Draginol

The frustrations of being an entrepreneur in Blogging JoeUser Forums

The best part about being an entrepreneur is working with really good talented people. They say you can't choose your coworkers but that's the one perk of being an entrepreneur. And over the past few years, we've put together an outstanding team of developers. I don't mean this as an idle boast but we have some of the best people on earth working together. Years ago, in the OS/2 market days, we had put together a pretty good team too. But it all nearly collapsed when the OS/2 m

Trickle Down Economics and corporations in Politics JoeUser Forums

The problem with supply-side economics as a theory is that it's too broad. When dealing with tax rates, there are really two completely different tax debates. First, you have the individual tax rate. And secondly, you have the corporate tax rate. Individual tax rates in the United States are too high at the higher levels. But I don't believe that lowering this rate would improve the economy in any noticeable way. Contrary to what Bush thinks, whether the money is in individua

Game Developer's Class Reunion in Software Development JoeUser Forums

Hi everyone, great to see you all. Man, lot of familiar faces here. I brought my friend Norm with me. He's really into games and has always wanted to be in the game industry. Norm, feel free to look around.. Norm: Thanks bud! You don't mind if I bum around and ask some of these guys about themselves? No? Great! Everyone around the table, introduce yourselves! Chris: My name is Chris, I'm 34, I now do technical support at a l

My Stargate SG1 Episode idea in Movies & TV & Books JoeUser Forums

Anyone watch Stargate SG1 on the Sci-Fi channel? I am totally addicted to it. Got my Tivo set up to record any time it shows up. If you're not familiar with the show, the premise is that the US government has control of a stargate that allows travel to a multitude of different planets across the galaxy. The government sends teams (SG teams) usually made up of 4 people on missions to these worlds to explore and make contact with other civilizations. But what really make

Reply to But who's going to pay for my pills?! in Politics JoeUser Forums

How can your taxes in the US be higher? If you make less than $30,000 you basically pay no federal taxes (you get it all back at the end of the year). And most companies pay for health care. As for the war on terror, since defense costs 15% of the budget and welfare programs of various kinds use up 60% it's pretty obvious what is causing high taxes. ;)

Reply to But who's going to pay for my pills?! in Politics JoeUser Forums

The question is whether it's the federal government's job to provide pills to the elderly. We're not talking about putting elderly on the streets or starving them. We are talking about whether the federal government should be providing pills. So what's next? It's going to be heartless and soulless if we don't provide everyone with a free car? Or how about more money so that everyone has a free membership at a fitness center? Where are you going to draw the line? What about ch

But who's going to pay for my pills?! in Politics JoeUser Forums

I swatted away a yellow jacket at the BBQ while listening to to my friend patiently and firmly explain that the wealthy and companies need to pay more in taxes. I am not sure if the average American has always been as woefully ignorant of how our economy works as they are today. But if so, it's amazing that our country hasn't collapsed economically. We live in a representative democracy of universal adult suffrage. The problem with unqualified voter rights is that thos

Reply to Customizing the Windows desktop: A primer in OS Customization JoeUser Forums

Ah thanks. the end had somehwo gotten cut off. fixed.

September 2003 desktop in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

This is what my Windows XP desktop looks like this month. Now, if you're new to customizing Windows, you may wonder why it looks so different. My day job at Stardock includes being Product Manager of something called Object Desktop. It's a desktop enhancement

Reply to Multiplayer gaming is still tedious in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

The complexity of the game isn't the issue. It's the multiplayer aspect of it. Where something crashes, or a player quits, or someone gets knocked out. The game complexity itself is irrelevant.

Multiplayer gaming is still tedious in PC Gaming JoeUser Forums

We played Rise of Nations this evening here on the LAN. Even with ideal conditions, multiplayer strategy games are almost more effort than they're worth. I think age is a major factor here. When I was in my 20s, I burned thousands of hours mucking around trying to get Total Annihilation or Warcraft 2 or C&C or whatever games going. But now at 32, I seem to have a lot less time or at least patience to throw away 20%+ of the "game day" due to various problems in multiplayer. Whether th

Is Spam actually getting worse? in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

Some months ago I started using some spam filters. My favorite has been SpamPal. Our mail server also has its own spam filter on there. They worked reasonably well. About 90% of the spam was caught by them. Which for me was significant because each day I get around 500 to 600 email of which around 300 to 400 is spam. Going through 600 email to find the 200 legitimate email was a major pain. It's still quite a pain even with the filters. But in the past month, more and more spam has b

Reply to m_BadDayForTheHungarians = this->BWAAAHAHA in Software Development JoeUser Forums

