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.

So the Cartoon Network has finished its animated Star Wars series of 5 minute shorts on The Clone Wars. I have to admit, it was really really good. The writing was very strong, the stories interesting, the animation effective, and the action oustanding.

It was Samurai Jack in the Star Wars universe basically. If anything, it makes the battles in the movies look lame. The advantage of animation is that you can do a lot more cool things on the cheap. The force powers shown by Obi Wan and Anakin and Mace Windu certainly blow away what we've seen so far in the movies.

Which of course, creates its own problems -- in these cartoons, one Jedi can take out dozens, if not hundreds of troops single handedly. But in the movies, they're not quite so powerful. But still, that aside, the point is taken - the Jedi are tough. And Anakin is becoming ever more powerful as time goes on.

It definitely makes the third movie looking to be more compelling than the first two prequels. But it also makes me sad. Sad that George Lucas squandered the first two movies with such poor directing and allowing such poor acting to spoil what were, otherwise, reasonably good stories. Whether that be Jar Jar wrecking the first movie in between Anakin's "Yippees" or in the second one with such wooden and artificial acting with Anakin's character that Anakin comes across as creepy rather than intense (the whole "love" story of the Clone Wars is incredibly artificial and lame).

I don't know if Lucas is directing the third one. I hope not. I fear that the inevitable and intense battle between Obi Wan and Anakin will be laughably compared to the battle with the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Only time will tell.

But in the meantime, definitely check out these shorts. They're well done.

 

If you run a business long enough eventually it'll get sued. It's inevitable. And the bigger your company is, the more often it'll get sued.

I sometimes wonder what percentage of time executives at Fortune 500 companies have to spend giving depositions for some case.  Our company is fairly small and I've had to give my share of depositions in lawsuits. Each lawsuit against us I believe (even with hindsight) was unnecessary and really frivolous. 

One thing I have learned from lawsuits is:

a) You should try to avoid them.

Everyone loses, particularly the smaller party.

c) They are very expensive for everyone even if they are frivolous.

The most recent lawsuit that we're currently engaged in involves a competitor of ours in the Windows customization market. They have sued to ask for a declaratory judgment to use our IconPackager files for profit in their program. It is, in my opinion, an incredibly foolish strategy from a business point of view and a PR point of view and without legal merit. 

The money they've spent in legal costs could have been used to pay icon artists to create new and original content exclusively for their program. But instead, they'll spend vastly more in legal feels in an attempt to win a judgment so that they can leech off the popularity of our product. And what's worse, for them, is that it's unlikely they'll prevail. But if they'd spent the same money paying icon artists, they'd definitely end up much better off.

But sadly, it is a case we have to vigorously defend. If they could get away with leeching off the content generated by our software to compete with us, soon there'd be dozens of parasitic developers doing the same thing to that same program or others we make.

Our business model is based on a fairly straight forward proposition -- users need our software to use the content our software generates. The entire "skinning community" is based on this proposition. Skin sites exist because developers of customization software have control of the formats they come up with and the content their software generates. Artists can then use these programs to create the content and upload them to skin sites. 

Software developers, like us, therefore generate our revenue by end users wanting to make use of this content. And because most of the artistic portion of the content is provided freely, the software is incredibly cheap.  IconPackager, for example, is 15 bucks. That's practically freeware compared to other software. But this model becomes threatened if the software developer who comes up with the formats and other related intellectual property cannot be assured that their software is the exclusive way to make use of the content that's been generated by it.

That's why in this case it's such a bad business decision for our competitors. We have no choice but to defend our rights vigorously against their lawsuit. And I don't think they've ever been involved in an intellectual property lawsuit. They can last years. Years and years. And cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's a lose-lose proposition for both parties but particularly for the smaller party (our competitor in this case) because while I'm answering depositions and dealing with other paperwork, our software continues to move forward. Our release schedule isn't impacted. But in smaller software companies, the executives are usually the ones who also do the programming and other key hands-on issues. And we can afford it better financially. 

