In 2002 we had the GUI Olympics. It was a contest to see who could create the best user interface designs for the Windows GUI. The tool used was WindowBlinds to apply them.  The contest was a huge success. Something over 100 skins were submitted.  But while the contest was a huge hit, running it was an absolute nightmare. The politics behind the scenes nearly brought it all to a screeching halt.

The near-disaster should have been easy for us to predict but we were a bit naive on such things.  You see, the contest was an inter-site contest. That is, each of the major skin sites had a judge. The gotcha was that the skinners had to choose to represent one of these sites. And the money ($10k in cash/prizes were given out) from this contest was split between the author and the site. So you can see the problem - the people judging actually had a potential financial conflict of interest.

Meanwhile, add to that the classic issue of who is in charge? Stardock, who sponsored it, felt it should have the final say since it was providing the prizes, running the website, and running the day to day contest. But some of the smaller sites felt that they should have an equal say in every decision. This included requests for post-facto changes to the rules. At one point, a group of the smaller sites banded together and demanded that none of the judges be appointed by Stardock. This would have essentially meant that the only ones who could judge the contest were those who had a financial stake in the outcome.  Stardock rejected this and two skin sites dropped out of the contest.

The net result was that a couple "Teams" dominated the entire contest (deviantART and LotsOfSkins). To spectators and contestants, this was no big deal. You really only need 2 reasonably equal contenders to make it an exciting competition. And in the end, deviantART won 18 medals, LotsOfSkins won 10 mdeals, and VelocityArt 9 medals. So despite some half-baked ideas on how to run the contest, it all worked out well and people have been asking for a new GUI Olympics ever since.

How times have changed...

It was 2 years ago this April that the last GUI Olympics was finished.  And so here we are again, 2 years later and things have changed remarkably since then.  For one thing, back then there was an ongoing battle between the "old guard" of "community leaders" of skinning who had wanted to keep skinning a small, private hobby. As one of them put it at the time, "This is our scene, we created it, we don't want it turned into some mass-market, would you like fries with your happy meal phenomenon!".  And on the other side, there was the "new guard" whose response would have been "Yea, we want skinning and customization to be a mass-market, everyone and their brother should be trying it out."  And so behind the scenes this battle was waged. The old guard has since faded away as skinning became mainstream.

Where skinning was a tiny niche hobbyist thing before, it has grown and grown. Three "new guard" sites: WinCustomize, deviantART, and Neowin have grown massively in terms of number of users.  deviantART, in fact, moved beyond merely spreading skinning to the masses to helping make art itself something that everyone could take a shot at. And for good and ill, these two sites now get over 6 million unique visitors per month between them -- more than all the other sites in the "community" combined.

And Neowin went from being a niche tech site to being possibly the world's most popular technology forum. It has become not just a hub for skinning but one that has opened up customization to the average users. In terms of actual quality skin creation, it has become immensely popular and likely to be a real force this time around. If there were any old guard people still active, they would say that WinCustomize, deviantART, and Neowin have let in the "riff raff" in which mediocrity prevails, originality quashed and skinners focused on making popular skins and themes rather than new and fresh ones.

But no matter how you slice it, the times have dramatically changed.  Skinning has become mass market. Look at the table above and the stats make it clear.  The rankings of every customization-related site that was involved in the GUI Olympics 2002 has dramatically improved except for Teknidermy which was, at the time, the core old guard center of things.

Skinning as a niche is gone, it's mainstream now. Countless programs these days are coming skinned. Microsoft made Windows XP be skinnable to a degree. Longhorn boasts of having all kinds of new customization features in the pipeline.  Stardock is making almost as much selling DirectSkin at $10k a pop to companies to skin their applications as it does selling WindowBlinds to end users for $19.95 a piece.  Skin authors themselves are now making thousands of dollars annually making professional skins. The recent Zippo Lighter Suite is just one example. Professional skin authors have made skins used by Microsoft, ATI, nVidia, Nintendo, and countless other companies. Another reason why this would be a good opportunity for someone to try their hand at skinning using industry accepted standards like WindowBlinds.

And so it makes sense that the GUI Olympics 2004 would expand too. Expand and be run fundamentally differently...

GUI Olympics 2004 concepts

This time around, skinners will be able to form their own teams. They don't have to represent any particular site (though they can).  The winning team will get a $500 bonus prize. A team can be merely a group of guys with no particular affiliation other than each other. They just have to create a logo and form a team. When the GUI Olympics gets going in March, contestants will be able to create and join teams.  Teams can be websites. They just don't have to be this time around.

