I've been a Corel Draw user since version 2 back on Windows 3.0.  Corel Draw was the first "expensive" program I bought which was in college when money was very tight.

Every thing I've ever made whether it be Galactic Civilizations for OS/2 to WindowBlinds skins has been done using one of Corel's programs.  I use Corel Draw for virtually any sort of vector based drawing and I have used Corel Photopaint for all my bitmap needs.

If you've never heard of DISC, it is one of the standard personality profile tests used in the enterprise. It is, by far, the most effective, accurate, and useful personality profiling system I've encountered. It is, however, not cheap.  We tend to stock up on DISC tests (which are like $10 apiece) to give to key people.

Below is the text for my profile:

Individual tends to be a strong willed individual who continually seeks out new horizons. Tending to be extremely self-reliant and independent in both thought and action, he may prefer to find his own solutions to any difficulties he may encounter. Although he may ask others for information, he seldom asks for opinions or solutions, preferring to make his own decisions. Due to his independence and self-sufficiency, Individual may feel relatively free of peer pressure or constraints of the group. Therefore, he may be able to bypass conventional ideas and current practices to come up with imaginative and innovative solutions.

Individual tends to look for a new challenge or a new opportunity. He may be anxious to test his skills and knowledge against the demands of a new situation. Tending to be somewhat reluctant to acknowledge his shortcomings or errors directly, he may tend to keep trying new solutions and new approaches until he obtains the results he desires. Or, he may simply move on to a new challenge. He tends to focus on solving the problem rather than identifying the person responsible for the problem. As a result, he may avoid wasting time in blaming and "buck-passing" behavior.

Tending to be easily bored, Individual may search for new activities and opportunities for achievement. He may prefer activities that require considerable mental or physical effort. However, he tends to want to have complete control of the results of any activity for which he is held responsible or which is important to him. In fact, Individual may like to be in control of most situations.

Although he generally may tend to be direct and forceful, Individual may be capable of careful planning and strategic manipulation of people and situations to ensure that his goals are met. He tends to be very persistent in pursuing the results he desires, doing whatever he can to overcome or reshape any obstacles that may appear. This may make others uncomfortable unless a climate of mutual trust has been established.

Individual may have high expectations of others and may be critical when his standards are not met. In particular, he may want others to be like him: self-starters who think for themselves. Tending to be so strongly focused on results, he may seem to lack empathy and often seem uncaring. Since he may put his own interests first, he may appear self-centered. Opportunities for personal achievement and challenge may be very important to him.

If Individual is required to participate with others in situations which limit his individualism, he may become defiant and aggressive. Similar behavior might occur when he does not get his way on something important to him. He may generally enjoy being with people. However, Individual may become a loner when something needs to be done. He may normally prefer to give the details of an activity to someone else to do. Yet, under pressure his need for control and high expectations for performance may cause him to complete his activity alone or to interfere with the efforts of others to whom he has delegated the details.

Individual tends to approach a new problem or decision in a quick and direct manner. He may size up all the data available - taking time to get additional facts only if there is a glaring lack of information - and then very quickly come to a tentative solution. He may monitor the results of that decision and make changes as needed. He may be willing to try new ideas and to take risks equal to the expected results.

You can learn more about DISC tests here.

For the first time since I became old enough to vote, I'm seriously considering sitting out a Presidential election.

Obama, on the one hand, brings nothing to the Presidency other than a radical agenda that seems to have little understanding of how the real world works.  There's no circumstance that I would vote for him.

But to me, McCain's actually worse.  Unlike Obama, McCain actually took away our rights.  His "Campaign Finance Reform" stripped a lot of my fundamental freedoms. For instance, if there's a candidate I feel passionately for, I couldn't take out an ad for them in a newpaper right before the election. My ability to support a candidate has been greatly curtailed.  For that reason alone, I wouldn't vote for him.

But McCain has so many other reasons not to vote for him. His position on immigration,while not different from Obama's, has been presented far more arrogantly than anything Obama has done.  I was against any kind of "path to citizenship" nonsense. I don't want "comprehensive immigration reform". I want the current laws enforced. It has nothing to do with "racism" as McCain and his minions suggested.  How about this: Our company spends tens of thousands of dollars each year paying for legitimate visas and other red tape to legally employ foreign workers.  For McCain to even suggest that those who break the law should get a slap on the wrist or be ignored isn't incredibly offensive.  Does McCain plan to pay us back the $100k or so we've had to pay to do things by the book?

McCain's positions also often strike me as just pandering to the media. He's against drilling in ANWR? Why? He wants to push various "green positions"? Why? I'm not saying he shouldn't, I just think it's obvious he supports those positions to pander to his left-wing buddies in the media. I doubt he's very familiar on the issue.

The only argument for McCain I can really see is supreme court justice picking. But realistically, the next two court justices likely to go are on the left anyway and McCain is not likely to pick particularly conservative jurors, particularly with the Senate so far left.