I get the feeling that our competitor sees this as a "matter of principle". They mistakenly consider what they are doing no different than say Word Perfect reading in MS Word documents (which for obvious reasons I won't describe here at this time why that analogy is absurd upon inspection). But for our company and for the skinning community, it's an issue that goes to the core. So for us, the issue will be pursued until our competitor stops trying to use our intellectual property without our license even if it takes many years -- because we have no other choice. We're not out to "get them". We simply have no other choice.

But it is a lose-lose situation. Businesses that engage in lawsuits often do so when they are unnecessary. In this current one, our competitor could simply invest their money trying to woo icon artists to create content for their program. Support websites that host skins, themes, and icons. And just generally make a compelling product. It would have cost a lot less than they've probably spent in legal costs and have helped their customers and the community in general.

It's also a losing proposition from a PR point of view. Software companies in our little community gain reputations based on their actions. What our competitor is doing doesn't pass the "smell test". The average user who is into this stuff (i.e. potential customers) may not know exactly what part of what they are doing is illegal, but they know that it just looks slimy.

But it's all part of doing business in the United States. It is too bad that we don't have a "losers pay" system. I am pretty sure that if we had such a system that we would never have been sued in the first place. But in the US, you can file a lawsuit and even if you lose, you don't end up having to pay the legal costs of the person you sued (there are rare exceptions of course).

The next major version of Windows, code-named Longhorn has been pushed back to 2006, according to Microsoft.

Longhorn will provide 3 major updates to Windows:

1. WinFS - a new way of managing your files on your computer.
2. Avalon - a new graphics engine designed to provide a composited user experience (imagine being able to run at very high resolution without everything being tiny -- the screen resolution will be irrelevant, we'll deal with things in terms of DPI - dots per inch).
3. Indigo. A set of new services built into the OS to make it easier for developers to create Internet applications.

You may be wondering what that means in terms of customizing Windows. It's really too early to tell. I can say that having the entire screen composited in 3D will create all kinds of new opportunities for software developers. Our only fear is that Microsoft's (ahem) "security initiatives" which seem fixated on making everything be "managed code" won't straight jacket Windows into a one-sized fits all solution (though we're sure Linux advocates would love to see that).

What we do believe, however, is that Longhorn will present programs like WindowBlinds and DesktopX with all kinds of new goodies. Imagine graphics that are vector based instead of just bitmapped? And with the hardware that would be available by then, imagine your WindowBlinds skins transformed into vectors on the fly via accelerated video cards with alpha blending built in.

Though don't get too excited. It's over 2 years away. And Windows XP will likely be here to stay for quite awhile. Luckily, XP is pretty darn nice.

This is a site I plug on occasion because it's such a good, useful, and reliable source of information for those people who are interested in tweaking Windows. Check it out.

One thing I do want to make clear: I don't think the United States is an angel by any means.

And in fact, I think the United States pursues its self-interest quite vigorously.

However, I think that the way the United States has defined its self interest has been done in a way in which other countries happen to benefit.

Let me give you an example: During the European imperial age, the belief was that nations needed colonies to supply raw goods. Getting colonies required conquest, subjugation, etc. Not nice stuff.

The US, by contrast, defines its self interest by having a stable world order and prosperous countries to trade with. It doesn't *need* raw materials (and despite those uneducated enough to think we'd conquer a nation for its oil, oil is not worth conquering a country for, it's not valuable enough). So its policies have tended to be able ensuring global stability and creating markets for its products and services.

Sometimes that has meant supporting dictators and other goons who provide "stability". But usually it has meant the US defending countries being assaulted by others and trying to increase the overall propserity of the world.

In other words, the US strategy has been in its own self interest overall but its self interest has always been of benefit to the others. What is good for the US, as a generalization, has also been good for the world.

Since 9/11, the United States has recognized clearly that backing dictators because of stability is not the way to go. That the "freedom deficit" is coming back to bite us. The rise of Al Qaeda and other movements can be traced to this freedom deficit.

Which brings me to the irony: The same people who oppose the United STates having liberated Iraq from a monstrous dictator and attempting to create a democracy are the same people who complain that the United States supported dictators in the past.  Bush would be the first to say "Yea, it's wrong to support dictators. We need to start vigorously promoting freedom instead."

