Draginol

Royalties or lack there of in Philosophy JoeUser Forums

Our company deals a lot with consumers. Which means, inevitably, there is a certain percentage of people who think we're a bunch of crooks. I take that really personally. I know I shouldn't, it's the nature of doing business on the Internet. But people just have no idea how dirty the business world is. It's the start of a new quarter which means Stardock is paying out its royalties to those developers who are paid in that manner. We've never missed a payment. Ever.&n

Stardock? Where'd that name come from? in Blogging JoeUser Forums

A user asks: > > However one minor thing missing I think. How did you come up with the > > name Stardock exactly? That's actually a funny story... So it's 1991 which is when I founded Stardock Systems (DBA, Not incorporated at this point). I got ahold of a whole sale PC parts catalog which, back then, was a pretty big deal. I called up the place to start ordering parts for a PC and the guy on the phone says "What company is this for?" Being a stupid 20 year

10 years of Stardock in OS Customization JoeUser Forums

Introduction October 2003 marks the 10 year anniversary from when Stardock was first incorporated. It's really hard to believe that it's been that long. Age creeps silently upon us and as I've looked at recent photos, I can tell that I'm no longer the "kid" I was when this all began. I founded Stardock while I was attending Western Michigan University. It was supposed to be a temporary

Reply to Remember Nibbles and Tetris? in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

I got to level 9. 15,770. blocks: 259.

Reply to Bias in the media? Note what is reported on in Politics JoeUser Forums

Indeed. While everyone is guilty ofmessing with stats on occasion, the left does it in the most cynical way. Across the board tax cuts do indeed benefit "the rich" than everyone else in terms of who gets raw dollars because they pay the most taxes. Half the adult population pays essentially no taxes. So a tax cut for them means nothing because they aren't paying to begin with. The top 10%, however, pay over 90% of the bill. So a flat 10% tax cut for everyone means tha

Reply to StarCraft: Back in the day... in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

Too bad you weren't at Stardock during the day... Because you would have gotten your wish. Stardock did the official Starcraft add-on called "Retribution". Imagine spending 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 6 months playing Starcraft all day. You migth find, at the end of those 6 months that you didn't like Starcraft anymore. ;)

Reply to Lit like Britney Spears in Software Development JoeUser Forums

Drool!

Reply to Is Health Insurance a Basic Human Right? in Politics JoeUser Forums

That's kind of the downside of a democracy. People who don't contribute to the treasury are still allowed a say in how that treasury is spent. It's like having a neighborhood association of 100 homes where 51 homes don't pay in but still get to insist that there be a public pool built, paid for by raising the dues on the 49 people who actually pay but are against the pool idea.

The war against piracy can't be solved by a mechanism in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

I recently wrote about this topic here . But I wanted to write a more succinct version of it since some people thought I was advocating something akin to Internet Product Activation to thwart piracy. Let me first Bottom line this: CD based copy protection does more harm than good. Let me then add: There is no magic bullet that will stop piracy. Game developers need to quit trying to solve piracy via some

Reply to Bias in the media? Note what is reported on in Politics JoeUser Forums

With regard to Wilsongate, I think the main reason it didn't get reported is that the story is "complicated" relatively speaking and not terribly interesting. Some minor operative that was the spouse of an ambassador was leaked to the press. This wans't some "spy". That was someone who already had diplomatic immunity anyway. It's something that needs to be looked at but doesn't really rise to the level of being front page news in my book.

Imagine if D-day were covered by CNN in History JoeUser Forums

Imagine if World War II were covered like Iraq is being covered. Most people today seem to think that after D-Day the Americans just stormed into Germany and the war was over. Far from it. Instead, for the first couple of months the Americans and British got stuck in "Hedgerow" country in northern France. A stalemate was largely the result as it took considerable time for the Americans to break out. But imagine if CNN were covering that. You'd have in

Bias in the media? Note what is reported on in Politics JoeUser Forums

Those who say there isn't a liberal bias in the media should take a closer look at what the media chooses to report on. It doesn't even take long to discover that the issues that get reported tend to be ones dear to liberal causes. Let me give you a good example: Today the news covered how any millions of people are not covered by medical insurance. It was reported repeatedly on NPR, CNN, ABC News, and CBS evening news (didn't see NBC but I bet it was reported

Is Health Insurance a Basic Human Right? in Politics JoeUser Forums

There was a report, repeated often on the news today, that there are now 44 million Americans without health insurance. So what? No, seriously. What exactly does that mean? Does it mean you can't get medical care? No. What it means is that if you need medical care that you are responsible for paying for it yourself. In other words, there are 44 million Americans whose health care isn't pay for by someone else (i.e. such as their employer as part of their compen