There will be 3 categories this time:

1. Visual Styles (must be provided in WindowBlinds format)

2. Icon Packages (IconPackager format)

3. A MP3 player (to be announced soon)

There will be 6 judges.  4 appointed by Stardock and 2 appointed by the company that sponsors the third category.. Of the 4 appointed by Stardock, 1 will be Paul Boyer, who works at Stardock now and is considered the leading Windows icon author (since he can't compete in the icon creation portion it makes sense to have him judge). Another will be Kris Kwilas who has been a GUI expert for nearly a decade.  The other two judges from Stardock will come from the community.

In addition, there will be 3 moderators. Think American Idol. These 3 moderators will weed out skins, icons, and player skins that don't have a chance to keep the final total reasonable. It just means a skin or set of icons that contains ripped material or is incomplete or is just plain terrible won't be allowed in. The moderators won't be judges though, they just get to give a yay or nay to the submissions as they come in.

All skins and icons must be new. They can't be something that's existed on any other site previously. They also must be exclusive to the GUI Olympics (i.e. you can't go uploading them around the net). Once the contest is officially started (early March) there will be approximately one month of submissions before the various events even begin to be judged so there will be plenty of time to put together the skins and/or icons. 

We expect each category to have between 3 and 5 events. 

The visual style events will include: Best OS-like skin (not an OS skin, but an original OS concept that one would say "Now that would be a good OS skin!".  Most Creative Skin (that is, one that doesn't look like every other skin ever made out there but still looks nice).  Most Minimalistic Skin. Best PowerUser Skin.  Best Overall Skin.

The Icon packages one would be: Best OS-like icons  (see above). Most Original Icons.  Best overall Icons.

The MP3 player categories will be influenced by the sponsor but are likely to be: Most Creative Skin.  Best PowerUser skin.  Best Overall Skin.

Plus one final event: Best overall submission.

Additional Awards: Most Valuable Player and Winning Team

Overall, we're looking at 12 events.  12 events competing for $10,000 cash and prizes. Prizes will include hardware, software, shirts, and possibly trophies (we're looking into that).

Each major customization site will be able to have a flag posted on the top of the GUIOlympics.com page in exchange for the GUI Olympics logo being put prominently on their site during the the contest.

The Next Step

The contest will get officially announced soon. We just have to make sure things are set for the third category (it's a large company) as well as get prize sponsors all together. But this is a head's up of what is coming. 

But for those who do feel that skinning has become so mainstream that skinners now top themselves in seeing who can create the most mild looking skins out there, this is an opportunity to stretch your talents out. The most "Creative" skin is unlikely to go to someone making a "Luna-like" visual style (WindowBlinds supports buttons on the sides and bottom as well as the standard top right position), today's media players are almost infinitely customizable.

It's going to be blast!

Good luck to everyone!

 

Stardock has released DesktopX 2.1 today!

DesktopX is a desktop enhancement utility designed to let users of Microsoft Windows turbo-charge their Windows desktops. DesktopX does this by enhancing the desktop and extending it to natively support objects and widgets These objects and widgets can add all kinds of new features for users as well as be put together to build entire desktops.

DesktopX has been used to create kiosks, create alternative computer interfaces in movies and TV, create simplified, child friendly desktops, and by power users who want to improve their productivity. Simply put, DesktopX can make Windows more useful and more fun to use.

DesktopX has 3 primary features:

1) It can enhance your existing Windows desktop by making desktop icons have shadows, be sized independently from the rest of the system (i.e. have big icons just on the desktop), respond to mouse events (such as grow and shrink when the mouse is over them), play a sound when the mouse is clicked on them, and much more.

2) It allows for additional functionality to be added to the desktop. DesktopX objects can do virtually anything. DesktopX objects include clocks, calendars, stock tickers, news monitors, IRC clients, video games, fish, simulators, color grabbers, timers, CPU meters, network monitors, MP3 players, radio station players, PVR interfaces, and much more. In DesktopX 2.1, these objects can be exported as mini-programs called Widgets that can run on any system that has DesktopX installed.

3) It enables users or administrators to actually build their own unique desktops. These desktops can be used as kiosks, power user desktops, desktop for guests, and much more. DesktopX Pro even includes security features to lock-down the desktop.

DesktopX comes with a host of built in features allowing end users to easily create their own objects and themes. Features such as monitoring virtually any resource on the PC, clocks, email checking, and many other common tasks are built into DesktopX.  But DesktopX allows third parties to easily extend DesktopX through either plugins or using Javascript/VB Script to add new functionality.  DesktopX 2.1 now provides extensive documentation on both its use and how to extend it.

