If you have Drengin.net (www.drengin.net) you can now download the beta of The Political Machine.
The Political Machine is a strategy game in which you run for President of the United States. Its home page is www.politicalmachine.com.
Let us know what you think if you've got it here!
Welcome aboard!
I defeated Bush today. As Kerry. In the Political Machine that is. The first beta is going out tomorrow and I played the build we have up on Stardock Central (available privately). It'll be available tomorrow to all users of Drengin.net. I'm not fully satisfied with the game play so far. We'll be tweaking the heck out of the game in the coming weeks.
But I must say, even as a beta, I'm having a pretty good time. Which isn't something I could say for Galactic Civilizations which I went around the office saying "This game...Suuuuuuuccckkkkssss..." during the first 2 betas until we got starbases in. I still wasn't really satisfied with how GalCiv turned out, if I had known how MOO 3 was going to turn out we would have put in the ship design feature we had originally wanted to put in. But hindsight is 20/20 and the Altarian Prophecy is something we're pretty happy about.
Here's a screenshot from tonight's game. I played at "Beginner" level.
I managed to win Wyoming as Kerry which was a bit gratuitous. It took quite a bit of effort to do it as you can imagine. I wasn't able to win over Ohio though, Bush had simply gotten there and worked it harder sooner.
So what are the parts I don't like?
So that's some of the things we're working through. I've got a lot of work to do on the AI still. I don't have the AI able to do endorsements, deal with political consultants or activists correctly. And I need to crank out a lot more political issues. I also need to make sure that answering crazy answers definitely sinks your campaign.
So in this practice game I did beat Bush by about 30 electoral votes.
I've been tracking the rate in which GUI skins (WindowBlinds / msstyles) since 2001. What I do is see how many new skins are created each month and then check on the rate of creation.
It is a good indicator of how popular skinning is. Now, from a purely competitive point of view, msstyles compete with WindowBlinds skins. But Stardock, as a company, benefits from and overall interest in skinning.
At the start of 2004 there were about 2,550 WindowBlinds skins and 1100 msstyles.
Now, April 12 there are about 2785 WindowBlinds skins (not counting GUI Olympics entries) and 1212 msstyles.
This is looking at ThemeXP.org mainly as the site for msstyles. deviantART is a good site too for msstyles but they get even fewer msstyles than ThemeXP does.
So since the start of the year, nearly twice as many WB skins have been made.
Yea, I know, yippie for WindowBlinds. But does it mean that the GUI skinning "craze" has peaked and it's starting to move back towards being a more techie thing? Obviously not good news for those who use uxtheme patching programs but WindowBlinds has really become really popular partly because of how popular skinning, as a whole has become.
Thoughts?
Anyone can enter. The main rule is that your entry can't have previously been made publicly available anywhere else.
Some great stuff has already been made. It will be very exciting to see what comes as we near the May deadline. The war in Iraq is part of the war on terror. We are not in Iraq for the sake of the Iraqi people. Don't let those who favor military action in Iraq (or are against it) try to spin it that way. Our presence in Iraq has nothing to do whatsoever with how the Iraqi people feel about the United States. Our soldiers are risking their lives in Iraq not for the sake of Iraqi's but for our sake. For the sake of Americans.
It is often easy to forget, with all this talk of "liberation" that at the end of the day, we invaded Iraq because we believed it was a threat to us. I always felt that those who opposed taking out Saddam were being incredibly naive and short-sighted. Eventually, had things continued the way they were going pre-9/11, sanctions against Iraq would have been lifted and Saddam would have had a free hand to covertly become a nuclear power. Opponents of the war make great noise about the lack of WMD stockpiles. But they seem to gloss over the fact that Saddam was quite clearly trying to put together the infrastructure to start cranking them out once sanctions were over. The Kay report makes this quite plain.
Saddam's plan was pretty straight forward: Be a reasonably good boy until sanctions were lifted and the world looked the other way and then arm to the teeth with WMD so that 1991 could never happen again to him again. The next time he invaded someone he would have nuclear weapons to keep the allies at bay. That was the plan. Terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda worked very well into that strategy -- Al Qaeda would be the ultimate delivery system for such WMD.
Americans, contrary to what some in Europe seem to think, are pretty bright. We have a lot of common sense, as a culture. After 9/11 the calculus was pretty clear -- Al Qaeda would use any weapon available to murder Americans. And Saddam either had or planned to have weapons of mass destruction that he could, if he chose, provide covertly to these terrorists. At the very least, the very threat that he could do this could stymie US action in the middle east.
Let's take a quick look at the middle east. Do you see Afghanistan on the right? See Iraq there in the middle? Other than Turkey, most of these nations are cranking out terrorists one way or the other. These terrorist have been doing horrific things for 30 years now.