Obama's position on taxes and such are largely harmless to the people he's targeting because Obama is too clueless to understand how the tax system really works.  My favorite proposal was Obama's suggestion that people who make over $250k a year would continue to pay FICA. That's the kind of proposal that only someone cluessless about the tax system would come up with.  All he'd do is create an incentive for people to get paid in dividends or disbursements instead of going through payroll which, in turn, would start to cut into Medicare payments (which are already uncapped).

So I say down with both of them. There's no lesser of two evils this time around.

Stardock has released Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor v1.96.  This is a pretty major update despite the version numbering.  Our goal with this update was to address as much of the player feedback we could in the time available.

Our next stop is to work on Galactic Civilizations II v2.0. v2.0 will be an update for both Twilight and Dark Avatar players which signicantaly enhances espionage, updates the computer AI based on player feedback, and incorporates a lot of new content that we've been working on for awhile.

v2.0 will also include the updated user manual that fleshes out the Twilight of the Arnor universe and talk about the Legacy of the Telenanth.  There will be some updates for Dread Lords users as well. v2.0 will be a free update of course.

It's available for download on either Impulse or Stardock Central.

Check out the link below to get an idea of what was changed.

This year I've got 8 hives. Of those 8 hives, none of them are doing what I'd say great but all but one is doing okay.

Though, the ones doing okay I use the term loosely.

One of them is doing crazy stuff inside the hive.

The Political Machine requires video cards that support pixel shader 2.0. Namely:

- NVidia FX series and higher
- ATI Radeon 9500 and higher
- Intel 9-series chipsets and higher (http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/cs-014257.htm)

(If you do not have a supported card, you can probably find one for as little as $24.99 from places such as newegg.com.)

Normally, on our other games, this isn't a problem as nearly all video cards support this.

But due to the more mainstream appeal of The Political Machine, we're getting a number of people with old video cards which simply can't run the game.  Because they were purchased at retail where returns are generally not allowed, those people, especially people with older laptops, are usually out of luck.

However, Stardock will take your game and provide a FULL refund even if you bought it from a retail outlet.  All we need you to do is send us the box, the receipt, and a brief letter letting us know what type of video card you have (so we can document this).  The only caveat is that you need to do this within the first 10 days of having purchased it.

Send to:

Stardock Entertainment
15090 Beck Rd.
Plymouth MI 48170

Make sure you include your name and mailing address.

It's not that I intentionally speed as much as I just don't like being the victim of speed traps that I have made it my business to know what the best radar detectors are.

For the last 4 years in particular, I've been using various models of K40 radar detectors with the most recent one being a K40 Calibre installed last year.  The K40s are special because they are integrated into the car. That is, someone would not know that you had a radar detector.  The radar detector itself is installed professionally in the front of the vehicle (under the hood) and a remote receiver informs the driver of any radar threats.  Once installed, the read out is part of the dashboard (typically a pair of LEDs). 

Also during this time, I've been a daily lurker on many different car websites and the consensus, by far, is that the Valentine V1 is the best radar detector out there.  However, the V1 is a traditional radar detector which means it is quite conspicuous there on your windshield.  If you're reasonably handy, you can help this situation by hooking it up to a power source in the car, but it's still not nearly as seamless or subtle as a K40.

Pricing

The price difference between the K40 and the V1 is significant.  A fully set up K40 Calibre (with laser defuser) can end up around $2K.  The V1 is around $400.

Going head to head

Recently, while driving up north, I got a speeding ticket.  The K40 went off but it was with so little notice that it was far far too late (I was the trooper before the K40 went off).  So I decided to pick up a V1 and conduct a series of unscientific head to head tests over the past month or so.

So which radar detector is the best? The V1, by far, is superior. It's not even remotely close.  The V1 gave off far fewer false positives, seems to be much more intelligent in picking up what matters, was able to detect instant ons that were going on in the distance (The K40 never even went off), and gave far more advance warning.

Eventually, I decided to put them both in the car at the same time.  I had read that having two radar detectors in the car at once could cause them to interfere with each other. But at least in this case, there was no problem at all. The two were far enough apart (since the K40 is in the front under the hood) that they got along just fine.  It allowed me to really compare the two in performance and like my separate testings showed, the K40 was no where near as effective as the V1.

What I was really amazed at is the lack of false positives the V1 gives when it's in "advanced logic" mode. It really works phenomenally well.  The other thing I noticed was how well the V1 handled detecting troopers on the highway who were using instant on to nail targets. The K40 never even picked them up.  This evening, while driving up north, the V1 gave me plenty of notice of a state trooper on I75 but the K40 didn't pick it up until after I could see the trooper -- at which point I would have been dead meat if I had been relying on the K40.