New in DesktopX 2.1:

Full history at: http://sdcentral.stardock.com/public/dx/production/history.htm

• Registered users can now export their objects as programs (.EXE) that can run on any computer that has DesktopX installed. These are called widgets and run like any other program.
• All users of DesktopX (including the free version) can run widgets created with DesktopX.
• DirectGUI 2.1 - much more seamless painting of objects and widgets.
• Objects covered by a window are not drawn saving CPU (this is a big deal - you can now have an animated desktop that uses virtually no CPU when it's covered up by windows).
• User Mode greatly enhanced - objects have a "close" menu item now on them when running in user mode.
• Dragging common images to the desktop creates a thumbnail of that image on your desktop (very cool - you can drag a .JPG file to your IconX enhanced desktop and instead of it having the standard .JPG icon it will be a thumbnail of that image).
• Users can now include custom files to their exported object (in the summary page).
• Can now include custom fonts with an object, DesktopX will auto-install them.
• DesktopX VBScript/Javascript support greatly enhanced with a large number of new DX based APIs to make use of.
• Scripts can control the z-order of an object (you can command your object to go on top at different times)
• DesktopX objects can now act as "Appbars". The Star bar is an example of an appbar. Appbars can be auto-hide, always visible, or normal. See included Longhorn theme example with mode button at top right.
• IconX enhanced desktop icons now respond to same commands as regular icons (such as rename, copy, move, etc.)
• DesktopX objects now use 1/3rd as many GDI objects as DesktopX 2.0 and before.
• Developers can control object visibility from scripts independent from those objects being classified as "pop ups"
• Tons of tweaks and fixes to improve performance, stability, and compatability.

DesktopX is one of the programs that makes up Stardock's Object Desktop suite of desktop enhancements which also includes WindowBlinds, ObjectBar, IconPackager, IconDeveloper, Keyboard LaunchPad, WindowFX and much more.  DesktopX Enhanced comes with Object Desktop or can be purchased on its own for $19.95.  It adds the ability to export widgets, use enhanced objects, make use of additional IconX settings and more. Object Desktop is $49.95 for the entire suite which includes a full year of additional updates and new programs as they become available.

Screenshots:
https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/dx-feb04.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/dx-jan04a.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/dx-jan04.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/dx-dec03a.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/dx-dec03.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/dx-feb04a.jpg
 

Websites:
DesktopX - http://www.desktopx.net
Object Desktop - http://www.objectdesktop.com
Stardock - https://www.stardock.com
 

Stardock has released DesktopX 2.1 today!

DesktopX is a desktop enhancement utility designed to let users of Microsoft Windows turbo-charge their Windows desktops. DesktopX does this by enhancing the desktop and extending it to natively support objects and widgets These objects and widgets can add all kinds of new features for users as well as be put together to build entire desktops.

DesktopX has been used to create kiosks, create alternative computer interfaces in movies and TV, create simplified, child friendly desktops, and by power users who want to improve their productivity. Simply put, DesktopX can make Windows more useful and more fun to use.

DesktopX has 3 primary features:

1) It can enhance your existing Windows desktop by making desktop icons have shadows, be sized independently from the rest of the system (i.e. have big icons just on the desktop), respond to mouse events (such as grow and shrink when the mouse is over them), play a sound when the mouse is clicked on them, and much more.

2) It allows for additional functionality to be added to the desktop. DesktopX objects can do virtually anything. DesktopX objects include clocks, calendars, stock tickers, news monitors, IRC clients, video games, fish, simulators, color grabbers, timers, CPU meters, network monitors, MP3 players, radio station players, PVR interfaces, and much more. In DesktopX 2.1, these objects can be exported as mini-programs called Widgets that can run on any system that has DesktopX installed.

3) It enables users or administrators to actually build their own unique desktops. These desktops can be used as kiosks, power user desktops, desktop for guests, and much more. DesktopX Pro even includes security features to lock-down the desktop.

DesktopX comes with a host of built in features allowing end users to easily create their own objects and themes. Features such as monitoring virtually any resource on the PC, clocks, email checking, and many other common tasks are built into DesktopX.  But DesktopX allows third parties to easily extend DesktopX through either plugins or using Javascript/VB Script to add new functionality.  DesktopX 2.1 now provides extensive documentation on both its use and how to extend it.

