so, from your post, it seems that a 'skinning community' has to include you for it to be, in fact, a skinning community? yes tgtsoft is releasing a in-memory [so far] patch to a dll...put there isn't a stylexp skinning community. there's an msstyle skinning community, yes. and that would be part of the community that is being supported, i suppose. besides, what makes a community? a central 'town hall' if you will? what about if instead of one building, the town hall had a building for relevant community bulletins, one for offices, one for meetings, etc.? just because tgtsoft themselves don't have forums and a skin repository, which, mind you, neither does stardock if you're going to try and make that counter-arguement because wincustomize is a seperate entity as far as anyone's concerned, doesn't mean there isn't a skinning community out there that makes use of msstyles. that's how the msstyles community is set up, i know because i'm in it just like i'm in this one (yes that's legal, but judge as you will), with themexp.org being the main repository for themes, sites like neowin and iexbeta having community discussions as well as themexp's own forums, etc.

besides, if you read the eula when you installed stylexp, you would've seen that the betas are only good for 90 days and it's expiration would not have shocked you. you DID read the eula didn't you?

besides, you don't have to pay tgtsoft to use msstyles, either make the changes to uxtheme.dll yourself and run with it or grab the 'fixed' .dll from any number of sites.

just wanted to try and clear that stuff up a bit before this turns into too great a circle-jerk...

What "Community" do you speak of then, Mephisto Corugant? If I give TGTSoft my $19.95 for Style XP what community is that supporting?

If I start up the Chris Hamp charity where the money goes to just me, is that still a charity?

These guys are parasites in the truest sense. They don't have a skin site or pay for one. They don't even have a support forum for me to make my bitch post. And they make a program that profits off of Microsoft's engine. Style XP can be reproduced with a few lines in a hex editor which is what I'm going to do. To the unwary it may fool. But to me it's a scam.

There may be an msstyles community but paying for Style XP doesn't support it. No other program I have ever used has ever tried to sleaze its way into my wallet by pandering to my guilt like this patch does. Support "the community" indeed!

I don't have Windows XP nor do I envision it any time in the forseeable future. But any company that tries to get you to pay them money via "support the community" guises I would be wary of.

Maybe I'm a cynic but I'd be disgusted is General Motors tried "Buy a new Chevy to support America! Don't let the terrorists win".

firstly in my rebuttal, i'm not backing the actions tgtsoft is taking. let tony and thomas and that other guy cause i can't remember his name do what they want to. i'm refuting thehamster's thought that there is no community for msstyles.

now, the wincustomize thing. firstly, sorry, i didn't think things completely through. but, secondly, there is a similar setup between tgtsoft and stardock with regards to accessing more themes than the ones bundled with their wares. both have links off their main site, and by this i mean www.tgtsoft.com and www.stardock.com that lead to other sites, owned by them or not, with respective themes. those sites then have forums and messageboards and support and the like. so in that way, the way i was trying to convey, they have similar setups. both have a 'community' associated with them, and i'm sorry for coming off on the wrong foot. I know wincustomize's tab is picked up by stardock, but it's also not a completely monopolised repository for just stardock products skins (i hate grammar), as neither is deviantart or themexp (though that one's pushing it a bit)

so again, sorry for not fleshing that out adequately.

and honestly, i got stylexp and stylebuilder free from tgtsoft because they're going to be using acid etched in the next community skin pack. there's that damn word again. so perhaps i am biased, but i'm not gonna kiss their ass and do their own pr work. i'm just trying to get across that, despite what tgtsoft do, there is in fact a community of people making skins that use the msstyle format. some of those people are actually getting a kickback of some sort from tgtsoft, despite there being a free alternative (hacked .dll and reshacker) in the form of free registrations, but still, point remains, there is an msstyle community, though whether tgtsoft is supporting them or not is your own opinion.

if that doesn't quite read right, blame canada...

i didn't read hamster's remarks in saying there is no community. quite the contrary. i read his remarks as saying that giving money to tgtsoft supports no community in particular. do you disagree? if so, what community is tgtsoft supporting and how? as fb says, even stardock, which does very overtly support communities of users, doesn't use that tactic. when you act like a charity you raise the bar. where does that 20 bucks go? what support are they giving with that money?

Wow I made a hot topic!

I did not say that there was no msstyles community. I just don't see how giving my money to a couple of guys who whipped up a hack as supporting it. If anyone should be collecting money it shoudl be websites you mention.

That Stardock is paying for Wincustomize that in turn supports non Stardock programs just highights the difference between TGTSoft and Stardock. Funny that Shoggot isn't reading this. It would be a good object lesson of ethical standards of different companies. One actually spends money to help the community the other leeches off of it giving nothing back while trying to guilt people into giving them money under false pretenses.

The arrogance I speak of is that TGTSoft seems to have elected themselves as guardians of the msstyles community that they give precious little back to. They weren't even the first to patch that DLL. They're just the first to try to profit from it.

There's only so much money one can spend. THe entire capitalist model is flawed.

No, this has little to do with the current subject.

craeonics goes print some money

If you buy a car you are supporting the American economy. You support the dealership by signing the deal, and you support the baillifs when they come to reposses your car because you and half of the rest of the country just got laid off, so go and buy a car!

On a side note, what TGTSoft is doing is wrong in my eyes, they are undeniably trying to promote the idea that MSStyles is their product, which it is not. In this free economy, if I started trying to sell my own patched version of UXTheme.dll, what sort of messages do you think would start cropping up about me in the various subsets of the skinning community? Imagine then that I had the nerve to suggest that giving me money was supporting the community...I envision a Jay and Silent Bob style internet-revenge-beating of biblical proportions heading my way.

AJ

Person A drowns 15 puppies. Person B drowns only 10 puppies.

Yes, I see the difference, TheHamster. On drowns fewer puppies. Doesn't mean that they don't drown puppies at all.

One of the things I've noticed about Shoggot is that he doesn't seem to be used to having to back up his assertions with evidence. He will toss around words like "Stardock is evil" or whatever without ever providing any evidence to support his assertions. And usually when he does try to cite an exmaple it's incorrect. I tend to suspect that Shoggot is more anti-capitalism than anti-Stardock.

The facts are (and facts, Shoggot, actually matter in real life) that no Stardock product has ever tried to sell itself by appealing to user's charity. WindowBlinds, which costs the same as Style XP, sells itself based on what it actually does. And it doesn't time out. Rather, a user knows specifically what is in the enhanced version and hence knows precisely what they are paying for and why.

Despite the fact that Stardock pays for this site, which Shoggot of all people should know is expensive, we don't try to get people to buy WindowBlinds in order to support this site. Similarly, it doesn't try to argue that you should buy it to help the economy.