Draginol

Why companies fiercely protect their cultures in Business JoeUser Forums

While the unemployment rate nationally remains over 8%, the unemployment rate in the tech industry is basically zilch. Software developers and game studios can't hire people fast enough and fiercely compete for the talent out there. This is why companies fiercely guard their company cultures. When every person at a given company knows that they can easily find another job if they so choose, the onus is on companies to make sure that the "work experience" is such that they have an

Don’t worry, it’s you in Blogging JoeUser Forums

(from a forum discussion) It’s not that I don’t take the issue seriously. It’s just that I don’t take you seriously.

Spam Spam Spam in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

For the last few weeks, the poor IT team have been battling spam bots. Let’s give a shout out to all our hard working moderators who have been able to clean it up quickly and the IT team that’s been making it harder for them to do it.

The Internet isn’t real life in Business JoeUser Forums

First off, I want to thank all the people who have written their kind words of support these past few days. I wish I could say this is the first time we’ve had to deal with a frivolous lawsuit and I wish I could say it was the last. It happens. It’s business. The only difference here is that one party doesn’t normally leak this sort of thing out to get press coverage. It is amazing how many people will look at a bunch of unsubstantiated allegations and assume

My kingdom for DirectX 11 in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

Smarter developers than myself (Which would be most of them) have told me that there are “Tricks” to making DirectX 9 support multithreaded graphics. Unfortunately, they’re beyond my capability. DirectX 11, by contrast, natively supports a process spinning off a graphics related job into a thread (as opposed to it being in the same thread as the main message pump thread). When I joined the Fallen Enchantress team as lead developer (the first time I’ve held that position

Reply to No, it’s not up to everyone else to adapt to you in Business LittleTinyFrogs Forums

People get mad and can say things they wouldn't otherwise say when they're annoyed (like our email exchange). But it's the actions that matter. It's not like she specified any "jokes". And since I'm not in the habit of making sexual jokes (there's 10+ years of blog writing available to pour through, it's not my type of humor) I could only assume her personal definition of what constitutes "sexist, vulgar, etc." was ridiculous and I was offended and angry. Not to me

Reply to LittleTinyFrogs.com – a work in progress in Blogging LittleTinyFrogs Forums

Well, JU isn't really a business. It's just a hang/out hobby for us to try different things.

Reply to No, it’s not up to everyone else to adapt to you in Business LittleTinyFrogs Forums

No, Jin, you don't want to "chat" about it. You want to try to play arm chair lawyer where you get to cherry pick one thing and ignore the rest.

No, it’s not up to everyone else to adapt to you in Business JoeUser Forums

What kind of place do you want to work at? Stardock’s a pretty fun place to work. We have almost no turn over and morale is pretty high. It is, however, a nerdy place. That means there’s lots of references to Monty Python, The Simpsons, Family Guy, Robot Chicken that sometimes float around.

How I would have done Windows 8 in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

It's no secret I'm not a fan of the way Microsoft is handling Windows 8. So how could they have done it? First, simplify/unify the underlying platform in a way that developers can feel confident that they're not going to get screwed over again (That Silverlight knowledge in my brain is going to be stored right with my OS/2 SOM storage). That means .NET .NET .NET. You make sure that if you write for .NET 4.5 that it'll work on any Windows 8 target. &

LittleTinyFrogs.com – a work in progress in Blogging JoeUser Forums

I’ve had JoeUser.com as my home but with two differnet IDs (draginol and frogboy) so thoroughly conflicted at this stage, I thought it would make sense to set up a site that combines them. My articles still get posted on all the Stardock sites (you might be reading this on JoeUser or WinCustomize or Sins of a Solar Empire. Who knows. But now you can find all my stuff together at www.littletinyfrogs.com .

Expendables poster in Movies & TV & Books JoeUser Forums

Supposed to be pretty good actually.

All the good gaming names are taken in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

Came up with a bunch of good names for future games --- so good that they were already taken, somewhere at some time. And because we’re such a litigious society, people will sue over even partial names. I remember getting a threatening letter because we had a technology in Galactic Civilizations II called “Space Marines” and that they had a trademark on that name. We renamed it to Stellar Marines (sounds better anyway). In recent times, companies have had to resort wit

Mac Pro Retina just came in in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

Playing around with that this evening. Trying to migrate from my 2010 Mac Pro. Taking a lot longer than I’d like. I also have a ThinkPad X1-carbon on the way. I’ll let you know how that goes when I get it.

First summer with the Solar Array–is solar power worth it? in Science & Tech JoeUser Forums

This past year I had a 20KW solar array put in. For the month of

Blogging from the iPhone in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

I'm impressed. I can blog to the stardock ecosystem with the iPhone app Blog Writer. I just use my forum user Id and pw with the metaweblog URL: https://www.joeuser.com/api/MetaWeblog.axd

Windows 8: 8TB of memory available for games? in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

I discovered something interesting. Unless I’m mistaken, large address aware 32-bit games may be able access up to 8TB of memory. I don’t know what tricks the OS is using to do this (a 32-bit process should only be able to see 4GB) but a cursory look indicates when running on 64-bit version of Windows 8, a 32-bit process that is using large address aware is “seeing” 8TB. Take that with a grain of salt since my guys are skeptical about whether you can actually use any of that.&#

Reply to The effects of working long hours–my story in Business Stardock Forums

I think I created more on-line detractors between May 1 and August 30 of that year than all the years prior.

Tiles on Windows 8 in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

[video]http://www.youtube.com/v/lwlq4i0Qhxg?hl=en&hd=1[/video] If you have Windows 8 and you’re finding it annoying to get around the desktop, you can download Tiles (it’s free). This has been a life saver for me as it lets me qu

The effects of working long hours–my story in Business JoeUser Forums

I originally wrote this o

Play Testing a post Beta 4 build in FE Sneak Peeks JoeUser Forums

I’ve been working on the AI this weekend and making a few proposed balancing changes. For one thing, I moved the tougher monsters away further from starting locations and murdered the remaining “Uhh” sound effects that make me cry the tears of a thousand rains every time I hear them (I get dehydrated a lot). I’m making my own faction <img style="backgrou

Unlikely success in Business JoeUser Forums

Guys like me aren’t supposed to get “rich”. When you look at the most successful (or rich) people in the tech industry they usually have remarkably similar backgrounds. By contrast, guys like me are supposed to be relegated to some back lab coding drivers. That was, when I was in college, the dream. Of course, that dream didn’t come true because I couldn’t afford college and had to work multiple jobs at once to pay for school. I discovered that the best way to make money w

OnLive appears to be becoming NonLive in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

Real-time game streaming service, OnLive was a phenomenon when it debuted a couple years ago. I think my precise opinion of it was “It’s doomed”. More nuanced comments can be found here: http://news.bigdownload.com/2009/03/25/stardock-ceo-speaks-about-onlive/ My opinion hasn’t changed on it even though it is a marvelous technology. I was hoping they’d got bought out or something