We've been working really hard to get Political Machine ready for next week's beta for Drengin.net users. There's a lot of play balancing issues we need to work out. The multiplayer is starting to come along though.

Probably the biggest things we need to address right now are:

1) More questions for the TV shows. This is something I have to really work on since it's my area.

2) Look at the effect of ads and such more. I'm getting my butt kicked by the AI but it's not always intuitive why.

3) Difficulty levels for the AI.

4) Balance Democrats and Republicans to ensure that it's equally hard/easy to win.

5) Make sure no one thing is too powerful.

6) Introduce partisanship in the states (i.e. make it so that some states tilt more Republican or Democrat than they currently do).

7) Tweak the issues so that while there is variation in states, they don't switch sides. I.e. There shouldn't be a case where Republicans favor Universal health care or Democrats are against abortion rights.

Screenshot from this week.

Someone on one of the forums said:

"I find it embarrassing that anyone would brag about US foreign policy. We should be apologizing for it."

Such self-loathing has always been typical of the left. The sort of pessimistic, glass is half empty views on any number of issue has always struck me as strange. In this case, it also strikes me as incredibly lacking of serious perspective on world history.

I consider the US foreign policy, as a whole, to have been of great benefit to the world.

The US has pledged over $10 billion to fight AIDS in Africa.  How much as the EU spent total? China? Russia? Why not? This is serious money.  The US spends more than anyone else on helping not just AIDS in Africa but on providing food and fighting malaria. And when one of their governments, such as in Liberia or Ivory Coast crumble, it's not the French they want in there. It's the United States. The US is like the unappreciated cop. People spit on the cop but when things hit the fan you know who they really want and trust to help them -- the United States.

Let's be real here -- if not the United States, the whom? France? Russia? China? Who? Much of Europe got a taste of Germany wanting to be the hegemon. Japan too. It's easy to compare the United States to some sort of idealized perfect world power. But how about living in the real world. Not the Star Trek world where it's the idealized Federation being the standard bearer.

The US helps ensure the freedom of countries like Taiwan. Meanwhile, France participates in joint naval excercises with Communist China off the coast of Taiwan during the Taiwanese elections. Nice. While the US was trying to get consensus in the UN, France unilaterally invaded the Ivory Coast. But hey, that's okay, it's France right?

The US not only liberated Europe but it paid for its reconstruction. Same for Japan. By contrast, the Soviet Union pillaged Germany and Eastern Europe. Some 100,000 German women were raped in 1945 alone by Russian soldiers. And for all the complaining about the Kyoto accords and other CO2 debates, visit eastern Europe or say Moscow. You don't need any special devices to tell that the air in Moscow is hard to breath. Try visiting Beijing who is in the process of trying to clean up its massive air pollution to be less embarrassing by the time they host the olympics. The typical American or European (and ask anyone whose visited a major city in China) will currently have a seriously hard time breathing. But we'll pick on the United States because it doesn't support the Kyoto treaty (btw, John Kerry voted AGAINST the Kyoto treaty).

Meanwhile, South Korea, which provides a lot of the computer goods you guys use to bitch about the United States, exists today because of US foreign policy. The US lost over 50,000 people defending South Korea. Which, btw, at the time was essentially a pre-industrial rural society. With US help, it has become home of such companies as Samsung and manufactures everything from cars to computer chips. Even today, 25,000 Americans are there. And while it's convenient to fixate on every American combat casualty in Iraq, there are occasionally deaths in Korea near the DMZ zone. It's not a fun place. How many French and German troops are helping out in that "UN" operation?

Western Europe, which regularly gets uppity about US foreign policy, is free today because the US was willing to put its own cities on the line in the face of Soviet nuclear intimdation. Which is totally taken for granted. The US was willing to sacrifice itself to save Europe from Soviet domination. Meanwhile, the Germans can't manage to put together a single division to help the United States in Afghanistan.  Heck, the French and Germans combined can't.

