The smirking chimp is a site dedicated to not just insults of President Bush but also of promoting radical left-wing nonsense like the article "When the rich make too much money".

It never ceases to amaze me to see someone write, without irony on a computer, built by companies started by people who are now "rich" full of components made by companies whose founders are "rich"  running computer software made by companies whose founders are "rich" complaining how unfair it is that there are rich people and how it endangers us all.

Above is a quote from the article that is written without a hint of irony.  Apparently, being a politician or diplomat has more worth than Warren Buffet.  Who defines how valuable a human being is to society? Apparently in the liberal utopia, learned academics like Dr. Lower.

But before we are assigned a human worth value by the academics, I would ask -- how much has our life changed in just the past 100 years thanks to people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and so on?  What would our lives be like today without the tiny percentage of people who go out and truly change the world?

If the government were to tell me that I had a maximum cap I could earn, then my answer would be "fuck you" and I would simply stop working.  I have a wife and 3 kids.  Sure, I employ 50 people but if I'm not going to be able to benefit beyond a certain point from my efforts, then I'm not going to work beyond that point either. How would that affect the 50 people that work at the company I run? Probably not very well. But being forced to work without compensation is slavery and I won't be a part of that. 

I could retire right now if I wanted and live comfortably.  I'm not driven by money or wealth accumulation, but I certainly expect to enjoy the fruits of my labor (see Draginol's new car).  I expect to one day be able to afford a lot more than what I have today.  That isn't what gets me up in the morning (making cool stuff does) but there are plenty of days when my job isn't fun and having goals that involve materialism do help (well, I sure don't enjoy having to deal with employee issues but on the other hand, I can afford to buy a nice lake house up north).

One of the things that drives people like me is the desire for new experiences and new frontiers and many of those new experiences take a lot of money because, as I've written before, money can buy time to allow people to experience more in the limited amount of years they have on this Earth.

The problem with left-wingers is that most of them are inevitably divorced from reality and have no conception to how we got from serfdom (where the "goverment" did put hard limits on how much one could earn) to where we are today in a fairly egaltarian society where the child of a single parent with no economic advantages can grow up and live the American dream.

Too many left-wingers think jobs and opportunity simply exist on their own and are not connected to anyone. But our society is a reverse pyramid. You remove the handful of movers and shakers from society and it would collapse in a hurry.  Supply and demand deterine where we are on that pyramid -- not some group of learned academics.

You'd think that academics would see the obviousness in this. After all, one presumes they have some grasp of history.  Yet, when they espouse short-sighted proposals like this which would, in essence, return us to a social structure more resembling feudalism (except where our lords are "elected" rather than born into) it's hard to take their words very seriously. 

It's ironic that a site that has so much venom directed toward the current elected political leader that they would, if they had their way, redirect so much power and wealth into the hands of such leaders and away from people who made their wealth from the voluntary choices of millions of people.

Lots of coding in Twilight of the Arnor this week. One thing we're putting in is right of passage treaties which should make a lot of people happy.

But as we've been playing around with things, we've come to realize that what is going to make Twilight of the Arnor so spectacular is not the unique technology trees unto themselves but rather the planetary improvements and ship components that these unique tech trees can deliver.

For this reason, we're going to have a beta next month for people who have pre-ordered. More details soon but we're so confident that people are going to like the changes that we're going to do the beta program quite differently than past ones, it'll be a real treat I think for people who closely follow things as we roll out the various tech trees one at a time.

For those of you who really know GalCiv, consider very carefully the possibilities that unique tech trees can really provide. Forget the techs but rather the unique planetary improvements as just one example. Think about how different the civilizaitons can play out with enough unique planetary improvements.  Envision that.

I wish you guys could have been with us at the lab today. This expansion pack is just going to be something that we think players will be so happy with. We're just incredibly excited about the possibilities that are only starting to really dawn on us as the implications of what unique technology trees do.

At long last the new car has arrived.  A 2008 Porsche 911 Turbo.  My daily car remains the Jaguar S-type R, but on these beautiful days, the Porsche is a fun ride.

I'll write up a more thorough review when there's more time.  My problem with most car reviews is that they're written by jaded, snotty sounding auto-reviewers who seem to be so out of touch with what normal people care about that their reviews are largely wasted.  

For example, many of the reviews I read in Car & Driver talk about things like "engine emotion" or some other completely non-sensical term.  I realize that what people like in cars changes from person to person, but I like more specifics or at least words with specific meaning.

The new car, for instance, is fun to drive. I think people can relate to that.  I can't speak to whether the exhaust has enough emotion in it or not since I don't know what that means.  It's certainly a louder car than the Jag is and ironically I find myself driving it slower than the Jag (I think that's probably because it's a stick shift unlike the Jag which is an auto).  Being a stick, you are much more aware of how fast you're going and hence what speed laws are being violated.

