So let's put all recriminations aside about what Clinton did or Bush did.  What should be done, if anything, about North Korea?

Eugenia from OSNews.com has written a lengthy but interesting article on the state of operating systems tehse days.

She writes:

In the '80s we had at least 6 operating systems that had a good hold of market share each (e.g. AmigaOS, Mac, DOS, GEM, GeOS, Unix flavors). In the '90s we had Windows and Windows NT, Mac, DOS, OS/2, Linux, AmigaOS, BSD, other Unices and even BeOS, all with some considerable usage share (before Windows 9x got to its 94% of market share and get declared monopolistic). Along with those, you had a gazillion other small, embedded, academic or hobby OSes. We are talking about a few hundrend of them.

Today, it's the game of the three, plus about 10 more OSes that draw some minor only attention by the media: BSDs, QNX, Symbian, SkyOS, Zeta/BeOS, Solaris, Windows Mobile, PalmOS and some even smaller ones, like VxWorks, Syllable, MenuetOS etc. Overall, I would't say that there are more than 40-50 active or noteworthy OS projects/products out there today. That's a far cry from the hundrends that existed in the '80s and '90s.

And I have to agree with her. The excitment of the 90s is over.  Where is an OS/2 2.0 where you need it? Or the AmigaOS? MacOS X and Windows continue to evolve but there's nothing revolutionary in either one. Both seem content to snap up third party ISV ideas and toss them into the OS.

America Online is expected to launch an Internet phone service in the United States next month, leapfrogging rivals in a fast-growing market as it seeks to evolve from an also-ran provider of dial-up Internet access to a broadband services powerhouse.

Like Yahoo and Microsoft, AOL already offers voice chat on PCs as a free feature of its instant messaging services. AOL's new phone service, by contrast, will take a different path, charging customers a monthly fee to make calls over the Internet using an ordinary handset and a small analog-to-digital telephone adapter.

Read more from the below link.. (hat tip to Neowin.net)

Our friends at deviantART are setting up website summit this summer (June 17, 18). It is something I hope to attend this summer too. deviantART has long been a friend to the skinning community and has grown from a being..well deviant to dominating the on-line art-scene.

You'll be able to meet thousands of people from the deviantART community (many of whom are WinCustomize users as well). Visit the link below to find out more.

JoeUser is not just slow but it's been flakey lately. It's been very frustrating for me to deal with that.

The site's traffic has increased considerably in just the past few months. From 120,000 visitors in November to 160,000 already in February.

But that's not what's causing the problem. It's WinCustomize which shares the same databases as JoeUser.com. Its traffic has climbed from 10.2 MILLION visitors in November to almost 17 MILLION so far this month in 24 days.

But it's not like the hardware as doubled. In fact, it hasn't changed at all. Hence our problem.  And since JoeUser.com's free, it doesn't get the priority I'd like it to get.  But it IS being worked on.  The new forums are much faster than the old ones and they are being updated on a regular basis.  But it'll probably be quite awhile before the main site is updated.

Instead, what's goign to happen is that we will soon have a WinCustomize subscription drive to try to buy some mroe hardware for WinCustomize. This will take some of the strain off of JoeUser. But I do share your frustrations about the site being slow. 

In the nearn near term, the IT guys are working on reliability.  Little "bugs" that don't affect site stability at traffic level X start to bring things crashing down when traffic level Y is met. So they're fixing that which will hopefully also improve performance some as well.

The most visual change in DesktopX 3 over its predecessors is that when the user double clicks on the DesktopX icon, they will be presented with a clean, easy to use, interface.

The beauty of DesktopX has traditionally been that it makes it easy to create really cool stuff. That has also been its problem too. DesktopX tightly integrated its development environment with the user environment. The net result is that the poor guy who just wants to put a neat CPU meter on their desktop or a really nice drive object on their desktop had to also mess around with the development environment. And no matter how simple the DesktopX development environment is, it's still a developer's environment.

