Gamespot has a preview of Stardock's upcoming PC strategy game, Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords.  It's the sequel to the award-winning, best selling strategy game of the same title (Galactic Civilizations) released in 2003.  In Galactic Civilizations II, players take on the role of leader of an interstellar civilization (play as leader of humanity or one of 9 other alien races). 

For WinCustomize users, what you may find interesting is that the entire user interface is created with DesktopX. That is, the screens directory is literally dozens of .dxpacks.  To make use of DesktopX in a state-of-the art PC strategy game, a DirectX 9 based 3D engine was developed that then reads in the DXPacks and uses them that way.  For players, this means that they can "skin" the game itself simply by loading up the .dxpacks and moving them around.  The UI graphics are being done by Stardock's Paul Boyer (Mormegil).

The preview includes many screenshots in which you can see the UI in action as well as the game-play.  The final game won't be out until early next year.

VIEW: [Gamespot Preview]

Gamespot has a preview of Galactic Civilizations II up and going.  Definitely worth checking out!

NOTE: This is a hands on preview with lots of brand new screenshots. I.e. they played beta 3.

Early verdict: Combining the best elements of Galactic Civilizations & Master or Orion 2.

Whether you're a current subscriber or not, what features of a subscription would make you more likely to subscribe?

WinCustomize subscriptions are currently $19.95 which last 1 year.  After that year, a user can renew for $19.95 which provides 2 additional years.

Subscriptions currently provide:

• Access to the WinCustomize Premium Browser (program that is a front end to the overall site)
• Two premium suites
• Personal Pages (http://frogboy.wincustomize.com).
• Personal Photo album storage
• No advertismenets
• Unlimited use of download bandwidth
• Access to faster servers

What would be some good additions/changes to this do you think?

I cringe everytime I hear people yell about SUVs and their gas mileage. I was talking to a friend of mine in California who made some pretty...militant remarks about people who drive SUVs and their irresponsible behavior.  To which I said, "Wait, don't you commute an hour per day to work?" To which he said, "Well sure, but I drive a Toyota Corolla."  So what?

I don't care what kind of car you're driving, if you're driving over an hour (total) per day, you're burning a lot of gas. Some people have to drive that far and other people simply prefer to live out in the country.  And I have no problem with that.  But if you do live far away from work (or in the case of my friend simply have to drive through heavy traffic for long periods of time) then you can't go around condemning other people's car choices.

I don't have an SUV.  But I do have a car that only gets 18 miles to the gallon.  I also drive 6 miles to work and 6 miles home.  I spend about 20 minutes per day on the road -- total. 

The Corolla gets around 35MPG on average if you're driving it mostly in the city.  My friend drives about 25 miles each way, 50 miles per day.  So he burns 1.43 gallons of gas per day.  I burn 0.67 gallons of gas per day. Over the course of the year, he uses over 500 gallons of gas.  I use 243 gallons of gas -- less than half as much.

I don't care what kind of car other people drive.  But if you're going to take on a holier-than-thou attitude on fuel standards, then you better be factoring in your commute distance. 

Source

The people who blame global warming on CO2 emissions have a lot in common with the people who claim that intelligent design is a "theory". Which is ironic since they politically disagree on almost everything else.

Whenever I get into a discussion on global warming with someone in person, they are almost always, universally, completely devoid of first-hand knowledge on global climate history, other factors that can cause the warming and cooling of the earth.  They often sound, remarkably, like the people who come to my door trying to "save" me.  They refer to various unnamed "scientists" and "experts" who have told them what to think and therefore believe it. 

I can be talked into believing that the Earth's temperature has risen in the past several decades. But I am not convinced that it has anything to do with CO2 emissions.  There's very little evidence that the earth's atmosphere has warmed any measurable amount globally.  But surface temperatures are a different thing.  Urban sprawl and humans covering increasing percentages of the earth's surface with cement and other heat-sink materials could certainly create local increases in temperature.  Go into a city in the summer and you can definitely feel it. 

Incidentally, I'm not arguing that human habitation of the surface is causing global warming either.  I am saying that there may be other explanations to it -- if it's happening.  We are, btw, in an inter-glacial period.  That is, we are actually currently in an ice age. The earth is currently cooler than it has typically been when looking at the earth historically over the past 100 million years.

We simply don't know very much on global climate yet.  That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to decrease our impact on the environment. We should try to cut down all our impacts whether that be CO2 emissions, sulfur emissions, CFCs, etc.  But we shouldn't do it because of global warming.  We should do it because we simply don't know what impact it will have on the environment.

I've been working massive hours these past two weeks so I haven't had much time to pay attention to the Katrina situation.  From what little I've seen, it's incredibly tragic and my thoughts definitely go to the families and friends of those who are involved in that terrible situation.

It's also amazing to see how the situation brings the best and worst out of people.  I've read a lot of articles on the subject this evening and I'm just amazed at the vitriol and emotion involved on it.

