Spiderman is now in movies and yes, it rocks. If you hated the first one you will still hate this one. But for everyone else, you definitely don’t want to miss what I think is probably the best super hero movie of all time. Though, X-Men 2 was pretty good too.

What really struck me about this movie was how much of it is really about Peter Parker. This movie is much less “cheesy” than the first one. It’s much more about how ordinary people are having to deal with extraordinary events.

Peter Parker isn’t your typical comic book hero. He’s just this guy, a guy who just doesn’t seem to cut any breaks. He doesn’t have very much money. He’s having a hard time juggling job, school, and being a super hero. And Mary Jane has given up waiting for him. 

While admittedly the movie violates the laws of physics over and over again, I can forgive it because it really lets us peer into some of the tedium that goes into being a super hero. Having your costume bleed into your whites in the laundry. Having to get around down town.  And while Spiderman can take a lot more punishment than the average person, unlike superman, he’s not invulnerable.

On my IMDB index, I give this a 9/10 (first movie of 2004 to get that high).

I love my IBM ThinkPad T40.  I've been using ThinkPads as my notebook of choice since 1994 when I got a ThinkPad 750 (I think it was).  I've had great luck with them.

But with this ThinkPad T40, the hard drive just doesn't seem to be quite right. It is slowly dying. Sector by sector, it is degrading. Luckily, I actually do backups on a regular basis so when Windows got wiped out again due to more sectors going bad, I was able to recover my data. But I don't trust it now, I'm going to have to talk to IBM about it. I'll let you know how well their service goes.

This article at the Telegraph (linked below) sums up many of my views on Moore.  Moore's writings and "documentaries" can be entertaining -- if you're already in the looney left wing camp or don't keep up with this stuff on a daily basis.  To the rest of us, it's just frustrating.

In my view, Moore is little more than just some ranting left wing idealogue who has managed to get famous. There's a zillion conspriacy nuts just like him out there. It's like they've elected him king of the loonies to spread his nastiness around.

Given the success of his film, however, it's seems that he's managed to expand his base beyong the fringe and into the mainstream. What this means for Bush is unknown.  Many people I know who are on the right fear that this bodes very ill for those of us who favor the administration's foreign policy.

But I disagree. I have great faith in the average person. I don't know if Bush will win or not (I tend to think he won't for electoral college reasons but that's not related to this film). But I don't think this film will persuade fair minded people.

Moore seems to forget that millions of Americans, such as myself, expected the US to respond in Afghanistan. The whole oil pipeline bullshit is just that -- bullshit.  I don't care if there had been a magical energon cube mine in Afghanistan, after 9/11, we had better had gone in there and removed the Taliban and disrupted Al Qaeda.

Similarly, those of us who favored military action in Iraq could care less about the oil. I don't have any ties to "big oil" and yet somehow I've been in favor of the US removing Saddam since 1998. How is this possible? In Moore's slanted universe, people like me are dupes. Suckered in by greedy puppets of big oil to do their bidding.  I would, on the other hand, argue that we are merely keepers of something Moore obviously lacks -- common sense. 

Oil only comes into play in Iraq in that it was a resource that gave Saddam the capital to acquire things that could do us great harm either in the short or long term.  After 9/11, removing Saddam was a "no brainer". The whole "Bush lied" nonsense strikes me as incredibly ignorant given that everyone thought he had WMDs long before Bush came into office. 

But Moore seems to want to have it both ways. Bush is both a simpleton and a master manipulator of us dupes out in the world. The attacks of 9/11, which were planned during the Clinton years, demonstrate to clear thinking Americans that there is no foreign policy that would satisfy these maniacs. If the appeasement policies of the 90s led to 9/11, I think it's worth trying a more aggressive policy -- which is what Bush is doing. 

Just got back from South Padre Island. Lots of run. The kids loved the ocean. We all got a little sun burned.

Only downer is that my right ear is totally plugged. Went to the doctor while there and got a prescription...not that it helped any since the pathetic pharmacies there didn't have the anti-biotics.  I really like South Padre island though. The people are nice and it's a fun vacation but I would hate to live there. It's like traveling back to the 70s in terms of technologies and resources.

