MadIce writes:
I agree with your "True progress, in my opinion, is a melding of ethics and a realistic understanding of human nature." But isn't that a liberal point of view? It would allow you to make a progressive decision.

Not necessarily. Each side's ideologues believe they have a lock on both.

Communism failed because it didn't take into account human nature (which led to cascading inefficiency that ultimately spelled its ruin -- people generally want to succeed for themselves and their families, not for the state). Fascism failed because it had no ethics (which led to everyone focusing on its destruction in a violent way). American conservatism and liberalism falls far in between those two extremes.

I do not believe that the government rules us. I see the government leading us but we control the government. It's a service provider that we set up. It exists at our convenience.  In other words, the government exists to serve us. But liberals tend to see the government as the solution to many of life's problems. And to do that, they see the need to invest more and more power into the government. A binding power that, given time, turns what we consider basic rights into privileges.  Conservatives tend to see government as a necessary evil. An instrument to implement things that we cannot, as individuals, take care of that must be taken care of (roads, defense being the main two things).

Conservatives tend to see the government as merely this thing we set up to take care of a few things. So when people start suggesting that it should have power over us (such as telling us what we can and can't own in our homes) conservatives have a problem. Note that I use the term conservatives and not Republicans. Republicans are not purely conservative anymore than Democrats are purely liberal.

Americans, particularly conservatives, tend to feel that we are allowed to do anything we want unless expressly forbidden by a law. And even then, we can change those laws. Increasingly, liberals tend to take the opposite track, that the government should decide what behaviors, attitudes, even thoughts are allowed.  To any Europeans reading this, this must seem absurd, backwards. That's because it is. Somewhere down the line, things got switched around. In the United States, it's increasingly liberals looking to take away things from Americans and conservatives wanting to provide more freedoms (or arguably restore more freedoms hence "conservatives").

Moreover, Conservatives want to see the laws made and enforced as locally as possible. Liberals prefer to see laws made and enforced on a national level. I see nothing progressive in that. In fact, I don't really see anything "progressive" about American liberalism. In some ways, such as political correctness laws and policies (seen particularly on campuses), American liberalism is regressive.

So what is progressive really depends on your point of view. My own point of view is that philosophies that promote greater freedom for individuals, as a whole, are progressive.  And I find, overall, that conservative values are more along those lines.

Skinning your icons? Yep. Adam, lead developer of IconDeveloper, has written an article previewing a new feature in IconDeveloper that will let users SKIN their icons. That is, mix images together to create new icons. It's pretty impressive.

Anyone who's been watching TechTV's The Screen Savers lately has seen Konfabulator. A MacOS program that is the equivalent of the DesktopX object feature. You can think of Konfabulator as being the closest thing to DesktopX on the Mac.

But whether it is Konfabulator or Kaleidoscope before it or even some of the other Mac skinning programs, as well as the icons, there has been an ongoing debate, over the years, over who is better at skinning. Mac users or PC users?

On the PC side, programs like WindowBlinds, DesktopX, ObjectBar, Sysmetrix, Hoverdesk, and many others have more sophisticated features that allow technically adapt PC users to create a lot of interesting things. On the Mac side, while a much smaller market contains a lot of graphics designers and artists.

Anyone that's been on one of the mailing lists for the Mac skinning programs knows that Mac users are pretty convinced that they're a lot better at skinning (and are convinced that PC users are a bunch of rippers -- a charge, that while over generalized, we all have seen how little respect some people have for the rights of skinners).

So now Konfabulator is coming out for Windows. My view is, if Konfabulator becomes more popular somehow than DesktopX then we're a bunch of losers who deserve to be on the ash heap of history. With a 2 year head start and a lot more features (and DesktopX is cheaper!) the only way I can see DesktopX losing is through either a) Stardock sucking at development or Stardock sucking at marketing or c) Our community unable to compete with the Mac community's skinning prowess.

Anyone interested in getting a monthly desktop video thread going? If so, we can look at adding a video section here to WinCustomize. Just keep the videos under 5 megabytes. Then you can take a little video of your desktop to show people how you use your computer.

They're incredibly easy to make.