After 9/11 it became clear that we needed to deal with the underlying issue -- Islamic fascism. The question is, what exactly do you do? Why is it when you hear about terrorists killing innocent civilians, taking hostages, making declarations of war on the west, etc. that the people are from these countries in general? This is a very small section of the world we're looking at here. What makes this part of the world different? Oil? No. Most of these countries have no oil. Victims of US "aggression"? No, the US has had very little involvement here (particularly relative to the Europeans who colonized and created these countries in the first place). So what is special?
The Bush administration came up with a term: Freedom deficit. These were nations where freedom was virtually non-existent. Many of these nations were corrupt and cruel. On the other hand, there are plenty of nations in Africa with corrupt and totalitarian rulers. Perhaps a combination of religion and higher GDP has produced fanatics with means.
And so the United States government looked at this map. The first target had to be Afghanistan. It was the imminent threat. It was the failed nation state that Al Qaeda was based on thanks to the Taliban regime. The US's first priority after 9/11 was to remove the Taliban and disrupt Al Qaeda. That mission was accomplished (despite bitching and moaning from the left how it would be another "Vietnam" -- side note: Why is everything another Vietnam to the left? When I try to explain to my wife that I can't mow the lawn because it'll be another Vietnam she's unconvinced. But strangely Democrats think that most Americans will compare
But what next? Remember - the goal in Afghanistan is accomplished already. Al Qaeda is disrupted. The Taliban is gone. And as bonus we are keeping the pressure on the top Al Qaeda leaders who are hanging out near the border region with Pakistan. The US decided it was time to look back at the map.
So who were the big sources of these violent fanatics? The answer: Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. But how do you go after them? Logistically, we couldn't go after any of them. And politically Saudi Arabia is off limits. But...BUT...there was Iraq. Iraq needed to be taken off the board anyway. Saddam had to go for plenty of reasons. Saddam should have been removed in 1998 by Clinton. But perhaps this could now be used to our advantage. We had dozens of UN resolutions against Iraq already. The legal case was already mature. Americans understood after 9/11 that Saddam had to go. And look at the map closely. Which 3 countries border Iraq? Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. And, Iraq did produce enough oil that we could afford to alienate Saudi Arabia if push came to shove.
If Saddam could be removed we would be eliminating a serious long term threat to US security. I know I didn't want my kids having to go over to Iraq to deal with a nuclear armed Saddam. Now was the time to do something about it. Momentum was in our favor if we could get rid of Iraq while people were paying attention to the seriousness of the threat. It didn't take a rocket scientist to conclude that Saddam, armed with biological or even nuclear weapons would probably have no problem covertly handing them over to fanatical Al Qaeda terrorists for their follow-up to 9/11.
And that is why we invaded Iraq. To remove Saddam first and foremost and if possible, for extra credit to create a stable, democratic, liberal Iraq. One that would, hopefully, serve as a beacon to its neighbors: Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. A successful Iraq would draw others to emulate it. And by doing so, drain the swamp of the fundamental source of terrorism.
That's why we are there in Iraq. We are there because we are trying to prevent future 9/11's. With all the bitching about how Clinton and Bush should have stopped 9/11, it's amazing that those same people who bitch are usually the ones who argue against what we have done in Iraq. For if in say 2010 Saddam's sons had smuggled a crude nuclear weapon to Al Qaeda who then used it in New York harbor to kill 250,000 Americans, these same anti-war people would be incredulously demanding why we didn't remove Saddam when it was politically feasible to do so. That's why it's hard to take people who are both anti-war yet believe Bush is somehow at fault for 9/11 seriously. They're not serious people.
Which is why it ultimately doesn't really matter whether the Iraqis want the US in Iraq. We're not there for their sake. We are there for our sake. It just so happens that our sake happens to provide the opportunity for Iraqis to live in a free, democratic and prosperous Iraq.
Our soldiers who fight in Iraq are not there to save Iraq. They are there so that their own children are not murdered en masse by nuclear armed terrorists. They're there so that their children don't have to go over to the Middle East to fight off some united Islamic Fascist republic. We are there because in the long run, our soldiers are fighting to save the lives of thousands, or even millions of innocent lives. Every American solider is a hero. Sacrificing their own comfort to ensure our safety in the long run. They are giving up their today so that we have a safer tomorrow.
It is a nice side-effect that the citizens of those failed nations whose corrupt, evil leaders are being removed will end up befitting in the long run. But their benefit is just that -- a side effect. It is not the primary goal. Never forget that.
Limiting people’s ability to participate in democracy is not good.
When you limit the ability of citizens to participate in the political process by restricting financial contributions you inevitably end up with a concentration of political power in the hands of those have the ability to get the word out without having to spend money.
This so-called reform would be little more than merely handing power to big media companies, celebrities and anyone else who can get air time without having to spend money.
When you're intelligent, it can be very frustrating to recognize that one lacks wisdom. And recognizing that truism is the first step on the path to gaining wisdom.