Tomorrow I'm gone for vacation for a few days. Going to South Padre Island down in the gulf of Mexico. My first vacation in 2 years. Pity it's only for 4 work days.

So the GUI Olympics is coming to a close. Man that took a long time. I don't know if we'll ever do another one or not. It's a lot of work. The User's Choice Awards came out this week. They essentially mirrored the judges. What was particularly ironic is that on the Winamp side, the users chose essentially the same skins the judges did despite the shrieking from certain Winamp users of the idiocy and other charges on the part of the judges for not recognizing the genius in some of the other Winamp skins. Make sure you visit www.guiolympics.com to see all the results (best team, best skin, etc.).

Best Teams and individual skins and such can be found HERE.

If it weren't 9pm I'd put up some screenshots of the upcoming ObjectDock Plus.  But then again, if I had more time, I would have announced that ObjectDock 1.02 (freeware) was released a bunch of "little fixes" in it. ObjectDock Plus is going to rock though. It has, amongst other things, tabs, skinnable system tray docks, a Start menu, fan-out menus, multiple docks, multiple monitor support, and a bunch of other neat things. For the Plus version (which will probably be around $20 to register -- ObjectDock itself will remain freeware), our goal was to make something very useful and not just a toy.

Also this week Object Desktop users were treated to WindowBlinds 4.38. Don't let the version fool you though, something significant is in this new version that we aren't talking about yet. If all goes well, we'll talk about what is new in it a great deal. But for now, we'll be interested in finding out if people find it even faster than 4.3 was.

In last week's poll about DesktopX, a lot of people had no idea what IconX is. Okay, in a nutshell, IconX is a feature in DesktopX to enhance your existing desktop icons. When you enable it, your desktop icons can be made any size you want, have shadows under them and even zoom and and out as you put your mouse over them. It's incredibly slick.  You can see it for yourself and it's a free download. www.desktopx.net

I was on NPR this week and CNBC last week doing interviews with regards to The Political Machine. We expect to go gold this week with it for an August release.

Apologies for not getting around to doing a new Stardock TV yet.

When I get back, some of the WinCustomize version 4 features should be almost ready to beta test. Just as the launch of the original site was controversial, there will probably be some controversy about the new site features. One of the features we hope to put in there is to enable a way for skinners with Master access level to submit skins, suites, icon packages, etc. as premium content that they can, in turn, get paid for.  After all, we are constantly hearing from certain users how wrong it is for skinners not to get paid. We agree! Though we hope that this system will result in net increase of free skins too.  After all, to get to Master access one has to go from Citizen to Apprentice, Apprentice to Master Apprentice, Master Apprentice to Journeyman, and Journeyman to Master. And to do that one has to contribute a great deal to the community.  Quite a few skinners will get promoted to Master when I get back so that we can start a pilot program on this.  But this should be a win-win for everyone. And while some other skin sites have had to move to bundling spyware with their skins and wallpapers and such, WC's cut of premium skins should enable WinCustomize to afford to keep growing and avoid doing pop up ads or any other annoying revenue generating tactic. And best of all, skinners will have a way to get even more back than just fame and adulation, they'll be able to make enough money to upgrade their software, buy new hardware, or who knows what else depending on how well it does.

Speaking of WinCustomize v4, it's going to include a lot of article writing features and blogging. We want to encourage people to create tutorials and tips and tricks articles.  After all, if a half-literal dolt like me can whip up Stardock TV in a few hours each month, imagine what people with actual talent could do.  WC4 will be set up in such a way to help those people syndicate their work to millions of people.  A lot of the focus is going to be put on the people who "Create stuff". We want to do a lot more than we have thus far to highlight those who make sites like these possible.

Also this week Galactic Civilizations: Altarian Prophecy was released (and yes, when WC4 comes and people can write their own articles they can shamelessly promote the other stuff they work on too! <g>).

One thing I would like to find out about is why people on WinCustomize don't comment very much on news items or forums.  I mean, over at the site I news moderate (Neowin.net) articles get tons of comments.  But here, even though WinCustomize gets nearly 3 million unique visitors each month, a typical news item will only get a couple of comments.