DesktopX 2 Gamma Info in OS Customization JoeUser Forums

A new version of DesktopX is out. We've been working like crazy to get out the little buglets and make it more useful in a very apparent way. The big thing in the gamma can be summed up in stability, performance meter support, system info support, and multi-monitor support. 1.99 GAMMA Worked on multimonitor support. Now IX works with multiworkarea so it can place icons on all monitors and behave correctly even when changing monitors dispositions,

Reply to Moore Me Me Me Me! in Politics JoeUser Forums

BTW, beware of taking general statements and turning them into absolutes, "Mr. Frog". I believe in a basic safety net. The biggest takers from the troft today are actually the elderly. 65 years was "really old" in 1933 when the average life expectancy was 51. But now, a person who lives to 50 can expect to live to 80. As a result, we have people living for many years on social security and medicaid that is vastly beyond what they paid in.

Reply to Moore Me Me Me Me! in Politics JoeUser Forums

Ultimately, any brief article is going to have to deal with generalities. In general, the top 10% of tax payers are overwhelmingly conservative in fiscal policy. Outside entertainers of various sorts, it's a big part of the temperment needed to amass significant capital. Liberals believe in equality more strongly than freedom. Conservative tend to believe more in freedom than equality.

Torturing small children in Home & Family JoeUser Forums

So the 3 year old is crying. He's been crying for awhile. His big brother is outside playing and he's not. Why? Because he wouldn't eat his dinner. And by eat I mean, he wouldn't even eat a single bite. Salmon. I remember when I was a kid objecting (but still eating) foods like spam. Is spam actually a food or are they using that now for insulation? So it's hard to take the 3 year old's crying very seriously for not taking a single bite of salmon. But he

Futurama and France in Movies & TV & Books JoeUser Forums

Saw the first episode of Futurama again today. My wife noticed something very interesting that snuck passed me but given the attention to detail this show has, I wonder what it could mean.. During the show, they do two New Years Eve countdowns (10...9...8...etc.). The first one, taking place in 1999, goes to various parts of the World. They show the Eiffel tower and the people say 9 in French. Similarly, every other part of the world says their number in their native language.

Moore Me Me Me Me! in Politics JoeUser Forums

Michael Moore and I share two things in common. We're both from Michigan and we're both grew up in the midst of Big Three blue collar workers. But that's where the similarities end and the different readings on what the "majority" of Americans think about things. Michael Moore seems to have two basic beliefs: (1) The majority of Americans have liberal opinions. (2) Conservatives are all about "me me me me". To extrapolate on that

Reply to Glorified Station Wagons.. in Consumer Issues JoeUser Forums

Our minivan gets 20MPG. The same as my 2003 Bonnaville.

Reply to It's the right that's been naive about Iraq in Politics JoeUser Forums

Brab, just because you choose to misread Bush's letter to congress doesn't make your opinion fact. You are reading way too much into a 2 paragraph letter. He is referring to laws passed by congress, he is not making assertions. As for your other questions, that could be applied to any war. Perhaps American action in Europe in WW2 was a mistake too using the same criteria. But I don't think so. If the UN was "making progress" I sure didn't see it. Just a few years before the

Reply to Unofficial GalCiv FAQ in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

Suggestion: Add a question about the windowed version. You now run it by typing c:/>galciv w Must be in 16bit color for it to work at at 1024x768 or higher res.

Reply to It's the right that's been naive about Iraq in Politics JoeUser Forums

No plan is without risk. But I think you are looking at things from too pessmistic a scope. Are you suggesting that the mission in Iraq is a failure? What specifically would you and those who agree with you have done instead? What was your plan?

DesktopX meters coming to life in OS Customization JoeUser Forums

DesktopX is shaping up much better and I think we'll be able to have that public build today (fingers crossed). Today me and Paul Boyer ( Mormegil ) worked on a bunch of little DesktopX objects. Actually, what happened is that he made a really cool set of objects and then let me use his Corel Draw file (he uses Corel Draw f

Fun with Alexa in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

Alexa.com is a great site for figuring out (roughly) how popular a website is. It's not perfect, especially on sites that don't get a lot of traffic. But as sites get more popular, it does tend to show a good relative ranking. . . WinCustomize.com is one of the sites I administer on. It gets nearly 2 million unique visitors per mo