In our upcoming game, The Political Machine, the candidates must occasionally do interviews with the press.  Coming up with questions is not that hard. Coming up with thoughtful answers is harder.  So we've decided to let users have a crack at it.

Here is our first batch of 5 questions. If you were a Presidential candidate and had to answer in less than say 500 words (i.e. BRIEF answers) how would you answer these questions? Also, answers cannot reference the current President (or "This administration") since we are not dealing with the current/party/person in office (both sides are "Challengers").

1) With the babyboomers heading towards retirement, many analysts believe that the social security system, as we know it, will collapse. What would you do, as President, to ensure the viability of Social Security?

2) The national debt has increased substantially in the past two years. A few years ago this country was running a modest surplus. Now we are running record deficits. As President, what are your thoughts about the national debt?

3) The poverty rate in the United States remains remarkably high. Given the great society programs of the 60s and 70s, it seems that the war on poverty has not been won. As President, what would you propose we do to help the poor in this country?

4) The war on drugs is nearings its third decade with no end in sight. Drug usage has hovered about the same but our prisons are filled with drug users and police report that a great deal of violent crime is the result of the illicit drug trade. As President, what would be your prescription to deal with drugs? Legalize them? More enforcement? More education? What?

5) With tragedies like the Columbine massacre, gun violence has really become a front and center issue for the American public. As President, what is your position on gun control?

It's funny because I debate all kinds of issues on the net. Political issues. Military history. Game industry issues and of course skinning issues.

But as a group, none of them compare to Style XP "advocates". I don't know why but we are quite regularly subjected to flames by their users on our news groups, forums, and even Download.com.

Let me give you a few examples:

Usenet thread

This is just one guy recently - but it's typical. If you look at his stuff, look at how LONG it is. And what is his alleged source of why he needs to attack us? Because I had the audacity to point out that Style XP just patches uxtheme.dll. He won't accept that. But if you read through it, you notice a pattern, his claims are the exact same claptrap Style XP advocates have gone with for years. It's as if there's a bunch of talking points.

But we'll see this kind of thing on forums ranging from Neowin to deviantART to people coming onto our own news server. It's not enough for them to bash WindowBlinds, they act like Style XP is some sort of great program that they're on a mission from above to sell to everyone.

They can't just use it, no they have to go out and trash our software. Nevermind that if it weren't for our software, uxtheme wouldn't likely exist in the first place.

I honestly can say that I advocate people try whatever they want and make their own choice. I say that because I feel pretty confident at this point that WindowBlinds is such a superior choice that the only reason not to use WindowBlinds for skinning would be price at which point free uxtheme patchers become preferable.

Which is what makes me suspect that many of these people who are so militant, so aggressive about making sure the world knows that "WindowBlinds sux" and "Style XP rulez" are people who are in denial. They paid $20 for something that patches parts of their OS and don't want to admit they made a poor purchasing choice. They don't want to admit that they could have gotten the same functionality (or virtually all of it) for free.

What gets me is when someone tries to accuse *us* of "bad mouthing" Style XP. There's nothing we've posted that is even remotely equivalent to TGT Soft's Style XP marketing document. Maybe these people can't accept that a company would so boldly write false statements like this (according to their document - updated for Style XP 2 so recent - no one else skins the Explorer task panels as one example).

It's incredibly frustrating as you can imagine.

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In many ways, JoeUser is an experiement. It is the only blog site on the Internet that combines the strengths of all the individual bloggers together. When you make a post or comment on someone blog, it is distributed across the thousands of blogs here on this site. And, because JoeUser.com is so popular, your article is likely to get picked up on search engines.

Which, needless to say, creates a temptation for abuse. People who intentionally try to humiliate others by taking advantage of these features.  After some discussion internally, we've decided how we're going to react to this.

1) You may NOT create attack articles about other individuals on this site with your blog site using the person's name or derivative of that name as part of the article title.

2) You should avoid criticizing other users of this blog, by name, in your articles if you have black listed or prevented them in some other way from commenting on your article. Generally speaking, it's cheesy to abuse other people in your article.

