I'm not speaking for Stardock. I'm speaking for myself.  I'm pretty disappointed with the GUI Olympics so far.

Not so much the entires. There are some outstanding entries so far.  But the quantity so far has been lacking. Not in terms of # of skins per skinner but the number of skinners.

Winamp: 11 skins. Most of which are classic.

IconPackager: 7 icon packages.

WindowBlinds: 45

The people participating are doing some great work. But I'm becoming a bit concerned about the number of skinners participating. Are there a lot of entries still in development? I hope so. Because I got all kinds of emails from people asking for another GUI Olympics. I didn't want to do one. It's a lot of extra work for me and Pat. But we went ahead and did it and managed to get a bunch of big name sponsors this time.

What I'd like to know is how many of you reading this have submissions that are pending still.  Because if we end up with the contest only having say 15 to 20 people total participating, then I'd say it was not worth it. Where are all the other skinners. Where are the Winamp skinners? Where are the WB skinners? Where are the Icon authors? Are they still working on stuff or is there just not that much interest in contests like these?

Stardock has been quietly working on MacOS X versions of WindowBlinds and DesktopX.  Next week, Stardock plans to open a public beta for MacOS X users of these new versions of Stardock's software.

The MacOS X version of WindowBlinds will integrate seamlessly in to Apple's Quartz engine. Existing WindowBlinds visual styles will be able to work on any 10.3 or later version of MacOS X.

With regards to DesktopX, all .dxpacks will be able to run as widgets on MacOS X 10.3 or later. Utilizing Quartz, DesktopX users on MacOS X can expect outstanding performance.  Stardock has developed a VBScript interpreter for MacOS X to handle DesktopX objects that use VBScript. Javascript will be handled natively by MacOS X.

Stardock doesn't plan to have all of Object Desktop for MacOS X. A bundle of DesktopX + WindowBlinds will be available for MacOS X for $34.95 in June.

Stay tuned for more details.

The March issue of WinCustomize Magazine is available. Those of you who subscribe to it should have received it via email by now (though possibly those of you with email addresses late in the alphabet may be waiting still).

Click on the link to check it out. Lots of good stuff.

Hopefully none of you have had this problem but I wasn't able to post or respond today.

The new (ahem) logon system is buggy and unfinished apparently. I couldn't even log off to fix the problem. I had to delete my cookies and then close my browsers and then reload and then relogon. Now it works.

So I'm working in my home office and the 3 year old comes up and says "I wove you, daddy." and hugs me.

I melt onto the floor.

At the end of the day the American people are going to have to make up their own minds with regards to George W. Bush. They will either conclude that 9/11 was unavoidable and the policy of going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and then taking out Saddam in Iraq was a good thing or it wasn't a good thing.

Richard Clarke, who has been testifying before congress, decided that Bush and his team didn't do enough before 9/11. Whether you find him credible or not probably depends on whether you believe he has an axe to grind or not. I personally believe he does. In 2002 he gave a glowing review of how aggressive the Bush team was pre-9/11 and savaged the Clinton admistration's feckless policy. And yet, after not receiving a promotion into the DoHS, he resigned and has changed his mind that Bush's team did enough. The question is, when did he lie? Is he lying now? Or was he lying in 2002?

One thing is clear: Clarke believes going into Iraq was a distraction. He believes it has taken vital resources and attention from Afghanistan. Before you decide whether you agree with that assessment or not, there is still the simple issue: He has changed his view of how Bush's team was dealing with terrorism before 9/11 based on policy decisions made after 9/11.  That's intellectually dishonest at best.

Now, assuming you agree with him, that dealing with Iraq took vital resources away from exterminating Al Qaeda, doesn't the same charge go for Clinton even more? Could it not be argued that the whole Kosovo war was a distraction from Al Qaeda?  Couldn't Clinton, at the very least, inserted some special forces to take out Bin Laden? Post-9/11 Bin Laden is hiding in caves. During the Clinton years, he was living in public.

I think most Americans could be convinced that the Bush team didn't take Al Qaeda seriously enough prior to 9/11. I think Bush would agree that they weren't treating terrorism as the priority it should probably have been given. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. But for anyone to argue that Clinton did a good job with terrorism is just trying to sell you something.

But all that aside, the question Americans will ultimately have to decide on is who do they think would have done a better job? A President Gore? A President Kerry? Or President Bush? Would Gore have responded to 9/11 like Bush did? Would Clinton? Would Kerry? Be honest. Can you really see Clinton having put together a plan to overthrow Afghanistan? One must remember how much of a contribution Rumsfeld and Powell put into the Afghanistan campaign.

Somehow I suspect that had Kerry been President (or Gore or Clinton) that the Taliban would still be in power. Certainly Saddam would have been. And as someone who is glad that both are gone, I think it's pretty obvious which candidate I trust American foreign policy to more -- regardless of which version of Clarke's story I choose to believe.

People talk about democracy. But do they really understand it? How about representative democracy? Basically it means that citizens (the people) make the rules that we live by. We do so by way of voting for legislatures who will pass laws that represent our will.

This was a major point of the Declaration of Independence. The law of the land would be decided by the voters through laws.  It seems a simple enough concept. And for our nation's history, it has worked pretty well.  When Americans concluded that slavery was an abomination, it voted for laws that outlawed it.  When we decided that women should have the right to vote, we voted for laws that explicitly allowed it. 

In every case, it has been laws, passed by the will of the people. Slavery wasn't abolished by a judge. Women weren't granted the right to vote because some mayor decided they should be allowed to vote. The people enacted laws to do that. That's the way democracy works.

And yet on the subject of gay marriage, some people would throw democracy to the wind. Has any federal or state legislature passed a law enabling gays to be married? Forget what position on the issue you take, you either favor democracy or you don't.

I do not approve of judges or mayors or whatever deciding that they will dictate decide for the rest of us. If gay marriage is to be legal, it needs to become legal as a matter of law. Laws passed by elected officials who were voted in to represent the will of the people.

That's what democracy is all about. If we slide into a system where individuals can declare new laws unilaterally, we slide further away into democracy and back towards what the American revolution was supposed to abolish. 

So to those who support gay marriage, some advice: Make your case to the American people. Build support for your position. Lobby legislatures to pass laws. That's democracy in action and it's served this country well for over 200 years.