For users interested in knowing more about Windows Vista or for Vista users who are interested in sharing their experiences, a new website has been launched -- VistaBlogging.com.  This new site allows users to share their experiences with Windows Vista as well as providing specific Vista coverage that you may not find on more generalized websites.

Articles from VistaBlogging.com are automatically syndicated to WinCustomize.com, JoeUser.com and elsewhere and vice versa if they pertain to Windows Vista.

A video demo of Windows Vista has been posted to help get things started.

http://www.vistablogging.com

 

Today I made a short demo of using Windows Vista. Nothing fancy and admittedly, my live talking to myself demo skills are not particularly impressive. But hopefully you'll be able to get a general overview of Windows Vista.

Click the link below to view it.

The next video in the series will get into more of the meat.  Windows Vista isn't just Windows XP with new eye candy and some new utilities, so stay tuned to see some of the benefits of Windows Vista.

Also, if you want to make your experiences of Windows Vista public, you can read this post.

Screenshots:

 My Vista default desktop

Power Users will be happy with the resource monitor.

Now a universal benchmark for Vista machines. This will become a big deal I predict.

Personalization is both more and less powerful than Vista. We'll talk about more in the coming weeks.

No "skinning" this time around in Vista by default but users can change both the opacity and color of glass in Vista which most will likely prefer.

The new Start menu is a big improvement in most ways over XP's. Easier to find things, better organized, more professional looking.

...and now the video demo...

 

The website http://www.vistablogging.com has been set up so that users can give their own input and feedback on Windows Vista.

So how do you create your own articles for the home page?

1) You will need an account on WinCustomize.com OR JoeUser.com.

2) You will need to create an ARTICLE on one of those two sites and make it of type: Personal Computing ->Windows Vista (with one of the appropriate sub categories from there).

Some guidelines:

a) We reserve the right to remove articles for any reason.

Please make sure your articles look good. Check spelling, check layout. Don't put in giant screenshots (use thumbnails that point to full versions).

c) Make sure your articles are accurate and to the point.  Make them interesting and informative.

d) And have fun!

 

The install

Installing Vista is a breeze. We pretty much expect nice installs at this point. Put in CD, press a button, and go away for awhile and come back when it's done. Which is what I did.

Welcome to Windows Vista

The first thing you're going to experience when you get into Windows Vista is that it will do a lengthy and thorough analysis of your PC's performance. The idea is for it to determine just how fast your PC is so that it can tune your experience.  But what Microsoft has done with the Vista performance analysis is pretty ingenius. When it's all said and done, you get a number. That's your rating. And that rating can have far reaching consequences.  One can picture a future where games might say "PC rated at 7 or better" rather than a myriad of hardware requirements.  The best ideas are often the most obvious in hindsight.  My Windows Experience Index is a 4.0 on the laptop (processor is a 4.7 but graphics area  4.0).

 

Those drivers

When you first boot up, it'll begin trying to find drivers for the various devices you have on your computer. This will likely mean sticking in a lot of CDs and hoping they work. I was a little disappointed that more support isn't already in at this stage. My ThinkPad T60's finger print reader wasn't supported for instance.  The Verizon wireless modem wasn't supported.

Living in Vista

One of the reasons to upgrade to Vista is that it's the closest thing to Windows idealized as we've ever gotten. It's a thousand little things that, when combined, make Windows a much better experience. Better dialogs, better usability, and so forth. It's just a much more pleasant environment.

One nice little touch, for example, as a power user is that when I bring up the task manager, it hides all the system processes.  You can see them all with a friendly button called Show processes from all users but for every day use, the task manager is finally useable again.

One thing that annoyed me a bit is that it didn't automatically bring up a list of wireless networks to choose from. So I had to go and set that up manually.

Installing my stuff

At this stage, it's time for me to start installing my stuff.  One of the first things I notice is that most installer dialogs of programs I use are not fully styled by Vista (i.e. have classic buttons).  I'm so used to using WindowBlinds (which skins everything) that it's a bit jarring to see anything using classic buttons.

One of the first programs I install is Multiplicity for Windows Vista. I use Multiplicity because I can then control my XP desktop, my XP laptop and now my Vista laptop from a single keyboard and mouse. It has a single clipboard between the machines so I can quickly copy and paste files and other things to the Vista machine and in turn copy and paste screenshots and such to my XP machine that already has PhotoPaint installed for tweaking photos and then pasted again to my other XP machine where I am using Front Page to write this article....there we go.

JoeUser.com is going to get a major makeover next year.  Right now, WinCustomize.com is getting the treatment (WC 2K7 won't show up until end of this year).  But we have some thoughts on the direction JoeUser.com should take:

 

1. Automated side-bars. You can make a given blogger your friend and quickly see what sorts of things they've been up to on the site.
2. Photo albums. Mini photo-albums (up to 6 pictures).
3. Automated home page. Based on the insightful/interesting points, the ones that get the most points in a given time frame will get auto-featured.
4. A "real" home page for each blogger. So a Draginol.JoeUser.com would not just be the latest blogs written out but a page that you can put links onto, allow friends to talk to each other on, let you feature other people's blogs and articles, and so forth.
5. A JoeUser.com today page that will let people quickly browse everythign that's been going on the site in a single glance. Users will be able to organize this by topics (like politics, technology, etc.) or just have the latest articles from your friends show up (Effectively subscribing to the blogs created by your friends).

