Stardock has released a free holiday game: Northpole Showdown!

Santa needs your help! Robots designed to help Santa's elves have gone haywire and are trying to take over the North pole. You must battle your way and warn Santa before it's too late!

Update: 1.0A released

Jimmy Carter was on NPR...again on Monday. During the obligatory Bush bashing, Carter said something totally insane:

"I can't think of a time in this country's 200 year history when we've been more isolated politically."

Really? One can almost picture Dolly Madison, freshly transported from the ruins of the freshly destroyed White House due to the British in 1812, into 2004 hearing that and slapping Carter across the face.

Is Carter really that ignorant of American history? His statement is completely absurd. Besides the example where the United States was war with Britain in 1812 with no allies to aid it, there are much better examples, shockingly enough, than the one that ends with the white house being burned to the ground by the British.

Fast forward to 1862.  The United States vs. The Confederate States.  The CSA economy was largely based on slavery. The USA, market capitalism. And despite that massive distinction, France and Britain provided aid to the CSA and were very close to recognizing the CSA.  Think about that. France and Britain basically hoped that the CS would win its independence of the United States.  You can argue whether that was a good position for them to take or not. That's not the issue. What is beyond dispute is that the United States definitely didn't have very good political clout if most of the powerful nations on Earth (not just UK and France) sided against the United States in the US civil war in which the opposing power was to varying degrees (depending on who you talk to) fighting for its right to have slaves.

Can you imagine Lincoln hearing Carter's words. The USA, in 2004, has British, French, and dozens of other nations working with it in Afghanistan.  The US and many other nations are working together in Iraq. It is part of countless international organizations. It's made great strides towards establishing a free trade zone in the western hemisphere. And Carter thinks we're more isolated now than we were when those same countries were rooting for the slave holding states to defeat it in the civil war?

What's amazing is that if Bush had said something that ridiculous, he would have gotten tons of jeers from the media. His intelligence would have been called into question.  But Carter says something utterly idiotic and what was Diane Rhem's response? "Why do you think this administration continues this course of isolating itself from the rest of the world?"

Clearly, Bush hatred has the same affect as mild lead poisoning on the left.  It makes them crazy and a fairly dense at the same time.  They despise him so much that they can't seem to think straight. And that's the friendly explanation. The alternative is that these people are just so incredibly ignorant of American history that nothing they say about anything should be taken seriously. I.e. if they'll speak on history when they clearly have no idea what they're talking about then who knows what else they talk about that they know nothing about.  Those are the options: Temporarily insane or stupid. In Carter's case, probably both.

Just a recap - in the past 30 days we've had two primary servers crash due to hardware failure. We are in the process of trying to purchase 2 new servers along with prepare the way for additional servers to help provide redundancy.

All we need are 500 new subscribers by the end of the month. As I type this, we have 156.  Each month, over two MILLION people visit this site. The costs for running this site are considerable.  While Stardock pays for most of the bandwidth and IT work, WinCustomize has to pay for its own machines.

We need your help. In the next 20 days or so, we need to get another 350 subscribers. Even as I type this message, there are 1,178 people on this site. If you've already subscribed, we thank you. If you haven't, please consider purchasing a premium subscription.

Premium subscriptions not only give you unlimited bandwidth to the site, you get access to the WinCustomize Browser which provides a direct link to WC's database.  Premium subscriptions last TWO years and only cost $19.95. This Spring, a host of cool new features will be added to WinCustomize that will only be available to subscribers. Two premium skin suites are already available for WinCustomize premium subscribers and a system tray program that monitors WinCustomize for new skins, themes, wallpapers, and more is also available.

To subscribe you can follow the link below or go here:  https://www.wincustomize.com/store/

A large percentage of you who read this are already WinCustomize premium subscribers. You've already done your part to help this site keep going.

But I must say, things are grim this holiday season here. 2 expensive servers are down. We must get 2 new servers in here. We need to get another 2 servers on top of that for redundancy but that can wait a bit. But it's depressing knowing that millions visit this site each month and we've only gotten 156 new subscribers since the subscription drive began. It definitely makes a strong case that perhaps the days of free skins are over. That the skin authors and web masters, who pull their weight, should move towards a more commercial model that benefits primarily those who contribute (skinners, subscribers, and developers). 