Well the question really comes down to whether it's more readable to have something like this->bMarked is more readable or whether m_bMarked is more readable. I think this->bMarked is more readable, you prefer m_bMarked is. At that point, you essentially have a draw. What breaks the tie is the legacy code involved which uses this->bMarked. ;)

Getting your own blog here at JoeUser.com status report in Blogging JoeUser Forums

The new JoeUser.com system is still very new. There are still zillions of little buglets we're working through. Just today we fixed a problem with printing of articles as well as enhancing and then fixing the email article feature. There's still a lot of work to be done so please bear with us. But coming in a few weeks, people who create accounts (or already have accounts) will have the option of having their own blog. It'll be free to have your own blog here. And your blog won't be so

Iraq: Just one stop in the war on terror in Politics JoeUser Forums

Right now there's a lot of people who seem to think that because we haven't found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is a major problem for the US. In fact, it's not. In the bigger picture, WMD was just a low hanging fruit excuse to do what needed to be done in Iraq. Those same people seem to forget that there were a lot of other low hanging fruit reasons to invade Iraq. One of the most obvious is, if he didn't have WMD, then Saddam was a fool to flout the UN resolutions and m

Reply to Should making Europe like us be a campaign issue? in Politics JoeUser Forums

With regards to France and Italy and WW 2 statistics. I've been trying to find the book that had the deaths broken up as to which side they were on when the death occurred. France lost 250,000 troops in WW2 total, Italy lost 330,000. But none of the net resources I've found break it up. I've always wondered where those statistics for France come from in the sense that they only fought at a nation on the side of the allies (and I mean actually fought) for about 6 weeks in the summer of 1940. For

Should making Europe like us be a campaign issue? in Politics JoeUser Forums

In American politics, presidential candidates like Howard Dean stress the need of getting other countries to like us "again". Do you think that French candidates sweat whether the United States likes France? In fact, the United States has a 200+ year obsession with wanting other countries to like us or to accept us. The upper crusts of the American life have traditionally felt scorn and embarrassment at the "crass" culture of the United States. In the United States, the midd

Mars is as close as it's going to get in Pure Technology JoeUser Forums

This was taken with the Hubble space telescope. As I mentioned last week , I bought the $300 ETX-70 hoping to see Mars up close. Anyone who is vaguely familiar with astronomy is probably laughing at the "typical newbie" naiveté when it comes to astronomy. The ETX-70 is a 2 inch or so telesco

Reply to Adventures in texture land. in Software Development JoeUser Forums

Pretty cool. One suggestion - better headlines. ;)

Hard Drive Crash in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

I am notoriously bad about backing up my computer. And my main home machine went down this past week. The hard drive actually physically died. The motor went out or something. It's the machine that had all the baby pictures on it. Every picture that we had taken of our 2 children since they were born were on that computer. And the hard drive was dead. Luckily, I had been making backups thanks to those new portable USB drives that you can get at Best Buy or whatever, there's r

WindowBlinds Review in USA Today in Personal Computing JoeUser Forums

USA Today reviewed WindowBlinds 4 and it definitely made my day. Reviews usually make me cringe. That's because often times, when you're a small company, the reviewer cranks through the product in 10 minutes and whips up a review. Even when the review is favorable, it's often full of errors. But USA Today really nailed it. It was true vindication. You see, the problem with t

Reply to When crime isn't counted as a crime in Current Events JoeUser Forums

I'm not linking debt and crime here. The problem is that there are busineses that seem to operate on the principle of trying to screw other companies out of money. It's people exploiting the system. And to me, it's a pretty fine line between the guy stealing a candy bar from the store and the guy stealing a truckloda of candybars from the guy makin gthem.

When crime isn't counted as a crime in Current Events JoeUser Forums

Steven Den Beste, who I've known since "the OS/2 days" took a short sebatical to gather his thoughts and has retu

Rising Stars in Movies & TV & Books JoeUser Forums

My diabolical friend Norm lent me a series of comics called "Rising Stars". It's created by the same guy who made Babylon 5. On the NGs, we always refer to him as JMS. It's a fantastic series of comic books. In a nutshell, what happens is that in a small Illinois town, a flash of light occurs one evening. All the women in that town who were pregnant at the time (around 11

Securing the desktop right out of existence in Software Development JoeUser Forums

Stardock's Chief Technologist has taken a close look at Microsoft's early concept for their secure PC initiative (NGSCB for Next Generation Secure Computing Base). You can read the full article here . Currently, third parties can extend Windows by having their program create a hook into the OS. Hooks come in many forms (system