Step 1: Download a freeware desktop capture program like CamStudio. http://www.ehelp.com/camstudio/product/screenrecording/

Step 2: Record your desktop as a .AVI

Step 3: Convert that .AVI into a .WMV file with Microsoft Movie Maker (comes with Windows XP)

Step 4: Link to it.

Here's mine:


Video: https://www.stardock.com/video/frogboy-nov03.wmv

When I ask, "Why do liberals keep losing?" what I specifically mean is those who believe in American liberal ideals (which to a European means something different) are finding their political fortunes ebbing and their influence on the United States weakening.

And it boils down to this: the left wing mainstream media and liberal politicians mistakenly think that their beliefs are held by the majority of Americans.  They're not. They should know this because the polls on these issues are regularly posted by them!

Some of my positions are liberal too and it is easy to believe that those who disagree with you are stupid or evil or ignorant or whatever.  It's amazing how often conservatives get called "Fascists" or "Nazis" by the left. Do they really think they're doing their cause any good by having such a knee-jerk reaction to other beliefs? Liberals have it harder because they proclaim to be open to new ideas and most of all, tolerant. But liberals are increasingly seen as not tolerant. What used to be a competition of ideas has become political correctness.

Here are some bullet items. See how you react to them. These aren't necessarily how I believe but these are conservative views held by a large percentage of the population.

1) All Americans, even children, have a right to own a firearm. That means a hand gun. It means a semi-automatic weapon. It means a rifle or a shot gun. The reason for owning this is not just for hunting. Not just for protection. But to ensure that if necessary that the people could overthrow the government.

What is your reaction to that statement? Polls have shown that most Americans believe this or a significant portion of this. Read the debates by the founding fathers with regards to the second amendment (including writings from Thomas Jefferson) and it's pretty clear that the right to bear arms was put into the constitution for, amongst other reasons, to keep the government "honest".  As Jefferson himself said, "A little rebellion now and then is a good thing."

2) Abortion should be illegal in all but the rarest of cases. It is not the fault of the unborn child if its parentage was accidental or inconvenient. In addition, its legality should not be determined by the supreme court but instead by state legislatures.

Again, while I am pro-choice myself, roughly half the population believes this.

3) The death penalty is necessary. In a land with so much freedom responsibility for ones action must go hand in hand. Those who take the life of another, having exhausted their appeals, should be put to death.

Most Americans believe that the death penalty should be legal. They have lots of reasons for this but most of it simply boils down to if you kill someone, you should forfeit your life.

4) By and large, the poor of the United States are poor because they are either lazy, stupid, or mentally imbalanced or all three. It is not the job of the government to take care of these people. That is the job of charities.

Once again, a large percentage (this one I don't know the polling data off hand but I know it's a pretty large chunk) of the population feels this way. It is not a matter of being uncaring. It is a matter of who's job is it to take care of the poor? Not the government's. Let those who are truly compassionate give to charities.

I'll stick with these 4 since this should be enough to make the point. Liberals find these viewpoints to be inhumane, ignorant, selfish, and extreme.  That is certainly their right. But where their mistake comes is believing that only a tiny "Fringe" of "right-wing extremists" believe these things. In fact, millions of Americans believe these things. Millions of decent, educated, thoughtful Americans believe these things. Thinking that only a tiny number of people believe in these things causes liberals to underestimate them.

The results have been obvious -- losses in elections, losses in media influence (watch Fox News sometime, and I mean actually watch it, if you find it "right wing" to any significant degree then I suggest you look in the mirror, you're probably significantly left wing). As long as liberals continue to dismiss conservatives and their values as "fringe" and label them as "Nazis" and "Fascists", they will continue to lose ground. Alienating large tracks of the American population unnecessarily is foolish.  Which is exactly what we've been seeing for the past few years.

Been having a lot of fun at work lately. Very busy but still incredibly fun.  For one thing, been working on a bunch of different programs at once. Namely:

• DesktopX and DesktopX Pro
• IconDeveloper
• WindowBlinds 4.2

Today I discovered the joy of combining Flash and DesktopX together. Holy cow can you do some neat stuff. I took a Flash Tetris game and turned it into a DesktopX object.

