[Great Microsoft article on the Windows 7 taskbar]

Elemental, like Galactic Civilizations, will have a very in-depth single player world.  In fact, in terms of the single player game, it will have a lot more "stuff" to it than GalCiv had (such as a virtual persistent single player opponent which we'll talk more as time goes on).

But it will be in multiplayer that we really hope to bring new fans to the genre.

I love multiplayer games. But I am not an advocate of them in terms of taking resources up from the single player game for most types of PC games.  That's because, as a practical matter, relatively few people play on-line.  Not because they can't but because it's just usually not worth the hassle.

Playing on-line can take a long time, it can be frustrating and it can often end up as a total waste because of dropouts, crashes, whatever.

To address this, Elemental is going to add some new multiplayer options that we think will really help expand the interest in multiplayer.

One of those options is the persistent world: Empire vs. Kingdom.  In it, players choose a side - The Empire or The Kingdom.  Having chosen that, players then play on-line with various other players who are trying to help their side - The Empire or The Kingdom conquer the world of Elemental.  Each battle takes place on a tiny part of the overall world of Elemental.  Their opponents and friends are a mixture of real users and AI users based on what is necessary.

The AI work in Elemental is a little bit beyond what we've done before.  We are aiming to provide virtual AI players who are competing in the game like a real player would.  These virtual AI players would be able to join games (if no one else is available, real people get first dibs on joining games) and would play much like real people do (GalCiv players have an idea of what we mean).

Part of my work, as the AI developer at Stardock, would be to create lots of these virtual players, each with their own personalities and strategies, so that they're prepared to join up in games and provide varying degrees of a challenge to human players.

The idea here is to let people be able to get into games on-line and play without a lot of hassle remembering that this is an additional option to the other multiplayer modes available.

We'll be talking more in the future about how the Kingdom vs. Empire persistent multiplayer experience works later.

Stardock has released Object Desktop 2009, its annual major update of our popular desktop enhancement utility suite.

This year we've got a ton of cool new things such as Theme Manager 3, a complete rewrite and reintroduction of Theme Manager.  Theme Manager lets users manage their skins, icons, themes, etc. Users can even take a snapshot of their desktop and save it as a suite for later use.

Object Desktop 2009 also includes a new version of DeskScapes which supports animated wallpapers on Windows XP. It's pretty slick and a definite must try. There's literally hundreds of free animated wallpapers available for download on WinCustomize.com in the Dreams section.

Another big update was the inclusion of BootSkin Pro, a brand new boot screen changing program for Windows Vista that lets users apply and create their own Windows Vista boot screens.

There's tons of other updates too. I mainly just wanted to show off some of the screenshots collected today.

You can get Object Desktop at www.objectdesktop.com.

Animated Wallpaper while running the new Aero Midnight theme and checking out some cool icons from the GUI Championships.

I got a real kick out of "Broken Aero" (WindowBlinds skin). WindowBlinds is the most popular program of Object Desktop with millions of users around the world.  For Object Desktop 2009, we enhanced the texturing support in it for greater speed and in preparation for some cool stuff we have in the works.

Definitely the biggest highlight of Object Desktop 2009 is the new Theme Manager.  It supports applying suite files but also MyColors themes.

Theme Manager doesn't just apply suites, it can interface with the individual programs. So you an do it all from a single program now.

 
I made this desktop from a combination of a number of different items. I changed my boot screen, Windows icons, skin, and what you can't easily see in the screenshot is that I applied a flowing animated water effect to my standard Windows wallpaper (it's super cool in action).

Aero Metal is a pretty popular skin for Object Desktop users.  Here I'm just showing how I took my desktop and saved it as a suite.

This is a slightly modified version of the Aero Midnight suite that comes with Object Desktop 2009 (open up Theme Manager and look in suites).

Diagramming what is happening.

Auto Bailouts Will Give Us Detroitsky

A Chapter For Detroit To Open

Wouldn't it be great to live in a world where everything was free? You sure?

Plants are people too..?

Detroit: Same Old, Same Old

Great article by Walter E. Williams that helps explain why socialism is a fundamentally evil concept.

I'd go even further and say it's also insipid because its supporters actually believe that supporting socialism actually makes them morally superior.

Imagine there's an elderly widow down the street from you. She has neither the strength to mow her lawn nor enough money to hire someone to do it. Here's my question to you that I'm almost afraid for the answer: Would you support a government mandate that forces one of your neighbors to mow the lady's lawn each week? If he failed to follow the government orders, would you approve of some kind of punishment ranging from house arrest and fines to imprisonment? I'm hoping that the average American would condemn such a government mandate because it would be a form of slavery, the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.

Would there be the same condemnation if instead of the government forcing your neighbor to physically mow the widow's lawn, the government forced him to give the lady $40 of his weekly earnings? That way the widow could hire someone to mow her lawn. I'd say that there is little difference between the mandates. While the mandate's mechanism differs, it is nonetheless the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.

Read the whole thing: http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2008/11/19/evil_concealed_by_money

This year's GUI Championships are the first one to take place since Windows Vista was launched which means the age of 256x256 icons have arrived!

www.guichamps.com.

DeskScapes 2.5 as part of Object Desktop 2009 coming this week. Animated wallpaper for XP users.

Changing the Windows Vista boot screen is about to become a snap in Object Desktop 2009 which arrives this Wednesday. Everyone who purchased Object Desktop within the past year will automatically get this.

Impulse Phase 2 has gone into beta.

To get it, make sure you have the latest version (just open up Impulse).

Then go to preferences by clicking on the Stardock orb and choose "use Impulse betas" to get access to the latest/greatest editions.

Better. Stronger. Faster.

NOTE: The beta build removes the Impulse dock. We are going to release the Impulse dock as a free download later this week. This way, people who don't want the dock don't have to deal with it and the people who want it can get it.