* What mistakes cost shareware developers the most money? Shareware authors that are too stingy in their restrictions initially or too easy in restrictions later on.  When you make a program, it needs to be usable enough that the potential customer can see what it does and how well it does it.  Some authors will cripple their program so much in fear that people won’t register it if it’s fully usable. But what happens is doing that causes the user to stop ev...

My wife and I had a great time last night. One of my co-workers got married and it was a great night. They had a terrific reception with good music, dancing, etc. My wife and I boogied all night together. But the guy who got hitched, he's our lead cartoonist on The Political Machine. We realized yesterday that we don't have an image of Dick Cheney in the game. During the reception, they were asking people to sing a song to get them to kiss. Here's what I came up with: (sung to "Close to yo...

The On-line Community survival guide Going on the Internet and interacting with thousands of people in open forums can be a really wonderful and enlightening experience.  But it is also an experience that has its share of pitfalls and challenges for the unwary. I've spent the better part of the last two decades taking part in on-line communities. From the days of Commodore BBSes to massive web based communities, the faces and names change but the joys and frustrations remain the same. Ho...

I worry about my kids.  I want to teach the 7 year old how to ride his bike. But he just has no interest. His friends are all riding their bikes and yet my son just seems to have no interest at all. He'd rather draw or play. Or if we let him, watch TV or play video games. I'm not sure how much I should be pushing them. I don't want to be an ogre forcing them to go outside and play all the time but at the same time I don't want them just laying around the house on a beautiful warm da...

Over the years I've learned the hard way which lines work and which lines do not work when picking up women. Well...okay mainly I've learned which lines do NOT work. Here they are: 1) You have a pretty mouth. 2) I admire your fatty deposits 3) You have good birthing hips 4) Do you want to see my turtle? 5) You seem clean. 6) Do you like to cook? 7) Do you want to see my Chevette? 8) Want to play video games on my computer? 9) Not all of that is dandruff. 10) Actu...

On June 30 Iraq begins to officially be run again by Iraqi's. That is the date of turning over sovereignty to them. The question then becomes, what's next? What should the US role in Iraq be? Personally, I would be in favor of a referendum in Iraq asking the simple question: Do you want the US military to remain in Iraq to help provide security and stabilization services or do you want the US military to leave. Whichever the Iraqi's desire the US should follow-up in my mind. If they wan...

I wrote an article the other day that asked a pretty straight forward question: What do you think the US response would be if terrorists smuggled in a nuclear weapon into New York and set it off killing tens of thousands of people. The responses were quite surprising. Hardly anyone actually answered the question. I was interested in hearing various response scenarios. Instead, the comments area got filled with people preemptively blaming the whole thing on the United States.  Apparentl...

On this month's Stardock TV we look at DirectGUI in action, the first week of the GUI Olympics, IconX, and how to make widgets! The first week of the GUI Olympics has concluded. We're just getting started and the winners were from teams SkinPlant which leads the medal count with 3 medals, team Pixtudio with 2 medals and last year's returning champion, deviantART with 1 medal. Some outstanding entries this year have made it incredibly hard for the judges to decide amongst t...

Some months ago I wrote an article outlining why I thought that it was important that the middle east solve their terrorist problem themselves.  Let me postulate one example reason why. Imagine this scenario: New York, Fall, 2008. A suicide bomber team has smuggled into the United States a crude 8 kiloton nuclear device. Assembled in lower New Jersey, the team rents a boat and brings it into New York harbor and sets it off. The destruction kills 47,000 people and destroys much of Manh...

Those who fear and loathe the US "hyperpower" meddling in the affairs of the middle east and elsewhere should consider a radical, alternative approach: Clean up their own messes. The US, being a democracy, is representative of the will of its people. Americans don't want to be in the middle east. But we feel we have no other choice -- people from that part of the world keep doing everything that can to murder as many of us as possible. And their *stated* reasons (as opposed to imagined reason...

Just for the record - stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons were never the principle reason for the coalition to remove Saddam from power. But the lack of these stockpiles is something those who have opposed the war have, in my view, cynically jumped onto to argue that the war was unjustified (as if those who were in favor of removing Saddam were losing sleep over mustard gas). Anyway, they are apparently starting to find some of this stuff. For whatever it's worth.

A video demo of the winners from Week 1 are out. Sometimes, a screenshot just can't do it justice, you need a video. Watch them now: GUI Olympics Week 1 (large) 67M GUI Olympics Week 1 (small) 17M

It's now time for another episode of: WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER PUT YOUR IMAGE ON THE INTERNET. (see link below)

Another excellent satire over at Right Wing News. Here's an excerpt: Mr. Ben-Gorelick: Mr. Lincoln, you took us to war two years ago and said it was to save the union. Lincoln: It still is. Mr. Ben-Gorelick: And yet - and I’ll put this text in the record - there’s not a single reference in this speech to saving the union. Lincoln: It’s implied. Mr. Ben-Gorelick: Not a single reference. Isn’t it a fact that you said in the speech, “dedicated to the proposition that all m...

So I'm hanging out on the various skin sites like I always do and it hit me. We're boring. We suck. Where's the heart? The problem isn't that we're boring and heartless. It's just that it's easier to just post news. So that's it. I'm done. I'm going to try to occasionally write a skinning blog item here on WinCustomize and just talk about cool computer customization. DesktopX stuff This week was E3 which is the big game show. I normally got to it but I'm too busy finishing up The Politi...