Here are the finalists for the top visual style for WindowBlinds spots.  This is a very challenging event to judge.  After all, what exactly makes a visual style "the best"? Is it the features that they use? The usability of it? The subtle touches? How innovative it is? And then, which features should matter?

For example, Pixel8 made the best use of the dialog background skinning feature. Take a close look at its screenshot and see how much that adds.  On the other hand, what about a good use of sound? And by good do we mean useful or clever?

What it boils down to is this: Why are you changing the look and feel of the Windows GUI in the first place? Some people just want something that is slightly more attractive. Other people want something that is really "cool" looking. Each person uses visuals styles for different reasons. One person might look at a skin and say "Yuck! Way too busy!" whereas another person may look at it and say "Oh man, that's cool! That's what I want my computer to look like!" That's why judging "best" overall is so tough.

So go through these and you'll see how different they all are from one another. Some are more practical than others to use. Some have animation, others have sounds, some provide wallpapers (WindowBlinds visual styles can incorporate wallpapers as part of the visual style itself), others don't.

You can find all these visual styles in the WindowBlinds section over at www.guiolympics.com.

NeOS by Danillo0c
+ Sounds
+ Progress Animation
+ Toolbar icons
+ Some use of animation

Pixel 8 by Essorent
+ Progress Animations
+ Dialog backgrounds
+ Toolbar icons
+ Unusually clever title bar icons

Blanco by The Morphium
+ Progress animations
+ Toolbar icons

Cardinal by Pixel Pirate
+ Toolbar icons
+ Progress Animations
 

Legacy by Xino
+ Progress Animation
+ Toolbar icons
+ Animated version
+ Good use of sounds
+ Unusually good Start menu
+ Wallpaper

Dojo by Essorant
+ Progress Animation
+ Toolbar icons

Thunderstorm by Treetog
+ Progress animations
+ Toolbar icons
+ Sound support

G-Pod by Gabriel
+ Progress animations
+ Toolbar icons
+ Animation
+ Clever use of sound
- Minimize to system tray button is where the resize grip normally is

VectorCell by b0se
+ Unusually good title bar design
+ Best included Wallpaper
- No progress animation or toolbar icons

Curulean Jewels by BoXXi
+ Very unique title bar
+ Animations
+ Distinct look
- Not practical
- No progress animations/toolbar icons
 

Quasar by MikeB
+ Progress Animations
+ Toolbar icons
+ Animations
+ Sound support

Sektor by Danillo0c
+ Unusually good Start menu
+ Progress animations
+ Toolbar icons
+ Animation
+ Outstanding use of sound

Kewk by Erik Holmer
+ Progress Animations
+ Toolbar icons

Mini-OS by Treetog
+ Progress Animations
+ Toolbar icons

FlyOS by Treetog
+ Progress Animations
+ Toolbar icons

Antares by Treetog
+ Progress Animations
+ Toolbar icons
+ Sound support
+ Massive Animation
+ Separate unanimated style

FM by Gabriel
+ Progress animations
+ Toolbar icons

2002 Economic chart of major nations (populations >1 million)

Source: CIA World Fact book.

I've been watching the tributes to Ronald Reagan this week. I've been somewhat dissatisfied with them because none of them capture the enormity of Ronald Reagan's contribution to mankind. They tend to focus on just one aspect of what he did. They tend to ignore the full benefit Ronald Reagan's presidency has given to us all.

Ronald Reagan's achievements can be categories in three areas the made our lives better. Rich or poor, American or non-American, odds are, you directly benefited from one of Ronald Reagan's 3 bold initiatives.

1. Defeating Soviet Communism
2. Lowering taxes
3. Deregulating private industry

Defeating Soviet Communism

When Jimmy Carter left office, if someone were to say that at the end of the Reagan administration the Soviet Union would be finished in all but name, you would have laughed. The fall of the Soviet Union was not inevitable. Countries that are not pushed over the brink can go on for decades teetering (look at Cuba and North Korea for example).  Ronald Reagan changed US policy from respecting the status quo to one of trying to beat the Soviet Union. This came in two forms: SDI and a massive military build up. 

The massive conventional build up of American forces ended the Soviet's ability to realistically expand. There would be no more Korean Wars. Pretty soon as American conventional military power, amply demonstrated in 1991, would be outstripping Soviet military capability. But still, the Soviet Union could remain a super power with its nuclear threat. This is where SDI ("Star Wars") came in. If the Soviet Nuclear arsenal could be neutralized, then the Soviet Union had nothing over the US. 