My friend Scott (Jark) has much the same problems over at deviantART: http://news.deviantart.com/article/12039/

That is, the problem of having massive MASSIVE traffic but only a tiny fraction of those users paying the bill. Many people think, incorrectly, that massive traffic == money. It doesn't.

I can tell you, those of you who have purchased premium subscriptions here have helped the community in ways that the average user can't possibly fathom.  Premium subscribers combined with the volunteer efforts of this site's administrators (Jafo, Boxxi, DavidK, Treetog, Alexandrie, Kaosati, MikeB, Hippy, and others) are what keep things going.

Without the premium subscriptions, I can tell you right now what would happen.  This site would slowly morph into being a purely Stardock oriented site with bandwidth caps for all users (including Object Desktop users - though theirs would be higher). Support for non-Stardock sections would slowly disappear or be restricted to subscribers only.  The wallpaper section would only be available to those who either have a wallpaper on there that got accepted or subscribers (in all these exaples, anyone with apprentice access or higher would be treated as a subscriber).

There would be banner ads, and things would become vastly more commercial. Instead of a free Christmas suite, it would be a $8 Christmas suite. Instead of free skins, a new system would b eput in place to allow authors to sell their skins as part of te library once they had achieved a certain access level. One-click purchasing by users with the skin authors getting a percent.

That is the commercialized future of skinning. The alternative. It's not necessarily dark and evil. But it is a much different world than what we have now. I suspect many skin authors out there would jump at the chance of being able to get paid for their skins.

I've posted for years that our community is made up of 3 co-equal groups: The skinners, the web masters, and the users.  We webmasters are doing everythign we can.  The skinners have done their part.  The users have to do their part as a collective.  Which means of the 75,000 unique visitors this site gets each day, 500 more of them need to contribute back too.  As the alternative to voluntarily helping will be paying bits and pieces here and there for skins and themes.  The alternative is a smaller community, a more commercialized community but a sustainable one too.

Personally, I hope some balance can be found. While some people think we represent the commercialization of skinning, in reality, we don't. We simply want...must find a sustainable model that allows our community to grow.  We have all seen the instability Deskmod, Skinz.org, and even Customize.org have faced.  The site has grown beyond what Stardock can pay for via Object Desktop sales.  While Stardock's revenue has grown, the traffic to this site has DOUBLED this year.

Like I said, a large percentage of you have already done your part. There's nothing more you can do.  But hopefully, the millions of people who come to this site will have some infintesible number of them that recognize that someone has to pay for all this stuff. 

The end of the year may end up being the end of this site as we know it. Those new machines will be purchased one way or the other. But if Stardock ends up having to pay for any of those two new machines, it's going to come with strings attached. Ones that will certainly benefit subscribers but the casual users of the world will probably not like.

The chart below is a chart of CO2 emissions vs. Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Many in Europe falsely accuse George W. Bush of "killing" the Kyoto accords. In actuality, the Kyoto accords died in the United States in 1998.  They don't have a chance to pass in the United States no matter who is President because the Kyoto accords are, basically, a joke.

Now, if you're not familiar with the Kyoto accords (most Americans who argue for it probably have never looked at it) let me give you a primer: The accords are designed so that countries will reduce the amount of green house gas to be 5% less than they were in 1990 (which I've highlighted).

Data Source: IEA CO2 Emissions from Fossil Fuel Combustion
Data Provider: International Energy Agency
 

The first issue Americans have is the arbitrary choice of year -- 1990.  In 1990, the United States was in the midst of an economic boom while many nations in Europe (notably France) were suffering a relative economic slowdown.  Why 1990?

The second problem has to do with reporting. How accurate are reportings on CO2 emissions? I suspect they are very accurate in most western European nations, Japan, and the United States.  But look at the countries that they have. How do they measure Angola?

The third problem has to do with the one size fits all solution. It's a helluva lot easier for say France to lower its emissions. Just tighter controls on its remaining factories.  The United States, however, is a relatively sparsely populated nation spanning a continent. Much of the CO2 emissions in the United States are from cars. How exactly is the US supposed to solve that? Smaller cars? Small cars are nice in urban environments. But most of the driving takes place outside the cities in the suburbs and changing that reality isn't doable or practical or even necessarily desirable. And people driving significant distances to work are not likely to tolerate doing it in tiny cars to satisfy some European politicans who have decided that CO2 emissions are going to cause global warming (when I was a kid, it was global cooling that was all the rage).