Anyway, more to come.

For the uninitiated: SkinStudio is a program that lets users creates skins to change the look & feel of the Windows GUI.  These skins are applied by the program called WindowBlinds.  Both WindowBlinds and SkinStudio come as part of the suite of programs called Object Desktop.

SkinStudio 6 is a complete rewrite of the program designed to make it much easier for users to make skins.  Over the years, as WindowBlinds got more powerful, the existing version of SkinStudio (versions 1 through 5) were extended and extended to the point where it was simply too complex for new artists to easily get into. 

SkinStudio 6, by contrast, has been re-designed so that skinners can skin Windows step by step.  And anything they choose not to skin is automatically skinned with the native elements of the OS (Aero on Vista, Luna on XP).

Beta 2 has tons of small changes  (and a few big ones like a tree view option and classic color choosing).  It's only available to users of Object Desktop presently.

The final version of SkinStudio will have a free version and a Pro version with additional functionality.  Let us know what you think.

What skin are you running this very second? A WindowBlinds skin? Msstyles? Classic? Plain old XP or Vista? Let us know below in this informal discussion.  I'm currently running VStyler's Vienna XP.

Aroche is a skinner who has been around for 2 years now and has created a significant library of great CursorXP cursors.  With CursorVista in development, the role of cursors is set to become increasingly popular over the next year and Aroche has led the way for awhile.

According to his stats, he has commented on his and other people's skins and cursors many times and his activity has helped make WinCustomize the kind of community that people enjoy being a part of.

If you don't have CursorXP, get it. And then check out Aroche's gallery.

If you have Object Desktop you can now download WindowBlinds 6 beta 2.  For the uninitiated: WindowBlinds is a program that allows users to easily and safely change the look and feel of the Windows user interface (title bars, start bar, star menu, scrollbars, push buttons, etc.).  Object Desktop is a suite of programs that allow users to personalize their entire Windows experience.

Now, WindowBlinds 6 is the next-generation version of WindowBlinds.  Amongst its cool new features is the ability to do full blurred glass even on Windows XP. Full support of skinning every piece of Windows Vista. Advanced animation and advanced colorization, user sub-styles and well just tons of other features both big and small.

Beta 2 is a huge overhaul to the underlying structure of WindowBlinds.  For years, the skins you download for WindowBlinds have gone into the WindowBlinds directory. But with Windows Vista, Microsoft really frowns on programs putting data in the program files directory.  So beta 2 migrates all the skins to the shared documents folder.

Those of you who are technical can probably appreciate the immense amount of effort involved in smoothly migrating what can amount to gigs of skins from one place to another without disrupting the user experience in the process. 

Below are some screenshot highlights:

Taken on my Windows XP box. Check out the blur effect in the title bar. You can blur existing skins even.

This is the quick way of being able to Vista-ize your existing skins. There's literally an option to vista-ize skins (even in Windows XP).

The advanced coloring support is extremely cool. Now you can specific which colors you want to affect. It takes a little practice but it's worth it. Now you can hue shift parts of your skin.  So even if a skin author makes a skin a different color than you desire, no problem, you can easily change it.

The dragon on the start menu is a smooth, >30fps animation with fire effects.  It does this on Windows XP and Windows Vista.  Again, technical users out there can tell you - non-trivial to get this kind of performance.

WindowBlinds 6 not only has these cool features but it does it using trivial amounts of memory and is FASTER than Windows XP or Windows Vista are normally.  We include the Diamond skin. Feel free to dual boot to a Windows XP box, load up Diamond with full blur on and check out the performance. Then boot to Windows Vista and run the default Aero. Which is faster?  WindowBlinds 6 makes full use of the DWM on Windows Vista to maximize performance/lower memory requirements. 

If you have Object Desktop, check it out for yourself, let us know what you think.  We release on October 2nd!

Wallpapers on WinCustomize have been a bit hit or miss over the years.  I admit, from time to time I've found myself going to other sites to get my wallpapers. 

But lately, the wallpapers on WinCustomize have been really nice.  Below are just a handful I've noticed from the site that are quite good.  Check out the gallery for a full tasting.

See for yourself...

 Icon packages that provide full support for Windows Vista are few and far between. That's because they require significant effort. What, with the 256x256 pixel resolution for every icon and having to make folders in a special way to support live folders, it's a lot of work.

Luckily for all of us, Quentin94 has released his Arileen icon package updated to support Windows Vista completely. It has 209 different icons in the icon package.  Check it out!

Fairy and friends have launched a new community project called Ammomite. This widget goes along with Jazzymzr's WindowBlinds skin and there is a Rainlendar skin as well! Check out their excellent work!

And three cheers for community projects like this!