Interesting article at The Register claims that Microsoft does not allow people to remove Windows from their machines.

Another Star Wars movie arrives and for the second time in a row the toy
makers are putting out utter garbage. There's nothing worse than seeing toy
makers completely patronize kids with gimmicky stuff that few kids would
want to play with and things that just look lame.

As I peered at the various toys, vehicles, guns, and action figures, I was
just astonished with how out of touch these guys must be. And you know that
they'll blame the movie or Lucasfilm for their eventual failure to sell.

Here's why:

1) There's no goal.
What do I mean? As a kid (started collecting at age 5 when Star Wars came
out) the back of each action figure listed EVERY figure available at the
time. This gave me a goal to try to obtain every single one I could. I
remember after one birthday going hunting with my mom to store after store
trying to find Jawas. But instead, the back of the boxes just show all the
various moveable parts and give no idea how many figures are out there. This
leads to #2.

2) Removable parts = bad thing. Yea, I somehow managed not to lose all those
storm trooper guns when I was a kid but I never used them. Just too much of
a pain and I was always too worried that I'd lose them. To an 8 year old
boy, losing a part is the end of the world and these new action figures
practically beg you to lose half their parts. What the hell were they
thinking?

3) The figures aren't fun to play with together. The action figures are
basically dolls now. The original ones were stiff but easy to stand up
enmasse so that kids could re-enact battles or use their imaginations to
come up with new adventures. But the new ones are so cumbersome that they
are designed that you will play with them one at a time or possibly two at a
time since it's so hard to stand them up or do anything with them. So
surprise surprise, kids aren't going to want to buy a bunch of them. I had
20+ storm troopers for instance. You think any kid is going to want 20
"super battle droids"? That leads to #4

4) The generic figures are either missing or pathetic. Remember the battle
droid figures from Ep 1? Holy cow was that pathetic. Various parts to lose
and they felt so cheap. Compare that battle droid do the speeder bike
trooper from Return of the Jedi. Light years difference. I couldn't even
find a new "Storm trooper" which is really ironic because those are the ones
that might possibly be purchased in quantity by kids. Good action figures
have substance (physically to them). They should be designed for kids to
play with outside and be tough. These seemed to be designed for 30+
nerdlings living in a basement who won't even take them out of their
packaging.

5) The vehicles are pathetic. Why do toy makers think that kids want things
that look cutesy? Kids want things that LOOK as realistic as possible. So
why come out with a slave 1 or jedi fighter or whatever wher ethe colors
have been brightened? I have the original slave 1 still from when I was a
kid, it would kick the new slave 1's ass.

6) The guns. Holy cow, some of them are practically all orange. They look
cheap and have strange colors that aren't realistic at all. Compare them to
say Han Solo's blaster toy which was not a particularly good toy even at the
time but at least didn't patronize the kids.

7) Toys are too specific. I can't just get character A. I have to get
Character A in a particular scenario. "Anakan Skywalker in shower cap!" I
mean come on, how many Anakin's or whatever do they think some kid is going
to want? It was bad enough in the old days having Luke Skywalker in Hoth
outfit and Luke Skywalker in Bespin garb but this is taken to the Nth
degree. It's all back to the first issue - kids want obtainable goals. No
kid is going to whine their way to collect 5 versions of Obi-wan. Just
aren't enough holidays during the year.

I remember when they did this sort of thing with Transformers toys years
ago. I'm sure they just thought that demand for Transformers toys dropped
off. No, it's that kids couldn' t keep up with a constantly increasing
deluge of characters. In their own greed quest, they end up undermining
their sales.

Of course, by Christmas season look for the inevitable "Has Star Wars lost
its merchanidizing ability?" It won't even occur to them that maybe if the
toys that they made weren't utter garbage that kids might want them. My son
is 5 and the first thing he said when he saw the Jango fett figure was "Too
many parts, I'll lose them!"

Pity. And right when Steve is leaving blue's clues too.

For interacting with data and information, do you think having a 3-D interface would actually be more useful than the 2D style interfaces we have today?

I personally don't think so. Ultimately, interacting with information seems to work best when it's relatively linear. That is, as straight forward as possible from the source to the user. Making it 3D would add layers of complexity to it.

But I could be wrong since I've never seen a 3D interface and can't really imagine a good one. But perhaps someone reading this can think of a good 3D interface.

What do you think?

I originally wrote this on Deskmod but wanted to hear your views...

Deskmod's poll on how long youv'e been using skins is really encouraging.

The results so far:

I'm new: (>1 year): 36%
Experienced (1-2 years): 29%
Elder: (3-4 years): 23%
Old guard (4+): 12%

As someone who fits into the oldie (been skinning UI's since 1991 and professionally since 1995) it's really encouraging to see that it's a growing thing.

It always bugs me when people try to compare computers to toasters or some other appliance. I don't know about you but I don't spend hours using a toaster (unless my wife is out of town ).

Of all the things that we personalize, cars, phones, homes, etc. it's odd that making computers personalized to how we use them isn't even a bigger phenomenon. As someone who spends more hours in front of the computer than I care to admit, I can't imagine tweaking it to work the way I want. And believe me, my desktops get pretty crazy depending on what I"m doing that week.

