MicroProse, MegaTestes

From the Wikipedia article on MicroProse, known for games such as "Gunship" and "Civilization", here's something that made me laugh for the brazen nature of it.

First, a little backstory, again just from Wikipedia. First was a board game called Civilization, made by the Hartland Trefoil company. Another company, Avalon Hill, got a license to sell the game in the US. These events were both circa 1980.

Fast forward to 1991, when a PC game called Civilization comes out. Made by Microprose, which went so far as to license the title from Avalon Hill despite the different media, the game was a smashing success.

But Avalon Hill developed its own designs on the PC market, and circa 1997 wanted to make a PC version of its Civilization game (which by this point was called "Advanced Civilization"). So it was that in 1997 Avalon Hill rescinded the MicroProse name license, handed that over to computer game maker Activision, and together with Activision sued MicroProse.

(Now, this to my mind is the problem with licensing anyway. If it is rescinded for any reason or no reason at all, you are screwed.)

Now obviously, the Avalon Hill folks . . . had they not been bastards . . . would have noted that they had already licensed the name, so they could've released their game by another name. However, they wanted to capitalize on the work MicroProse had done to make the name a legend in the PC world, and of course Activision wanted the same thing. So they wanted to call their game the same name in the hopes that people would buy it not realizing it was some board-game-on-the-PC crap.

This is why the law sucks sometimes . . . but then it does give us entertaining stories like this:

In November 1997 MicroProse was sued by both Avalon Hill (who had the US publishing rights to the name Civilization) and Activision for copyright infringement. MicroProse responded by buying Hartland Trefoil, which had used the Civilization name in early game products and then sued Avalon Hill and Activision for trademark infringement and unfair business practices as a result of Activision's decision to develop and publish Civilization computer games. [...] Under the terms of the settlement MicroProse became the sole owner of the rights of the name Civilization [...]

In other words, Avalon Hill acted like they owned the name in the PC world, so MicroProse responded by buying the real originator in Avalon's board game world, and then sued Avalon and Activision.

It is the legal version of "bring it on, mofo!" I love it. MicroProse completely made Avalon Hill and Activision their prison bitch, and rightly so.

Little Green Footballs Deflating

Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs gained notoriety during the so-called "Rathergate" fiasco, when Dan Rather and CBS ran with false documents impugning Bush the Younger's Guard service. I've visited the site sporadically since then and found it generally interesting, if for no other reason than the fact that it was both conservative and very anti-creationism.

But save for lip service to conservative values, Charles Johnson and LGF are no longer worth paying attention to.

1. Regarding the never-ever-seen Hawaii birth certificate of Barack Obama, Johnson declares those who would like to see it retarded "nirth certifikit" idiots, known as "nirthers".

It is never a great idea to skip to the childish and obnoxious name-calling behavior when the precise item that people wish to see remains unseen. Folks wanted to see Obama's birth certificate to confirm his American citizenship, yet it was sealed and everyone is content to leave it so. Sure, there are announcements in the paper from the right time, and a "certificate of live birth" (which has little to no legal standing given that those can be issued even for the birth of non-citizens), but that isn't the birth certificate.

America's a show-me kinda place . . . Missouri even took that jab and made it a motto. So to start name-calling on that basis is the epitome of absurdity.

And as long as we've brought up the topic of the certificate of live birth, LGF showed an original one from 1962 the other day:



Here's Obama's, which they showed after claiming it is equally valid and that all counter-claims are "debunked":







Now obviously, these two look nothing alike, which leads me to the following irony bomb:

RatherGate was based on a document forged to look like it had come from a typewriter but which instead came from Microsoft Word.

Now the same guy who gained notoriety for debunking RatherGate claims that a Microsoft Word Certification of Live Birth is equal in all ways to either a 1962 typewritten Certificate of Live Birth or even a real Birth Certificate.

Funny, that.

2. Johnson has been going after Glenn Beck in all sorts of absurd ways, usually if not exclusively featuring ridiculous straw men.

I am unsure what it is about Glenn Beck that Johnson finds so repugnant. Beck is a Mormon and does discuss his belief in God and his (unfortunate) belief that the rights of America's people are God-given rather than claimed by the blood and sweat of American patriots, but I can listen to Beck and just sort of edit the God stuff out and he still has everything else right. Thus, I find Johnson's hatred quite confusing.

The latest absurdity is here.

Glenn Beck . . . and this happens even in the posted video . . . clearly states that car dealers involved in the Cash for Clunkers program who use a government website for processing are at risk because the site's terms of service clearly state that their computer and all its contents, upon logging in to the website and using the services thereon, become the property of the Federal government, to be used or disposed of as they see fit.

You don't find that a little freaky for the government to stick in a long legalese terms-of-service thing? I sure do. So does Beck.

Yet Johnson goes apeshit and declares Beck "a raving freakazoid nut sandwich". He also claims you can't reach that page from Cars.gov, which is also silly ... apparently Johnson's never been to a site where the login happens on a different server than the default site's standard URL.

I don't know for sure, 'cause I'm not going to the site to research it on this computer. I guess that makes me a freakazoid nut sandwich, but if so then I am in august company.