I hang out on a lot of different websites and one of the things I have seen repeatedly come up is how people loathe the GalCiv2.com forums. They were very different in design from other forum systems.

In an attempt to try to improve that experience, we have re-written the underlying forum technology and re-designed the look to take some of the good points from other forums and our own technology and put them together.

Hope you like what you see.

I've shown friends my beta of Windows Vista and they love the clean look, the glass UI, the dark Start bar.

But I wonder how they'll feel about it say a month after they've been using it.  As I've begun to mess around with the betas more and more, the sexiness starts to wear off and my desire to personalize my experience for my own preferences returns.

What looks like glass at first starts to just be a bitmap that's at 20% opacity with a blur effect on it.  Sure, I can change the opacity or the color but essentially, from a customization point of view, Windows Vista is actually a step back from Windows XP in some ways in my opinion.  Even XP users could hack uxtheme.dll and apply hacked msstyles to their system.  This time, the story isn't quite the same. Now, at best, you'll have someone hacking bitmaps to replace the border and button PNGs/BMPs with another and even then, what do you do about things like Office 2007 which are literally hard-coded.

My prediction is that skinning, which has been steadily growing in popularity to the point of being mainstream (which has not been completely good news for skin sites -- as skinning becomes mainstream, cottage sites become less needed), will take a new turn with the demand increasing even further.

I think WindowBlinds and other Stardock programs will likely see real competitors because the demand for customization will grow much higher.

And I haven't even touched on Microsoft's gadgets which are definitely going to need third party help to be viable IMO.  As it stands now, the Microsoft gadget platform is in desperate need of third party attention to expand what developers can do easily so that worthwhile content can be made.  DesktopX 4 will likely step up to the plate when it's released but I think you'll see a whole cottage industry for that.

But what do you think? Do you think Vista will be good for skinning or do you think the cool, clean look of Vista will be enough?

Those of you with Object Desktop have probably noticed that there's been a lot of new updates to programs on Object Desktop.

So what's going on?  Object Desktop 2007 is the answer.  Stardock is about to release a new CD compilation of it's flagship product and in preparation for that, the individual programs of it are getting tweaked, updated, and in some cases overhauled.

After Object Desktop 2007 is released, public shareware versions will also be announced/released as well so that non-Object Desktop users can get a taste of what it can do.

Here are some of the highlights of what's being updated:

• Theme Manager 2.3 will be coming out with Object Desktop 2007
• IconDeveloper 1.3
• IconPackager 3.11 was just released on ODNT.
• DesktopX 3.2
• Keyboard LaunchPad 1.5
• Stardock Virtual Desktops 2.0

In addition, ObjectBar 2.0 will finally get its release in the next month or so now that more resources are available to finalizing the last bits of it.

Some of the updates are just tweaks and user-requests implemented. Others are more significant.  For instance, Keyboard LaunchPad 1.5 will allow users to set hot keys from the context menu of the program icon (which makes setting up programs much easier). 

The target release date for Object Desktop 2007 is later this month. Stay tuned.

Later this summer WinCustomize.com's forums will be totally re-imagined with an updated look, new organization, and more.

To get a sneak preview of what we have in mind, see the Stardock.com forums (linked below) to see how we are starting to organize things.

The Royale Vista WindowBlinds visual style is a combination of the long popular "Royale" skin but given some of the slickness of Windows Vista (I'd like to see a glass version myself too).

Created by .dobee. the skin has been downloaded by over 70,000 different users with over 50,000 of them in the past month.

The EU commission issued a $357 million fine for the period between last December and the end of lastmonth along with a continuing fine over nearly $2 million per day.

The fine was based on a 2004 ruling that required Microsoft to share information with comopetitors that develop workgropu server OSes as well as license parts out at a reasonable price. It also required Microsoft to unbundle Windows Media Player from the OS.

The EU has been frustrated with Microsoft's lack of progress and decided to take this to issue such harsh sanctions.

The EU considers Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior to be a grave threat that needs to be dealt with. If Microsoft were doing something less threatening, such as developing nuclear weapons to threaten competitors with, more patience would have been in order.

Microsoft was issued several milestone dates and Microsoft was slow to comply with the EU's requirements.  How this affects Windows Vista remains to be seen.

Little Whip wrote an article here that makes the argument that JoeUser.com has become a kind of "Democratic Underground". To back up her assertion, she points out that many long-time left-wing bloggers have slowly left JU and that many right-wing bloggers get a free pass on some pretty iffy left-wing bashing.

I do agree with her on part of her argument - that right wingers tend to look the other way when "one of their own" starts preaching to the choir. But I don't think that's a right-wing issue as much as it is a human issue, people will tend to give more latitude to those they tend to agree with on most issues.

I also don't agree with her with regards to the core of her argument -- JU being like DU.  There's a big difference: Democratic Underground does not allow conservatives to post or express themselves. It is against the rules there to post "non progressive" posts.  On JoeUser, anyone can post anything they want as long as they aren't personally attacking other individuals (who are not public figures).  We don't discriminate against left wing or right wing bloggers.