New in DesktopX 2.1:

Full history at: http://sdcentral.stardock.com/public/dx/production/history.htm

• Registered users can now export their objects as programs (.EXE) that can run on any computer that has DesktopX installed. These are called widgets and run like any other program.
• All users of DesktopX (including the free version) can run widgets created with DesktopX.
• DirectGUI 2.1 - much more seamless painting of objects and widgets.
• Objects covered by a window are not drawn saving CPU (this is a big deal - you can now have an animated desktop that uses virtually no CPU when it's covered up by windows).
• User Mode greatly enhanced - objects have a "close" menu item now on them when running in user mode.
• Dragging common images to the desktop creates a thumbnail of that image on your desktop (very cool - you can drag a .JPG file to your IconX enhanced desktop and instead of it having the standard .JPG icon it will be a thumbnail of that image).
• Users can now include custom files to their exported object (in the summary page).
• Can now include custom fonts with an object, DesktopX will auto-install them.
• DesktopX VBScript/Javascript support greatly enhanced with a large number of new DX based APIs to make use of.
• Scripts can control the z-order of an object (you can command your object to go on top at different times)
• DesktopX objects can now act as "Appbars". The Star bar is an example of an appbar. Appbars can be auto-hide, always visible, or normal. See included Longhorn theme example with mode button at top right.
• IconX enhanced desktop icons now respond to same commands as regular icons (such as rename, copy, move, etc.)
• DesktopX objects now use 1/3rd as many GDI objects as DesktopX 2.0 and before.
• Developers can control object visibility from scripts independent from those objects being classified as "pop ups"
• Tons of tweaks and fixes to improve performance, stability, and compatability.

DesktopX is one of the programs that makes up Stardock's Object Desktop suite of desktop enhancements which also includes WindowBlinds, ObjectBar, IconPackager, IconDeveloper, Keyboard LaunchPad, WindowFX and much more.  DesktopX Enhanced comes with Object Desktop or can be purchased on its own for $19.95.  It adds the ability to export widgets, use enhanced objects, make use of additional IconX settings and more. Object Desktop is $49.95 for the entire suite which includes a full year of additional updates and new programs as they become available.

Screenshots:
https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/dx-feb04.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/dx-jan04a.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/dx-jan04.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/dx-dec03a.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/dx-dec03.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/dx-feb04a.jpg

Websites:
DesktopX - http://www.desktopx.net
Object Desktop - http://www.objectdesktop.com
Stardock - https://www.stardock.com

WinStyles evolved into Theme Manager. Here is a preview of Theme Manager 2004's UI.

Anyone who's written enough on-line over a long enough period of time knows that there are a lot of people out there who write before they think.

This is particularly true on Blog Sites.  My favorite blog, USS Clueless, doesn't allow any comments on his articles. He used to have a message board but eventually he grew weary of the idiocy there and disbanded that too. We have some advantages in that our IT staff can put together some interesting options for bloggers.

Ultimately, JoeUser is a blog site, not a discussion site. How much discussion occurs on blogs will be up to the author of a given article on their blog. If a blogger doesn't want "l33tdue89" to respond on his or her blog, then he shouldn't be allowed to respond. Period.

But why stop there? What I am interested in setting up is a system in which bloggers can have control over not just who can respond on their blogs but what kinds of users can respond on their blog.  Here are some ideas that we have.

Basic Filtering

When you write an article not only can you control the audience of who can read it at all (that's already in) but you can control who can comment it. Your options will be:

Who can comment on your article?

( ) Everyone (default)
( ) Registered Users Only
( ) No one
( ) Custom

If you select Custom things get even more interesting.  You could then filter out people based on anything you want. Let me be up front: Bloggers would have the right to discriminate who gets to comment on their blog.  I personally would probably not use these features but that freedom should be provided to the bloggers themselves to decide.

For instance:

No one over age X can comment on my blog

No one under age Y can comment on my blog

No one with access less than Z can comment on my blog (in the next few weeks we'll be adding new access groups where trusted regulars will slowly move up in access).

We could even have a generic JoeUser knowledge test where users would take a test on knowledge on various issues. Bloggers could have a score threshold needed to comment on their blog.  Most people wouldn't take the test but that would be fine with bloggers who used this option since they would be ones looking for only those who are interested in serious, intelligent, discussion.

Some people would likely be up in arms about these kinds of options. But the fact is, this site exists for people to be able to write blogs. It's a blog site. The features are aimed at encouraging people to write. To be comfortable writing about what they want. And to that end we want to provide them with features necessary to have some control over who comments on their blog.

 

One of the biggest challenges in designing a US Presidential political strategy game is balancing the fun factor with accuracy.  And nothing quite exemplifies this as much as coming up with political issues for the game to have.

 Ultimately, as political junkies, we decided to throw out wisdom and not make the political issues generic but instead contemporary.  That puts the burden on us to keep updating the game but at the very least players will be able have an advantage in being up on the latest political issues.

 That isn’t to say all the issues a candidate will run into will be contemporary, many will be timeless in nature or at least timeless enough for our purposes.

 In addition to coming up with issues, we also have to figure out how Democrats, Republicans, and Independents feel about a given issue. Even more, we have to figure out in many cases how attitudes change from state to state. This means that we have to know first what percentage of the population in each state tends to vote for Democrats and which tends to vote for Republicans.

