Draginol

Reply to Why BUSH and CHristmas sucks in Politics JoeUser Forums

It's kind of hard to feel sympathy for people who have cable, a computer, and Internet access. The "poverty" level described here is dubious. Yes, your post only demonstrates that even those in "poverty" can afford luxuries like entertainment. Most of the money going to Iraq is paying for American soldiers who are actually risking their lives so that you can complain about not being able to have a new car to go along with your cable TV.

Reply to Review: Star Wars - Knights of the Old Republic in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

I would say it's somewhere in between. It's like a PC RPG with some UI changes to help console players (no drag and drop inventory for instance) The combat happens in continuous time. It's turn based but turns happen automatically. You can pause the action any time you'd like with the space bar so that you can control the action. The combat is really enjoyable because: 1) You maintain reasonably good control over what your characters do and what they do makes a critical dif

Review: Star Wars - Knights of the Old Republic in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

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 b

Reply to Spirit of Wandering Now Available in Press Room JoeUser Forums

They say the same thing about Bush.

4 reasons why consoles can't replace PCs for gaming in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

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 ma

Angry Dad, Angry Child in Personal Relationships JoeUser Forums

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!

Reply to Impulse Weekly Top 10 in Press Room JoeUser Forums

You don't know very much about the Republican party. Only left wing charactertures of it.

Reply to Impulse Weekly Top 10 in Press Room JoeUser Forums

Where exactly did O'Reilly say he would apologize? And the jury is out on whether there are WMD in Iraq or not.

Keeping good employees is the key to long term success in Software Development JoeUser Forums

Next week I'm going to be giving a guest lecture at the University of Michigan. My topic will be the game industry and software development requirements to be part of it. But it got me thinking about other issues involved in running a successful software company. Probably the key, in my view, to having a successful company is retaining good employees. It may seem obvious but let me get more specific: Everyone in any industry knows that there are various kinds of people out t

Reply to Solution to welfare: Contraception in Politics JoeUser Forums

LOL. Most people on welfare are elderly or disabled? Um no. Most people on public assistance are young, female with 2 or more children. That isn't open to dispute. That is stastical fact, Luscure. I've never met an intelligent high school drop out. And the statistics on poverty certainly don't help their case either. Bottom line: It is not society's fault to raise other people's children. If you can't afford to have children, don't have them. If you are too ireresponsible to

Reply to Patch Work in Politics JoeUser Forums

Actually, the first TWO YEARS of military occupation duty in Europe was considered, at the time, a total disaster. Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, STARVED to death while there was rampant looting, crime, and violence as different factions "settled scores" and if allied troops were in the way they got zapped too. Moreover, American troops had a high incidence, relatively speaking, of accidental death and a relatively hgh (by today's standards) of corruption as servicemen, often

Reply to Another Note on Social Security in Politics JoeUser Forums

You don't need to invest in stock. How about this crazy idea: Put money into a savings account. Who's really being greedy? The wealthy or the people who demand that the wealthy pay for other people's retirement because they never learned the story about the ant and the grasshopper?

Reply to Another side of welfare: A success story in Politics JoeUser Forums

I must say that your story doesn't sound like a success story. It is exactly the type of story that makes those of us who have been working since BEFORE we were 16 and still working just that much more annoyed. I'd love to be able to spend more time with my children. Unfortunately, I have to work.

Reply to Consoles vs. PC Games: The writing is on the wall in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

I'm not sure what you mean by that. You'er writing your game in C# or something?

Reply to VASECTOMIES in Politics JoeUser Forums

I agree.

Consoles vs. PC Games: The writing is on the wall in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

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

Desktop Enhancements vs. Games in Blogging JoeUser Forums

...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

The blahs of hard drive crashes in Blogging JoeUser Forums

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 o

Solution to welfare: Contraception in Politics JoeUser Forums

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 b

Reply to Random House Announces Partnership with Stardock in New IP Creation and Development Group in Press Room JoeUser Forums

I loved Calc. I took it voluntarily in college (had to as part of my degree but I looked forward to it). It's a great tool to recognize the relationship between vlelocity and acceleration as well as being able to find areas under a curve. Without calculus, we wouldn't have the modern society we have.

Hard Drive Crashing in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

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 Thu

Reply to VASECTOMIES in Politics JoeUser Forums

At some point some of you just chucked elementary logic right out the window. ;)

Reply to The importance of extending Longhorn in OS Customization JoeUser Forums

Ah, nitpicking spelling, the last refuge of the on-line scoundrel. ;) BTW, it wasn't me who spelled a lot "alot" that was the part I quoted.

How to really theme your Windows XP desktop in OS Customization JoeUser Forums

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 downloade

Reply to Your Imagination's the Limit in Max & The Magic Marker in Press Room JoeUser Forums

There is a 93% chance that someone will make a statistics joke comment.