The left really hates George W. Bush.  I don't particularly care for Bush myself. But it's more on a personality level than due to his policies.  I haven't decided whether I will vote for him or not. But one thing is for sure, he seems to drive some people on the left insane. And I mean that literally -- IN-SANE. Ask them why and the reasons usually are in a gurgle of profanity and crazy talk. And unfortunately for them, the left is increasingly becoming its own worst enemy.  A...

I suspect I'm not the only one who is thinking this. As a student of history I've come to a fairly simple conclusion when it comes to war: Wars only end when both sides decide that it ends.  While this may seem straight forward, it a conclusion that seems to escape from many policy makers. Many of the problems we face in Iraq are the result of the enemy not believing they are defeated. The United States and its allies have fought a war as antiseptically as possible. Surgical precision ...

So you've got Windows XP and it has only 3 looks: Blue, Green, and Silver.  And you want to add more. How? There are two commonly used ways to do it.  You can patch Wndows XP to support applying Microsoft's .msstyles format. Or you can use Stardock WindowBlinds  Both ways have their own pros and cons. MSStyles / UXTHEME When it comes to using .msstyles you need to patch uxtheme.dll to use them. There's roughly a thousand msstyles out there (though many of th...

I just finished Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Outstanding role playing game. I played the PC version though the game is available on the consoles as well. Knights is an adventure/role playing game where you control up to 3 characters at a time. From a pure game mechanics point of view, it contains the standard fantasy role playing elements with fighters (soldiers), thieves (scoundrels), and various magic classes (Force powered things). In the game, you begin as a low level fight...

This was one of the comments to Why consoles are taking over at retail . But it was so good I wanted to highlight it. Written by Sirian.  I agree with him that consoles can't replace PCs but I fear that such an argument might sound someday like "Why the Internet can't replace HAM radio". I agree with what Sirian says, I'm just not sure if these factors are enough to keep the PC game market large enough so that its retail presence has sufficient diversity. My article wasn't de...

So last night the 6 year old is in the car with us and he's throwing a fit. And one point he says something totally crazy, "I wish I had a hammer right now and then I would smack my own head with it!" To which I responded, "We're not making a special stop to get a hammer, you'll have to make due with whatever you can find." This special moment brought to you by, the crazy gene!

Historically the argument of PCs vs. Consoles as game machines was an artificial argument. The two appeals to very different demographics. Many gamers, such as myself, simply were not willing to tolerate playing games on a television. How can you go from playing at 1024x768 to what amounts to 512x384? (That's 1/4th the resolution). But times are changing. More and more people are getting HDTV and many games are starting to support this. This trend definitely doesn't help the PC game market gr...

...and the #1 reason why Stardock is so successful: Because everyone thinks desktop enhancements are a tiny niche market. When I try to convince the press to cover our software, I am often met with "Do people really use this stuff?"  By "stuff" they mean desktop enhancements. Do people really want to change the way Windows looks and feels? Surely, it's just a tiny group of geeks who do this right? Right?? In actuality, desktop enhancements are pretty huge. They jus...

Every month or so I go through a day or two of the blahs. Where I just feel...down. That's where I am now. That feeling of hopelessness. It always passes. I'll exercise or find something to keep me busy.  Though ironically, our main skin library hard drive died yesterday at WinCustomize.com and that has definitely not helped matters. Trying to restore all that data is going to be a pain. Luckily, I work with really smart, talented and hard working people who are taking care of that stuff. B...

Having grown up poor I don't have a lot of sympathy for people on welfare. By and large, they seem to have been people who aren't able or willing to be responsible with their own lives and essentially rely on everyone else to support them. Often times, it seems, that it's just a matter that they don't think ahead. They don't think through their actions. Statistically, most welfare recipients are young females with 2 or more children and are under 25. Sure, you can bring up cases that don't ...

The skin library file server over at WinCustomize took a hit today when the primary library hard drive died. Luckily, we do regular backups so it's not a total loss but very likely will lose a few files in the process. How many remains to be seen. Most of our stuff uses RAID in redundancy mode but unfortunately, because of the sheer size of the library, it's not really practical (on a budget) to do that. But boy I wish we had that set up tonight. I guess it's better tonight than say Thursday....

One of the things that has made me so excited about DesktopX is just how easy it is for "regular users" to be able to make interesting stuff.  Normally, desktop enhancements require a high degree of sophistication.  As a result, customizing Windows was pretty much divided into two types of people: Users and Creators. Creators were the tiny elite group of people who had mastered the arcane way of making a skin or a theme or whatever.  And users were everyone else who just downloaded what the crea...

Want to get your blog more popular? First, visit this article that has some good tips: http://www.rightwingnews.com/category.php?ent=1027 Next, link to other like minded blogs. This is important. Get them to exchange links with you. What's nice about JoeUser is that referrals are tracked so you can actually see who your best referrals are. Look at the bottom right in the lighter gray area. That's where links to your blog are coming from. Now, to add links to your personal blog click o...

As shocking as this may be to hear, I have detractors.  No really, there are actually people out there that don't like me. Actually, there are people out there that hate me. The reasons are many fold and this article will only talk about a particular group since it would take a lot of time to cover all the different types of people who find me reprehensible. The type of detractor I'm talking about for the purposes of this article are the people who dislike me and my employer Stardock lar...

Did it just happen one day? That the editors of InfoWorld and PC Week (before it became eWeek), got together and decided that instead of having interesting magazines that they would instead focus on covering only the dullest stuff out there? Was it their goal to transform their magazines from thick, content rich material to being largely pamphlets that resemble more of a specialty Miller Freeman type publication that only a tiny select group would find interesting or useful? Loo...