3) Related to #2, it IS OKAY to write a counter article. That is, if you disagree with someone else's article, you can certainly reference that article (linking to it is fine) and disagree with the article.

4) Debate the issue don't attack the person. I'm getting so sick of reading flame articles by people that are nothing but hate mongering against other people. I don't care if you think someone else is racist, homophobic, atheist, fanatically religious, whatever. It's irrelevant. If you disagree, then disagree. Explain why you disagree. But to just say "You're a racist" or "You're going to burn in hell" or some other nonsense is obnoxious. 

Bottom line: If you want your blog to be full of hatred towards someone else, then go away. We didn't put all this effort to let people's blogs get a lot of attention so that people could use it as a blunt instrument to attack other individuals by name.

One other note: I also get tired of those who think they have some first amendment right to heap personal abuse on people. You want to write a "I hate <insert person's name here>" articles, go make your own site. Whiney "You're a facist, you're censoring me" articles get old in a hurry.

JoeUser is meant to be a place where intelligent thoughtful people of ALL political persuasions can get together and talk about whatever they want. And they can't very well do that if they have to worry that some hate monger is going to write up a post entitled "<User X> is a jerk!" or whatever.

In The Political Machine we are creating a PC strategy game in which players run for President. But no game would be complete without your candidate having to go on TV and answer "tough" questions. Not only do these questions make the player have to answer real world questions, but they help make players understand why politicians "spin" the truth.

We've put together two editors that we use internally to build these TV interviews. The first one is called the Issue Editor. In it, we create political issues "Abortion", "Crime", "Healthcare", "The war on terror". Then we set whether Democrats, Independents, or Republicans are in favor of a given issue (a positive value) or against it (a negative value). The higher the number, the more strongly they feel about it.

Since it's a game, we focus purely on the two major political parties.

Here's an example (click to enlarge):

So first we come up with an interview (in this example it's a parody of "Nightline" called "NightTime" -- all our parodies are designed to be respectful, they're not charactertures). Then we come up with questions that they might ask.

From there, the player has a list of answers they can choose from.

We try to provide answers that are reasonable. However, we also provide unreasonable (funny) answers too. They don't have to use them. We also have answers that are based on the candidate's intelligence, charisma, etc. Players designing candidates have to pick and choose amongst the traits they want. If someone makes their candidate an idiot, they'll only have idiotic responses available to them to choose from.

Once the player chooses an answer, we then affect how their answer will affect their candidate's rating and that of those watching. Most of the time, we don't have answers affect the people's opinions. But very intelligent candidates are more likely to get responses that persuade the public. Most of the time they are just building their own positions up. When you start the game, you start out at 0 on all the issues (neutral). Your answers on the issues will help build up who you are.

So if you are against universal health care, for instance, you'll get negative points (negative just means you're against it). 

Here's a vastly over simplified example:

Let's say you're a Republican and you are very against universal health care. Let's say your position comes out to be a -5.

Then let's say Republicans are -10 on the issue of universal health care. Independents are 0 (neutral) and Democrats are +10 (in favor).

So you would score: -5 * -10 = 50 points with Republicans (two negatives makes a positive in multiplication).

On the other hand, if your opponent was wishy washy on the issue and only got 30 points with Democrats, the net result would be that you would win a higher percentage of the Republican vote than your opponent would get of Democrats.  However, it's not quite that simple because different states have different percentages of Republicans and Democrats. Getting 70% of Republicans to vote for you in New York may not be enough to win against a Democrat who got 50% of Democrats. And on most issues, Independents are truly neutral. They lean slightly one way or the other. Not much but enough to tip the scales.

The hard part for us is coming up with good responses for all sides. So we'll be posting questions to YOU, readers of PoliticalMachine.com / JoeUser.com and see what pithy answers you come up with.

So you have Windows XP and want to know what programs can change what parts of Windows XP? Here's an article that talks about the various programs available (free and non-free) that can let you change nearly every aspect of Windows XP.