In The Political Machine, issues aren’t about what percentage of the population agrees with a position. Instead, issues are about how much people care about a given issue. A big difference. This means that we have to know secondly roughly how much Democrats and Republicans will care about a given issue.

The role of a candidate is to accomplish three things:

 1)      To build up their strength behind a given position

2)      To convince the population that the issue in question is important.

3)      To convince the population that their opponent’s position is counter to his on that issue.

 

So what are some of the issues of The Political Machine? Let’s start with the “timeless” issues:

• 1)      Abortion Rights.  Should abortion be legal or illegal?

• 2)      Government Provided Healthcare. Should the government provide healthcare to all citizens?

• 3)      Tax Cuts. Should the government lower taxes?

• 4)      Increased Federal Spending on Education. Should the federal government spend more on education?

• 5)      Social Security. Should the government continuing providing social security?

• 6)      Debt Reduction. Should reducing the federal debt be a priority?

• 7)      Prayer in Schools. Should the federal government pass laws to allow prayer in public schools?

• 8)      Curbing Illegal Immigration.  Should the federal government do more to stop illegal immigration?

• 9)      Improving the Economy. Should the federal government focus on improving the economy (this stat is heavily affected by the economic climate setting at the start).

• 10)  Fighting Crime. Should the federal government do more to help fight crime? This statistic is affected by the domestic unrest setting.

• 11)  Increasing Military Spending.  Should the federal government spend more on defense? This statistic is affected by the state of war setting.

• 12)  Capital Punishment. Should the federal government support the death penalty?

• 13)  Gun Control. Should additional restrictions be made on the carrying of fire arms?

• 14)  Environment. Should the government focus more on helping the environment?

• 15)  Farm Subsidies. Should the federal government support subsidizing farming?

• 16)  Foreign Aid. Should the federal government support less fortunate nations with economic and humanitarian aid? How much?

• 17)  Civil Rights. Should the federal government concern itself more with the civil rights of minority groups?

Here are some more contemporary issues:

• 18)  Legalizing Marijuana. Should the federal government legalize marijuana?

• 19)  War in Iraq.  Was removing Saddam Hussein through military force the right thing?

• 20)  War on Terror. Should the US continue the course of fighting global terror as we have been?

• 21)  Gay Marriage. Should the federal government support and recognize gay marriage?

• 22)   School vouchers. Should parents have the ability to control which schools receive their tax money?

• 23)  Private Social Security Accounts. Should we begin to privatize social security?

• 24)  Prescription Drugs for seniors. Should the federal government subsidize prescription drug coverage for senior citizens?

• 25)  United Nations. Should the US continue or increase its support of the United Nations?

• 26)  Israel. Should the US generally back the Israeli government in its dispute with the Palestinians?

• 27)  Palestinians. Should the US generally back the Palestinians in its dispute with Israel?

• 28)  Flat Tax. Should the US switch to a flat tax?

• 29)  Affirmative Action. Should the federal government continue to support Affirmatie action.

• 30)  Kyoto Treaty.  Should the US ratify the Kyoto Treaty on global CO2 emissions?

• 31)  NAFTA. Should the US continue with the NAFTA treaty?

• 32)  Tort Reform. Should the federal government crack down on what individuals can file a lawsuit for?

• 33)  Nuclear Energy. Should the federal government subsidize the building of nuclear power plants?

• 34)  Missile Shield. Should the government build a missile defense shield?

• 35)  Campaign Finance Reform. Should the government put strict limits on how money can be raised for campaigns?

• 36)  Drilling in ANWR. Should the federal government open up ANWR for oil exploration?

• 37)  Fighting Global Warming. Should the federal government put its efforts towards fighting global warming? Does global warming exist?

• 38)  Deficit Reduction. Nevermind the debt, should the federal government be focusing on reducing or eliminating the budget deficit?

• 39)  Trade with China. Should the government be interfering with trade with China given China’s shortcomings in human rights?

These are just a sampling of issues that candidates will have to deal with. On top of these, there are personal issues candidates can target such as integrity, credibility, competence, experience, and so forth. 

In designing the game, it was important to also deal with the fact that not only do different parties care about these issues at very different levels, but a candidate’s ability to persuade the electorate will differ greatly based on their political party. 

When you speak on a given issue, you may be able to convince the population that an issue is important but they may not believe you care about it as much as you say depending on what party you are on.

A Republican preaching about the environment might help make people start thinking about the environment more but it will likely not help the Republican very much.  Similar, a Democrat talking about the importance of a strong military might convince people of the need for one but not necessarily help the Democrat’s perceived position on that matter.

Learning which issues matter and how they affect the constituencies of each party will be key in mastering The Political Machine.

