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Getting a little irritated with the treatment Warlock is getting in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

Yes. I get it. Turn based strategy games aren’t for everyone. I know this. I know it’s a niche. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t good. It just means they don’t appeal to everyone. Recent reviews of the excellent Warlock: Master of the Arcane lead me to believe that too many reviewers are confusing games they like with what is actually a good game. To use an analogy, I don’t really care if a reviewer is “into” science fiction or not. I only care wh

Stardock’s visitor stats tell interesting picture in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

Let’s look at 3 web stats that tell us a little bit about the demographics of who visits us. First, we’ll use our homepage: Stardock.com. Then, we’ll look at our most popular game, SinsOfASolarEmpire.com And lastly, we’ll look at our most popular desktop utility, Fences. These stats are for the month of April, 2012. Who visit Stardock.com? By Browser: Firefox (34%), Chrome (32%), Internet Explorer (24%) By OS

Latest Global Temperatures in Science & Tech JoeUser Forums

If you’re looking for a non-politicized (just the facts) site for global temperatures here’s a good one: http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/ All it does is use the NOAA satellite data to measure the atmospheric temperatures. No more. No less. As a result, it doesn’t rely on readings ground stations which have tended to be somewhat inaccurate or affec

Top 5 Star Trek TNG episodes in Movies & TV & Books JoeUser Forums

We just finished a Star Trek TNG marathon. Let me first say that a lot of TNG episodes don’t hold up well. Burrrr. Some of them are really bad. But in general, TNG still delivers and there are some truly amazing episodes in there. Below are my top 5. Please comment below what your favorite ones are. Inner Light Yesterday’s Enterprise The Best of Both Worlds (I and II) Darmok Chain of Command </ol

LONG play-through of the Beta of Fallen Enchantress in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

Listen to me bitch and moan while I play Beta 3 of Elemental: Fallen Enchantress. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnPKHQIksrA&

I need a new TV series to watch in Movies & TV & Books JoeUser Forums

What television series would you recommend to someone to start from scratch? For instance, I’ve never watched Lost but I don’t think I could handle 7+ years or whatever it was of shows mainly because I heard the show ended up like X-Files where the creators were kind of winging it. Any suggestions?

After Steve Jobs: What’s next? in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

I wrote awhile back how the death of Steve Jobs affected me . This is kind of an update on how things have progressed since then. Now, I don’t consider myself in the same league as Steve Jobs. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet some of the titans of our industry and their force of intellect has been humbling. Capability aside, certain types of people are motivated by very similar

Real Life and Horrible People in Blogging JoeUser Forums

I have a standing opinion about people who take their forum disagreements into “real life”: They’re horrible people. This evening I was surfing the net and found someone who had been recently subjected to someone who disliked them on an Internet forum going out and taking out ads with their real name, address, etc. for the purposes of harassing them. The person who did that is a horrible person. The irony, however, is that the victim of the harassment was someone who fla

Beekeeping: Split the hives in Pets & Nature JoeUser Forums

Today was a reasonably warm day and very sunny. I used the opportunity to split one of my beehives into two. Here’s how that works. I have a beehive that’s doing pretty well. To split a hive, you take a bunch of frames from inside the hive that have eggs and open celled larva and move it (and the bees on the frame) to the new hive. In a few days, week, the bees will realize there’s no queen and feed one of the larva royal jelly which will turn that bee into a queen

Brad’s April Ramblings in Blogging JoeUser Forums

I just finished a really enjoyable book called The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution . Highly recommended. I’ve been planning my midlife crisis for awhile. These things need planning of course. Last year I hit 40. That’s the age where denial over middle age is over. It’s arrive

AI Wars: Beta 3 Edition in Elemental Dev Journals JoeUser Forums

Update: Hour long AI test video for the truly die hards who want to see all the mistakes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnPKHQIksrA&feature=youtu.be I see all. I know all. At least, when it comes to this map. <img style="background-image: none; margin: 0px; pad

I miss the days of Microsoft borrowing other people’s ideas in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

From the day we migrated from OS/2 to Windows, every new version of Windows meant Microsoft was going to lift some ideas for the next version of the OS from Object Desktop. And we would have to adapt. Think I exaggerate? Look at Object Desktop for OS/2 (which was developed prior to Windows 95) with its ZIP files that worked as folders, DesktopX with its widgets and gadgets, Control Center with its side bar of “gadgets”, GUI Skins (where uxtheme.dll so blatantly borrowe

Object Desktop 2012 Preview in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

Object Desktop has evolved greatly over the past two decades.

Problems Streaming content from Apple, iTunes, iOS to Apple TV, etc. in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

I’ve spent weeks trying to figure out why I was getting “Error downloading content” messages from Apple TV as well as aborted download attempts on my iPad and even my Mac and PCs. Eventually, after a lot of effort, I traced it to the IPS feature on my router. Disabled that feature and all worked well.

Puppies and little girls in Pets & Nature JoeUser Forums

The puppy likes our sons but absolutely adores the 5 year old. It’s a weird thing.

OS/2 2.0 turns 20 in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since OS/2 2.0 shipped! It certainly changed my life. To recap, here’s an article I wrote…for its 10th birthday . <img style="border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none" class="wlEmoticon wlEmoticon-smile" alt="

Reply to You know how to make a sword? Really? in Science & Tech Stardock Forums

Now with regards to the GAME (FE) the issue some people have with learning Spears I think is because they feel like they have to learn that tech. But that's a design failure, not a problem with Spears. If you have to research something then it's not really a choice. And if it's not a choice, then it doesn't belong in the game.

Reply to You know how to make a sword? Really? in Science & Tech Stardock Forums

Which is a different argument all together. Starting out with swords is "fun" but not clubs? The starting point, game-mechanic wise, is irrelevant. Either weapon technology is a progressive thing or it's not. If someone thinks it shouldn't be, then they're really looking for a different game. If they agree that weapon technology should be progressive, then it makes sense to start it at a point that people can agree that your average peasant could make -- i.e. clubs and wor

Windows 8 “Groups” in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

In Windows 8, you can create a column of tiles in it and label the tile. This is Microsoft’s idea of a “group”. Here’s a couple of videos showing off the pain: Windows 7: The Start Menu <div id="55436901-b558-4ca7-8e41-a41

Reply to You know how to make a sword? Really? in Science & Tech Stardock Forums

The first step is just gathering the people together to survive. The next step would be to find people who know how to do things (like large scale agriculture, smelting, etc.). The next step after that would be to disseminate that knowledge across your fledgling kingdom. If someone wants to make the case that it would be fun for the society to start out just "knowing" out to do that, that's fine. But seeing people casually argue that people would just "kno

You know how to make a sword? Really? in Science & Tech JoeUser Forums

I was reading on the forums today people complaining that even in a post-civilization world (one where people are basically getting together from the ruins) that they would “know” how to do all kinds of things like make bows, swords, etc. I have a lot of friends who are active in the Renaissance and Medieval communities out there who always laugh at this kind of thing. The conversation goes something like this: “Really, you think you can make a spear? Ok. Let’s see you do it.

No, AT&T, that’s not 4G in Mobile Tech JoeUser Forums

As some of you know, the latest

Reply to Preview of new Stardock download store / updater in Personal Computing Stardock Forums

https://www.stardock.com/stardockcentral/

Reply to Multi-Core AI in FE Sneak Peeks Stardock Forums

8 to 12 seconds would drive me crazy. The other benefit in reducing that time is that it puts more pressure on the core systems to be robust.

Windows 8 UI: Metro breakdown in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

Andrew Orlowski has a really good article about the the state of Windows 8. Check it out here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/03/andrew_does_windows8/