Over the months I've been playing WoW I've learned a lot of useful things that have greatly improved the game experience. Let me first say that WoW doesn't assume you've ever played a massive multiplayer game. There is jargon in the game at higher levels but by then you know it. And most of the jargon is really just slang.  For instance, "Tanks" refer to fighters who have no ranged weapons who are covered with armor. It makes sense because you start to feel like a tank as you go up in levels. Similarly, "buff" is a term for adding spells and enhancements to a character to increase their traits. So let's go through some tips:

1) Elite monsters see ghosts. If they have a + by them it not only means they're tough. It means they can potentially see your ghost. That means if you die, you're not coming back easily if at all to get your corpse. The most infamous place for that is in the Redwood Mountains in the Orc castle. If you die in that castle, forget it. You won't recover your body and will have to take the XP hit. The orcs will see and attack your ghost as you near and your ghost only has 1 HP. I've lost thousands of XP because of that. So don't mess with the elites unless you really know what you're doing. (on the other hand, elites give vastly more XP to offset this when they die).

2) Get Everything Script and Quest Share. These are wonderful tools. You can find them in the World of Warcraft forum in the interface customization area. http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/board.aspx?fn=wow-interface-customization This tool will speed up things like smelting, seeing how much damage people are doing, seeing what common quests are available in your party (very nice), let you know when someone has completed a quest in your party, tell you how much damage per second a weapon does (very good for dealing with the whole speed versus damage thing).

3) Go with the smallest party you can get away with. 5 people tromping around the world is very safe. But if you're on quests in which you have to collect an item that drop from dead creatures, you could be waiting quite awhile. You also get a lot less XP.  A good group would consist of a tank, a rogue, and a preist (or wizard if the tank is a paladin).

4) Rogues are very useful in parties. The rogue can sap creatures. This is a power that puts them to sleep for 25 seconds and it can make a huge difference when dealing with mobs of creatures. I don't particularly care for the rogue as a lone quest (they're pretty lethal but the XP gained per minute on their own isn't as favorable).

5) Sell high value articles in Stormwind in front of the bank.  If you find something you think it unusually useful, and you think it's worth >1 Gold, you're probably better off going to Stormwind and selling it in front of the bank (in the trade district).  You can typically get 4 to 5 times as much (sometimes more) selling an item to users rather than just selling them in a shop. So if you get something that is worth 30 silver to a NPC trader, you may want to try selling it for 1 gold. 

6) The best items are made by players. It takes awhile but eventually the best items are the ones created by players. I bought, for 2g, a 1 handed mace that does 18 damage per second (that's something like a 2.5 speed mace that does 40 to 50 damage per hit). That's before "buffs". It was made by a player. Of course, to get to that point you have to make a lot of crap. I still haven't broken 100 with my armor smith Paladin yet.

7) If the world's ground is flashing... Find the config file (it's in one of the subdirectiries) and find where it says "specular lighting" and make it from a 1 to a 0.

8) Expand Expand Expand. If you're hanging out in Westfall forever, be aware that there are whole areas of the map that you could do other..easier quests. The higher you go, the mroe quests that were easy become in accessible because of your level. I leveled up very quickly because I didn't stick around in westfall doing every last quest. Instead, I did the ones that were fun and easy and then made my way to Iron Forge and did those quests that were fairly easy which took me to the east and I did those quests that I found enjoyable. Then I returned to Westfall and found myself quite a bit tougher. Sure, I didn't get quite as much XP for the remaining Westfall quests because I was 2 or 3 levels higher than I was, but on the other hand, I wasn't dying because some vulture went after me or because I bumped into some gnoll group.  Same thing happened in Duskwood (darkshire quests). Those are nasty. So I ended up going up to the Wetlands and doing some of the easier quests there. Got up a couple more levels, came back and was able to handle the duskwood missions much easier.

Hope this helps!

When I first got into the alpha of World of Warcraft I quickly concluded that keyboard commands and hotkeys would not cut it when it came to on-line communication.