I highly recommend reading this article: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/236jmcbd.asp

It is a very good article that discusses why the US went to war with Iraq in the first place.  It never ceases to amaze me that two things about the on-line world always remain true: 1) How little people know about the facts of history and 2) How willing they are to go on-line and demonstrate this.

The United States and UK went into Iraq because it believed, correctly so, that Iraq was a serious threat to the region and to the US/UK. The Kay report has been reported very selectively. What it actually says includes three  things but only one has been widely reported:

1) No weapons of mass destruction have yet been found and it is increasingly likely that none will be found.

and the part left out that should be mentioned:

2) Saddam thought he had weapons of mass destruction. His generals thought he had weapons of mass destruction. Due to internal corruption, money that was being spent to create weapons of mass destruction were diverted to other things.

3) The general strategy Saddam was going towards was to not create stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction but rather prepare the way to be able to produce them in quantity once the sanctions were lifted. That is, not have a smoking gun but get everything in place to flip a switch once the heat was off.

It is items 2 and 3 that should be remembered and yet are overlooked by the media (and amazingly there are still some people who claim there is no bias in the media).   The United States was attacked on 9/11. It was the most severe attack by a foreign entity against the United States since 1812.  The US is at war.  Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 directly. But that's totally irrelevant. In a post-9/11 world Saddam couldn't be allowed to stick around. The UN believed he still had weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence services from every major country thought he had WMD.  And why not? Iraq said that they had them too. When Iraq tossed out the inspectors in 1998, there were still tons of WMD unaccounted for.  Iraq refused to account for those weapons and hoped to play the stall game in the hopes that France and Russia would again take the position that sanctions should be lifted.  The people who were against the war are still against the war. The people in favor of military action are still glad we did it. Not finding WMD is completely irrelevant because a) it wasn't up to us to prove he had WMD. and His current possession of WMD was irrelevant.

But don't take my word for it. Here is something former President Clinton had to say this past year.

"When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know. So I thought it was prudent for the president to go to the U.N. and for the U.N. to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if you don't cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanctions."

Iraq repeatedly made false declarations about the weapons that it had left in its possession after the Gulf War. When UNSCOM would then uncover evidence that gave the lie to those declarations, Iraq would simply amend the reports. For example, Iraq revised its nuclear declarations four times within just 14 months, and it has submitted six different biological warfare declarations, each of which has been rejected by UNSCOM.

In 1995 Hussein Kamal, Saddam's son-in-law and the chief organizer of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, defected to Jordan. He revealed that Iraq was continuing to conceal weapons and missiles and the capacity to build many more. Then and only then did Iraq admit to developing numbers of weapons in significant quantities--and weapons stocks. Previously it had vehemently denied the very thing it just simply admitted once Saddam's son-in-law defected to Jordan and told the truth.

Now listen to this: What did it admit? It admitted, among other things, an offensive biological warfare capability, notably, 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs. And I might say UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq has actually greatly understated its production. . . .

Next, throughout this entire process, Iraqi agents have undermined and undercut UNSCOM. They've harassed the inspectors, lied to them, disabled monitoring cameras, literally spirited evidence out of the back doors of suspect facilities as inspectors walked through the front door, and our people were there observing it and had the pictures to prove it. . . .

Over the past few months, as [the weapons inspectors] have come closer and closer to rooting out Iraq's remaining nuclear capacity, Saddam has undertaken yet another gambit to thwart their ambitions by imposing debilitating conditions on the inspectors and declaring key sites which have still not been inspected off limits, including, I might add, one palace in Baghdad more than 2,600 acres large. . . .

One of these presidential sites is about the size of Washington, D.C. . . .

It is obvious that there is an attempt here, based on the whole history of this operation since 1991, to protect whatever remains of his capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction, the missiles to deliver them, and the feed stocks necessary to produce them. The UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions, a small force of Scud-type missiles, and the capacity to restart quickly its production program and build many, many more weapons. . . .

Now, let's imagine the future. What if he fails to comply and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route, which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made? Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction.

And some day, some way, I guarantee you he'll use the arsenal. . . . In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now--a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers, or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.

If we fail to respond today, Saddam, and all those who would follow in his footsteps, will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United Nations Security Council, and clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program.

-Bill Clinton

I don't watch a lot of TV. I just don't have time. So when I do watch TV I want to watch the things I want to watch and not just whatever is on. For that reason, I've been an advocate of PVRs (Personal Video Recorders).  2 years ago, I bought a software PVR called Snapstream. It was a good start but fairly primitive at the time. So I went and got a Tivo and have been quite happy with it since then.

But Snapstream has made steady progress on their PVR and rebranded it "Beyond TV". Version 3.4 is out and it works pretty well (though some people, including myself, have run into stuttering problems on playback). The new version takes aim at Tivo and other PVRs and has a ton of features that make it pretty compelling. Here are some screenshots of its interface. Remember, this is a program you just install to your Windows PC and it can run as a full screen application (or windowed if you prefer).