The Verdict

So which would I use? The Valentine V1 right? Not necessarily.  The V1 is better. No doubt about it. The question really revolves around what is "good enough".  For cruising around town, the K40 gives ample notice. And let's face it, for most of us, that's when we get nailed. Going 45 in a 35 or 40 in a 25 is the scenario most people run into and the K40 works very well for that.  It doesn't work as well as the V1 but the K40 is completely integrated into the car. I can't do this with a V1.  The best I could do with a V1 would be to get a professional to install it up near my visor and put a remote display somewhere which would still be more than I would want on a day to day basis in my car.  What's nice about the K40 is that it works fairly well and it's largely invisible.

That said, the K40 is basically worthless for highway driving. I've had my installation checked a couple of times and I am sure part of the weakness of the K40 is how low to the ground it is (since it's installed near the front grill) compared to a traditional radar detector. But I can also tell that it's programming is fairly stupid compared to the V1. So if you do a lot of highway driving, the K40 is pretty useless.  So it really boils down to whether you speed a lot when you're on the highway as well as whether the "stealthiness" of the radar detector matters.

Hi guys!

First, thank you for purchasing The Political Machine!

Since release and in our internal testing we've made notes of some issues that you may run into. This post has some of them in it.

#1 The game video is choppy.

Solution: You probably have an older nVidia card. To solve, go to the game options and turn OFF anti-aliasing.

#2 The game crashes after the first turn.

Cause: Odds are you're playing on a laptop that has integrated video which doesn't support Pixel Shader 2.0 (the bear minimum hardware needed to play a modern computer game).  We are currently working to see what we can do to work around this.

#3 The bobble heads stutter and face parts don't move smoothly together.

Cause: Older video drivers.  Even the February 2008 ATI drivers exhibited this problem.  Update your video drivers and this game and your other games will likely play a lot better. This is particularly true if you have Windows Vista.

In the directory \my documents\my games\polmachine there is a file called debug.err. Near the top of it you will see information on your system. We can use this to help you.

We basically live on these forums and you're dealing directly with us - the development team - as well as Stardock's support team so we're here to help pretty much all the time.

This is an excerpt from something I wrote for our internal business plan. I've had a number of people comment that they think I should publish this so here it is:

Why do people make what they make? If you ask someone, they will answer that it’s based on how good of a job they do or their level of training or perhaps because that’s the “going rate”. But none of those answers get to the root of why people make what they make.

How much people are paid is derived from how much wealth they produce. The typical amount of wealth produced by a particular job title helps set the base salary – i.e. the market forces that set the “going rate”.

But the reason why an engineer makes X and a secretary makes Y has to do with the wealth they produce. To make more money, you have to find ways to produce more wealth.
People are not compensated simply because they are good at their job. They are compensated for what they produce either directly or indirectly through their labor via others. It’s not about fairness or skill or personality. Those things may be elements that lead to opportunities to generate more wealth but they are, in themselves, not the root sources of their salary.

The greatest worker will still not be as well paid as a mediocre worker if the product of the great worker’s labor doesn’t make as much wealth as the mediocre worker’s efforts.
For example, the reason the CEO of Stardock works so many hours, brings his laptop on vacation and is available on it all the time isn’t out of a sense of duty or guilt. It is because the CEO of Stardock wants to make more money and does this by producing more wealth through his efforts.

No one forces or suggests that a particular employee should work every weekend or be available on his laptop while away on vacation. But at the same time, he should realize he is making a choice. Most people are unaware that they’ve made a choice. Most companies are too rigid to even allow for such a choice. But in the right company, the management team will make sure employees have as many choices as possible in order to harness their native abilities to generate more wealth.

Compensation isn’t about fairness or hard work. Compensation is the result of the wealth the individual has produced. That Wealth can be measured as the difference in wealth that would have been generated by an organization if that person wasn’t there versus how much was produced by his contribution.

The individual who believes they are entitled to wealth simply because they are surrounded by it is always doomed to disappointment because they do not understand that those who obtained the wealth are the ones who are entitled to it.

Compensation is not given as a prize or gift. It is not a fief given by the benevolent corporation. Compensation is simply the portion of the wealth that the individual already controlled. The individual already controlled that wealth because they were the ones who produced it and the corporation is reliant on the individual to continue to produce that wealth.

The money people earn was always their money even before it was paid to them. The employee always had control over that compensation because they generated it. Compensation is not dispensed as a bribe or as tribute. Compensation is merely the affirmation of the wealth that the individual already produced. It was already their money. Companies that do not turn over this money are stealing is just as much as a thief who breaks into someone’s home.

Companies do not give compensation because they are generous or fair. Companies provide compensation because they want those individuals to continue to generate the wealth that allows them to mutually benefit.
The greedy company that attempts to withhold the share of the wealth that rightfully belongs to the individual destroys itself because by withholding the earned wealth, the individual can take their productivity elsewhere.

However, if an organization can successfully argue that a given amount of wealth would have been generated whether a particular person was there or not, then that particular person has no sovereign claim to any of that wealth and to think otherwise will only lead to baseless resentment. A person only “deserves” the compensation that they control. And they only control it if they produced it through their labor or investment.