The fourth problem is related to the third, different industries have different requirements and difficulties to reduce CO2 emissions.  The American power production grid is largely coal based. France's, being controlled by the government, is largely nuclear. I would love to see the US move to nuclear power for power generation but the same people who want Kyoto are usually the same people protesting against nuclear power plants.  And France is transitioned to being a post-industrial nation. Do they still have factories in Paris?

The biggest problem, however, has to do with economics. If times are good, emissions go up. Many Americans see the Kyoto accords as a cynical attempt to try to slow down the US economy.

What Bush and many Americans have supported is the idea of trying to tie emissions to GDP.  That is, become more efficient at power generation.

Interpreting the table

There's a lot of countries on that table so let's get to the bottom line here.

The United States went from 1191 (1972) to 650 (1999).  So the United States has greatly improved its efficiency in power.  Instead of tarring and feathering the United States, people should be pleased that the US (and the world in general) has gotten so much better at using energy more efficiently.

Other countries who are roughly the same as the United States (or worse) include Canada, Romania, Australia, China, Cuba, Poland, (heck pretty much all of eastern Europe).

The former Soviet Union is at 1530.5.  Think about that. That's worse than the United States was in 1972. Anyone who's visited Moscow can tell you the air conditions there.

The worst country, btw, was Iraq at 2816. You'd think that the Euroleft would be glad to see the US take out the world's worst polluter per GDP.

But really, the numbers show another trend - countries that produce energy have high emissions. Hence, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, etc. have high emissions. And it's not commonly known but do you know which country produces the most energy each year? It's not Saudi Arabia. It's the United States. It's just that we consume so much that we still have to import. But think about that, despite producing more energy each year than any of the countries in the middle east we still have a remarkably low emissions per GDP.

If you have any doubt about the correlation between energy production (oil refining) and emissions, Egypt, which is quite close to Saudi Arabia, has an emissions ratio of 529. That's less than one fifth that of most of the oil producing states in the middle east.

And btw, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, and others who produce virtually no energy are not significantly better than the United States. The USA is around 650, Germany is at 444. That's 200 units difference. When you take into account that they are relatively small countries that don't have the massive automobile use of the US and Canada and don't refine their own fuel, they are actually remarkably inefficient. They should actually be much lower than that considering their relatively ideal conditions. And don't forget the emissions in the United States from having to transport goods across the continent (such as the food many Europeans eat).

BTW, Ethiopia is at only 75.9. Are they who we should be striving to emulate?

To all but the most hard headed, it should be clear why the Kyoto accords were always unworkable. It was a simplistic solution to a complex problem. And besides, that, it's really hard to take France and Belgium and other Europeans terribly seriously about environmental issues when they are just now phasing out leaded gasoline (want to talk really nasty stuff).

The US senate, in 1998, did the right thing by voting a resolution (unanimously) making it clear that these flawed, simplistic protocols would never be welcome here. On top of all this, there's the basic issue that odds are, Kyoto is meaningless when it comes to the environment. CO2 emissions going back to 1990 levels may (and in my opinion would) do nothing to affect the weather either way. The in the 70s climate models showed global cooling. Now we hear about global warming. In reality, we don't know and we also don't really know whether we produce enough CO2 to make that kind of effect. But that's a different discussion enitrely.

When Kyoto's advocates are ready for taking a stab at serious environment resolutions the US will be waiting. But having Europeans trying to take the high ground on environmental issues is like having a vegetarian chain smoker trying to take the high ground on health issues over a non-smoker who happens to eat red meat.

Well that sucked.

Remaking Battlestar Galactica was always a risky proposition under ideal circumstances. But these circumstances weren't ideal due to a series of seemingly arbitrary changes that eliminated a lot of the good will of the original fans.

By arbitrary I mean making Star Buck a girl. Making Boomer a girl. Hey, if you want to have girl power, put in new characters. The biggest arbitrary and I believe ultimately disastrous change was making the Cylons creations of the humans.  Look, by the time we have that kind of technology, I think it's safe to say we'd be pretty damn careful about making them not turn on us. And if we're too stupid to keep that from happening then sign me up as the first Cylon slaveling. Good grief. It's been done.

But alienating the original series fans is only the beginning of this show's journey to drek. Let's list off the things that help make this show a fraction of what it might have been...

