Terrorist Osama Bin Laden has ended speculation over whether he is alive or not with his new video that threatens more action against the United States.

The anti-war advocates made loud and vigorous claims that the United States would end up killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians if it invaded Iraq.  Others claimed that it would take years for the United States to defeat Saddam ("Iraq would be no Afghanistan") and ("The road to Baghad will be covered with American blood.").

And yet despite that, the American military crushed Iraq in a matter of a few weeks. Now, nearly 2 years later, fewer than 1,1200 Americans have died -- and that's counting both the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation and counting accidental deaths which represent a significant percentage of the deaths.

In addition, relatively few Iraqi civilians died in the process. One thing our troops learned during the invasion, if may recall, is that Saddam had vast VAST caches of weapons, ammunition, and explosives tucked around the country. He also had billions of dollars in cash tucked away across the country.  Coalition forces, having defeated the Iraqi forces in an amazingly short amount of time at a very low cost also managed to secure hundreds of thousands of tons of these caches and confiscate over a billion dollars of Saddam's cash.  All this in a matter of weeks.

And yet now, a week before election, the increasingly partisan American media and the Kerry campaign (And supporters) have latched onto the still iffy allegation that somehow looters walked off with 380 tons of ammunitions from one of those weapons caches I just mentioned. This represents a tiny percentage of the total caches captured mind you.  And moreover, that somehow, George W. Bush -personally- is to blame for this.

To me, this just sounds hysterical. Grasping at straws.  I recall in 2002 two guys in the Washington D.C. area putting the entire country into hysteria because they went around sniping people. 2 guys did that. During the Florida hurricanes there was wide spread looting.  During the Rodney King verdict, LA erupted into massive riots.  Do we blame our Presidents for these things? No. That's absurd. Yet somehow, almost by magic, it becomes the President's fault if (surprise surprise) there's looting in Baghdad in the aftermath of Saddam's fall from power. As if somehow, US forces, trying to take control of a country of 25 million people are supposed to be able to secure and maintain order over the entire population -- but without causing civilian and American casualties in the process.

This latest incident speaks to that seeming irrational thinking on the part of the Kerry supporters. I just..well it just sounds desperate. It's about as nutty as blaming the weather on Bush -- except that they blame that on Bush too.

In engineering, you create systems that will have a certain percentage of failure. In software development, for instance, a product is successful if it works on >99% of systems.  And most software products these days are lucky to be greater than 98%.  Yet, calling the administration and America's military incompotent (and let's be candid here, you can't blame the President on this one without blaming the military in Iraq as well) because <1% of the weapons caches in Iraq got botched is simply unrealistic.

The only reason this is a story at all, which is more telling than the story itself, is that this issue, now over a year old, happens to pop up a week before the election. Indeed, CBS was originally planning to run it Sunday night without very much research having gone into it.

Even now, we don't really know what happened. We don't know looters took the stuff away. The materials might have been taken away by US forces and not correctly inventoried. Saddam loyalists might have spirited them away while the US was busy pacifying Baghdad and sent them to Syria. No one knows really yet because not enough time has passed to give a thorough look at the situation.  All we know for sure is that in January of 2003 the exposives were there and in May 2003 when US inspection forces arrived they were gone (btw, for those arguing the incompotence case, bear in mind that the US inspection team did arrive pretty quickly after the war, this isn't stuff that was hanging around and got taken away this summer due to US troops having just left the place open -- things were pretty busy in early 2003 if you remember).

What we can say is that these things aren't being used against our troops at this point. The insurgents are much more in need of land mines, guns, ammunition, radios, RPGs. These are things that are not claimed to have been lost there.

In the end, it's not going to change minds. But it does demonstrate a certain level of irrationality on the part of Kerry supporters. That they'll cling on to anything. Anyone who has studied military history can tell you that all wars have set backs and blunders.  As one simple example, in World War II, US torpedoes didn't actually work for the first couple of years (they just whacked against the side of the ship and did nothing). Many thousands of Americans died in vain as a result.  Back then, being American meant a bit more than being a Democrat or a Republican so you didn't see massive outcry in blaming President Roosevelt for this.

Sometimes, when someone is making a bunch of very loud charges against someone else you learn more about the people making the charge than the target of those charges.

We ban griefers. We can even IP ban someone. But if someone really wants to get at a given blogger, they can via anonymous accounts.

For those of you who have blogs who feel like they're getting stalked by trolls and other jerks, you can stop them.

When you create an article, only allow registerd users to respond to your article. That way, you have some say over who can interact on your site.

It's important to keep perspective on your blog site - IT'S YOUR OWN BLOG. You don't have to put up with jerks coming on and trolling you. If you find yourself getting angry or upset about people's responses, don't despair. Just don't let anonymous users respond and if registered users are upsetting you, just add them to your black list archive.  Your blog is like having a room in a huge house. You have the right to decide who can come into your room. 

It's all about having fun. If you're a liberal and you feel like a bunch of "right wing kooks" are spoiling your writing with their responses, you can stop them. Same if you're a conservative and those "liberal nut cases" are bothering you. It's not about freedom of speech. THEY still have freedom of speech - on their own free blog where they can write.  On your blog, YOUR rights take precedence over the "rights" of people who would respond.

I black list people all the time from my blogs. Not because they disagree with me but usually because they just add angst and nastiness to the responses (or they spam for things). If you want your articles to be a debate about politics or computer hardware or whatever that's fine. But on the other hand, if you're writing about your job or your kids or a movie you saw, there's absolutely no reason you should feel like you have to allow some sad griefer to spoil your enjoyment.

A couple months ago I wrote why Bush may not get my vote. I'm still not thrilled with Bush but I do know I won't vote for John Kerry.  Some of my reasons for not supporting Kerry are straight forward philosophical disagreements on his views on foreign policy and his view of the role of the federal government. Others are less tangible.

So let me go through my reasons why I don't support Kerry:

1) I don't trust Kerry to be an effective leader in foreign policy.  Will Kerry see things through in Iraq or will he bail out as soon as it's politically expedient? Will he treat terrorism as a war or as a law enforcement issue? He hasn't made his position consistent on this.  In 1991, he voted against liberating Kuwait even though Bush Senior had a Security Council Resolution authorizing the use of force! I think that's a very telling insight of Kerry's view of America's role in the world. He doesn't trust US power.  He would prefer to see it channeled through the UN -- and even then only in the most dire situations.  And I don't trust the UN.  I think events have shown that it is a corrupt organization that cannot be trusted.  In short, I don't think Kerry would be an effective commander in chief.

2) Kerry would raise taxes.  If Kerry wins and gets his way, you can pretty much assume that JoeUser won't be a free blog site to the degree it is today.  Why? Because Kerry would raise taxes.  Taxes on those who make more than $200,000 per year.  That means LLCs and S-corporations which get filed under personal taxes would get taxed.  That money that goes to the government is money that isn't there to pay employees. Employees who do things like write ASP code for websites like JoeUser.com.  I think it would be a rotten economic plan for the country. Taxation is a drag on the economy. It's a necessary evil and raising it on one group but not everyone is class warfare of the worst kind.

3) Kerry seems excessively poll-driven.  I may not be super fond of Bush but I know where he stands on issues.  Kerry seems inclined to change his views based on the polls. Or he'll just say what people want to hear from moment to moment.  He wants an energy policy that moves the US onto renewable energy sources (20% by 2010 for instance). But how? It's just a warm fuzzy feel good position. I'm an engineer so I am interested in the mechanics of how a plan would actually be implemented.  Kerry doesn't support nuclear energy. And there is no other energy source abundant enough reach that goal other than nuclear energy. This is typical of his attitude - he doesn't really mean the things he says.

4) Kerry's health care proposals bug me. I am tired of paying for other people's health insurance.  I have a fundamental problem with the federal government confiscating earnings from its citizens to send over to other citizens. It's not a matter of compassion, it's a matter of personal responsibility. The federal government is not supposed to do this kind of thing.

5) I don't want to be on the side of haters. Too many of Kerry's supporters seem to be full of hate and anger. I don't want to be on the same side as Michael Moore or Susan Sarandon. Heck, I don't want to be on the same side as some of the lunatics I see on Democratic Underground or even some of the extremists I see here.

6) This is related to #5 but I fear that if the left wing loonies of the world are successful in this election they'll think they can influence elections and we can look forward to more Fahrenheit 9/11's and Moveon.org's and other such nonsense. We'll be assured that these fringe groups will be empowered. And we can be assured that every election is going to be full of pompous patronizing jerks making empty yet witty political statements every hour on the hour during the campaign cycle.

So these are some of the reasons why I could never support him. There are others that are more minor. I don't like how he turned 4 months of service in Vietnam into a centerpiece of his political career. I don't like that he's a political opportunist to an almost extreme level. Heck, I don't even like his wife.  But I might be able to deal with some of these things if those other 6 issues didn't exist.

In Galactic Civilizations II you will be able to play as any of the 10 major civilizations. OR you can create your own custom race to play as (pick out your own portrait, etc.).  So there will still be the sand box mode that was Galactic Civilizations.

But the sequel will include a campaign and in the campaign you do continue the story of humanity's rise into the galaxy.  Where Galactic Civilizations I started in 2178, the sequel begins in 2225. And where Hyperdrive was the center issue of galactic instability, this time around it's the rise of shield technology.

Thanks to the rise of hyperdrive, the Drengin Empire has made great gains throughout the galaxy and the humans must get together allies to help stop them.  But the Drengin have a huge head start on military build up. They have massively powerful disruptor based weapons that just rip through the armor of the ships of the other civilizations.

The humans, however, have a new invention: Deflectors. A basic shield technology that counters the disruptors quite well.  So while the humans have relatively few ships, they're able to rip through the vast hordes of Drengin fleets as humans also have Phasors in hand for battle.

But it won't be quite enough. There are just too many Drengin ships. The humans will have to put their diplomatic skills to the test as they bring new allies on board through the campaigns to fight the Drengin menace.

What's worse, there are rumors that the Drengin are actually fighting on a second front in a distant part of the galaxy. The Drengin apparently awoken some sleeping evil that is indescribably horrific.  Could it be that the evil precursor race of the Dreadlords have returned?

The campaign in Galactic Civilizations II will not require linear play. I.e. you can LOSE a given mission and have the option to continue to an alternative mission. Obviously if you lose enough missions you'll be facing an onslaught against Earth itself.

Welcome to Galactic Civilizations II: Dreadlords official home page.

We are just getting things going now. This website is a work in progress so much will change between now and release. 

Galactic Civilizations II isn't like most "sequels" where they take the first game, make some tweaks and call it a day.  Galactic Civilizations II will be a dramatic departure from the first one visually and in game play.  We think you'll like all the changes we're doing and we'll have previews going up shortly. Stay tuned.

If somebody's dog manages to vote for John Kerry, then, in effect, Velma Thompson (or whomever) failed to vote for that nice man, George W. Bush, even though she tried. Whiskers cancels out Velma. Here's another way to make the same point. Each Bush vote is paired with a Kerry vote and they're both thrown away. The winner is the one who has votes left on the table after all the other guy's votes have been chucked. Pairing legitimate voters with voting felons, dogs, corpses, and Frenchmen has precisely the same effect on the outcome as shooting legitimate voters before they can get in the door of the high school gym.

Republican vigilance about keeping illegal voters from voting is democratically equivalent to Democratic vigilance against Republican attempts to suppress the legal vote. Republican vigilance has the semi-intended side-effect of suppressing likely Democratic votes. And huge Democratic registration and GOTV drives have the semi-intended side-effect of canceling out a large number of Republican votes with illegal ballots. I bet I can tell from your party affiliation which you think is worse.

Read the whole article.

Making computer games has its drawbacks. But one nice thing about them is that you know when they succeed. They can succeed commercially (i.e. make a profit) and they can succeed critically.

With The Political Machine, it appears we've done both.  Which lets us breathe a sigh of relief because it was a very close thing for us.  I had the idea for the game floating around my head since the 2000 election. And even before that, I had given some thought to doing a game based on politics.  But after the Bush/Gore 2000 election, I knew that we needed to make a game before the next election.

But we almost didn't have time.  We went a bit late on getting the expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations done.  So in January of 2004, we began development of The Political Machine.  We had to finish the game by June in order to have the game out in time for the election season.

That gave us 6 months to come up with a game, write a 3D engine, and put it all together in a single solid package.  I was vaguely aware that there were other games out there but didn't have much time to look at them. The main impression I got was that they were focusing more on being election simulations. I didn't want to make a simulation. I wanted to make a game. Specifically, I wanted to make a strategy game with very well defined game mechanics and rules that would be easy to understand for casual gamers but satisfy hard core political junkies.

In June, we did indeed finish the game and we got it out the door in time. It was pretty solid other than not realizing that our use of True Type Fonts would prevent it from working on those older (but more common than we realized) integrated Intel video adapters (which is one reason why user reviews tend to be a bit lower than the actual review - doesn't take too many ticked off people who can't run the game to lower a user review).

Here's a round-up from slate:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2108292/

and

Here's a look at the games of this genre from Gamespy.

http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/559/559987p1.html

The Slate article is by no means definitive since it's one reviewer's point of view.  But it choosing The Political Machine as the best game of the pack definitely made us feel pretty good here. I think it really boils down to whether you're looking for a simulation or a strategy game. If you want to play politics as a strategy game then I think The Political Machine is very strong.  If you want a more in depth simulation, then one of the other games may be your ideal.

How much we can update the game really depends a lot on our publisher. All our updates have to go through them and they have a finite QA budget so we have to make it worth their while to do more updates.  But we do plan to release an update after the election that takes into account the new political realities.

Check out this article over at Gamespy that goes through the various US presidential based games and what their backgrounds are.

The article is located here: http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/559/559987p1.html