Thanks to a new hack, PC users can now run the beta of MacOS X for X86 on their standard PC.  The first set of hacks required the user to run it via VMWare.  But apparently newer hacks allow it to run as a regular operating system on a regular old PC.

Users of X86 MacOS have observed that the OS runs significantly faster on the X86 platform than on the PowerPC platform.  There have been numerous explainations offered for why this is the case.

The fact that the hack exists already raises questions over the future of MacOS.  It will be difficult for Apple to price their Mac-PCs at a premium if their OS runs just fine on a Dell or HP box.  What has traditionally made the Macintosh "special" is its usability features -- the complete package.  The Mac has had a certain mystique that is likely to be harmed if users perceive that the Mac is really just an OS that can run on any old hardware.

Last month is usually the slowest month of the year for skinning, but some skinners were in over-drive last month.  Here are some highlights of top skinners.

#1 Pixtudio.  Pixtudio's release of Sputnik really helped propel the classic skinning team back to its #1 perch.

#2 JJ Ying. JJ Ying's been a skinning madman and was nearly #1 overall thanks to his strong advocacy score. JJ Ying's incredible work such as with Star Wars cursors and TargetWB were outstanding.

#3 Adni18 stayed near the top.  Not as active in July as he's been in the past. His Vista-1 wallpaper was enough to keep him in the top 3 and his Omega 13 WindowBlinds skin released in June was still going strong.

Thank you guys for your excellent skins and themes!

 

Half the fun of a next-generation console comes from the furious rumormongering that precedes its arrival, and the Microsoft Xbox 360 has been no exception. But with the Xbox 360's release date now only three months away, it's time to revisit the platform and see which rumored features have been confirmed, which have been shot down, and which remain firmly in the realm of speculation.

These days, we are so divorced from the concept of barter and trade that we easily overlook that the entire customer/shop relationship is really just a specific type of trade.  At the end of the day, we are all still bartering, still trading.

When someone buys something from a shop, they are trading one thing for another -- money for a product or service.  In a sense, both parties are "Customers".  This realiziation -- that both parties are customers -- had pretty much died by the late 20th century thanks to the rise of mass consumerism and retail businesses.  The 20th century brought us the phrase "the customer is always right".

The 21st century, I suspect, will return people to the realization that being a customer is a two-way street.  Anyone thinking differently need only look at the terms of service of World of Warcraft, for instance.  In that, Blizzard can revoke your service at any time should you violate any of their rules.

WinCustomize operates much the same way.  Not often, but occasionally, a user will aggravate us to the point where we'll forcibly refund them.  Or looked at from another point of view, we demand a refund from the customer.  That is, we demand they stop using our service and hand back the money they paid to use it. 

Such an instance came up today and motivated me to write this.  They believed, wrongly, that simply because they had purchased a WinCustomize subscription that they had the right to comment and post on the forums.  That is not the case at all.  When someone purchases a subscription they are trading money for a very specific set of services -- unlimited bandwidth use, a personal page, the skin browser, etc.  Being able to post on the forums or make comments is related to one's user access (click on any profile and you will see that there is Access class and User Level.  They are distinct. 

This particular user had lost his posting priviledges due to repeated (and I mean REPEATED) instances of abusive behavior on the forums and news.  He was in the process of getting back his access (we generally give second chances to users who have contributed to the various skin libraries here) when he started emailing us personally with various demands including removing all his skins/themes/etc.  At which point he got his wish but lost his "second chance".  And at that point, having tired of his personal attacks in email, I decided we'd "Refund" him his WC subscription and exile him so that we wouldn't have to deal with him.

The point being, being a customer is a two-way street.  When you buy something, you are making a specific trade. Typically money for a very explicitly listed set of goods and or services.  Too often, especially on-line, people think that their exchange of money implicitly gives them the right to behave rudely.  Such is not the case.  And just as a customer is inclined to demand a refund for payment towards a service if the provider is repeatedly rude to them, so to can the service provider terminate the relationship with the "customer".

The September issue of Computer Games Magazine has a pretty good preview of Galactic Civilizations II and the direction we're going.  It should be at a newstand in North America right about now.

