I like Gov Granholm. She's the kind of politican that few states are lucky to have -- honest, friendly, reasonable. I also think she's intelligent.

But it is, IMO, her intelligence that had led her economic policies to disaster. Simply put, when she doesn't know something, she relies on her intelligence to function as a form of intuition. And for whatever reason, she just has some sort of block when it comes to business.

In her 2007 state of the state speech, she advocates raising taxes to help make Michigan more competitive.

"The tax changes I will prpose are simple, fair, and progressive."

Which is a recipe for disaster. Words like fairness and progressive send up red flags.

If I have $100 to invest and I have 100 companies to invest it in, should I be "fair" and invest equally in all 100 companies?  Should I be progressive and give it to the poorer companies?  Or should I base my investment based on merit and capability?

Granholm's administration has be not-quite hostile to business as much as not understanding the role of business in the success or failure of a state.

To be "simple" about it, business is everything.  Busineses are the ones who employ people and people (and businesses) pay the taxes. Without those businesses, everything else collapses.

Politicians tend to get stuck on things like "better education for our children". That's nice. But the skills necessary to function in our society are remarkably cheap to acquire.  They do not require spending $10,000 per student per year. 

I don't know what the exact amount is necessary to adequately educate a child only that $10,000 per student is far too high.  You get into diminishing returns pretty quickly.  My sons attend public school. And of the 180 days they are in attendance, they lose a solid 10 on various "parties". They lose another 3 or 4 to "field trips" that have no educational value (I should know, I have gone with them on some).  Their curriculum is full of fluffy nonsense that does nothing to help them acquire basic math and reading skills.  The teachers have assistants who have assistants.  At a certain point, money is just a metric used by politicans and Michigan has far exceeded that metric.

Here are the two basic problems with Jennifer Granholm's political philosophy:

1. She doesn't understand the role of business in a state's prosperity
2. She thinks education has a significant role in making a state successful

Both are incorrect.  When I hire people (or as politicians call it -- when I "create" jobs) if I can't find someone locally, I bring someone from out of state. About half the people at our office are from outside Michigan. 

Bringing talented people from outside of Michigan isn't a "bug" IMO, it's a feature. Politicians should be glad when businesses recruit talented people from out of state.  Obviously you want a hard working, educated local work force. But once you have that, goodies like free tuition and such are counter productive. They do nothing for your state other than encourage moochers to move in. Is that the goal?

If Ms. Granhom really wants to make Michigan successful here are a few things I'd recommend:

1. Lower taxes, especially on businesses.
2. Eliminate thing likes Single Business Tax now (The itself SBT was finally removed in a referendum)
3. Keep on top of the roads. It's humiliating to bring someone in where the roads are a total joke (they're getting better though - thank you!)

That's pretty much it.  She should also use the tight budget as an excuse to cut educational spending. The problem with schools (whether it be suburban or inner city) is not a lack of money but a lack of self-reliance and accountability. Throwing money at public schools when they can't even fire incompetent teachers is wasteful.

Making it easy for every child in Michigan to go to college sure is nice. And as they move off to Texas or Arizona or South Carolina to get a job, I'm sure they'll be faintly appreciative (though not likely) of Ms. Granholm's commitment to education.

The mantra politicans need to remember is that businesses create jobs.  What's good for them is good for your state.

If you have a JoeUser blog you can mirror your blog on WinCustomize.com right now.

To do this follow these instructions:

1) Go to www.wincustomize.com

2) Sign in with the same UserID and PW you have on JU

3) On the right you'll have a "Create personal page". Click on it and follow instructions

4) You will now have a personal page that has the same content as your JoeUser blog. 

When you go to your personal page, there are blue tabs that let you go through various options for it.

Example: http://frogboy.wincustomize.com

Articles:

http://frogboy.wincustomize.com/articles.aspx

Visually, a future JU would look nothing like what you're seeing. But feature, speed, reliability wise, it'll be very similar.  You'll be able to put up pictures and customize the site visually how you'd like and a host of other things.

You'll have immense amounts of data to look at if you want, a friends list, a diary, etc.

Example of some of the stats from Frogboy:

http://frogboy.wincustomize.com/stats.aspx

Activity:

http://frogboy.wincustomize.com/activity.aspx

Here's my photo gallery:

http://frogboy.wincustomize.com/photos.aspx

JoeUser will be able to piggy back on this kind of technology in the coming months. The main change you'll see will be in speed and reliability.  JU's speed has increased substantially since the bad old days but it is still a frankenstein monster of code underneath that is flakey and unreliabile.