My friend here at Stardock who is also on the alpha introduced me to Ventrillo: http://www.ventrilo.com

Ventrillo is a voice chat system. It's like IRC but with voice. I assigned my Ctrl key as the hot key to let me talk. I just have a microphone on my desktop and talk to the other members of my guild. It's a great way of communicating because it's so clear and easy.

You do have to set up a server in order to use Ventrillo -- someone has to relay all that stuff. When the game's released, I'll have a special server just for those who join our guild so that people can easily communicate back and forth to each other.

I highly recommend giving it a try. It's so good that we're thinking about using it here at the office for communicating with our European developers.

http://www.rightwingnews.com/archives/week_2004_03_14.PHP#001868

The hatred towards George Bush and Republicans in general has certainly increased since the 2000 election. I visit a lot of websites during the week and while I see a lot of idealogues on the right, there is no right-wing equivalent to Democratic-underground.

Even here on JoeUser, the tolerenace for the right by those on the left seems to be problematic, at best. I have seen people argue that this site is right-wing. Why? It's pretty easy to demonstrate that as being false. Just look at the top 20 blog sites on this site (right of page) and you'll see that there are more that are left of center than right of center.

Here's an excerpt John Hawkins found on Democratic underground:

SCRUBDASHRUB: OK, this is juvenile but this is how fed up I am. I need to watch it because I don't want to wind up getting shot, but I was driving to work and some idiot drove by me on the expressway whose license plate read 1GOP1 (I might add, he was driving completely arrogantly (no signalling, etc...typically of the party he's so proud of).

I waited until he got far enough ahead of me and promptly flipped him the one finger salute, then gave him three fingers to spell "W" and the thumbs down symbol.

Jack @ss...

boobooday: "Don't get shot. But really, he deserved it. It's like smoking. We have to make it socially unacceptable to be a Republican.

That's what they tried to do to the word "liberal." Time to ATTACK BACK!!"

nicecakes: Sure thing. Time to go beyond politics and get personal to start a new civil war! After enough victories we will be the only party and one party rule will rool!

MadProphetMargin: "That's not juvenile. Juvenile would have meant following him to a gas station, and "improving" his license plates when he went in to pay.

Try this one: On a Friday, after working hours, put a crack & peel sign on your local republican headquarter's (8.5X11 crack & peel inkjet paper is available at any major office supply company) front door. Have the sign read "Whites only - Blacks please use rear entrance."

With any luck, it will remain up until Monday. For additional fun, call the local papers and complain about what you "just saw".

MPM,
Master election prankster."

lastknowngood: "Call DMV with tag # and get his address then send off for some gay porn to be shipped to his house. Just one of my little evil ideas to use on arrogant christens and prudes."

Now, maybe this kind of hatred and vitriol exists on the right but I can't find it. This isn't some lone kook here, this is several people all wanting to do harm to someone simply because his license plate has the words GOP on it (which may or may not have anything to do with being a Republican).

This is the kind of intolerance Bakerstreet made note of in his article http://bakerstreet.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=10659 .

 

 

According to the US Department of Labor, about 55% of Americans are employed by small businesses. That is, companies with fewer than 50 employees total. And while I don't have the statistics handy, something like 70% of Americans are employed by companies with fewer than 1000 employees.

This is important when one considers who to vote for in the next election. John Kerry has stated that he will raise the taxes on those who make more than $200,000 in income yearly. He is counting on people to imagine that those people are just a bunch of rich guys. You know, those Fortune 500 executives busy screwing their employees no doubt.

But statistically, that's not who they are. While those making $200,000 or more per year only represents 2% of the population, most of them are owners of small businesses. And that $200,000 isn't their salary, per se. It's their company's income.

There are 3 main ways to form a business in the United States.  There is the LLC (Limited Liability Corporation), S-corporation, and C-corporation.  Most small businesses are formed as either LLCs or S-corporations. From a tax point of view, the principle owner of the company's taxes are integrated with the company's revenue. In theory, this lowers his tax burden. But in practice, it really makes small business at the mercy of the individual tax rates. 

