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It must be something in the water. As Right Wing News points out, Johnny Depp, just before the opening of his new movie, "Once Upon a time in Mexico" was in France slamming the United States

Would he have us emulate France? Possibly the most cynical self serving country on Earth? These are the guys who wouldn't let their "ally" even fly over their air space during a strike on Libya after Libya's terrorist bombing of a disco frequented by American troops

As RWN points out, his remarks will likely cost his movie some millions of dollars as a certain percentage of Americans will simply not go to his next movie as a result. Unlike France, Johnny Depp apparently isn't too intune with his own best interests.

The best part about being an entrepreneur is working with really good talented people. They say you can't choose your coworkers but that's the one perk of being an entrepreneur.

And over the past few years, we've put together an outstanding team of developers. I don't mean this as an idle boast but we have some of the best people on earth working together.

Years ago, in the OS/2 market days, we had put together a pretty good team too. But it all nearly collapsed when the OS/2 market died. But it wasn't OS/2 dying itself that did it. We weren't naive. We knew what was coming. But what we hadn't banked on is the stupidty of business partners.

In those days, 90% of our revenue came from third party resellers. We would sell to distributors who would in turn sell to resellers or retailers. And when OS/2 went down the tubes, apparently this came as some shock to the half-witted distributors we were working with. Two of them, Micro Central and Blue Orchards went down oweing us many hundreds of thousands of dollars. In fact, the only major reseller who did pay their bills (bless them) was Indelible Blue.

My budgets had taken into account the decline of the OS/2 market. But they didn't take into account us having to deal with that as well as eating roughly $400,000 in bad debts from our "partners". The result was the near collapse of our company.

We learned a valuable lesson back then. When we rebuilt we wouldn't rely on third parties. We would, instead, sell direct. We would create the world's most sophisticated Internet sales system ever seen. In 1999, we launched Stardock.NET and The Object Desktop Network -- software as a subscription. No biggie nowadays but back in 1999 it was pretty darn amazing. Bear in mind this is a year before Microsoft's own .NET initiative. We came up with .NET first you could say.

And we would still let third parties pay for our stuff if they paid up front. Ubisoft and Take 2 and GT Interactive all sold games that we made but they paid entirely up front.

Today, 75% of our revenue comes from direct sales. 25% comes from other sources. But sure enough, nearly all of that 25% is a collections pay in the butt. We may end up eating a good chunk of that 25% this year. Luckily, because of past experiences, I didn't "count" on that 25%. I budgeted our core business based on the 75% direct sales and planned to use that 25% for future expansion (such as buying a new building).

But it is still amazingly frustrating having to deal with inept or incompotent business "partners". There is little penalty for squandering other people's money in business. I think fly by the pants CEOs would budget and consider things more if there was some personal penalties for running your business into the ground oweing debt. They need some sort of law saying that if your payables exceed your net worth by more than say 2X that the officers of the corporations may be personally liable for some of the repayments.

Wow, something's happening on the net this week.

Worldwide Internet traffic is distinctly down for the past couple of days even as response time gets worse and packet loss grows.

Whoever wrote those worm viruses needs to be shot.

The problem with supply-side economics as a theory is that it's too broad. When dealing with tax rates, there are really two completely different tax debates. First, you have the individual tax rate. And secondly, you have the corporate tax rate.

Individual tax rates in the United States are too high at the higher levels. But I don't believe that lowering this rate would improve the economy in any noticeable way. Contrary to what Bush thinks, whether the money is in individuals hands or in the hands of the government, it's still being spent. The economy is much more affected by consumer confidence than anything else in my opinion and I would say Bush made a big mistake wrecking the surplus for tax cuts. Consumer confidence, I suspect, is higher when the government is paying off its massive debt than a few hundred bucks in tax cuts on a typical household.

Corporate tax rates, on the other hand, do affect the economy. Every liberal I know always claims to various degrees how corporations don't pay taxes. But a simple look at the federal revenue stats show that obviously corporations are paying taxes. Those billions in tax revenue are coming from somewhere. And I believe that nearly every penny of that money is harmful to the economy overall. The companies making the profits are the ones who are obviously the most effective at managing their resources. So why punish them? In addition, the federal tax system is...well idiotic. At $49,999 of profit the corporate tax rate is 15%. At $50,001 it jumps to 25%. And Michigan, where Stardock is based, has the ridiculous "single business tax" whereby corporations cannot deduct wages as an expense. Meaning you can lose money and still pay taxes in Michigan.