What I see instead is something that I think many suspect - that when left-wing ideology is confronted by those who disagree with them, the left-wingers will tend to flee the field because many of their core ideals do not hold up under intellectual scrutiny. That is, when pressed to actually back up their..feelings with facts and logic the left of center debater will eventually leave -- but not usually before going off on a hate-filled rant against the "racist, nazi, greedy scum that is the right."  

I believe that many left-of center debaters simply feel utter loathing towards those who disagree with them. At best, their opponents are ignorant, brainwashed or misguided. At worst they are vile, evil scum who should be exterminated like the vermine they are. At least, that seems to be the attitude they express (And I say this having observed this on many blog sites over the years).

That isn't to say that there aren't plenty of nasty, intolerant right-wing jerks on JoeUser or elsewhere. There certainly are. It's a difference between what is typical behavior and what is atypical behavior.  Whether the subject is taxes, the war in Iraq, welfare, poverty, the environment, you name it, I will normally see the right-winger at least attempt to argue their position with the left-winger just sitting there savaging public figures and eventually their opponents.  I have seen enough lengthy essays arguing for a right-of center point of view only to be followed by a left winger saying "Fuck you." or something to that effect. 

The pattern I see is that left of center people end up fleeing the field because their arguments and behavior alienate lurkers enough for them to jump in as well.  This happens to right-of-center people as well from time to time (a religious debate on JU and elsewhere can get pretty rough too). But it is much more common on left of center.

The other day I went back and looked to see if there was so sort of "bias".  Since I tend to be conservative on some issues (but very liberal on others -- which is another beef I have with many left of center people -- you are either 100% left or you are a right wing nut, I can be pro-choice, pro-environmental regulation, pro-civil unions for gays, and liberal on many other issues but if I support the war in Iraq or US foreign policy or lower taxes then pow, I'm a right wing nut) I wanted to see if there's a bias in what I feature.

And there is -- in favor of left of center people. Bloggers who write left of center blogs are far more likely than bloggers who are right of center to get their articles featured. It is just that right of center bloggers tend to outnumber left of center bloggers by 2 to 1 and more recently 4 to 1 to the point where I am forced to feature stuff like Col Gene's latest "Bush is the devil" blogs in order to get any left-wing points of view on the home page.  I think any reasonable person can observe that it's hard to deny that I'm really really having to reach out there to make sure the JU front page is somewhat balanced.

So what does this mean? My argument is that most left-of-center positions -- their ideology -- is based on feelings rather than logic and that writing, especially written debates, lends itself to conveying logic more so than feelings.  Written debate favors the person using facts, logic, and reason to bolster their position. It is anathema to the person who is relying on feelings, passion, and desire as their tools for social change.

Which isn't to say that all left-wing points of view are based on feeling and all right-wing points of view are based on logic. It only requires that one ideology have more positions based on logic for it to have a significant advantage.  Moreover, if the adherents to a particular ideology tend to be more inclined to use logic in their day to day lives (engineers, scientists, mathematicians, etc.) than using empathy (teachers, artists, etc.) then even if the issue is soemthign that both sides have facts to support their position, the person who is more used to making use of facts to form a position is going to have an advantage.

Do I wish there were more left-of-center people on JU? I do.  Do I get tired of "thatta-boy" type blog responses from right wingers? Definitely.  But I'm not sure what the soluton is other than for left-of-center people to become more tolerant of other points of view and become better at articulating and discussing their points of view rather than simply demonizing, ranting, and "feeling".  There are left of center people on JU who can do this, we need more.

They say the difference between a successful game company and one that is out of business is time.  At least, that's what the joke in the game industry is.

And there's a lot to be said for that.  There are a lot of problems in game development, particularly when doing a new game.  For example - turn over.

While developing Galactic Civilizations II, we had a couple people leave during the course of the project. It was all amicable, but you get big enough, turn over becomes a percentage.  Because we were so tight on time, we ended up taking people off Society and putting them onto GalCiv II.

So then GalCiv II gets done and we're left with one game team. So what can one do?

Paul K., who was our lead developer on Society, has also left in the past year.  When you have a company of 40 people, a few people are going to leave each year.  But some developers are not well equipped to handle the loss of even one person. 

At Stardock, our development strategy revolved around having a few incredibly good developers who are equipped with a lot of inhouse technology that allows one developer to do the work of many. So when we lose one developer, it is really tough.

So what this means is that we're hiring up people. But it's slow going finding the right people, particularly since we're based in Michigan which isn't a tech hub (it's a great place to live and work but it's not like say Dallas where there's a bunch of game studios coming and going).

So that's one of the things that's slowed down Society.  The other thing is the fact that GalCiv II has done not just a bit better than we thought but massively better.  Which begs the question of which projects should resources go to?

Stardock has on its plate 4 game projects:

1. Galactic Civilizatiosn and future expansions.
2. The Political Machine 2008
3. A fantasy strategy game
4. and Society

The Political Machine is a smaller project so that will essentailly be done by the GalCiv team.

But if we have a second dev team, which should it be? a fantasy strategy game or Society?

It wouldn't be the end of Society, it would just mean that it's developmetn would be slower (i.e. a later release date).  We are definitely going to do Society. The question is how fast we can develop it.