I think we could all use more money somehow - not just for ourselves, but also to be able to help out our friends and communities. I'd personally like to get to the point where I could decide to do just about anything I want and not have to worry too much about what it cost. I plan to do so the boring way - by making good investments. I thought I'd share my
alex: I dropped my own email to Brad. I agree with you that we need to do better. I think that this should be specifically opt-in, and a little more succinct and to the point, if we do it at all. My own first reaction was to unsubscribe, and the only unsubscribe option was for all Stardock email. Not good, since I still want to get our email newsletters. Edit: Brad just mentioned th
You may renew at any time after your subscription lapses and you get a full year from the point at which you renewed, not the point at which your subscription lapsed.
The DWM needs a software buffer in system memory to draw on. It also needs graphics memory (which in cheap cards might actually be more system memory) as the "flicker-free" display copy for most applications. So, in most cases, there are two copies of every window in some kind of memory. This adds up quite quickly.
ObjectBar just released its 2.0 version. I think we're keeping up with that, though I fully admit that for a time we were having problems getting updates of it out. RightClick is based on ObjectBar technology, so if there is enough of a call for it and if there are features that can be moved across I suspect it will be updated as well. DesktopX is pretty much being held off on until we know where Windows Vista is going to turn out. Will sidebar gadgets be important enough to turn it int
Tom Chick didn't and doesn't stand to gain anything from us for writing a review of Sword of the Stars. Therefore, he didn't do anything wrong, and so we have no reason to not work with him in the future.
Are you stating, as a Stardock employee with that kind of authority, that Tom Chick will not be employed in the future project he has referred to, or any others? Maybe he will, and maybe he won't - that's up to Brad. But if he does, his previous performance as a manual writer will be the reason, not any reviews he chooses to make of other games t
Better stop reading Penny Arcade . They took our money for ads, and then had the nerve to tell people when the game came out , and comment on the whole copy-protection situation . They even linked to Brad's own articles . They'd probably run our ads again, too - unrepentant! Oh, and I j
Daiwa: I honestly don't know. The very small amount of testing we have done with it on that platform suggests that it's the widgets that are causing the immediate problem, but there may be other issues that lie beyond that - as 2k spans a wide install period time, there are a variety of components that may or may not be installed that OB could require, and which come as standard on XP. Right at this particular moment the lead OB programmer i
Daiwa: The page you noted has now been updated. I apologise for the lack of resonse to your previous enquiries. While it is theoretically possible (but untested) that ObjectBar 2 could work on some revisions of Windows 2000, we know that it definitely does not work with our themes which use DesktopX widgets - basically all the ones that we have used as examples for ObjectBar 2. Therefore, we do not let it install in XP.
"What do you mean 'yet'? I tried it before you, whippersnapper!"
It is a driver issue, which only appears with our software loaded. It is literally not possible for user-mode code (which is what WindowBlinds uses) to corrupt pool headers. It can just send instructions to drivers, which guarantee to perform them without doing bad things like corrupting pool headers - but, in this case, they failed to do so. Unfortunately just because we happen to be triggering the error does not mean that we can fix the code inside ATI's drivers that doesn't handle that
There are other things that work. Two come to mind immediately - DesktopX 3.2, and IconDeveloper (although it's rough around the edges). It is true, though, that a lot of applications will not work yet. Many of them are based around the assumption that the user is allowed to do things that they no longer can do due to Vista's increased security regimen. These are things that we are fixing.
We now have not just 500 but 550 articles, thanks to the dedicated work of Thervold over the last week. He's also been updating various pages with more detailed information. Thanks, Thervold!
My laptop is brand new. It comes with a sticker saying "Windows Vista™ Capable". It should work - and it does, mostly, with the new ATI drivers. Most vendors had better get their act together. Vista is coming up fast, and given our own experiences in writing non -driver code, they're going to have to make a fair few changes. DirectX 10 will be a sea change, but it will not have significant impact for a few years yet. People
This is an odd concept, I know, but why not just try the custom maps and see what they're like? The game you get is the explanation. You could always run it with cheats on and then expose the map to see what it's like if you want.
The main executable didn't seem to synch right, so we re-staged it just to make sure they were all the correct versions. I would recommend that you update to be sure you have the right exe with all the fixes mentioned in Brad's post.
I'm sure those who played the game encountered bugs, or places where things didn't work quite as they might have expected. However, those issues did not materially impact their satisfaction with the game. Therefore, they were not problems for them. There are, undoubtedly, bugs in 1.3, though I believe we fixed those we know about. And there will be bugs in the expansion. Chances are, we may even know about some of those bugs before we release it. But we will release it anyway, because i
To my knowledge the problem they had was just in the first run where they didn't realize that the content serials were just for content. There was another problem where our own manufacturing partner mixed up the serial files and content serials were used for both content and the CD, but I believe that only affected our area of distribution (and it's one we've been fixing - I've handled a few cases on IRC myself). These things happen, but we know when they happen and can deal with them.
We are party to the original sale and responsible to the original customer. As far as we are concerned, they still own the game. The appropriate solution seems to be to go to the people you actually bought it from - the store - and complain that they sold you a game with a serial that came up as previously used and which you could not therefore use yourself. If they refuse to replace or refund your purchase, I would suggest that you ask them to give you that refusal in writing an
I am sorry, but we are finger pointing because Paradox are the ones who are paid to support you, through the direct revenue that they get from sales of the game. They get their slice in part because it is their job to deal with problems in their area of distribution. Paradox are the ones who have relationships with the stores there, and if anyone can investigate a problem with reusing boxes, then it is them. It is not in any way easy or prudent for us to talk to a store halfway across the world
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I think OD's model is quite reasonable, because it mixes the best parts of the classical subscription and purchasing models since the released products don't "time out". If you're satisfied with what you have, and you don't want any improvements (or don't feel we're doing enough) then you're under no obligation to renew until you change your mind. Thus, there are ongoing incentives for us to keep developing the products, and people who are happy with what they have don't have to keep pa
As mentioned above, only selling online is the ideal approach, although I have to admit that it is not one we are likely to achieve in the short term. Speaking as a developer, not as a sales expert or support guy (which I'm not), I'd have thought our agreement would be more likely to be that they must not accept returns, because they could never guarantee that the software had not been used. Once a user has been sold a box with a serial in, that should be it. Either that or we wo
I agree that it is unfortunate. However, from our point of view, the net result is that two people end up having copies of the game, but we only get paid for one (or, since it is a retail copy of the game published by Paradox in Europe, a really tiny fraction of one which was probably eaten up by the time it took me to write this message). The ultimate solution is likely to be that we will simply avoid doing CD releases for as many games as possible and just sell them online. We are sel
I'm not sure what else I can suggest. Serials do not get linked with an email address until they are used. They can only be used when someone opens up the box, reads the serial number, and enters it into one of our online registration forms. If the serial is already registered, it means someone else has done the above before you. That person is the legal owner of the game's license. If Norway is as strict as you say on used merchandise, then it should not be a problem to go back to the
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