36% of users being new. Now that's the best thing I've heard in awhile.

Anyone care to venture a prediction on whether skinning (extreme computer personalization) will become so common and mainstream that people will take it for granted?

Well, gotta go, something's burning in the toaster!

ObjectBar 1.0 came out and has been quite a hit with over 80,000 downloads. But Stardock wasn't entirely happy with the release. It felt it was too slow, too buggy, and too hard to use.

Version 1.1 addresses some of this with a much more stable, faster version of it that uses considerably less memory.

What's neat about ObjectBar is that it is so flexible that you can make a bar that looks identical to the Windows XP Start bar (on Win2k) that also has the features of it. At the same time, you could create a MacOS X-like "Finder" bar that strips out the menu bar. Basically any bar, wharf, finder, dock, etc. ObjectBar can do plus create any combination of them.

And as if all that's not enough, it's skinnable too.

Version 1.1 also includes full documentation on the ObjectBar website and information on its use.

I'm curious as to how people in this community feel about debating. Some people I know simply don't like to get into disagreements or "constructive arguments" (aka debates). Other people (like myself) love to debate (as you've no doubt seen over the years).

In my off hours, I'll visit political, history, and technology sites purely to debate with other people who also like to debate. It's a great way to sharpen the mind's thought process and think through an idea or an opinion because you get in the habit of having to look at an issue from multiple sides which can save you grief later on.

Because I visit so many different "communities" (I'm very active in the game developer community for instance as well as several political discussion communities) it's easy to see general differences in how people act and feel and argue when they feel passionate about something.

It seems to me that most people in the skinning community are generally not into debating. Which is of course not bad at all. The only downside I've seen is the number of people who want to make assertions based on emotion or "gut feeling" but are disclined to have to back up that assertion with evidence or reasoning. It usually comes back to either "Well that's just how I feel" or it'll turn into a flame war.

I think sometimes one of the reasons why some people will see my posts on some site and consider me "combative" is because when I disagree with something, I try to get the person I disagree to back up their assertions.

Example:

"Program X sucks, it's just really slow and buggy."

If I disagree, I'll respond with:

"That hasn't been the case in my experience. What version did you run? What hardware? How was it buggy?"

In over 90% of the cases, I can never get a response. The user typically goes into "Well that's just my opinion, aren't I free to have opinions?" which is known in debate circles as a "strawman argument" (i.e. trying to redirect the debate into a different topic -- I wasn't implying he didn't have a right to an opinion, but merely to explain where his opinion derived from.

One thing about techies is that there is something unusual about them compared to other people. They have an unusually high desire to demonstrate knowledge -- even when they really don't have any knowledge. Hence the situation you see above. Because typically when I do get real answers about why they think program X sucks it's "I used version 1.2 3 years ago and it crashed on my Windows 95 box so I'm going to assume it hasn't changed in 3 years and how it would run on my new Windows XP machine..."

This is particular prevalent in IRC where those most inclined to behave in this way 15 to 21 year olds, will usually confuse ignorant criticism for providing knowledge (everything "sucks" to these 15 to 21 year old IRC people even if they're only vaguely familiar with it - sometimes it only requires hearing someone else who barely knows it to say something sucks for them to say it sucks).

I tend to take the view of not expressing an opinion unless I can back up my assertion with evidence - i.e. because of my debating background, I try to be ready to defend any position I take with reason and logic.

Which brings us back to the beginning - in the skinning community, there is a higher percentage than average of the population that doesn't respond well to reason and logic -- emotion, feelings, instincts and "that's just how I feel" are much more prevalent.

So those of you reading this, what do you think? Do debates make you uncomfortable? Is it your view that people should be entitled to their opinion and speak that opinion without being called on it? Or do you feel that when someone gives an opinion on something that others are equally entitled to call them on it?

I don't think either answer is better than the other. Afterall, on the one hand you don't want people to feel like they can't give an opinion on something without being challenged all the time. And on the other hand it's lazy intellectualism to constantly give opinions based on vague "gut feelings".

What's your view?

Been playing around with Mozilla 1.0 RC 1. It's actually a very nice browser. Better than IE6 in many ways. Anyone else tried it yet?

So what are all these skins and themes and icons and suites? Want to know what does what and where to get stuff? Then check out the Skin Primer 2002.

Updated to include information on new programs as well as updated info on Deskmod, deviantART, WinCustomize, LotsOfSkins, SkinBase, and VelocityART.

We haven't come up with a name yet for it. SkinBrowser just seems too generic. We're currently thinking of calling it - WinCustomize!

The skinbrowser bypasses all the HTML stuff and goes directly to the underlying database that drives the site. See the screenshot.

The skinbrowser will be available to users who subscribe to WinCustomize. Subscriptions will become available in the next few weeks - $19.95. Not only will users get the skin browser but unlimited downloads, exclusive skin packs, and some surprises we're working on that won't be available until later.

If anyone has any thoughts on a proper name for the program (maybe calling it WinCustomize is the way to go, we're not sure), post here.

LogonStudio is a program that lets Windows XP users apply, create, and edit their own logon screens. RC1 (release candidate 1) includes a handful of logons created by Boxxi and has numerous bug fixes and other goodies over previous versions.