WinCustomize and Neowin have teamed up to produce PowerUser.TV, a technology-focused podcast with the power user in mind. Hosted by Kristin Hatcher, the show will cover topics of interest to the tech user. Shows will consist of three segments of 9-12 minutes per segment, and will air every Friday. The show will cover everything from A to Z in the tech world, an will also contain exclusive interviews with the movers and shakers of the personal computing world.

Links:
View: PowerUser.tv Homepage
View: iTunes Subscribe link

Ever taken a "purity" test? I did in college and they're kind of a fun party game.  They tell you how..pure or impure you are.  It's on a scale from 0 to 100 with 100 being most pure and 0..well if you scored a 0...yikes!

So here's the test, feel free to post your results.  I'll post mine shortly.

WindowBlinds 4.6 is now available for registered users of WindowBlinds as well as for Object Desktop users.  The shareware version will be available next week. Version 4.6 includes a host of new features including glow effects for title bar buttons, new shellstyle and other support for easier msstyle translations, performance tweaks, and a fix for Internet Explorer 7 beta users (painting issues).

Use Stardock Central to get the latest version of WindowBlinds.

Jark is my friend.  He's been my friend for a long time.  I'm unhappy about the situation with deviantART.  Jark (Scott Jarkoff) and his friend Matteo (Matt Stephens) founded deviantART back in 2000.  The site was started with the help of Angelo Sotira (Spyed) as well but I don't think it's accurate to say Spyed is a co-founder of deviantART any more than it is accurate to give the CEO of say Ziff-Davis the co-founding credit of every magazine they publish.

deviantART, especially when it was launched, was a truly unique experience and its uniqueness put it on the path that has led to where it is today.  And about a week ago, the company that owns deviantART fired Jark without giving any sort of public explanation.  I don't think that's acceptable.  Jark deserves better than that.

Let me tell you the kind of friend Scott Jarkoff is.  Let me tell you about the man he really is.  He's a man of principle. A man of strong moral character.  He is not the kind of person who becomes paralyzed by shades of gray.  He doesn't worry about "appearances".  He worries about what is right and what is wrong. And he takes stands on things based on what he believes in.

Jark is a man who doesn't just say things that sound ethical and moral. He does things that are ethical and moral. He is a man of action.  Let me give you two examples where, at risk to himself, took a strong stand to help his friend (me in these cases) because he thought it was the right thing to do.

Example 1: The GUI Olympics

The first example took place in 2002.  We had put together this inter-website contest called the GUI Olympics.  And I fully admit that we at Stardock were incredibly naive in the way we had set it up. I say that because to help create a sense of equality and paternity, each member site was allowed elect a judge to represent their site without those sites having to have put in any real effort into the contest. As a result, they didn't really have a vested interest in hoping the contest was successful.  Stardock, in its naivete, had basically created a giant-give away to "the community" skin sites without really getting anything substantial in return. 

Stardock, which had come up with the contest, organized it, was paying for the contest and running it would have 3 judges. Each participating site would have one judge.  The rules for the contest were posted from the onset.

Over the course of weeks, Stardock burned the midnight oil to build an independent skin site (the GUI Olympics website) to host the contest and provide a place for judging.  Once it was done and as it was about to begin, a number of the sites started objecting that Stardock (gasp, a commercial company) should have so many judges. They insisted that Stardock be given 1 vote (so it would have 1 vote in 9).  Nevermind that the prize money given out was split between the skinners and the sites and therefore their demand would, in effect, create the potential for collusion -- a couple of sites could get together and potentially rig the judging so that skinners representing their sites would win. And nevermind that Stardock was the one paying for the whole thing.  And ignore that Stardock was the one running the contest (coding the sites, doing the database work, moderating, etc.).  They also demanded a host of other changes including changes to the rules, changes to how the skins would be displayed, etc.  Mind you, they made these demands right before the contest was about to start.  And bear in mind, they demanded this despite their only contributions to the contest being judging the skins -- not exactly a sacrifice. And for that they'd be receiving part of the $10k in cash and prizes being handed out by us along with links back to their sites.  And on top of all the other demands, they also insisted that skin authors not have their names publicly displayed until after the contest -- which would have essentially killed the contest since public recognition is a major factor for skinners. 

