Saw this at www.instapundit.com regarding an article in Today's Telegraph (UK), hardly a bastion of right-wing propaganda. At least $1.1 billion was paid directly into UN coffers, supposedly to cover the cost of administering the $67 billion scheme, while Saddam Hussein diverted funds intended for the poor and sick of Iraq to bribe foreign governments and prominent overseas supporters of his regime. . . . Although the UN Security Council approved the plan to levy a 2.2 per cent commissi...

Where will customization go from here? Are we at our limits of what we can do to customize Windows? The answer is, not by a long shot. In the past year we have seen a movement towards widgetizing the desktop. On MacOS X Konfabulator is a popular program for adding desktop widgets. On Windows, DesktopX provides similar functionality. These programs help bridge the distance between icons and full fledged programs. But that's really just a taste. One place Stardock sees things moving in the ...

I have a Samsung A500 which uses SprintPC's 3G service. I bought off of eBay a special USB cable that connects it to my computer and then bought a program called Snapdialer from fututerdial which uses my cell phone as a wireless internet access point. It gets about 256K/sec which is quite fine for browsing the net. I used it a great deal this week (been traveling on business). If you have a SprintPCS phone, I highly recommend getting set up on this kind of thing.

The new logon system is nearly complete. But if you're having any problems posting or anything at all, you will want to try logging out and logging back in so that the system can enable all your features for you.

John Kerry keeps talking about "Internationalizing" the war in Iraq. In a speech he put it quite plainly: "The United States is bearing 90% of the military and financial burden in Iraq."  His assertion is that "Bush's go it alone policies" have created this situation. And Kerry is wrong, the US is "only" bearing roughly 75% of the total burden militarily (I don't have the exact figure and the number changes by a few percent but if you add the UK + Poland + Japan + Ukraine + Australia, + ...

A user named Sput_UK wrote a post on our news server with regards to minimum wage. Here is what he wrote: Now, I think you're arguing that societies only responsibility is to let people help themselves...forgive me if I've misunderstood....here starts the rant... As with most people who argue against society having a moral responsibility to help those less fortunate, you seem to assume a level playing field for all, which is of course exactly not true. Not everyone is born with ...

I'm not sure which email made me decide to do it but at some point, a threshold was crossed. I think it was when I saw the third or fourth reviewer ask me "Do you think your right-wing leanings are affecting the objectivity of The Political Machine?" That question shouldn't even be asked. It's not appropriate in my opinion. Play the game should be the answer. And I find the question problematic on so many levels. 1) Those who think I'm "far right" need to back up that statement. I bet t...

The store server crashed twice this weekend. Grrr.

If you have Drengin.net ( www.drengin.net ) you can now download the beta of The Political Machine. The Political Machine is a strategy game in which you run for President of the United States. Its home page is www.politicalmachine.com . Let us know what you think if you've got it here!

I defeated Bush today. As Kerry. In the Political Machine that is.  The first beta is going out tomorrow and I played the build we have up on Stardock Central (available privately).  It'll be available tomorrow to all users of Drengin.net . I'm not fully satisfied with the game play so far. We'll be tweaking the heck out of the game in the coming weeks. But I must say, even as a beta, I'm having a pretty good time. Which isn't something I could say for Galactic Civilizations which...

The war in Iraq is part of the war on terror. We are not in Iraq for the sake of the Iraqi people. Don't let those who favor military action in Iraq (or are against it) try to spin it that way. Our presence in Iraq has nothing to do whatsoever with how the Iraqi people feel about the United States.  Our soldiers are risking their lives in Iraq not for the sake of Iraqi's but for our sake. For the sake of Americans. It is often easy to forget, with all this talk of "liberation" that at th...

Limiting people’s ability to participate in democracy is not good.   When you limit the ability of citizens to participate in the political process by restricting financial contributions you inevitably end up with a concentration of political power in the hands of those have the ability to get the word out without having to spend money.   This so-called reform would be little more than merely handing power to big media companies, celebrities and anyone else who can ...

When you're intelligent, it can be very frustrating to recognize that one lacks wisdom. And recognizing that truism is the first step on the path to gaining wisdom. When I was 17, I started keeping a journal of my thoughts and experiences. It was part of the whole internal conceit that comes with being young and assured of ones intelligence relative to others. I kept the journal for many reasons but one reason was because I wanted to remember what it was like to be 17-21 so that when I had ch...

So the Cartoon Network has finished its animated Star Wars series of 5 minute shorts on The Clone Wars . I have to admit, it was really really good. The writing was very strong, the stories interesting, the animation effective, and the action oustanding. It was Samurai Jack in the Star Wars universe basically. If anything, it makes the battles in the movies look lame. The advantage of animation is that you can do a lot more cool things on the cheap. The force powers shown by Obi Wan and Ana...

If you run a business long enough eventually it'll get sued. It's inevitable. And the bigger your company is, the more often it'll get sued. I sometimes wonder what percentage of time executives at Fortune 500 companies have to spend giving depositions for some case.  Our company is fairly small and I've had to give my share of depositions in lawsuits. Each lawsuit against us I believe (even with hindsight) was unnecessary and really frivolous.  One thing I have learned from law...