I often find myself writing JU articles from WC because it's such a smoother experience. They show up here the same way.

One thing to be very aware of:

Windows DreamScene uses video for its content. That is fine.  But not all formats are created equal.

.WMV files were designed for being as small as possible while maintaining quality. They use a LOT more CPU power as a result.

.MPEG are somewhat larger in file size but use a fraction of the CPU that WMV uses.

Hence whey MPEG2 was the standard for DVD players years ago - the CPU requirements were much less.  MPEG 4 (which WMV is a derivative of I believe) is superior in all ways other than CPU requirements which do matter for people using them as animated wallpaper.

The .DREAM format supports animated wallpaper made up of either MPEG 2 or WMV or dynamic content (generated on the fly).  Dynamic content will tend to use the least since there's no decoding.

Stardock is getting close to releasing the public beta of DesktopX 3.5.  DesktopX is a program that enables users to build their own desktops through objects.

Users can export entire desktops (as .desktop files) or export parts of their desktop as mini-applications called widgets. 

What sets DesktopX apart from other technologies is the inherent power of the underlying APIs. You can, literally, create anything with DesktopX. It supports ActiveX controls, VB Script, JavaScript, animation, sound effects, The Windows Performance Monitoring APIs and tons of other features that have helped make it quite successful in corporate environments.

With DesktopX 3.5, users will have the added option of exporting widgets as Windows Sidebar gadgets.  By default, the only way to make Windows Sidebar gadgets is to mess around with DHTML -- Sidebar gadgets essentially web pages created into a specific form factor.  DesktopX 3.5 will allow users who create Sidebar gadgets that are significantly more powerful with a lot less effort.

DesktopX is part of Stardock's Object Desktop suite of desktop enhancement programs.

Screenshot: A user-created desktop.

Screenshot: A user created widget.

We are pleased to announce that Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar, the expansion pack for the award-winning PC strategy game Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords is now available for purchase!

[Get Dark Avatar Now!]

[A Guided Tour]

The ship design feature in Galactic Civilizations doesn't just let players put weapons and engines and shields and what not on their ships.

It also lets them design what their ships will look like.  I must confess, even now, having played the game countless times, I still always design my ships with lots of extra flair to them and watch them battle it out. It's one of my favorite parts of the game even though it's largely cosmetic.

But I'm not alone. Lots of players with serious talent have been designing their own ships. Below is a link to a thread where players can show off their creations.  Here's a few examples of what people have made with GalCiv II.  The new Dark Avatar expansion pack adds hundreds of new components to use to design ships.

See more at the link below.  Show what you've created. The Library here will let you upload screenshots if you have trouble.

Last year, we had a thread in which people showed off some of the great ship designs they created with Galactic Civilizations II.

With the expansion pack adding so many new components and so much free form support, we'd love to see the cool things players create.

The cool thing in the expansion pack is now you can save your creations as templates and then assign the computer players to make use of those ships in various roles. Combined with the capability of creating your own custom opponents, now you can create your own sci-fi universe within GalCiv without modding.

 We have put together a guided tour of what is in the new expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations II (GalCiv II: Dark Avatar).

Check it out and to see some of the things we've done in the expansion pack.

Official release date is about a week!

 A Guided Tour of Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar.

A reintroduction to Galactic Civilizations

Galactic Civilizations is a turn-based strategy game set in the 23rd century. Players take on the role of leader of an interstellar civilization. The player must explore and expand into the galaxy and balancing their manufacturing, economic, political, cultural, and military resources in order to survive in a hostile galaxy.

Players can win the game through military conquest, diplomatic alliances, cultural influence, or through a technological victory.

Galactic Civilizations II introduced a ton of new features over the original game which we won't get into here. But a couple of the most notable were ship design and a new "technology forest".  The technology tree in GalCiv II forces players to make tough choices. Because economic, military, industrial, logistical, diplomatic, computing, cultural, and other kinds of technologies are in their own separate branches, the order in which players choose to research technologies as well as when they make those choices have a much greater impact on game play than is typical of strategy games. It also requires the computer AI to be far more sophisticated in order to be competitive.