My comparison to MySpace is somewhat in jest. JoeUser.com will focus on allowing people to express their opinions and then enabling those opinions to get out there so that others have a chance at reading them.  That remains the crucial advantage JoeUser.com has -- what you write here actually gets read by people as opposed to the typical blog that no one will ever see or, that only a handful of friends will see. (go onto Google type "Owens Corning Basement System Review" and you'll see what I mean). 

The site will be rebuilt using .NET technology so that speed and reliabily should go up.  Hopefully people have noticed that JU is a lot faster and more reliable than it was a year ago.

Stardock's goal with JoeUser.com will be for the site to act as a hub for article writing on any number of subjects and that those articles can then be syndicated to the proper subsites that feed back and forth.  And of course, to also be my blog site where I can dispense with my right-wing technology oriented claptrap.

Some people have expressed dissatisfaction with the forums but I think they'll be happier in the next week or so as the forums continue to be enhanced based on feedback with new browse modes.

Stay tuned.

Computer Games On-Line takes a sneak peek at the upcoming expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations II called "Dark Avatar".

In Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar players confront an expanded universe after the defeat of the Dread Lords. Asteroid fields can now be mined, covert operations as a means of warfare appear, new types of treaties show up and of course tons of new features, new ship types, new planets, new maps, etc. come into play.

Check out the Q&A interview at CGOnline to learn more.

I haven't had problems editing posts from the forum but I am testing again to be sure.

 

Editing from forum. 

This is going to be part one of a two part article that talks about what the War on Terror is about and how it got started.

Every so often I'll see a book or read an article that either asks "Why do they hate us?" or asserts how "we" squandered the "good will" that the United States had right after 9/11.

When I get into debates with people on these subjects the main problem I run into is that many people - on both sides of the debate - are appalling unfamiliar with history -- even recent history. 

Let's start with a look back at the 90s.  Right after the terrorist attack in New York there were a number of commentaries that argued essentially that we had it coming because of our "foreign policy".  When pressed, these people could rarely point to anything concrete. Instead, you got ridiculous "bad karma" like arguments like "Didn't pass the Kyoto accords" (as if that was what caused 9/11).

The reality is, US foreign policy in the 90s was nothing short of heroic. If you felt US foreign policy in the 90s somehow justified the attack on 9/11 then I humbly submit that you are insane.  Let us recap US foreign policy in the 90s:

• The United States puts together an international force including Muslim states to roll back the unprovoked conquest of Kuwait. The US returns Kuwait to its recognized government and leaves only a US air base in Saudi Arabia in order to help implement the No-Fly zone.
• Why did we have a No-Fly zone? Because Saddam was butchering Kurds in the North and Shiite Muslims in the south. The no-fly zone was there to help protect Muslims.
• The US sends forces to Somalia to help deliver food to starving people. Local warlords, wanting to use that food to build their own vile little power base fight against US troops resulting in the infamous Black Hawk Down incident.
• US helps Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo against "ethnic cleansing".  Despite being located in Europe, the United States provided the vast bulk of aid.

This is just a sampling.  Meanwhile, Al Qaeda, a terrorist organization that is part of the Islamic Fascism movement plots during the 90s on how to destroy the WTC.  It was during the 90s that Al Qaeda made several attacks on US interests including the embassy bombings, the first WTC attack, and the USS Cole.

So anyone who somehow thinks that US behavior in the Middle East made us "deserve" 9/11 is just nuts.

Next, let's look at the argument that we "squandered" good will after 9/11.  What good will was there actually? Le Monde saying "We are all Americans now?"  France's response was to send a trivial number of special forces to Afghanistan.

Let's be clear here: For the past 50 years, the United States had been spending billions of dollars and stationing hundreds of thousands of soldiers in Europe to defend Europe as part of its NATO obligation.  The United States is brutally attacked, the source of the attack is identified, the country they are in located, and the regime supporting them determined. And what did the other nations of Europe do (other than UK - they rock)? Not a lot. They sent some troops but as a percentage of their forces or what they were capable of doing? Not very much.  50 years, trillions spent defending Europe and we get attacked and a trickle of forces from NATO are sent to Afghanistan.  What good will? Momentary sympathy is not good will.

So why do people make such erroneous assertions that the US could somehow, realistically have avoided 9/11? Or that the US foreign misbehavior is somehow responsible? Or that the rest of the world was on our side but was squandered because of Iraq (which occurred two years later -- plenty of time to see "good will" translated into actionable will).

The answer I believe is that most people do not understand what the war on terror is about. Some people play semantical games ("You can't defeat a form of warfare")  Some try to cloud the issue by arguing there really is no war, just American right-wing hysteria.  But the truth is, the war on terrorism is a war on a particular ideology that is located in a specific area of the world.  And that we'll get into in part 2...

A thread over at the Democratic Underground asks what makes you proud to be an American.  The answers provide an answer as to why so many people have doubts about the patriotism of the left.

With the 2008 election starting to loom (unfortunately) the Republican line up for President is not looking very promising. It looks a lot like 1996.

Let's look at the likely leading candidates:

• Rudy Giuliani. Unelectedable. A social liberal Republican cannot get the electoral votes to win.
• John McCain. Probably not electable. Right wing turn out won't be sufficient if there's a strong Democratic candidate.
• Newt Gingrich. Low charisma. He would probably be an excellent President but being President today sadly is mostly about things besides qualifications.

So I'm not sure who the Republican are likely to put upt but it's not looking promising.