Well that's about all for now.  BTW, if you're interested in writing articles and getting them read by a lot of people, make sure you check out www.joeuser.com. It's a free blog site we've put together that has features no other blog site on the Internet has. One advantage it has is that it auto-promoted good articles so your writings won't languish in total obscurity necessarily.

See you next week! I'll be sunning with the wife and kids!

Fahrenheit 9/11's success or failure will provide a good measure of the political temperature of the United States. In my mind, Michael Moore is a villain. An unscrupulous opportunist who brings new meaning the to the phrase "the end justifies the means".  The end, of course, being the ouster of George W. Bush.  The means, in his own small petty way, is his new smear movie, Fahrenheit 9/11.

This review at Slate takes the movie apart bit by bit. I highly recommend reading it. If his propaganda piece on gun violence in America (Bowling for Columbine) was harmless, this propaganda substance is not. The central premise behind Bowling for Columbine was that "white America" has had a long obsession with guns and gun violence (largely due to being afraid of stuff). Forget that gun violence of "white America" is essentially the same as it is in peace-loving Canada, that doesn't fit into Moore's agenda. 

This time around, Moore's premise is that the Bush family is enthralled to the Saudis in various nefarious ways (as well to the Bin Laden family). Forget that the premise is absurd to begin with. What's really amazing is that Moore actually expects people to ignore the contradictions with these concepts.  After all, how can Bush be in the pocket of Saudi interests and be going directly against Saudi wishes by going into Iraq?

But Moore, far from being the "common man", seems to believe that the common man is a fool. A dupe. A chump. Even a year after 9/11, Moore wasn't convinced that Al Qaeda (or Bin Laden) was behind the WTC attack. And yet somehow he became convinced that we should have done more in Afghanistan? Good grief. Unfortunately, serious leaders can't wait years to take decisive action.

As Christopher Hitchen writes:

In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. Something—I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now—has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous "distraction" from the fight against him. I believe that I understand the convenience of this late conversion.

But it's not just there that Moore wants to have it both ways with history. Bush, regularly portrayed as someone anxious to go to war is also shown as being stunned into stupidity and inaction at the news of the WTC attack. Well which is it? Either he's an empty headed moron robot or he's a warmongering neoconservative looking to settle dad's scores.  How about this alternative explanation: Like millions of normal Americans, the attack on the WTC left him stunned and for several minutes he had to contemplate what to do next.  I consider myself pretty sharp but I remember just watching slack-jawed on TV when that second plane struck the World trade center. I was dumfounded. And I was dumfounded for more than 7 minutes.

Most disgusting is Moore's sympathy to Saddam.  According to Moore, Saddam's Iraq was no threat to any American. Really? Is this the same Saddam who tried to have Bush Sr. assassinated?  The same Iraq that regularly fired on US planes patrolling the no-fly zone? Is Moore so out of touch with the "average American" that he can't see how many of us considered Saddam a long term threat that could no longer be tolerated in a post-9/11 world?

Moore, author of "Stupid White Men" can't help but take morbid stabs at the assumed cowardice of white people (perhaps he projects too much of his own self?). In an interview, he opines that if the passengers of those flights on 9/11 had had mostly black people, they would have fought back. What a racist, gratuitous slam on the victims of 9/11.

Hitchen writes:

In a recent interview, he yelled that if the hijacked civilians of 9/11 had been black, they would have fought back, unlike the stupid and presumably cowardly white men and women (and children). Never mind for now how many black passengers were on those planes—we happen to know what Moore does not care to mention: that Todd Beamer and a few of his co-passengers, shouting "Let's roll," rammed the hijackers with a trolley, fought them tooth and nail, and helped bring down a United Airlines plane, in Pennsylvania, that was speeding toward either the White House or the Capitol. There are no words for real, impromptu bravery like that, which helped save our republic from worse than actually befell

But if that doesn't take the cake for disgusting attitudes, Moore has apparently made public his intent to aggressively go after his critics, legally if necessary. Ah, it is important to observe his right to smear his enemies (real and imagined) with impunity but any criticism returned needs to be cut off at the knees eh?  More and more, Moore makes himself the poster child of the left-wing of American culture. Dishonest, disingenuous, cynical, elitist, and hypocritical. 

