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.

Each week I participate on a podcast called PowerUser.TV.  There's a lot of banter and for most listeners, I think the banter is the draw. But some people don't like all the banter and joking around and wish we'd "edit it".

In fact, we do edit it a lot. A LOT.  Yesterday we recorded the show that will show up on Monday (you can listen to the shows at PowerUser.TV).  Below are two examples (of many) of what got edited out (transcript):

Kristin: So Derek, were you there when your son was born?

Derek: Yep. It was a real miracle of life type of thing.

Kristin: Yea. How about you Brad, were you there when your sons were born? You cut the umbelical coord and that?

Brad: Oh definitely. I mean, I might as well have, I already had the scapel in my hand from doing the appeasiotomy.

Kristin: Oh my god. Oh god. You did what?

Brad: Well yea, I needed lots of room to get in there to pull him out. Though I did have problems, I used to wear this big metal watch..

Kristin: Oh god!

(cut)

(edited out piece #2)

Kristin: So yea, Brad and I were walking near the building, you know talking about "marketing stuff" or whatever and Brad sees a snake and picks it up.

Brad: Yea, it was just a little gartner snake.

Kristin: Yea, and the thing is trying to bite him and Brad's taunting it because it has no teeth.

Brad: Yea, though it did pee all over me.

Kristin: Yea, that stuff smelled pretty bad.

Brad: Yea, but on the bright side you got that golden shower.

Kristin: Oh god, you're sick.

Brad: Hey, you shouldn't have touched my snake.

Kristin: You die now. (muffled sounds of beatings)

Kristin: I'd like to introduce our new panelist, Jose who will be taking the place of Brad.

Jose: Buenos Dias.

..

Each week, we record about 70 to 90 minutes of stuff of which 20 minutes gets taken out. Usually stuff that was too offensive or silly or just crazy to keep in there.

We have updated the main Stardock forums to have the new forum look and feel.

You can see the entire forum tree by going to https://forums.stardock.com/ 

The updated GalCiv II forums would essentially be a skinned version of that which focuses on the GalCiv II topics.

I want to create a news item that lists some of the better GalCiv II mod/talk sites that people may not be familiar with.

If we can put together a list here, I'll create a news item highlighting them.

Here's one:

http://www.forum.startrekgc2.net/

We're back from vacation and we finished up on the 1.1 recalc - including betas - today.  Sorry it took so long, these things have to be done with some care and we wanted to make sure it was done right.

The scores on the Metaverse are calculated as the total number of scores / the square root of number of games submitted.

I.e. 10,000 points played in 36 games would be 10,000 / 6.

The value of each game does decrease in value slightly each month in order to reward currently active players but the decay is fairly gradual.