I thought I'd chime my 2 cents.

There was an article called "Why are all the looters black?".  I'm not sure what the point of it is.  Okay, the looters featured on television have more pigment in their epidermis than I do.  On average, the men and women seen looting on television are genetically a mixture of around 75% African ("African-Americans" have, on average, quite a bit of European genes in them).  So, okay, what's the point? Is the argument that that genetic mixture is more prone to stealing? It is a commentary on culture? It doesn't really say.  What's the point?  It seems to me that those who are economically not capable of leaving are probably more likely to be of that genetic type because several hundred years ago Europeans decided to have slaves that were visually easier to identify and collaborated with African tribes who were willing to collaborate with them to sell them slaves.  In turn, having only been released from slavery only a bit over a century ago -- but still very restricted in rights and being at a severe disadvantage due to not having an intact family structure have tended to be poorer.  Thus, if it's mostly poor people left in devastated areas and most poor people are genetically predisposed to having more pigment (i.e. "being black") then yea, they're going to be the ones looting.

I could just as easily say "Why are so many of the looters male?" or "Why is so much of the violence there being done by men?" 

On a similar vein, there's "Why are so many corporate criminals, white?"  I'd argue that it's pretty much the same as above but in reverse.  Most wealthy people are white, therefore most criminals who are wealthy will tend to be white as well.

Then there are numerous posts making the rather absurd argument that somehow this whole mess is the result of the Federal government.  Please.  First, not to be unsympathetic but for better or worse, the people who didn't evacuate when they were told to evacuate bear some of the burden.  This didn't sneak up on us, we knew for days that a category 5 hurricane was going to hit the area.  Second, the mayor of New Orleans sucks. The city busses should have been evacuating people before the storm hit.  Third, the governor of Louisiana sucks.  Why didn't they have their act together?  Why wasn't the national guard activated in full before it hit?  There have been plenty of studies that said that a good hurricane hit would wipe out New Orleans because of its levies.  They had days to prepare.  It's not the federal government's job to wipe the asses of the state and local authorities. Blaming Bush (or Clinton or whoever) is asinine.  It's as bad as blaming the weather on them (which would be funny except there are people out there who blame them for the weather).

This situation isn't quite like the Tsunami and I doubt it'll get anywhere near the outpouring of support it did.  For one thing, there was plenty of warning about this one. I did watch the coverage just hours before it hit and there were people on Bourbon street having a "Hurricane party". Come on.  The other issue is how out of control the situation is.  Regardless of how much pigment the looters have, images of people looting, shooting at police, raping, etc. do nothing to instill sympathy. 

The violence and mayhem going on in what is left of New Orleans also helps drive home (to me) how biased the reporting in Iraq has been.  Look how quickly Americans can turn on each other in time of crisis and when there is a vacuum or order.  Is it really any shock that there's violence in Iraq?  It really demonstrates how pathetic the "insurgency" in Iraq must be.  They should send over some New Orleans looters and gang members to Baghdad to teach the "insurgency" how to conduct a proper uprising.

About a month ago, deviantART, Inc. let go founder, Scott Jarkoff (Jark) which came as a shock to the deviantART community.  This has created quite a rift in their community and in the skinning community in general.

This week, the CEO of deviantART, Inc. made a statement that, I think, gives hope that an amicable settlement will be found between Jark and the company that runs deviantART.com. 

The statement includes a great deal of recognition of Jark's contributions to the formation of deviantART and provides him with a new access class called "Founder". Whether the other outstanding issues (such as stock and other financially related items) can be settled remains to be seen. 

For those of you not familiar with deviantART, it is, in many respects, WinCustomize's sibbling. We have been friends with their staff and their community since the very beginning and so this whole thing has been quite upsetting to those of us in really live and breath this stuff.  Here's hoping they can resolve the other issues without too much legal issues.

I've spent the better half of a half hour trying to buy a song off of BuyMusic.com.  It's unbelievably, ridiculously over complicated.  The number of steps required to actually purchase a song off their awkward website is amazing.  Then, when it downloaded, it actually downloads a little EXE that installs it. It finishes with a "Listen now". But Listen now just opens the folder where it allegedly installed it (which I gave to sift through a gazillion files to find it).

THIS is why music sales aren't anywhere near as high as they should be.  I'd happily have gotten it at iTunes's Music Store except the song, Carmina Burana, isn't there.

Apolyton.net is an excellent strategy game community for people who are into 4X-style games.  It has some of the best coverage anywhere on the net of what's happening on 4X games.   Anyone that's interested in turn-based strategy PC games should definitely make sure to visit this site.

They've just launched their Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords section in which the latest news on the game is presented and independent discussions on the game can be held.

To give you an idea how good their coverage is on games, Apolyton is where we at Stardock went to find out what was the latest news on Galactic Civilizations. T