Speaking as a fellow-Michigander who actually did grow up in a blue-collar area (down river eastern Michigan), I find Moore's elitism disgusting particularly as he tries to portray himself as just a "joe American".

If his movie is a box office hit, it will send a chilling signal that the the American culture has an appetite for petty vindictive overtly left-wing propaganda.  I fear that like his last Oscar-winning drek, that some people will walk out of the theater having bought into the manipulated "facts". I fear a repeat of the same ill-informed thinking of "Agree with him or not, his movie gives you a lot to think about".  Because in reality, they really don't give you much to "think about". Quite the opposite. These are films that are designed to indoctrinate.

The reaction I'm seeing in my apolitical friends and neighbors to the spate of beheadings in the middle east is a mixture of disgust, anger, and perplexion (if there's such a word).  "How can a human being do this to another human being?"  If these Islamic terrorists believe their actions will somehow change US policy in the region in a way that benefits their cause then they're fools.

The practical result of these beheadings, I believe, is the gradual dehumanization of middle east culture.  The average person viewing these atrocities doesn't hang out on political forums going through the various nuanced arguments of various actions in the middle east. No, the average person simply sees these barbaric acts as inhumane and the product of a sick possibly subhuman culture.

It isn't Americans in the middle east I fear for. It's the Islamic Arab natives of the region I increasingly fear for.

In World War II there were essentially two wars.  The was the war in Europe and the war in the Pacific.  They were fought very differently.  In Europe, the Germans were considered human. Misguided. Maybe even evil. But still human.  The Japanese, by contrast, were considered subhuman, vermin, monkeys, filth to be exterminated. These beliefs led to the use of very different tactics.  In the Pacific war, few Japanese surrendered. But what isn't talked about as much is that one of the reasons few Japanese surrendered was because the marines had little interest in taking "Jap" prisoners. If tank battles come to mind in the war in Europe, marines with flame throwers come to mind in the war against Japan.  By the end of the war, US planes were simply working towards a policy of outright extermination of the Japanese people. Such is the power when one believes their opponents lack humanity.

Democracies are like that though. Democracies perform the policies demanded by the electorate. Americans, by and large, considered the Japanese to be subhuman and the US military obliged this in its policies. 

The worse thing that could happen in the middle east would be for the Arab world to convince Americans that they're not truly human. That they believe life to be so cheap that the US becomes more free to use less humane tactics to pursue its objectives.  Suicide murderers don't do their causes any favors by demonstrating to their opponents that the Arab culture is perfectly willing to treat its youth as little more than weapon ordinance. But these latest acts in Iraq and Saudi Arabia are far worse because they demonstrate a level of grotesque brutality that is alien to most Americans. Sprinkle a few scenes of civilian support for these atrocities and you help convince millions of Americans that these people aren't really sentient beings. Do these creatures of a conscience at all? Are they so devoid of empathy that they can butcher humans as if they were animals?

Far from changing American policy towards the middle east, these actions are likely to result in the American public demanding harsher action in the war on terror. After all, if they're not even human, any action can be justified.  For the sake of the Arab world, I hope that the civilian population is able to clearly signal their disgust at these actions and work publicly and effectively towards the elimination of the perpetrators of these heinous acts.

Drengin.net is going to be expanding hugely soon. We've been signing deals (announcements coming soon) with various major publishers to put their games on Drengin.net. The idea isn't to necessarily put their latest/greatest titles on there but instead focus instead on games that are on their way out from retail.

The example I love to use is Total Annihilation. It's discontinued now (I'm sure you can find it somewhere) but it's a game that was just awesome in its time and graphically it still looks  pretty good. And that's an unusually old game. But that's the idea, not to just pick any old games but find the best games of all time and save them. Make sure that great games don't just disappear after 6 months at retail but instead find a home for them where people can keep playing them and build communities.

And so that's what I want to do with Drengin.net.  Put our games and top games from other publishers on there that aren't necessarily "brand new".  But there's a gotcha, one that has been a bitter pill to swallow. Royalties on Drengin.net tend to fall between 0.5% and 1% per title. So if Drengin.net goes up to say $100, that means they'd only get 50 cents to $1 per sale.