But it gets worse. At $100,000 in net revenue, companies pay 39% of their net to the government. Again, a liberal will argue how corporations find "loopholes" to get out of paying this. Hey, if you think that, then show me the money because I'd love to hear about specific loopholes.  Sure, some companies manage to make tax deals with state and local governments. But that doesn't affect their federal taxes. In addition, while you do occasionally hear about some elaborate shell games being used to keep tax payments down by some fortune 500 company, the fact is that most people are employed by small and medium sized businesses. I know a lot of business owners and virtually all of them operate quite transparently from a tax point of view. They simply are trying do what their business does. That's what we do as well.

Not that that stops me from asking our accountants about these loopholes I always hear about at dinner parties. My accountants say that most loopholes fall into the urban legend category.

A company that nets $300,000 in revenue this year is going to pay $117,000 in taxes on that. The question then comes, who is better at spending that $117,000? The business that just proved its effectiveness by being so profitable or the government who wastes money at an incredible rate because no one feels responsible for it?  What would the typical successful small business do with that? If you listen to some people you will hear something like "The owner will just buy a boat." People who say that kind of thing have one thing in common: They've never run a business. Most small business owners would take that money and give some raises probably to key employees, hire another employee, improve infrastructure, and perhaps give themselves a reasonable bonus. 

The thing to remember though is that bonuses and raises are taxable. So the government doesn't lose that tax money. Similarly, if the corporation hires more people, what's happened? More tax payers.

Of course, Bush has done virtually nothing to help businesses,  particularly small businesses. This isn't a Republican vs. Democrat issue as much as it is a basic misunderstanding of economic forces. We do live in a society that increasingly tries to demonize the very entities that provide jobs -- corporations. Cutting corporate tax rates would have virtually no negative effect and provide great benefits to society in the long run through economic growth. Instead, we currently punish the most successful companies at the very time we should be trying to encourage hiring and expansion.

Hi everyone, great to see you all. Man, lot of familiar faces here. I brought my friend Norm with me. He's really into games and has always wanted to be in the game industry. Norm, feel free to look around..

Norm: Thanks bud! You don't mind if I bum around and ask some of these guys about themselves? No? Great! Everyone around the table, introduce yourselves!

Chris: My name is Chris, I'm 34, I now do technical support at a local ISP making $30,000. I spent most of my youth becoming an expert at how to make Adlib, Sound Blaster and Sound Blaster Pro drives for games. I knew everything there was about how to do it. My skills became obsolete when Windows 95 came out and I've spent a lot of time looking for work.

Norm: Uh, ok. But you're doing okay now, right?

Chris: Well if spending your days trying to explain how to do a renew on IPCONFIG to a hysterical grandmother over the phone is doing okay, then yes, I'm doing "okay".

Bill: Hullo, I'm Bill, I'm 37, I spent my youth working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week all year 'round working on PC games.

Norm: Really? What games?

Bill: Well I spent 4 years working on a Star Trek game that got cancelled. That was kind of a bummer because I worked incredible hours. My first wife left me and I gained so much weight from eating pop and fast food during working on it that I got diabetes.

Norm: That's too bad, any other games?

Bill: Yea, then I spent another 4 years working on "Terror Force". My second wife left me because I kept having to stay at the office 24 hours a day to make the deadlines.

Norm: Terror Force, hmm, oh I remember that game, I tried out the demo version for about 10 minutes, not too bad of a game.

Bill: It tanked, GameZoneWorld's reviewer only played the first level of it and said it lacked "umph." That was enough for the publisher to basically let it die on the vine.  By the time that game was done, I was 33 and had missed out on the prime of my youth working on stuff that had never come out or was completely forgettable. Now I'm out of shape, single, and don't have the resume to be a producer but didn't have time to keep up with the latest happenings in Direct3D.

Norm: Wasn't Terror Force 3D?