That's usually where the discussion ends. That is a pity because it doesn't explain why the Soviet Union collapsed.  Gorbachev recognized that the problem with the Soviet Union was its closed society and tight controls. To compete with Reagan's build up, Gorbachev issued a series of reforms.  Keep this in mind: Without pressure from Reagan, these reforms would likely not have happened. These reforms, however, opened the door for the discontented to express themselves and before anyone knew it, the Soviet Union collapsed.

But let's talk about the ramifications of that. Because the Soviet Union collapsed, Eastern Europe and Russia all became part of the "free world" so to speak.  Our company employs people from eastern Europe.  The lead developer of SkinStudio lives in Poland. Some of the top developers and graphics designers that we work with live in Ukraine and Russia and beyond.  A lot of games are now being made in Eastern Europe. A half-billion or so people have been added to the world community as both buyers and potential workers which helped create new opportunities all over the world.

When I was a kid, I lived under the fear that a nuclear war could break out at any time.  While terrorism and other threats are significant, my children don't have to worry that they might all die at a moment's notice because of a nuclear war. It is easy to lose sight of that difference or forget that subconscious tension but it was there.

Lowering Taxes & Interest Rates

When Ronald Reagan came into office, the tax rate for high earners was around 70%. Interest rates were over 20%.  Want to buy a new house? The mortgage rate was at around 16%.  My house today has an mortgage of 4.75% making it possible for people to buy homes relatively easily. Home ownership has skyrocketed since the election of Ronald Reagan.  Millions of Americans would not have houses if it weren't for Ronald Reagan.

But the taxes and interest rates had a more significant effect. They encouraged people to start businesses. They encouraged Americans to work longer and harder because their wages wouldn't be confiscated by the government. And despite the tax cuts, the poverty rate has steadily decreased from 1982 on.  When you reward the people who are really good at creating wealth, they tend to create even more wealth which tends to get distributed around.

Starting a company is a real risk. Most companies are started with bank loans or venture capital. But how can anyone seriously consider taking out a loan to start a small business if the interest rate is 20%? And even if they succeed, why bother if the government is going to take 70% of it? Talk about an incentive killer. Most entrepreneurs just stayed at their "safe" big company jobs.

Reagan changed all that. He got the taxes down into the 30s%. He got interest rates under control down to under 10%. And suddenly there was an incentive again for individuals with a good idea to take out a small loan and build it into a successful company where there was an incentive to stick to it. And the lowered taxes encouraged investors to invest in companies instead of having it in gold or Persian rugs and other "Tax shelters" of the day.

I know from personal experience that if the government was going to confiscate 70% of the money we earned that I would never have bothered starting a company. We employee dozens of people today. Not a huge number but there are millions of companies of the same size -- all which came into business since the Reagan revolution.

Deregulation

This is the biggest achievement in some respects and yet gets the least amount of attention because it's more "complicated" to explain.  In essence, Reagan helped eliminate a ton of red tape. He got rid of regulations that kept business from competing. He ended price controls.  When I was a kid, flying from Detroit to Dallas might cost $800 (in 1980 dollars).  Today, I can get that same trip for $200 (in 2004 dollars).

It wasn't just the airlines he deregulated. His administration broke up AT&T and let cable and local phone companies start competing. Without Ronald Reagan, it's unlikely that we would have consumer level Internet in the United States at anywhere near the level that we know it.  Behind your ISP is probably someone like MCI or UUNet which wouldn't have existed without deregulation.

Deregulation combined with lower interest rates made companies like AOL possible. It allowed banks to get into the credit card business. Consider that - credit cards.  Do you have one? Probably right? -- at least if you're an American.  In fact, if you're an American, you've probably had one for years. Thank Ronald Reagan for that (or blame him for that).

Ronald Reagan's deregulation opened the door to easy credit. How many businesses were started with credit cards as the "Credit line"? Go to an executive forum of small businesses and you'll find that a significant percentage were started that way. Think how much your own life has changed thanks to credit cards.  Without credit cards, electronic commerce wouldn't be viable. No electronic commerce no dot-coms. No Stardock. No JoeUser.com.

Putting it together

It is so easy to think of many of the things we enjoy today as being inevitable. But that is not the case at all. There was nothing inevitable about credit cards. Nothing inevitable about 4% interest rates, 5% unemployment, massively high productivity, and no threat from nuclear war.