For those of us who were working 70 hour weeks trying to get this thing going, the idea of going back and making these changes along with what we thought were obvious conflict of interest issues in allowing the sites who would be receiving money having so much say over how the prize money would be handed out was appalling.  During the course of it, I was called all kinds of names and made to look like I (personally) was out to "Screw over" skinners (how having a contest with cash and prizes can be turned into a "Screw skinners" thing is beyond me but that's what got spread).

But Jark alone of the major skin sites rejected their demands.  Jark took the position that it was our contest to run as we see fit and if they didn't like the way we were running our contest they should get off their asses and run their own contest (which, incidentally, none of these sites ever did).  And in fact, only Skinbase and deviantART via Jark stood up to the other sites.  As a result, the "committee of rule changes" fell apart since as a practical matter, by 2002 WinCustomize and deviantART represented the lion's share of the skinning community and as long as we had Jark's support, the contest could go forward.

The easy path would have been to ride the bandwagon. After all, the "committee" had made themselves out to be the saviors of poor exploited skinners and Stardock was the big bad corporate overlord.  But he took the harder path even though he had to disagree with other on-line friends and do what he thought was right.

Example 2: The TGT Soft incident

The second example came two years later.  It was a week before Christmas 2003 and software developer TGT Soft had demanded that it have the right to use the IconPackager .iptheme format we had created without having to license it from us so that their program Style XP could compete against IconPackager without having to go through the trouble of getting people to create icon packages in any format they came out with or having to pay to host such icon packages.  When we refused to simply give them permission without some type of compensation, they filed a lawsuit against us demanding a court force us to hand over rights to the .iptheme format without any sort of licensing agreement.

A "company" site would probably go and play neutral.  But Jark took a stand.  He condemned TGT Soft and refused to post any more news on them (Betanews.com and Neowin.net have done likewise).  But Jark was the first to do so and deviantART -- run by Jark -- was the only website to publicly condemn what many felt was the corporate equivalent of ripping. 

And I've been thinking of these incidents and countless like them in which Scott Jarkoff displayed a level of integrity and nobility that goes beyond anything one could ever expect in a single human being.  And while I cannot hope to match Jark's integrity, I can try to match his loyalty.  And therefore, I will publicly state this -- on behalf of Stardock Corporation, its shareholders, and Stardock's affiliated websites and partner websites (which are more than most people are probably aware of), we urge the company deviantART, Inc. to settle with Scott Jarkoff in a fair and reasonable manner.  We urge the company deviantART, Inc. to put together a fair and accurate history of deviantART that is created as a collaborative effort between Angelo, Scott, and Matt.  We urge deviantART, Inc. to reinstate Jark with a new "Founder" access class (or better) pending a formal settlement.   We urge deviantART to acknowledge the importance that Jark played in the creation of deviantART.  There would be no deviantART without Jark and to strip someone of their creation in such a way is not right. If both parties can't work together, it should be handled with delicacy and sensitivity.

By doing these things, we believe that deviantART can avert permanent damage to the community we care so much about and to the very valuable good-will that it has built over the past 5 years.  We care very much about deviantART and its success and we hope that the company that owns it and Jark can find a way to settle things amicably.

DesktopGadgets.com is nearly ready to launch.  Gadgets have been discussed quite a bit around here.  The only program currently available that allows you to create gadgets is DesktopX Pro.  Gadgets are like widgets except that they are true stand alone programs.  You can send them to anyone running Windows 2000, XP, or Windows Vista (and in many cases Windows 98/ME) and they'll run.  With DesktopX Pro, users have the option of taking their widgets and exporting them as gadgets.

But one need not be a software developer to enjoy gadgets.  For example, last night I took some pictures my mother had sent me and quickly turned them into gadgets that I could send back to her.  Now she has pictures of her grandchildren sitting on her desktop (not as a wallpaper but as a gadget that she can move around the screen).  One of our IT guys whipped up a quickie gadget to have it run a batch file when a certain number of bad email messages are in the bad email queue (to keep disk space from running out on that server).  It's a lot easier to make gadgets than it is to create traditional stand-alone programs.

For a very limited time only (next 20 days or so) Stardock is offering a $40 discount on DesktopX Pro to Object Desktop users.  So instead of it costing $69.95 it only costs $29.95.  But this is only for a limited time. 

If you have Object Desktop, GO HERE TO GET IT