1. Terrible directing. The camera work is awful.
2. Unlikeable characters.  Star buck in the original was a funny and charming character. The new one is a bitch. Apollo was a good hearted soul. The new one is a spoiled kid. Boomer was a confident solid figure. The new boomer (now a girl) is just weak.
3. Ruining the Cylons. Whether it be their ugly ships or their change of the infamous red signal light sound effect zipping back and forth (except on the ships) the Cylons suck. But having human like Cylons really takes the cake. Human enough that one could have sex with one and not know it? Think about that when you watch it. The Cylons apparently have technology to essentially create human beings and yet they're firing missiles. MISSILES.
4. Bad science. The new show's creators bragged about how they wanted to be more realistic. The problem is that when you do that, you can't just pick and choose. This is especially bad when the parts where they attempted to be "realistic" make the combat scenes far less enjoyable.  For example, gone are the great dog fights because they wanted to have the "asteroids arcade game" type affect where little thrusters have to be fired to maneuver a ship. They also pick and choose which sounds we get to hear in space. This nonsense that there's no sound in space is foolish because it all depends on your perspective and your definition of what is "sound".  A whole article could be dedicated to that but let's bear in mind that piddly things like no sound in space (so battles are largely soundless and thus boring) are chosen while ignoring that we have ships traveling through interstellar space seemingly beyond the speed of light using rockets (next week we get to see "Hyperlight" apparently).
5. Arbitrary choices of bad science.  So when there's an opportunity to make use of science to explain a bad special effect or a boring action sequence, they take it. But bear in mind, they have artificial gravity under control apparently. And the thing about that is, once you have artificial gravity, you might as well just toss out feeling obligated to put micro thrusters on ships for maneuvering. You can just channel gravity and move ships in precision dog fighting in space just fine. At least it makes things interesting.
6. The story was incredibly plodding in pacing while jumpy. Bad editing?
7. The ships are terribly ugly. One of the best things about the original was how massive a battlestar looked. The new one looks crummy. The ships are generally fairly crummy looking too. They should have stuck with the originals rather than making them look so video-game-ish.

All that said, if they had not called it Battlestar Galactica, I would say it's a decent, those mediocre sci-fi drama.  But when you have such excellent source material to work with, there's no excuse to have such drek as the result.

I would give this 2 stars out of 5.

Kazaa's (ahem) "owner" Sharman Networks, has stood up the rights of intellectual property holders...well no, maybe just itself and taken steps to zap Kazaa Lite K++.

It seems that Kazaa gets much of its revenue from installing various ads and spyware programs on people's machines (or you can pay $30 to get rid of that). Kazaa Lite K++ bypassed all that so users to get to stealing software, music, and downloading porn faster.

Truly, a major...blow to pirates, warezers, leeches, and porn users everywhere. More info on The Register.

FAT has become a standard file system for all kinds of devices. And so, Microsoft has decided that it's time to start getting these companies to pay up in the form of licensing.

Good or bad? Hard to say. FAT belongs to Microsoft and they should have control over who uses it. On the other hand, would FAT have become a standard if there had been licensing fees for all those years?

Skins, Themes, Icons, Wallpapers: All of these things have ratings associated with it. Ratings are designed to allow users to better find things that are of higher quality while helping new skin authors improve on their skill set.

Unfortunately, the ratings system is imperfect. Only those with Apprentice access or higher OR have WinCustomize subscriptions can rate skins. But some people abuse their ratings priviledges. Some people will give a 1 to a nice skin and many people will give 10's to terrible skins.

There is even what appears to be the occasional use of rating trading. Where authors will agree to vote on each others skins in exchange for high ratings for their own.

Let me be clear: We can see the ratings. That is, we know who rates what. And they are cross referenced. The Admins actually get a visual cross reference of what a user rates things. So if User A is giving all of User B's skins 10s (or 1s) and vice versa, it's pretty apparent what's going on.

Here is the standard of which rating should be done:

It's a 1 through 10 setup. 5 means average. A 10 means you think it's one of the best skins of all time. A 9 would be one of the best skins of the year.  Most skins should get between a 4 and 6.

We have begun prooning ratings to try to make them somewhat more representative.  Giving your friend a 10 on a bad skin is not helping them. It is definitely not helping other users who simply conclude that the users here must just have terrible taste. We don't want to have to threaten removing ratings priviledges from users so please, just try to be fair and honest in your ratings.

Thanks!