When Bush lowered the individual tax rates, in effect what he did is give small businesses a tax break. As a result, these businesses were able to hire more people. That is what happened at Stardock, who operates this site. Without those tax cuts, it's unlikely this site would exist in its current form (i.e. free).  The tax cut allowed us to hire an additional person.  The same effect occurred across the United States in thousands of small businesses everywhere. Not immediately of course, but gradually as small businesses recovered their losses and then began to build up again.

So what happens if this tax cut is removed? What if someone like John Kerry decides he wants to cut the deficit by some trivial amount by raising taxes on "the rich"? Small businesses will either have to make up those taxes in increased revenue or lay off the people they hired from the previous tax cut.

Tax cuts aren't always the answer, btw. In the mid 90s when unemployment was effectively nil, tax cuts would accomplish little to help the economy. Virtually everyone was employed. But when you're in an economic weak patch, as we've recently experienced, and you're trying to create jobs then the best way to do that is to try to make sure businesses have as much money as they can to hire those people looking for jobs.

And small businesses, by their nature, tend to be more efficient than "big business". Huge corporations tend to be not much more efficient than the government with money. That's why the Bush tax plan targeted individual income instead of cutting corporate taxes. They recognized that if you want to create jobs and get the economy moving that the best bang for the buck is to get money back into the hands of those LLCs and S-corps who are more likely to hire more people than buy a second mansion or something.

Raise those taxes and you're literally sucking capital out of small businesses at a time when job creation should be a priority. And that is why John Kerry's tax increase plan would hurt the economy. And potentially it would even increase the deficit as those people who lose their jobs are no longer paying taxes.

One of my pet peeves is when people try to demonize others for lacking any sort of restraint or tolerance even as they count on their opponent's restraint and tolerance to be able to say what they say.

For example, one of the cries I hear coming out of Europe these days, particularly from France, is that the "Bush's" United States is the greatest threat mankind has faced. There are many variations on this charge some equally melodramatic, others more specific. Another example is the charge that we're "losing all our freedoms" or the outright statement "We're practically living in a police state".

Such statements are absurd because the people making these assertions must be consciously aware that if their charges were real that they wouldn't be able to make them with impunity. After all, if John Ashcroft or some other boogeyman were out to "stifle dissent" they could realistically accomplish it.  Saddam Hussein, after all, received 100% of the vote in his last election. That is what stifling dissent is about.

The same thing regularly occurs on-line too in the mini-cosmos of net communities. I run a lot of net communities and I regularly get charged with being tyrannical and unwilling to tolerate any sort of dissent. One poster today, having called me "dumb", went on to tell me how fragile my ego must be and how childish I am. Yet at some level he is relying on the fact that my ego isn't fragile and that I'm not childish since someone with either trait would not put up with abuse if they had the power to prevent the abuse which any admin does. The admins on WinCustomize.com face that as well as they get abused by users accusing them of all kinds of problems all the while counting on the very tolerance that they claim the admins lack to be able to make their charges.

When I see people demonize Bush or Blair or some other figure who has the obvious ability to fully demonstrate to the protester the real meaning of loss of freedom or whatever, they weaken their case.  The same is true of US opponents who accuse the United States of waging a war of "genocide" in the middle east all the while knowing that if the US really wanted to, they could commit genocide with relative impunity. Opponents of the United States, including Al Qaeda, count on the United States having the very humanity and restraint that they accuse it of lacking.

Probably the most overt example of this is in Israel where people are regularly claiming how brutal Israel is to the Palestinians when in fact Israel would probably have an easier time of things if the simply rounded up all the Palestinians and ejected them into Lebanon and shot any who tried to re-enter. Who would stop them? Yet Israel's critics rely on the very restraint and tolerance that they claim Israel lacks.

When people make charges that literally require that the charge to be untrue in order for the charge to be made in the first place, they only damage their credibility. People recognize melodrama and tend to make a note of it - remembering that the person making such charges needs to have their statements taken with a grain of salt in the future.  At best,  the person making the charge sounds like a pampered provincial, inexperienced with the real world. At worst, they sound like a cynical manipulator of facts.