When I was 17, I started keeping a journal of my thoughts and experiences. It was part of the whole internal conceit that comes with being young and assured of ones intelligence relative to others. I kept the journal for many reasons but one reason was because I wanted to remember what it was like to be 17-21 so that when I had children, I would be able to understand better. I was certain that as I got older, I'd lose touch with that "deepness" that only young adults seemed to possess.
It is amazing how time converts intelligence to wisdom through experience. It shows up in so many subtle ways. I used to run a BBS back during my late teens and have print outs of some of my more (ahem) profound writings. Re-reading them makes it pretty clear just how intelligence is no substitute for wisdom. For example, when I was a teen, my word choices were intentionally more flamboyant and intellectual than they are today. That is, my writing was more designed to impress my readers of my intellect than to communicate my ideas. Today, when I write, I intentionally choose plainer words. That's because, over time, I've become more concerned with communicating effectively than demonstrating my vocabular.
That also is true of debating. I used to really enjoy debating about religion, the after life, abortion, evolution, love, etc. I still maintain that these are good things to debate because they make you think about things in ways you may not have previously. But now, I rarely will debate those kinds of things. They're too subjective. I am not interested in convincing someone that evolution is true (though I don't mind popping in and briefly commenting on the subject). I don't really care whether someone thinks abortion is murder or whether a "cell cluster" is life. These are things that are simply too subjective and won't be resolved.
Reading through my journal I recognize a great number of fairly typical attributes that one can see in teens anywhere in similar circumstances:
1) Melodrama. Everything is important. It is the age of poetry. The age of passionate diatribes. Heart-felt feelings. Words like "soul" and "eternal" are the types of words teens use to describe relationships. By the time you're 30, these words get replaced by words like "gas" and "smell".
2) Insecurity. Intelligence in teens is rarely valued by ones peers. This leads intelligent teens to simply try to redefine what "cool" is. That's why so many intelligent teens are basically exiles amongst their peers. I must confess, high school left a chip on my shoulder that helped fuel my ambition later on. Never underestimate the power of "I'll show them!".
3) Certainty. Teens seem to be "certain" of everything. I was. And adults who thought I was being naive were simply not intelligent enough to recognize the truth in my considered thoughts. After all, I had thought about these "deep" issues at length while adults were too busy playing office politics or watching TV. Some dullard 30 year old can't possibly understand the truth depth of my "love" for <eternal love interest #5101>. And their foolish patronization of me only made me feel more contempt for these dollards.
Of course, time moves on and wisdom is slow to build but it does over time. The issues I thought for sure would be important turned out not to be important. What delivers everyday happiness is different from person to person but is almost certainly not the things I was so certain were the keys to happiness when I was 19.
As a 32 year old, my fear now is more that humans, psychologically, follow the same pattern.
At 19 some think "I wonder what I should do with my life?" Result: Deep thoughts and certainty.
At 30 some think "I wonder if this is what I should be doing with my life?" Result: Marriages fail, unrest, re-evaluation.
At 45 some start to wonder "Is this what I should have done with my life?" Result: Mid-life crisis, sports cars, 21 year old girlfriends.
Obviously most people don't follow the pattern I describe above. But observation shows that a lot of people seem to fit some derivative of those patterns in roughly those scales.
Which brings us back to the original point - intelligence doesn't equal wisdom. Wisdom is slow to build over time. All we can do is try our best to recognize how little we know so that our intelligence doesn't lead us to disaster.
Hi Gang,
There seems to be some misunderstanding in the suites section here on WinCustomize. So let me try to go over this briefly:
What is a Suite?
A .suite file contains skins, themes, icons, wallpapers, etc. Basically a suite is a snapshot of someone's desktop.
What are the file formats of a suite?
The first program to create suites was called WinStyles. It has gone through its share of file extensions. But mainly there were two: .suite files and .xptheme files.
The two formats had very different purposes. You can't redistribute the skins, themes, icons, etc. of others without their permission. So we created the .suite file which was designed to allow users to LINK to the skin, theme, etc. A .suite file might be less than 1K in size for instance if it just linked to everything else. A .xptheme file, by contrast, actually included inside the file all the skins and themes needed to apply.
By contrast, when a .suite file was applied, it would look at the links and download automatically the skins and themes it needed. This way, the original author's work is protected and even gets a higher download count.
But more recently, Theme Manager, which is currently only on Object Desktop, combines the two into the .suite format. Now, a .suite might contain the wallpaper or icons in the file and also might link to a skin or theme on the Internet it needs.
How they should be used
It's fairly straight forward: IF YOU DIDN'T MAKE THE SKIN, THEME, ICON PACKAGE, ETC. YOU CANNOT INCLUDE IT WITH YOUR SUBMISSION WITHOUT PERMISSION. Many people are uploading .suite files that contain within them the skins and themes of others. This is not allowed. LINK to it instead. I'll be making a video of this shortly.