The computer AI in Galactic Civilizations has always been one of its high points. Most reviews will touch on it because, in an age where AI is often ignored (you can't take a screenshot of artificial intelligence), Galactic Civilizations has a computer AI that provides a significant challenge without having to resort to cheating (though super high levels are available for people who truly master the game where the AI does get extra money and resources).  The net result is a game where there are a ton of strategic options available that still provides compelling competition from the computer players.

Rise of the Dark Avatar

Galactic Civilizations II included a campaign called Dread Lords (the full title was Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords). In it, the Terran Alliance based on Earth in 2225 was working to build an interstellar alliance to ward of the powerful and hostile Drengin Empire.  Into this mix came the Dread Lords -- a race of insanely powerful beings who had been imprisoned in a pocket dimension.  Suddenly, a three-way war was underway.  The Dread Lords only weakness is that they were few in number (as in, only numbering in the hundreds).

Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar is the expansion pack to GalCiv II. It includes a ton of new features as well as a new campaign in which players must take on the role of leader of the evil Drengin Empire to deal with an internal challenge to their dominance -- the Korath.

A Guided Tour of Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar

Setting up a game

The setup options in Dark Avatar give normal players the kind of power that is normally reserved to game modders. Here's what's new:

The new galaxy setup screen allows users far more options than previous and is much easier to use.

Players can now easily pick and choose from a long list of opponents including ones they've created themselves.

When players create their own opponents they can even decide what ship style they'll have

Still not good enough? Okay, fine, you can even tell the computer player what ship styles they should use for particular roles.  Still not good enough? Okay, the ships they use can be ones you designed! So all those ships you made from your favorite Sci-Fi show can now be in the game used by different races that you created!

Still want more? Okay, how about being able to set the intelligence level to the point where you pick which algorithms and how much money they get compared to you? You can even decide whether they get to use more CPU than normal in order to make use of more sophisticated algorithms!

Into the galaxy

Colonizing planets isn't the "rush" it once was. Half the planets require a specific (and expensive) technology to get. Focus too much on getting those techs and you could find yourself far behind technologically.

The graphics in Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar are significantly better. Military star base from Dark Avatar (left) vs. original (right). And the new ones are more memory efficient.

The technology tree has been greatly streamlined. Gone are repetitive items in the tree like "Laser 1, Laser 2". Instead, technology groups are put together into a single item on the tree that's divided into milestones.

Asteroids are now in the game which can be mined. But the miners are not totally loyal. Make sure you control the space the mines are in or else they may defect! Moreover, decide carefully where to beam the resources from your mines. The further the target planet is, the fewer resources that get there.

Ship Design

Players can now use template ships as the basis of a design. Create a really cool ship? Save it as a template and use it in future games as the basis of new designs!

Ship Design is greatly enhanced thanks to having around 10X as many ship components to put onto ships as were available in the original.

The Effect of Super Abilities

Each civilization has its own unique super-ablity. And they're not afraid to use it. Here, "someone" has persuaded the Altarians to go to war with the Korx. Someone has the Super Manipulator ability...

The New Diplomacy

With Economic and Research Treaties in the mix, players who want to win without going to war have lots of new options.

The new treaties are immensely valuable. But they are very powerful too.

The Foreign Report screen is much more detailed about why civilizations like or don't like you.

Computer players put even more thought into who they should surrender to and why.

The New Warfare

The key to military victory in Galactic Civilizations II has been to keep an eye on what your opponents have on their ships. In Dark Avatar, this has been taken up a notch with the Starship Intelligence Report.

Pretty and useful. Keep track of what the AI has on its ships in style

Want to knock someone down but don't want to go to war? Send in your secret agents! They can disrupt an opponent's economy with them never knowing who did it. Of course, the same can be done to you...

Dark Avatar has a new combat system: Battles take place on a per weapon basis instead of all weapons being summed up into a single shot by a single ship. This makes ship design even more important and makes capital ships more valuable (but also more expensive).

The little Touches

Set where you want your ships to exit orbit at.

Get a pop up map for displaying territory using normal perspective.

Misc Screenshots

My Ranger class starship protects the home solar system.

Manage your military from a super zoomed out position in the abstract...

Or get really close to individual ships

A detailed report on your mining base (and an easy way to show how much better the graphics are than in the original GalCiv II).

Ships in orbit now really orbit on the map

Players now have the option to build not just the latest/greatest planetary improvements but older ones as well

[Get Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar]