If you are interested in game development, here is an inside scoop on how The Political Machine was made and what went right and wrong on it.
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20041011/wardell_01.shtml
This update will go over 1.01 or the 1.0 retail CD release.
https://www.politicalmachine.com/Download_Update.asp
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Fixed assorted typos
Fixed bug where # times fundraising in state was not being saved
Fixed bug where Lincoln's money stat was 14
Fixed "client can't kill ads" bug
Fixed Endorsement crash on Win 98
Fixed VP Awareness bug
Fixes for non-alphanumeric characters in custom candidate filenames (changes them to _ internally)
New initialization code to improve compatibility, additional debug info during initialization
State files saved as binaries to fix DirectX/triangles issue
Okay, how about this concept for rewarding skinners:
WinCustomize starts running regular contests in which the top 10 skins in terms of downloads by users who are also subscribers get a percentage of the revenue we receive from new subscriptions. It would be done for only certain sections so that we could highlight a given section for that period (and we could even have multiple sections featured in a given time).
So at the end of the 3 months, we would tally the # of downloads that were done by subsribers (best way to avoid download stuffing since it's hard to "stuff the ballot" that way).
So the top skin would get something like $200. Second place $150, third $100. Fourth $50. Fifth $25. Sixth through 10th $20. This would depend on the # of subscribers of course but it would be in this ballpark.
A given skin author could make the top 5 skins though and collect it all. So it would favor quality skins and quantity.
So let's say we started the first one in January and focused it on WindowBlinds and Iconpackager. The following one might focus on DesktopX and CursorXP. And so forth.
What do you guys think?
Next week the full site preview will begin to go on-line for WinCustomize subscribers. It'll be in "beta" phase until December so if you want to be one of the first people to see all the new goodies, make sure you're a WinCustomize subscriber (click on the store link above).
It's giong to be a whole new site in terms of features and layouts and speed and the underlying technology. We now have 200 MEGABITS per second to make use of and we're very excited about what's coming we hope you are too! 
One of our long policies has been that WinCustomize.com won't add sections for up and coming sections but instead add sections that had already done the leg work themselves to make their program popular.
Are there any programs you wish we had a section for that's become quite popular on its own that we don't have? Or do you feel we have enough sections already for skins? Let us know.
Stardock has released IconDeveloper 1.1 this week and the freeware version has a cleaned up user interface and more features including support for larger sized icon creation.
What makes IconDeveloper special is that it's really designed to make it easy for artists (as opposed to technical people) to take their artwork created in programs like Photoshop and whatnot and easily turn them into Windows icons. For example, a user can take a .PNG file and quickly turn it into a standard Windows XP .ICO file.
It also has arguably the best icon resizing feature available in any program. So a user can take a very large image (say 400x400) and turn it into a good looking 32x32 sized icon. Most icon creation programs will tend to scale such images badly. IconDeveloper has a host of different scaling options.
IconDeveloper is freeware. There is also an enhanced version that adds batch icon features (i.e. changing entire directories of icons and images at once). The enhanced version is also part of Stardock's Object Desktop suite of Windows enhancement programs.
Screenshot: https://www.stardock.com/products/icondeveloper/id-oct04.jpg
Download: http://www.icondeveloper.com
Listening to Hardball right now and Joe Trippie, of MSNBC, is trying to claim that liberals (now called "progressive") dominate the blog. What a laugh. Anyone familiar with the blog, for good or bad, know that it's largely a conservative medium.
The the top blog sites are almost exclusively conservative. There's a handful of exceptions but it's not very close.
It's always interesting to see guys like Chris Mathews trying to argue that the blogsphere is somehow leftwing simply because the Democratic Underground (not a blog site btw) is better at flooding the MSNBC on-line polls than conservative sites are. Flooding on-line polls is..well so 1990ish.
One of the cool new things about WinCustomize 2005's upcoming system is that it is integrated with the JoeUser.com blog network.
So someone who makes an article on WC2K5 will have their article syndicated onto JoeUser.com. Similarly, articles on JoeUser.com will get syndicated here if they're in the appropriate categories.
You can set up your own website for free on JoeUser.com. And you can read blog sites with Blog Navigator (www.blognavigator.com). See for yourself.
Why do these shows interview so many spin doctors? Like we care what Hilary Clinton thinks on the debate or what Karen Hughs think. We know what they're going to say and it's meaningless. It's just talking points.
Does anyone actually take the spinners seriously? I'd rather have the talking heads on there.
As I've said elsewhere, I think Kerry edged out Bush in this debate. But from reading views around the net and watching the pundits, it seems I am in the minority.
But here's a difference: I was driving home from a friend's for most of the debate so I heard the debate on the radio and that was where I felt Kerry was beating Bush. I only saw the last part at home on TV and that I will say that Bush seemed to be doing a bit better.
So I wonder if body language and other elements that aren't present when you're listening on the radio favored Bush.
Either way, who do you think won?
