IconPackager 4 will let you change the colors of your icon packages on the fly.

For Windows Vista users, IconPackager will let users set their live folder icons independently of the icon package. So if a given icon package doesn't include support for Vista live folder icons, no problem, you can set them yourself.

The title bar and borders are from an upcoming WindowBlinds skin.

WOW. On behalf of Stardock and Ironclad, I can say we're just incredibly pleased and thankful for the positive reviews that Sins of a Solar Empire has gotten.

Most gamers probably think of games they see at the store being developed and published by huge companies. But the truth is, both Stardock and Ironclad are just a bunch of guys (and gals) who love games and got together to create a game that could bring classic 4X gaming into a real-time experience. 

And even though people seem to really like Sins now. We are working hard to make it even better. Even as I type this, Ironclad is hard at work on Sins of a Solar Empire v1.03. A free update that is almost entirely comprised of new features, tweaks, updated AI, etc. We should have more info on 1.03 soon.

You can now get Sins of a Solar Empire at nearly any store. You can also get the Collector's Edition (digital or full version) directly from us where you can download immediately while waiting for your box to arrive.

• Review: Gamer 2.0
• Review: GameShark
• Review: Gamesquad
• Review: Resonance Gaming
• Review: GameTap

It's a whole new JoeUser.

The site has been completely rewritten from scratch. Some features haven't been completely re-implemented and there are bound to be some glitches.

But we now have the kind of backend and application support to do all kinds of cool stuff.

In the coming days, various usability tweaks will be made as we discover what key little features we've overlooked. Then, in the next few weeks, we'll start to add in new abilities and such.

We hope you like the new setup. I think as you look around your blogs you'll find that you have a lot more control than before and will find that things actually (shock) work much better than the old system.

IGN's review of Sins of a Solar Empire is up! The verdict: Editor's Choice.

The 3 page review goes into great depth about the game's strengths and the areas they could see improvement.

The conclusion of the review is:

We used to have to get our tactical and strategic appetites filled by different games. Then some smart developers started putting the two experiences together in alternating phases. Finally someone's managed to get them both together as part of the same experience. Sins of a Solar Empire does this so well that you never really feel like you're playing separate parts of a single game; you just feel like you're playing a game that works on different levels simultaneously. The experience works so well because the graphics engine works beautifully and the interface is very slick and efficient.

The combat is genuinely rewarding and free from the rock-paper-scissors design of most games, which leaves the player free to focus on more sophisticated tactics. It's true that the game is specifically designed for players to make war on each other, so that might turn off some peace-minded 4Xers, but happily we don't fall into that category.

In other words, if you like awesome strategy games, then you'll love Sins of a Solar Empire.

View: Full IGN review

I highly recommend David Sirota's Hostile Takeover -- just not for the reasons Mr.Sirota would probably prefer.  First, it's considered a "must read" by Al Gore. Secondly, it gives clear insight into how some American liberals view economics and the world in general.  To which I say, good for them. I love an open dialog with people of all political values. Mine are all over the place.

Mr. Sirota's book outlines a number of problems with our society and prescribes specific solutions for them.  His general thesis is that big corporations have taken over government and his general solution is to make government more powerful, which he assumes will thwart these big corporations.  Like many people, he fails to see that people who do stuff will always have the upper hand in any system over people who don't do stuff. The more powerful you make the government, the more able it is to be corrupted and abused by corporations -- which tend to be run by people who do stuff.

Let's outline some of his solutions:

On Taxes his solutions include:

• When cutting taxes, give everyone the same amount back literally. As in, if you cut taxes, give everyone say $1000. I'm all for this as soon as we all pay exactly the same "literally" in taxes.  Historically, money is exchanged for goods and services.  The millionaire paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in taxes is getting the same services as the person who pays basically nothing. Why should a tax cut literally be the same? When Mr. Sotira and his wife travel Europe on vacation while some of us stay home and work (and are taxed on that work) why should I be punished for that and he rewarded by the government?
  
  
• Fix the "regressive" payroll tax. This is almost on the same page where he says tax cuts should be literally the same. By regressive, his complaint is social security taxes are capped after $95,000 or so.  But social security and medicare are, in theory, set up so that the user has their own account. It is not supposed to be where rich person is paying for poor person's retirement. How about if we get rid of the payroll tax entirely then? I'm for that.  But what he seems to favor is having the middle class and the rich paying for ever increasing entitlements for the poor who aren't earning them.
  
  
• Limit the home mortgage deduction to $500,000.  Right now, you can deduct interest on your mortages. But people like Mr. Sirota think that houses that cost over $500,000 shouldn't get to deduct this interest.  Besides the obvious problem of creating a disincentive for buying larger houses which has negative economic consequences, it's a slap in the face to the people who already pay the most in taxes. It's such a petty class-warfare proposal because it literally sets the tax code up to punish the very people who do the most good in our economy. 
  