Most of you, I assume, drive cars but some act like oil comes from some magic fairie land. The US commited blood and treasure to liberate Kuwait from Saddam's brutal regime. And we all benefited from this. And while France and other "multilateral-loving" nations technically particpated in that wonderful example of multilaterialism, it realistically came down to the United States, UK, and Australia doing the real work there. France and the other countries were there essentially as symbolic gestures of unity.

And for all the talk about "squandering" world "good will" after 9/11 with the Iraq invasion, let us not forget Afghanistan where non-US help was minimal (a couple hundred Canadians, a handful of Germans, a couple French planes). That was the material result of "good will". No wonder Bush decided he could do without more "good will" in Iraq.

Which reminds me, Iraq, a country whose fascist dictator threw opponents and children of opponents into plastic shredders, cut out tongues, and created mass graveyards that made anything in Kosovo look like a joke, is now free of him thanks to US foreign policy. It should be pointed out that the whole middle-east mess can be laid at the hands of European colonialism. Now it's the United States, UK, Poland, and Australia doing the heavy lifting to help Iraq.  Now, why does that combination of countries seem familiar? Ah yes, they were the main ones who helped on the allied side in World War 2 (not counting the Soviet Untion of course).

The United States is currently helping out in Haiti. A country whose been poverty stricken since the French in the 19th century basically sucked the wealth out of it through a series of tribute payments backed by military threat. Most people don't bother to look into what messed up Haiti but I suspect many US haters suspect that somehow the US is at fault here too regardless of the facts.

There is also the billions of dollars in foreign aid the US provides to countries around the world. $5 billion annually  to Egypt. Billions to various central American countries. Even before 9/11, the US was the largest food donor to Afghanistan. More so than any other country.

Speaking of the EU and its abilities... after standing by and watching ethnic cleansing go on in its own back yard, the US stopped Serbia from doing the same in Kosovo.

So tell me again why the US should be embarrased about our foreign policy or apologizing? Because the US didn't get the express permission of Communist China, Russia, and France to topple Saddam Hussein? That is, btw, in case people weren't aware, the obstacle to getting a 19th or whatever UN resolution explicitly authorizing force. China who slaughtered its own citizens in Tienenman square. Russia, who's busy becoming more authoritarian and France..well being France. That is what makes some people embarrassed? That we don't kiss up to these countries?

Since 9/11, I don't see anything the US has to be embarrassed about or needing to apologize for. We were attacked. We have responded by toppling the regime that was hosting Al Qaeda. We then toppled the regime that was most dangerous to the United States and geographically located very near Afghanistan and smacked dab in the middle of the Middle East where these whackos who keep wanting to murder us for Allah come from.  

At the same time we've been doing this we've increased our foreign aid to Africa. We've helped South Korea, China, and Japan deal with their problem with North Korea (contrary to some anti-Americans, North Korea isn't just the US's problem or even primarily the US's problem). We've helped the people in Afghanistan and Iraq. And we've made great progress in moving towards a free trade zone in the Western Hemisphere that is likely to help bring up living stardards in the developing world here.

It seems to me, if anything, the US, as a whole, has a lot to be proud of in its foreign policy.

This month's Stardock TV focuses primarily on IconPackager. But with the new release of Object Desktop 2004 (the yearly snapshot of all of the programs that make up Object Desktop being aligned into a single coherent product) we take a quick look at that too.

This is IconPackager 2.5. The world's most popular way (by far) of changing your Windows icons by applying packages (sometimes called sets) of icons.

 

This is Theme Manager. It's been totally rewritten and is the successor to the popular "WinStyles" program. It lets you apply individual skins, themes, icons, wallpapers, etc. Or you can apply entire "suites" at once. When you have your desktop just the way you want it, you can save it as a .suite and bring it back later.

 

Some people think Object Desktop is all about eye candy and glitz. But Object Desktop is really about turbo charging Windows to work how you want it to. This month's Stardock TV also shows how you can use Object Desktop to create a minimalistic desktop. Just raw speed.

[StardockTV: April 2004 Video]

Video requires Windows Media Player 9

Products Featured:

• IconPackager
• Theme Manager
• Object Desktop (which both of the above come with)