Bill: OpenGL and it was kind of hacked at that. Now people want people that know Direct3D for coding or networking, neither of which I've learned. I'm trying to learn now but between looking for a job and learning that...

Norm: Yea, kind of a bummer. How about you?

Steve: I'm Steve, I worked at LightHearted Studios. We spent 5 years working on DeathKill. It was a first person shooter / adventure game.

Norm: Hmm, I haven't heard of that game.

Steve: Pretty much no one did. It came out, sold 40,000 copies, LightHearted went under. Now I write scripts for the IT Department at Ford. Wish I could have those 5 years back during the prime of my youth.

Norm: Er.

Cliff: I'm Cliff, I was an expert at Real sound, you remember that? The sound that came out of a PC speaker...

Norm: Brad, I want to go home!

Anyone watch Stargate SG1 on the Sci-Fi channel? I am totally addicted to it. Got my Tivo set up to record any time it shows up.  If you're not familiar with the show, the premise is that the US government has control of a stargate that allows travel to a multitude of different planets across the galaxy. The government sends teams (SG teams) usually made up of 4 people on missions to these worlds to explore and make contact with other civilizations.

But what really makes the show is the great writing and the characters. The writing is crisp, light hearted, and most importantly, not cheesy. They really make an effort to try to portray the US government as behaving as it probably would. The US airforce comes across as pretty compotent and the technology is usually light on technobabble (though as time has gone on, some plots have increasingly relied in it).

But the 4 characters really make the show. You have Major Carter, the brainy scientist who can kick butt. You have Teal'c the brave and noble warrior who has a very subtle sense of humor. Then there's Daniel, who was the main character from the original movie who is the idealistic voice of conscience for the team who has slowly become quite a butt kicker himself. And then there's Colonel Jack O'Neil who has become the break out star of the team. The way he acts, talks, and just carries on is both hilarious and believable at the same time. He's not the brightest bulb out there but he's smart where it counts for his area and makes no bones about being not so smart in the areas he's weak.

A typical Jack O'Neil moment came in an episode in which Carter is explaining how Neutrinos interact with the body and why they couldn't go to this one giant cave while there was so many of them. When Daniel suggests going anyway, Jack says "Didn't you hear Carter? There's too many Nintendos there!"

As for the story...

Anyway, here's my idea for the story. The team gets sent to this planet that has long been abandoned. As they explore the lost civilization they discover that the people were very fixated with music. That their entire language and culture was expressed in terms of music. While Daniel is messing around with some of the machinery, a flash occurs and suddenly all 4 of them have their own musical sound track.

Whenever they do anything or think anything or act on something, their own unique sound track plays in the are. Jack's theme is something like Peter and the Wolf. Teal'c's is something that is reminiscent of Bach. And so on.  For the rest of the episode they have to figure out how to get rid of the sound track. They return back to base and there is a lot of interesting interactions as their sound tracks and reactions to various things cause changes in their sound tracks.  When they return to the planet, they find that the Goa'uld have arrived as well and the team must somehow defeat the Goa'uld bad guys with their position constantly being given away by their sound tracks and find a way to remove the sound tracks from themselves.

Carter finds a way to use the sound tracks to their advantage and ultimately finds a way to remove the sound tracks.

But it just made me chuckle to think of Jack and his team having to deal with a musical sound track following them around for their every move. Like a Bugs Bunny Cartoon.

Ever wanted to try your hand at skinning? SkinStudio 4 makes it easier than ever. SkinStudio 4 lets you create visual styles for a variety of programs (best known for creating visual styles for WindowBlinds).

Version 4 introduces a new skinning format called the Universal Skin Format (USF). Users/skinners can import skins into USF from, for instance, .msstyles, and export them to other formats such as WindowBlinds and Windows Media Player.

To learn more about it and to get the beta go here: https://www.stardock.com/products/skinstudio/sks4/

I swatted away a yellow jacket at the BBQ while listening to to my friend patiently and firmly explain that the wealthy and companies need to pay more in taxes.