This also allows us to provide more options for users.  The run-time version of the program (DesktopX Client) is only $14.95 (about half what other commercial widget enablers provide and has far more features). The full blown DesktopX will be $24.95 but also comes with Object Desktop.  With that version, users will be able to mold their own desktops to their own desire, make widgets, etc.  And then there's DesktopX Pro which introduces gadgets -- the next evolution of widgets. Widgets require the widget enabling program to be installed. Gadgets are truly stand alone. In fact, the DesktopX 3 UI is a gadget.

Popular plugin author AndreasV has released Avedesk 1.2. It's a program that started out as a way of running ObjectDock docklets on the desktop (called desklets(. But it's evolved into so much more.

Version 1.2 is donation-ware but still free to use. It now supports themes (put desklets together and save your configuration) along with a host of usability features to make working with desklets easier.

Every few months a firestorm wages on WinCustomize.com. The site hosts thousands of pieces of artwork in the form of skins, themes, icons, wallpaper, etc.

And some people can give a star rating to a submission (1 through 5 starS)

On the one hand, often times the skinners (the ones who create the content) have a problem with the whole rating thing. Usually skinners whose works get below 3 stars. Solutions such as eliminating anonymous ratings have been proposed over the years.  Of course, what many would like to see is the elimination of ratings entirely.

And on the other hand, users very much want the ratings. And in fact plenty of users find WinCustomize to be full of "garbage" because we don't moderate very much content. People are free to upload their half-baked skin and unless it's totally broken or really horrendous it's made available. So the casual user finds themselves wading through a lot of stuff they don't like. This hurts the site and the ones who pay for the bulk of the site's costs -- Stardock.

So WinCustomize.com doesn't want to offend skinners but doesn't want to casual users to have to wade through sub-par stuff.

That's where the rating sytsem comes in.  Only users who have contributed to WinCustomize.com (by getting a subscription or having elite access through their works over time) are allowed to rate skins. So most people can't rate skins.  Moreover, the higher the access, the more the rating is weighted.  So if an admin rates a skin, it is weighed far more heavily than a level 1 user who has a subscription.  This way, those who have spent a lot of time doing this and have seen thousands of skins and themes and icons and wallpapers can make a relatively objective rating. 

The second part of the rating system is that those who are not logged on won't see skins,themes, etc. that have 2 stars or fewer ratings. If they log on, they can see it all. Eventually we hope to have per-library rating filters that users can set.

It's a tough thing. The desire to keep everyone happy is an impossible task. Many people who get 2 star ratings or 3 star ratings are simply unaware that perhaps they need to work on their skin. I regularly will go through the galleries and if I see a skin or theme with a rating that seems way too low (or way too high) I'll check the ratings to see if it's being manipulated. It happens. But the reality is, the average skin is a 2.5 star skin which means most skins hover around 2.5 to 3 stars (including my own stuff).

At the end of the day, the skinning community has to realize that it's a symbiotic relationship.  We all need each other.  We need the users AND the skinners. And we can't placate one without alienating the other. So we have to reach a compromise. The rating system is that compromise.  The alternatives -- not allow anything but the very best on would tick off skinners. Or let everything be on with no ratings would make the site unwieldly to use.

iTrip is a gadget that connects fairly seamlessly to your iPod. What it does is allow you to play your iPod music on an FM radio.  You set the station with your iPod and if you tune in your radio (that is within several feet) to that station you can listen to what's on your iPod.

I've used a number of these things in the past and this is by far the best one (the Belkin TuneCast II, for instance is total crap).

ITrip is ideally suited for the iPod because a) It connects right up to it, it gets its power from the iPod and c) It can be programmed from the iPod.

The only reason I didn't find it all I had hoped for was the general issue of FM tuners in the first place.  Skipping a song, which I tend to do in my car, is easier than messing around with an iPod (and safer).  But where the Ipod really shows off its goodness is with books on tape and the like. You can fit a lot more on an iPod than what you can fit on a CD.

Still, it would be nice if more cars came with CD players that could read MP3 CDs. Then I could jam a bunch of songs onto a single CD.  But in the meantime, if you have ever wanted to listen to your Ipod on a real radio, this is by far the best option I've found.