 

Their main interface.

 

When you buy the program, you get a .NET account with their web service which provides FREE listings from the net. It works quite well, better than Tivo in this area.

Finding a program is a matter of typing in the name. This is one area that is not as nice as Tivo's. This is the only way to find a program. I can't, for instance, simply look for "History" and have shows dealing with that subject matter show up. One feature that wouldn't be hard for them to do that neither have would be to have a channel spotlight. Each channel realistically only has so many shows coming on in a given week.  I would love to be able to click "Discovery Channel" and it would list what shows are coming on that week and then get season passes to them (both Tivo and Beyond TV support season passes -- get all the episodes as they come on).

 

This interface shows up when you first go to a channel but smoothly slides away as you watch the show. Very slick.

 

See the yellow areas? Beyond TV can detect whether something is a commercial and will highlight it allowing you to quickly skip over those areas if you choose.

 

One complaint by PC users has been that sure, you can do this on your PC but who wants to watch TV on their computer? But that's the thing that's cool about Beyond TV, you can get a remote control and control it like you would a TV. Its new full screen interface works fine on most standard TVs. Just make sure your video card has TV out on it (most good new ones do) and you're all set to have your PC control a regular television.

The million dollar question is, how does it compare to at Tivo. The answer isn't straight forward because it has a few features missing such as the aforementioned program finding features. The other issue is that because they only provide the software, the hardware side can be problematic. Why, for instance, does 3.4 have jerky video on my brand new 3 Ghz Dell machine with a ATI 9800 Pro card in it? Some people have the problem others don't (btw, by the time you read this they'll probably have this fixed, they're aware of it and working on a fix). 

On the other hand, there are some killer features in Beyond TV that make it quite compelling to nerdlings such as me. I can, for instance, watch my recorded shows from remote. I.e. if I'm working late and it's recorded say The Simpsons, I can watch it from work as it streams the video to me from my home machine. Very slick.  I can also export my saved shows to a PocketPC to watch. Seriously, you can watch shows pretty decently on a PocketPC. So for those of you who travel quite a bit, this can be pretty handy. Store up a half dozen shows and watch them on the plane on your PocketPC or Laptop (since it saves the files as standard Windows files including .WMV files).

Beyond TV is $70 normally. The only hardware you need is something that will take video signal (like WinTV or something) and convert it to be on your PC.  I personally have a WinTV USB card. Pretty ghetto fabulous in setup, I just plug the cable into one end and the USB cable to the PC and off I go. Very easy to set up.

As a software developer, I have to really hand it to the Snapstream folks, they have an immense amount of polish. Their installer is possibly the best software installer I've ever encountered when it comes to trying to make things painless for the user. You can try out Beyond TV at Snapstream's site to see for yourself how you like it.

Right now I'd give it 3.5 stars out of 5. When the video playback issue is addressed it'll go up to 4 stars. I definitely recommend giving it a shot. I have it set up in our basement on a PC that's in front of our various exercise equipment. Nothing too fancy but makes the treadmill more bearable...

Steven Den Beste has taken aim at Michael Moore's upcoming mockumentary Fahrenheit 9-11.

It's no secret that I have nothing but disdain for Michael Moore. I've only debated with him electronically once and my impression is essentially that he's a lot like many far left wingers I see on the blogsphere that are willing to distort things in order to further their preconceived agenda. But he has the fortitude to actually go through and make movies and books to spread his drivel to the general public. I'm thankful there are sites like www.Moorewatch.com that help document the inaccuracies and other BS in his writings.

But back to Steven's post which I agree with -- Michael Moore writes "Remember when lots of people were asking 'Why do they hate us?'" No. Actually I don't. I, like many Americans, remember 9/11 and the aftermath quite well. Our main interest was finding out who did this and what we could do to eliminate them. This led us to Afghanistan and the elimination of the Taliban government and disrupting Al Qaeda well enough that there have been no major attacks against the United States since. Which is remarkable given how active Al Qaeda had been prior to 9/11 (USS Cole, the Embassy bombings, etc.).  So it would seem that the response has probably had some effect in all likelihood.

But Moore goes further and his film looks at all the terrible things the US government and US corporations do and says the pertinent question should be, "Why don't they hate us?"

But Moore, like many of his kind, falls into the intellectual trap of believing in some sort of mystical Karmic retribution. I believe in Karma about as much as I believe in the Force. US corporations doing bad things in Central America does not contribute to a group of Islamic terrorists deciding to fly airplanes into skyscrapers.