I am not sure if the average American has always been as woefully ignorant of how our economy works as they are today. But if so, it's amazing that our country hasn't collapsed economically.  We live in a representative democracy of universal adult suffrage. The problem with unqualified voter rights is that those who don't produce or even know anything about the economy can essentially vote in representatives who will confiscate from the producers to give to themselves.

You can almost see it: America 2103, the congress, after a close 51% to 49% a new law stating that the top 10% must  subsidize summer cottages on lakes for the lower 90% of people. "It's about time those rich bastards pay their fair share. Why should rich people be the only ones with summer homes? Who made them better than us?"

Right now it's tax time at work and we're going to be paying quite a bit in taxes. "Most rich people and companies don't even pay taxes, look at Enron!"  The problem with that thinking is that it's completely wrong. Sure, you can find sensational examples of some individual or company that's managed to get rich and not pay taxes. But that's why it's news -- it's an unusual occurrence.  The vast majority of businesses and individuals operate pretty transparently and pay taxes. Lots of taxes. 

During the conversation, my friend had little sympathy for the taxes we pay. "Hey, you should be paying big taxes, you're making a lot of money. Thanks to your Republican buddies, a lot of people are without jobs and they need help."  To this I said, "Wouldn't it be better for companies like ours to keep as much of that money as possible so that we could hire more people? The taxes we paid cost us 3 jobs. That's how many people we would have hired if we didn't have to pay as much in taxes."

And here's where it became surreal, he responded: "Oh so you buy into that trickle down crap, Reagan tried it and Bush Jr. is trying it. It doesn't work." 

Bullshit. I am not espousing some egg head "theory". I'm living the reality. The taxes we are paying this year cost 3 jobs. It's purely a matter of budget. We need 3 more people but we cannot afford 3 people.  We have a perfect candidate in mind for a technical advisor position here and another person in mind for an animator position. Would be great to have them. But we can't afford them. Why? Because the government took that money. And what are they doing with it? 60% of it goes to various redistribution of wealth programs (social security, medicaid, medicare eat up the majority of that).

And now people want to expand this for prescription drugs? My friend explained why we "need" prescription drug coverage. Everyone knows someone who has to have some $400 prescription drug "to live". And it's "those damn greedy drug companies" that are to blame of course. Amazingly, people lived without prescription drugs for thousands of years.  Yes yes, I know, people didn't live as long back then. But rather than being thankful that the drug companies are coming up with these wonder drugs, we villainize them.  Think about that: these drugs allegedly make the difference between life and death -- that is, before these drugs we must assume that these people would have died. That's what the people who "need" these drugs claim anyway. Therefore, the "greedy" drug companies have created things that are saving a lot of people's lives. But because they want to be paid for them, and paid well, they're "greedy".

Personally, I find those who demand that other people pay for their stuff to be a helluva lot more greedy.  The people I know who scream for prescription drug coverage can somehow afford cable TV, air conditioning, and certainly don't look malnourished.  And they want those free pills. But they're not greedy of course. It's the drug companies who are greedy. It's the "Rich" people who pay for the prescription drugs for them who are greedy. It's the companies who employ everyone who are greedy. But not them. No, never. They just want something for nothing. They don't want to sacrifice anything for it. They don't want to ask their kids to help pay for it.

Instead, they'll get faceless people and companies to pay for their pills. And as a result, at least here, 3 people who might have had jobs, don't.

Last month saw the biggest surge in traffic since the site's opening over 2 years ago!

In July, WinCustomize got 1.49 million unique visitors.  But in August, that number jumped to 1.74 million unique users. We are not certain what caused the jump in traffic (no unusually large referral sources).

Some interesting stats:

Nearly 57,000 visitors from Japan. The .jp domain is the #1 country domain (i.e. not a .com, .net, .gov, .mil, .edu).

Overall, 36% of WC's traffic comes from foreign domains.

In terms of major domains, Road Runner is #1 with 5% of our traffic with AOL a distant second with 3.4%.

Most people spend 11 to 30 minutes on the site (29%).

7% of you spend over an hour on the site on average.

For those of you who like the message boards...well, the skin sections got 8.5 million page views all by themselves.  The message boards, by contrast, only got 91,000. That's about a 100 to 1 ratio.

Oh, and 25 people visited the site who were running OS/2!