Ronald Reagan changed the world in ways few people can claim to have.  He made the world a fundamentally better place. And while no one would claim he was a perfect man or perfect President, few can reasonably argue that his actions haven't led to a world, that is overall, much better off because of him. When one looks at the world of 1984 and the world of 2004 it is pretty apparent how much things improved.  Improved because of specific decisions made by a single man.

Ronald Reagan was the right man at the right time. Wherever he is now, I hope he can feel and understand the appreciation of a grateful world, even if some of it doesn't realize how much they benefited from his greatness.

For some reason, it really pisses me off when someone argues that corporations aren't paying enough in taxes. And it really pisses me off when someone argues that there's these large tax shelters or loopholes.

For a few days I couldn't figure out exactly why it ticks me off so much. I debate tons of issues on this site and none of them get me mad. Heck, sometimes I take up the opposing point of view just for a good debate. But on taxes, something about them really irritates me.

I have identified the feeling though. It is the same feeling I get when non-parents try to give me and my wife parental advice. If you don't kids, shut the hell up when it comes to telling me how to raise mine. It's one of those instant-reactions. Where the anger and irritation bursts out before you've had time to fully process it.

I pay a lot in taxes. Nothing compared to the super-rich. But I think 6 figures in taxes qualifies me to be someone who is "paying their fair share". As someone whose first job was taking out the trash to the dumpster for welfare mothers, I have gone from being poor to being pretty well off. So I know, from experience, that an able bodied person only needs to work hard and focus on things to be reasonably successful.  So it really irritates me that so many people try to play the victim when the fault lies with them.

I can deal with paying taxes. What I can't deal with are people who pay little or no taxes bitching that people like me should be paying even more. Or claiming that companies, as a rule, get out of paying their "fair share" (or "rich" individuals) by showing an example of some individual company or person who scammed the system.

Like my feeling on kids, if you're not paying significant amounts of taxes, shut the hell up about bitching that the government's not doing enough for "the poor". That's my feeling on it anyway. I have little sympathy for poor people as a general rule (as my articles make clear). I grew up as one of them and amongst them and most of them (not all but most) were just a bunch of losers who took no personal responsibility for their idiotic decisions or laziness. Or they were people with minor mental or physical disabilities that let those things become an excuse for sitting back and becoming a professional victim. 

If you're poor in the United States as a 30+ year old, you probably have no one to blame but yourself (unless you're physically disabled). Don't blame the government. Don't blame politicans. Don't blame "the rich". Suck it up and make someting of yourself.

A reader writes:

What does "more" world support mean? France and Germany? The US has the support of UK, Australia, Japan, MOST of the European countries (Poland, Ukraine, Czech, Bulgaria, Italy, etc.).  If you're getting your moral compass from Germany and France then you have my sympathies.  I don't define who I support based on what France wants but that's just me.

As for making things more dangerous, yes, John Kerry will make life more dangerous for Americans. I don't worry about snooty Frenchman attacking. I worry about Islamic fundamentalists attacking though. And Kerry just doesn't strike me as someone who wants to solve these problems. He'd rather go back to the Clinton-era policy of making nice with the Europeans and hope the problem goes away.  France is on record as believing Iraq is culturally incapable of handling a democracy. That's the kind of crap that I fear Kerry will buy into. 

I want a President who is going to make the tough decisions and take out these terrorists and make a serious effort to democratize the region. I think Bush is more likely to pursue that than Kerry because I think Kerry is mroe concerned about what his elitist liberal friends in Europe think than worrying about dealing with terrorism as a practical matter.

What a hectic week it's been. We're in the final stages of finishing up The Political Machine. I must go on the record and say that Ubi Soft is a first class team of people to work with. Total pros. We got the game's box design in and it looks great. The game is shaping up really well too. From a pure game mechanics point of view, I think this is the best game I've ever worked on, even better than Galactic Civilizations.  It's smaller in scope by design but packs a lot of punch in game play. I'd love to turn this into a board game at some point.

