There were 6 options:
1) Going to war with Iraq needs to be done.

2) Hopefully a peaceful solution can be found but if Iraq doesn't let the inspectors back in unconditionally (really) then the US/UK needs to be able to launch military action even without the UN.

3) The UN needs to be the mechanism in which all dealings with Iraq are handled.

4) Bush and his cowboy diplomacy is the problem here.

5) This is just a scheme by Bush to help out his oil buddies.

6) Iraq is a sovereign nation and hence inspections and other nonsense shouldn't apply to it.

Put another way you could say:
1) Advocates military action as necessary
2) Supports military action if all else fails
3) Supports military action only if the UN okays it.
4 and 5 and 6 are against any kind of military action.

Option 1 received 30% of the votes
OPtion 2 received 23% of the votes
Option 3 received 6% of the vote
Option 4,5,6 combined received 40% of the vote.

Interpreting poll results can be tricky. There was definitely a large enough sampling (1017 respondants) for it to be statistically valid. By what does this mean?

Well, 30% of WC users believe Saddam has to go no matter what. That is, unconditional support of military action.

Another 23% support military action as well but only if UN resolutions are truly obeyed. That's a thin majority of people who could be described to support military action against Iraq in some form (53%).

You also have 40% of people who are solidly against military action.

The remainder feels that the whole thing should be handled by the UN.

So it's pretty evenly divided with those who are open or advocating military action having a slim majority.

Now what would be interesting would be to see a breakdown of American users, European users, and others.

Our last poll asked what people thought of blogs. Most people turned out not to know what a blog is. Blogs have been around for years. They're essentially personal journals. But in recent times, the software and infrastructure to make them has gotten so good that critical mass has been achieved and we now have an explosion of these web logs (blogs for short).

Many blogs are actually becoming popular enough to serve as an alternative to the "mainstream" media. This has made those who feel that the media is corrupt or biased quite happy. Having viable alternatives for news and analysis is a good thing. On the down side, there are little controls in place to garauntee the accuracy of the "news" reported on blogs. Users have to use a critical mind when reading them. Those who are really into blogging have found that they are self-policing. Blatant errors tend to get commented on by other blogs. Bloggers tend to look at the "blogsphere" as a whole.

Here are some popular blogging (or blog-like) sites:
JoeUser.com (https://www.joeuser.com).
Andrew Sullivant (http://www.andrewsullivan.com)
Metafilter (http://www.metafilter.com/)
Instapundit (http://www.instapundit.com)
USS Clueless (http://www.denbeste.nu)

Some of these tend to be right of center. Others left of center. For reasons that are often debates, most of the blogs tend to present conservative views. But regardless of your interest, whether it be politics, science, technology, history, home and gardening, graphics design, you name it, there is probably a blog out there on that topic.

Have fun.

This week's poll: Your feelings about Iraq!

Cool Desk is a virtual desktop manager. Ever wish to have several screens
on your computer? Cool Desk creates up to 9 virtual desktops and allows
you to have different windows in each of them. The desktop manager window
has a skinnable interface and allows you to switch from one desktop to
another with a single mouse click. You can easily minimize, maximize, close,
move from one desktop to another and even drop windows to the system tray
area (near the clock) using the dockable "Windows manager". Customizable
hotkeys help you conveniently manipulate your virtual desktops. Drag you
favorite applications and shortcuts over a specific virtual desktop icon to
open it there. Each virtual desktop can also have its own wallpaper. Cool
Desk supports multilingual interfaces.

Homepage: http://www.shelltoys.com/cdesk/index.shtml
Screenshot: http://www.shelltoys.com/cdesk/img/cooldesk.gif
Download link: http://www.shelltoys.com/files/cdesk99.zip

Lots of goodies for subscribers.

First: The first WinCustomize subscriber premium suite is now available. Here's a screenshot: https://www.stardock.com/products/odnt/odnt-oct02a.jpg. This suite includes a WindowBlinds visual style by Alexandrie. A ObjectBar theme (with hotkey support) by me. And a full icon suite by Paul Boyer that makes full use of Windows XP alpha blending (it's awesome).

Second: A new release candidate of the WinCustomize skin browser is now available for subscribers. The new version is vastly faster at browsing the libraries thanks to a new method of retrieving the info. This is definitely an update to get.

Third: There is now a resources box in the lower left side of the page here that gives subscribers a fast way to access the software and other content as well as having links for software and soon a tutorial.

Have fun! BTW, the skin in this preview shot is XP Corona by Alexandrie (https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?library=1&SkinID=2850).

Thanks to WinCustomize subscribers, we've been able to order a new Dual 2.4Ghz server to help run the site. Any slowness on WinCustomize you experience presently isn't due to bandwidth but is rather because we've maxed out the CPUs on our servers. This new one will hopefully make a significant difference.

If you're not a WinCustomize subsriber and want to help support the site visit here: https://www.wincustomize.com/store.asp

WindowFX adds a ton of new special effects for Windows XP users.

So what does WindowFX 2 look like in action?

Try out this video: https://www.stardock.com/video/windowfx1.wmv

This video was done a 1Ghz Pentium 3 system with a Geforce 2 card (Detonator 40 drivers).

Click on the screenshot on the left to get a look at the new WinCustomize suite for subscribers.

If you're not a subscriber click here: https://www.wincustomize.com/store.asp

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2002/09/30.14.shtml

I don't really like Macs or more to the point, I can't think of Macs without thinking of Mac users.

Mac users sincerely believe that everything good and nice on the UI came from the mind of Apple first.

The latest example is WindowFX where Mac bigots seem to think that they invented this stuff. WindowFX came out before Aqua. And if someone wants to find what program inspired WindowFX more than anything else it was NPS/WPS from OS/2 which came out years ago (it had shadows, morphing of windows on min/max, etc.).

Apple does get credit for making cool effects famous but that's not the same as having invented it.

WindowFX is part of Stardock's Object Desktop suite but it is also available on its own.

Version 1 was the first program to really make use of Win2K's transparency effects and introduced PC users to alpha blended shadows.

WindowFX 2 features include:

* True, alpha blended shadows under windows (and it's skinnable - you can make your own shadows or make shadows part of your WindowBlinds skin and have WindowFX use them).

* A set of minimize and maximize transition effects

* A set of window opening and closing effects

* Ability to have large icons on the desktop while having normal sized icons everywhere else

* Ability to apply light sources to different coordinates on the desktop that colorize titlebar/borders of windows*

* Wide range of semi-transparency options such as making windows, the star bar, menus, and more semi-transparent

* Various special effects for Windows desktop icons and their labels

* A set of special effects for menus when opened and closed

* User defined size for windows to maximize to.

* Able to add more transition special effects and shadows created by users

and more!

You can download WindowFX at https://www.stardock.com/products/windowfx

The fastest, best way to get skins, themes, icons, and wallpapers is not by surfing some slow website to do it (ahem) but by directly connecting to the underlying database of a skin site.

That's what the WinCustomize skin browser does. It lets you search on skins at lightning speeds, browse through hundreds of wallpapers, skins, and themes very quickly and can APPLY skins and themes directly and even download the software you need if you're missing it.

The 1.0 release candidate is now available for WinCustomize subscribers. If you already are a subscriber, go to https://www.stardock.com/support and enter in your email address.

If you want to get the browser, become a WinCustomize subscriber: https://www.wincustomize.com/store.asp