Besides that, such thinking represents a moral and intellectual surrender. It always bugs me when people throw up their hands and basically resort to magic explaining everything. That is one reason I'm not religious. "How does the TV work? Magic" Why did a bunch of people hijack 4 commercial airliners with the intention of crashing them into buildings to kill people? Karma.

Sadly, experts on both sides of the issue actually do have a pretty good idea of what specifically triggered Al Qaeda's actions on the US. It's just that neither side wants to make such information generally known. It's not a secret or anything, it just doesn't get very much coverage because it's not sexy and it makes Al Qaeda look pretty lame while as the same time not having the same grandiose goals necessary for keeping the war on terror going.

Osama Bin Laden began targeting the United States after the US took up a permanent military presence in his native Saudi Arabia. His long term goal was to overthrow the government of Saudi Arabia, a government he considered (rightly) to be corrupt. He believed, given the events of Somalia and Beirut that if the US got a bloody nose, it would eventually wisen up and get out of Saudi Arabia.

Ironically, he succeeded. The US has moved its forces out of Saudi Arabia -- into Iraq.

That said, the war on Terrorism isn't just a war on Al Qaeda. That is just one battle and I am working on an article that talks about what exactly the war on terrorism is and the eventual goals involved in winning it but that's another story.

Moore, however, won't get into those things. Instead, he just wants to present a litany of actions by the United States and its citizens that he feels makes people hate us to the point that they want to attack us. But hating us and being motivated to commit violence are two different things.  After all, pick France, Germany, Russia, UK, Australia, Belgium, Italy, or Turkey and you would have no problem coming up with a long list of equally karmic bad deeds.  I mean heck, the entire Middle East was ruled by the colonial powers for quite awhile and you don't see airplanes being flown into the Eiffel Tower. During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq France invaded the Ivory Coast. Should we be expecting Africans to start bombing Paris?

I'm convinced that Michael Moore is becoming more of a shtick than anything else. He has figured out that he can make money by catering to the ideological fringes of society and now provides a product for those people. I wonder how much of this stuff he even really believes personally at this point.

I don't think it'll be as smooth sailing as Bowling for Columbine was though. Reaction to that movie was strong enough to have created a net infrastructure that helps get the word out on the other side of the issues he (ahem) presents. So this time around, people will be ready to pounce. It'll be interesting to see.

My education background is in engineering so writing wasn't something that came naturally to me. And yet, without a doubt, I am convinced that learning to write effectively has been an important factor in helping me succeed professionally.  But learning to write well didn't come overnight. It took years of writing to get decent at it.  Let me save you some time and give you some quickies on how to improve your writing which will in turn help make your blog more effective.

1) Perfect is the enemy of good. This is a universal truth. I am a good writer. I am, however, no where near great. My articles could be much better if I spent more time crafting them. But as Joseph Stalin used to say, quantity has a quality of its own and sadly it's true. It is better to have more articles that are well written than fewer articles that are superbly written.

2) Topic is king. This goes along with #1. The topic matters more than anything. Pick topics that you are interested in to begin with. For greater popularity, make sure those topics are things others will be interested in. I may be interested in finding out what that sickly sweet smell from my toe is but I suspect others may not be so interested  in that.

3) Writing Style: Paragraphs are your friend.  #1 problem I've seen in blogs are users who don't put spaces between paragraphs. Heck, really the #1 problem is people not having paragraphs at all.  People need to be able to read you article in bite-sized chunks. One big long block of text is not going to be well received generally.

4) Read out-loud what you've written. This is my #1 problem. I generally just crank out an article (or particularly a response) and don't read it before hitting submit. The result can be incoherent or come across as rude. Written communication is tricky and a few extra words can make the difference between a well received article and one that comes across as just mean or grammatically challenged.

5)  Stick to the topic. Once you pick your topic, remember what it is and stick to it. Don't go meandering off onto some tangent. Make a second article about that.

6) Look up what you write about. If you've been here long enough, you know that's my biggest pet peave. There are so many articles that get written here that are essentially a collection of straw-man arguments or historical revisionism. It can damage your credibility and turn off users. Writing articles entitled "President Clinton <or Bush> is the worst President in our nation's history" are generally unhelpful. Google is your friend.  If your article is trying to be persuasive, facts are very persuasive. A writer insisting that their opinion is a fact is not persuasive.

7) Find places to link to your article. There are numerous places interested in posting RSS feeds. Every blog on this site comes with a specific RSS feed for them. Find places that syndicate RSS feeds and get your blog in there. JoeUser has a lot of features built into help reward those who link to you as well as getting the word out on what you write. Take advantage of it. One site I like is called Blogstreet. But there are many other sites out there that are interested in letting people know when a blog has been updated.

I hope these suggestions will help you.