • Restores 1000 health
• Restorative scroll should eliminate Regulus tracking device
• Requested new item: Gauntlets of Demolition
• Requested new item: Scroll of Demolition
  • Does 2000 damage to a structure
  • Cost $2000
• Requested new item: Scroll of Invincibility
  • Unit is invincible for 3 seconds
  • Instant cast time
  • Cost: 200
• Eliminate:
  • Combat health potion
  • Combat mana potion
  • Rejuvenation Elixir (the cheap one)
• Armor: Need to be careful about how much armor we give players so that they don’t become invincible.

Demigods

Assassins

• The rook moves far too fast by default. He’s a walking castle! Super tough but super slow.

Generals

• Fewer minions that are a lot tougher.
• 1^st level minions can only have 2 of with you.
• 2^nd level minions can only have 4 of them with you.
• 3^rd level minions can have 4 of them with you.
• Generals should do less damage in battle. (the Oak, for instance, starts out doing like 150 damage per second).

Misc.

• Edge scroll should be on by default
• Multplayer is set to a threshold of 200ms. Can we increase this to 350ms?
• Is the game clock a real clock or one based on performance?
• Still need a fancier progress bar displayed when taking a flag
• Amount spent in upgrades should be displayed in the final game score
• # of upgrades paid for should be displayed in the in-game score screen
• Damage done by the general’s minions is not displayed
• The voice acting on Regulus could use some work. The original Regulus voice was much better.
• War score and war rank need to be synched up so that war rank is simply war score / 1000.

Those are just my personal thoughts.  The next step is that we talk it over and decide what makes the most sense to do.

1. I have never tried smoking or any drugs.

2. I never drank any alcohol until I was 21 and still mostly a social drinker (though I do like wine).

3. I was relatively dim until my 20s when my brain, for some reason, switched on and went into overdrive.

4. I tend to read 2 to 3 books a week.

5. I used to be a total sports junkie until high school, now I don't even watch the Superbowl.

6. I can't think of anyone that I "hate" or even severely dislike.

7. At work I go into "business mode" where I think and act completely differently than I am at home. It's like being schitzo a bit.

8. I work with my friend Pat who I've been friends with for almost 25 years.

9. I have only had 3 serious relationships in my life including my wife.

10. I have been with my wife for 17 years. We have 3 children.

11. My parents are the least compatible together people I've ever met. They got divorced when I was 4. They get along now but they are still totally incompatible. Glad they got together though long enough to have me!

12. I always wanted to have kids, even when I was little. Ideally, 2 boys and a girl (I have 2 boys and a girl).

13. I don't tend to worry much but when I do worry, it's usually about whether I'm doing the right thing with my children.

14. I almost never feel stressed.

15. I am finding myself less social as I get older but trying to fight against it.

16. I'm 170lbs now but was only 110lbs in High School. (5'11 inches tall).

17. I still have my Star Wars figures from when I was a kid and LEGO space ships I made too.

18. I am an only child but have a half-brother in Colorado as well as an adopted brother in Colorado though I haven't seen either in a long time (thank goodness for Facebook!).

19. I am not religious but I am thankful to God anyway for my life.

20. I make, amongst other things, computer games for a living.

21. I don't tend to have much compassion for people in general but tend to want to help individuals a great deal.

22. I tend to be politically conservative (fiscally very conservative, socially moderate). I'm a big believer in people having lots of freedom but coupled with lots of responsibility.

23. During the cold Winter months when work is busiest, I look forward to going to our cottage on Higgins Lake as a way to keep my spirits up.

24. I like to drive very very fast. Fastest I've driven is 161mph (don't ask me when or where, no comment <g>).  But I drive very carefully if I have passengers or if there's anyone else on the road. I've never been in a car accident.

25. My friends and family have said I am a lot like the Tom Hanks character in "You've got Mail" except when I'm at work where I'm more like House mixed in with the "You've got Mail" character.

One of the things about right-wingers that really annoys me is when they tell people who don’t like some policy with the US that they should just move to another country. It’s just obnoxious.

Of course, it’s annoying when left-wingers do it too.

In JillUser’s blog asking that people who complain how the rich spend their own money to take an interest in how those on public assistance spend theirs, long time user Mumblefratz writes:

This response can be boiled down to saying that we live in a country where the majority sets the rules and if you don’t like it, move somewhere else.

No one is arguing how the system functions. The point, I think, of people debating and discussing issues is to raise awareness of various issues.

At one time, the majority of Americans thought slavery was just fine.  Should those who had a problem with slavey just shut the hell up and moved to say Canada?

When someone argues that it’s not fair for the rich to have so much and the poor to have so little should the rich guy say “Well move to Cuba then, in the meantime, shut the hell up.”?

I don’t think so. I think people should discuss and debate as much as possible so that we can learn from each other.

People (clearly) don’t realize the unintended consequences of their beliefs. Some liberal/Democrat says “Hey, you don’t like high taxes? You rich people should move overseas.” And what they don’t realize, even though it’s right in front of them, is that that is what’s happening. It’s called outsourcing.  The rich get to enjoy all the benefits of living in the USA but without the tax downsides.

Hey, don’t like outsourcing? Well, hey, it’s legal and what else is there to be discussed? If it’s legal, it’s ethical right? What more is to be discussed right?

But no, we should discuss this sort of thing to raise awareness and see how our society might evolve and be a better one.

After all, JillUser could have just written “Hey whiney losers, quit complaining about my mansion and other material possessions that we earned. That’s the way it is and if you don’t like it, move to Cuba.”  Instead, she tried to raise awareness about an issue and opened it up to discussion.

1. Improve my email communication skills. How I communicate online is very different from how I am in person even though I use the same words.
   
2. Standard losing weight goal: Get down to 165lbs by my birthday.
   
3. Keep future house project on schedule.
   
4. Spend more time with my boys.
   
5. Write a fantasy novel for publication.
   
6. Put more effort into being a better husband.
   
7. Spend more time with friends (George, Sherry, Pat, Paul, Kristin, Kirk, Phil, etc.).
   
8. Get the lower level of the Stardock building finished to start hiring second games team.
   
9. Take a real vacation this year (i.e. not just "working" vacations).
   
10. Participate more in our communities.

The Titans of old long used men as pawns in their proxy wars on Elemental. But men were often unpredictable.

It came to pass that some of the Titans with the darkest of motives began to take the strongest, most ruthless, most consistently evil of men and used them as the basis to create a new race of mortal - The Fallen.

The architecture of the Fallen is very alien from that of men. More savage. More violent. But also more practical.

10 ill fated franchise reboots: http://pc.ign.com/articles/949/949110p1.html

The top 12 best anti-depressants: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/story?id=6761204&page=1

10 debunked scientific beliefs: http://listverse.com/science/10-debunked-scientific-beliefs-of-the-past/

World's most pissed off speeding ticket recipient: http://rightwingvideo.com/?p=253

David Letterman's most awkward moments: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-9-most-hilariously-awkward-letterman-interviews/

Crossing the scariest bridge in China: http://rightwingvideo.com/?p=349 (must watch this)