We also have been working a lot on SkinStudio. Getting version 4.3 out the door has been a high priority for quite awhile. SkinStudio 4.3 is a pretty "big deal". Pity it's coming out in the middle of summer. Okay, why is it a big deal? 3 reasons: 1) It explicitly supports exporting toolbar icons and progress animations as stand alone items. WinCustomize is going to add two new sections shortly for toolbar icons and progress animations so that users will be more inclined to mix and match these components together.  We also want to encourage artists who might just want to create toolbar icons or progress animations to do just that. 2) It is the culmination of a year of effort to nail down MSStyle -> WindowBlinds conversions. This is something we knew we needed to get done before the Longhorn betas come out. Because in Longhorn, MSStyles go bye bye. There's a lot of good skinning out there that would otherwise become "legacy". Since we fully expect WindowBlinds to work on Longhorn (either as-is or in some updated version) WB users would be able to make use of all those MSStyles that are floating around out there and there would be a place for MSStyles users to go.  3) SkinStudio 4.3 has a lot more error checking. The GUI Olympics has shown us why some people still find WindowBlinds "buggy". Many skins have small errors that don't show up on most people's computers but on some computers and on some programs can cause problems. SkinStudio 4.3 should enable skinners to create more visual styles.

Speaking of the GUI Olympics, the last two events are about to be judged and what a pain it is. The icon judging is really giving the judges pain. There are really 4 icon packages in particular in which any of them could get the gold and yet one of them is going to not be in the top 3.

The big skinning story of the week has to be the announcement that Alienware is going to be bundling Stardock's Object Desktop OEM (aka "Theme Manager") on all its machines. As some may recall, recent benchmarks from UGO have shown that games run slightly faster if WindowBlinds is providing the visual styles rather than uxtheme (i.e. slightly more FPS). So as someone said, this is a match made in heaven.  The visual style is being specially designed for high performance and compatibility. We also structured the arrangement so that the version of WindowBlinds that comes with it includes one branded visual style and then additional ones would have to be purchased for a nominal fee (with much of that fee going to skin authors, it uses a special WindowBlinds format). What's particularly ironic about this is that this deal to open the door so that skin authors could now more easily get paid to make skins came out just as some users were trying to claim that companies like Stardock leech off skinners -- as if the GUI Olympics with its $15k in prizes wasn't enough of a statement of how Stardock feels about skinners.

Jeff and co are working hard on a new version of ObjectDock (freeware) and a Plus version (ObjectDock Plus!) which will have a bunch of cool new features such as system tray support, tabs, multiple docks, task grouping, Start menu, very slick edge screen docking (where only the tabs will show up until you put your mouse there), mouse activation, slick dragging and dropping, skinning, and a bunch of other stuff.  We hope to have a beta of it available this month.

The other big thing being worked on right now is ObjectBar 2 which is a totally reimagining of it. We will probably break out the right-click menu part of it and make it a separate program (still part of Object Desktop). Having the Right click be a separate program would make it more usable and make ObjectBar's UI cleaner. ObjectBar 2 itself is going to be a fundamentally different looking program to interact with. It'll be much more focused on functionality. The skinning will still be there but generally we're going to migrate more to having it just inherit the WindowBlinds skin more so that we can focus more on having it be a useful productivity program. This will also serve as the basis for ControlCenter 2. Hopefully that'll show up later this summer. Lots of work left to do. But you can see from the screenshot here that it's got a lot cleaner, simpler user interface.

There is also some talk about taking IconX out of DesktopX and making it a separate program (still part of Object Desktop). All existing owners of DesktopX would get IconX still but this way it could get more of the glory it deserves. The poll on WinCustomize demonstrates a lot of people have no idea what IconX is.  So I'll tell you, IconX is an amazing feature of DesktopX that lets users control how their desktop icons behave. It can put shadows on them, make them react to mouse events (mouse over, etc.). They can grow and shrink on the fly, be colorized, have sounds associated with events, and much more. It's just supremely cool. But it tends to get overshadowed by some of DesktopX's other cool features. Not sure what we'll end up doing or when we'd do it. But it's being talked about.  Even if you just use DesktopX for this feature, it's worth it. DesktopX's overhead is miniscule and IconX can make your desktop incredibly slick.

So tomorrow we gotta get the GUI Olympics results up. That shouldn't take too much time. SkinStudio 4.3 (the free version) is actually now available, just not announced. Shhhh.

What a hectic week it's been. We're in the final stages of finishing up The Political Machine. I must go on the record and say that Ubi Soft is a first class team of people to work with. Total pros. We got the game's box design in and it looks great. The game is shaping up really well too. From a pure game mechanics point of view, I think this is the best game I've ever worked on, even better than Galactic Civilizations.  It's smaller in scope by design but packs a lot of punch in game play. I'd love to turn this into a board game at some point.