I also made a movie of my desktop for this month. Here's a screenshot of it:

Brad's November Desktop Movie (Windows Media Player)

If you haven't tried out DesktopX 2, you should. I haven't enjoyed skinning and such this much since the WindowBlinds .39 days. 

Today I figured out how to embed flash.  believe it or not, you can actually embed the flash .swf file right into a .dxpack itself (.dxpack is just a .zip file renamed) and distribute the flash file directly.

But I'm also having fun having it point to websites that have flash. 

https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?library=3&SkinID=3042

Here's some typical code:

So I put that on the web page.

First line get rid of the scrollbar and margins.

Then I have the width and height changed to 100% / 100% since Flash can scale on the fly which is nice.

Then I create my DX object, create a script and have it be an ActiveX control that points to my HTML file.

I tell ya, Flash and DesktopX are like two pees in a pod.

My wife and I have started dating again. By that I mean each other. Despite my attempts to stress to her that I'm a stallion and as a stallion I must roam and roam free, she still insists that I date only her. We've been having a lot of fun and it's amazing how much things have changed since when we dated before we got married.

12 years ago, which is about when we started dating, I drove a vette. A chevette but a vette none the less. Surprisingly, chicks weren't impressed by it. They weren't impressed by it's 0 to 60mph rating (eventual). They weren't impressed that I would take them to the literal king of hamburgers to eat. They weren't impressed by my modern sensibilities and belief in equality by insisting that we pay for our own meals.

My wife, or I should say my wife to be at the time, understood these things. Of course, she was a hick with a pick-up truck from a town that proudly boasts the second smallest free-standing McDonalds in the world (way to go!). Our dates were always conversation heavy. We have always liked to talk a lot. Violence has never been a major factor except when I uncontrollably exclaim "Wow, look at that chick! She's hot!" (Dating tip: Do not comment on how "hot" other females that walk by to your date. Follow-up tip: Don't ask "I'd do her! Would you?").

When we got married, we were still dirt poor. And I'm talking the yucky kind of dirt, not the store bought dirt (I just can't compete with that so I'd rather we not make comparisons that kind of dirt).  But over time, things have gotten a lot better for us. Both materially and spiritually. They say money can't buy happiness. I would disagree to a point -- money eliminates a source of potential arguments. Though in our case, we never argued about money even when we quibbled over who's turn it was to siphon gas out of the neighbor's gas tank. We're just both very frugal when it comes to money in the sense that we tend not to dissipate our earnings on little things but instead save for big things.  No  big screen TV, no stereo, no boat, no expensive jewelry in 10 years (wedding ring was last major purchase), etc. We just save up and buy big things like our home or...well our home mainly. We like creature comforts.

So getting back to dating, we have 2 small children and it's been really fun raising both of them (Marriage tip: Don't refer to your children as "Pets, but even better!"). But we haven't really gone out much. It's easy to look track of what each other is doing. For instance, apparently there is a machine nowadays that actually will wash the dishes for you! I kid you not. My wife showed it to me the other day along with telling me rumor of a laundry machine(s). But I suspect that's more myth than fact there.

But now each Wednesday we go out and get to date with some style. We can go out to nicer places where we don't have to order at a counter or from our car. We can even go to the movies during the non-Matinee (admittedly we haven't actually done this going to the matinee instead but I'm just saying we could). Going out on dates though lets us rekindle why we got together in the first place. Whatever that was. And talk about it. Well okay, actually we talk about all kinds of new things and still find each other's company incredibly enjoyable.

If you're married, I strongly suggest you find time to go out once a week with your spouse on a date. This is especially true if you have children (small children even more so). It makes a big difference and makes the rest of the week more enjoyable.

Despite the availability of iTunes and other services, a near majority of WinCustomize users in a recent poll indicated that they'd just continue to download the music "for free".

If you have a WinCustomize account you also have a JoeUser.com account (they're all stardock.net accounts). If you're a skinner, join the Skinning.JoeUser.com blog group with your own thoughts and techniques.

If you're not a skinner, check out the writings of skinners on various skinning issues.