He also has the usual stuff such as raising taxes on the rich which is always a signal to me of people who don't really understand the American economy but instead let ideology guide their principles.  

Before you get offended, let me explain: businesses and rich people don't treat taxes the same as the middle class.  The rich and businesses treat taxes as just another expense and when you raise those taxes, you're simply increasing their expenses which in turn increases the incentive to outsource or automate jobs that were once done by Americans. 

He also has solutions to the problem of wages:

• Raise the minimum wage to a living wage. Why stop there? Why not raise the minimum wage to $50 an hour? It's such an easy fallacy to crush because anyone can see that if you were to raise the minimum wage to $50 an hour the result would be a disaster.  So raising it to say $10 an hour would simply be what? A smaller disaster?
  
  
• Use tax policy to tie executive wages to worker wages I love Marxist rhetoric. Worker wages. Executives don't work you see.  But anyway, he argues that taxes should be tied to the ratio between the highest paid executives and the lowest paid workers. Hey, why stop there? Why not have a ratio between the minimum wage clerk at Barnes and Noble and the amount pompous, clueless left-wing authors make? Why should the store clerk make what amounts to $15,000 a year while Mr. Sirota makes big bucks off the sale of the book he wrote? Heck, most book store clerks have to stand 8 hours a day whie Mr. Sirota probably was sitting while he typed up his book. So it wasn't even real work.

It's worth noting that Mr. Sirota's "evidence" to back up his solutions and the "myths" he attempts to debunk tend to simply be columns written by other liberals. It's like when a religious person tries to use the bible to prove the validity of the bible. It rarely occurs to liberals to actually ask business people -- you know, the people who hire and fire workers, what works and what doesn't. 

Mr. Sirota's myth busting usually simply involves insulting conservatives and "right wingers". A typical example was his "myth" that increasing minimum wage eliminates low wage jobs. In it, he complains that the data that backs this myth comes from "right wing sources" (you see, to a liberal, ideology is what matters).  Next time he's checking out his own groceries at the store, he should ask a store manager what prompted them to replace those minimum wage checkout cashiers with machines. Ask the owner of a Dairy Queen or a Block Buster or manager at a mall store how minimum wage affects jobs.  Of course, maybe they're all "right wingers".

The book is 350+ pages of this kind of thing.  I know this is rude but his book is just full of empty, philsophical tripe. It shows a complete lack of understanding of the consequences of his beliefs in the real world.  Mr. Sirota essentially argues for the virtual enslavement of the highest producers of our society and then is shocked, shocked, when those same producers end up moving their assets overseas to escape.

We live in a society where political belief has replaced actual deeds in determining the morality of the individual. The quasi-socialist like Mr. Sirota can feel morally smug because he believes (strongly) in government programs he'll likely pay little for while condemning me and my capitalistic ilk who actually pay for these programs, pay for most of the charties, create most of the jobs and provide most of the products and services he seems to feel entitled to.

Mr. Sirota's book is the result of someone with a keen intelligence that is unpolluted by real-world experience in the topics he feels strongly about. Which means it's a very good book outlining the mind set of left-wing intellectuals with regards to dealing with a mixed market economy.

[Full Review]

Gamespot has weighed in on Sins of a Solar Empire. Reviewed by Jason Ocampo, one of the strategy genre's top reviewers as well as an expert in other genres, his review thoroughly walked through both the strengths of the game as well as elements of the game that gamers should be aware of (i.e. this ain't no 25 minute action RTS). You can see his other reviews here.

Read the whole thing here.

 X-Play has reviewed Sins of a Solar Empire with a resounding "4 pirates out of 5!" We lost a star (or pirate) due to not including a campaign in with the game.

"Sins is one of the biggest surprises thus far in 2008, a game no self-respecting galactic grognard will want to be without."

Check out the whole thing.

View: X-Play Video Review

The 1Up and Games Radar reviews have hit the streets!

"Sins is the fulfillment of Supreme Commander's promise -- zoom in to see the tracers of a fighter squadron launched from a carrier ship, and zoom out to take in 60 planets and five star systems at a time as utilitarian icons" -1Up. 

"With most RTS games shifting towards fast action at the expense of real strategy, it would be an unforgivable sin for a strategy fan to pass by this game on the shelf and not pick it up." -GamesRadar

The first reviews have started to come out!

 Here are some of the initial reviews of Sins of a Solar Empire!

• Sarcastic Steve: 9/10
• Gaming Steve: 9/10
• Resonance Gaming: 9/10
• Out of Eight: 8/8
• Game Squad: 9/10

 The major game website reviews are starting to hit as well. Stay tuned!