The thing is, if we can get dozens of titles on there, it will reach critical mass. That's the challenge: Getting enough games on there where the gamer will see it as a "no brainer".  If you get that critical mass, you could end up selling 50k units annually (with 100k being a possibility).  Now, a royalty of $50k to $100k per year may not sound like much. But odds are, it's vastly greater than the revenue these games get today and that's not counting the revenue from selling the games stand-alone as well for electronic download.

There are places already out there that sell games electronically, but they tend to look at things very differently than I do.  Guys like me are the target audience. Electronic distribution isn't about money. It's about convenience. If it's about money I'll bargain bin shop at EB. For me, I want to press a button have it, and know when I lose the file I downloaded 8 months from now I can press a button and get it again. Using my Total Annihilation example, I have four copies of that game..somewhere. Not sure where. I stopped playing it because I got tired of having to install the game, download the patches, apply the patches, put on the various expansion packs, etc.  I just want to press a button and have it all at once. When I blow away my machine, I want to be able to go back and download the game manager again and press a button and get all my games again.

That's what Stardock Central does. Even today, if you buy Galactic Civilizations in Germany and register with Stardock.net, you can lose your CD, lose your serial #, and in 2 years still come on and press a button to retrieve your serial # and press a button to download the latest version of GalCiv.  That's what I want.  And I suspect I'm not alone.

But for that to work, we have to be able to convince a lot of publishers that it's in their best interest to let us sell their titles as part of a mega subscription where they might only get 50 cents per copy sold and focus on that critical mass. I'd rather make 50 cents on something that sells 100,000 units annually than $5 on something that sells 500 units annually. Those who have sold their games or programs through an on-line distributor can probably attest that the sales figures on those things aren't terribly impressive. It's about critical mass.

In the game, The Political Machine, www.politicalmachine.com, the computer AI only knows the statistics. It doesn't have to play real world politics. It only knows which states it needs to win and based on our data, which issues to focus on.

So the computer controlled John Kerry is always trying to get Missiouri and Iowa which tends to mean Ghepthardt.  But what about Tom Vilsack? Governor of Iowa? Kerry should talk to him.

There's an old Star Trek episode in which Kirk and crew beam down to a planet that had been influenced by organized crime in Chicago. A whole planet run by organized crime.  It made for a kind of silly episode since the concept was so absurd.

And yet much of the population in the middle east lives in an environment in which organized crime runs their daily lives.  This outstanding article (posted at USS Clueless) gives a detailed look at the situation in that region.

For all the idiotic claims that US action was driven by the OOOOIILLL, it is easy to forget that the combined GNP of all the middle east, with all their oil wealth is less than half that of California alone. Needless to say, no one ever accused anti-war protesters of being particularly bright. Not too many business majors in the anti-war crowd I suspect.

The middle east is just such a mess. And they have no one to blame but themselves. An apathetic population has allowed gangsterism to take over.  For all the talk about Islam as a religion of peace, you don't see too many heads being chopped off elsewhere.  The American left and intelligentsia in Europe are always ready to excuse the monstrous behavior on public display in the middle east. It's almost a politically correct form of racism. As if the Islamic world are childlike in their understanding of adult civilized behavior and hence can be excused.  You can imagine the world reaction would be if Americans started arbitrarily rounding up Muslims and chopped off their heads. Heck, imagine the damage even a hundred fanatical Americans, well armed and trained could do throughout the Muslim world.  Luckily for them, Americans do behave in an adult civilized way.

Those who oppose US actions in the middle east haven't come forward with any constructive alternatives to current US actions. At best, we get impotent whining about Israel -- as if a country of a dozen million can be blamed for the vile behavior occurring in countries with a combined population of around 400 million.

Something has to be done. The corruption of the thugocracies in the middle east is affecting the rest of the world now as 9/11 made painfully clear.  I can't say I'm terribly happy with how the US occupation in Iraq has gone but I certainly can't think of any realistic alternatives than aggressive military action in the middle east to reshape it so that order and the rule of law can be firmly established in that part of the world and the hateful extremists can be weeded out.

We tried doing nothing for 8 years and that didn't work out too well. I fear that things are going to get a lot bloodier all around before things get better.