We also have been working a lot on SkinStudio. Getting version 4.3 out the door has been a high priority for quite awhile. SkinStudio 4.3 is a pretty "big deal". Pity it's coming out in the middle of summer. Okay, why is it a big deal? 3 reasons: 1) It explicitly supports exporting toolbar icons and progress animations as stand alone items. WinCustomize is going to add two new sections shortly for toolbar icons and progress animations so that users will be more inclined to mix and match these components together.  We also want to encourage artists who might just want to create toolbar icons or progress animations to do just that. 2) It is the culmination of a year of effort to nail down MSStyle -> WindowBlinds conversions. This is something we knew we needed to get done before the Longhorn betas come out. Because in Longhorn, MSStyles go bye bye. There's a lot of good skinning out there that would otherwise become "legacy". Since we fully expect WindowBlinds to work on Longhorn (either as-is or in some updated version) WB users would be able to make use of all those MSStyles that are floating around out there and there would be a place for MSStyles users to go.  3) SkinStudio 4.3 has a lot more error checking. The GUI Olympics has shown us why some people still find WindowBlinds "buggy". Many skins have small errors that don't show up on most people's computers but on some computers and on some programs can cause problems. SkinStudio 4.3 should enable skinners to create more visual styles.

Speaking of the GUI Olympics, the last two events are about to be judged and what a pain it is. The icon judging is really giving the judges pain. There are really 4 icon packages in particular in which any of them could get the gold and yet one of them is going to not be in the top 3.

The big skinning story of the week has to be the announcement that Alienware is going to be bundling Stardock's Object Desktop OEM (aka "Theme Manager") on all its machines. As some may recall, recent benchmarks from UGO have shown that games run slightly faster if WindowBlinds is providing the visual styles rather than uxtheme (i.e. slightly more FPS). So as someone said, this is a match made in heaven.  MikeB, who is one of the big winners at the GUI Olympics is helping with the skin. We also structured the arrangement so that the version of WindowBlinds that comes with it includes one branded visual style and then additional ones would have to be purchased for a nominal fee (with much of that fee going to skin authors, it uses a special WindowBlinds format). What's particularly ironic about this is that this deal to open the door so that skin authors could now more easily get paid to make skins came out just as some users were trying to claim that companies like Stardock leech off skinners as if the GUI Olympics with its $15k in prizes wasn't enough of a statement of how Stardock feels about skinners.

Jeff and co are working hard on a new version of ObjectDock (freeware) and a Plus version (ObjectDock Plus!) which will have a bunch of cool new features such as system tray support, tabs, multiple docks, task grouping, Start menu, very slick edge screen docking (where only the tabs will show up until you put your mouse there), mouse activation, slick dragging and dropping, skinning, and a bunch of other stuff.  We hope to have a beta of it available this month.

The other big thing being worked on right now is ObjectBar 2 which is a totally reimagining of it. We will probably break out the right-click menu part of it and make it a separate program (still part of Object Desktop). Having the Right click be a separate program would make it more usable and make ObjectBar's UI cleaner. ObjectBar 2 itself is going to be a fundamentally different looking program to interact with. It'll be much more focused on functionality. The skinning will still be there but generally we're going to migrate more to having it just inherit the WindowBlinds skin more so that we can focus more on having it be a useful productivity program. This will also serve as the basis for ControlCenter 2. Hopefully that'll show up later this summer. Lots of work left to do. But you can see from the screenshot here that it's got a lot cleaner, simpler user interface.

There is also some talk about taking IconX out of DesktopX and making it a separate program (still part of Object Desktop). All existing owners of DesktopX would get IconX still but this way it could get more of the glory it deserves. The poll on WinCustomize demonstrates a lot of people have no idea what IconX is.  So I'll tell you, IconX is an amazing feature of DesktopX that lets users control how their desktop icons behave. It can put shadows on them, make them react to mouse events (mouse over, etc.). They can grow and shrink on the fly, be colorized, have sounds associated with events, and much more. It's just supremely cool. But it tends to get overshadowed by some of DesktopX's other cool features. Not sure what we'll end up doing or when we'd do it. But it's being talked about.  Even if you just use DesktopX for this feature, it's worth it. DesktopX's overhead is miniscule and IconX can make your desktop incredibly slick.

So tomorrow we gotta get the GUI Olympics results up. That shouldn't take too much time. SkinStudio 4.3 (the free version) is actually now available, just not announced. Shhhh.

The GUI Olympics is almost over and now we're getting down to the wire. Two events remain: Best overall icons and Best overall WindowBlinds skin. After that it's just a matter of putting together the points and announcing overall winners of the contest.

The judges have been going through the icons in GREAT detail. The link below goes to the list of icon packages that have made the finals.