Software Reviews

A.  Handbrake is a highly-recommended DVD ripping tool that does not work at all.  Originally made for Macs, it evidently needs to stay with them and not pretend to be Windows-compatible.

1.  It's default is to save to the desktop.  However, even if you tell it to save to the desktop, it simply goes through the motions without creating an output file.   The third time I tried, it actually did finally create an output file . . . in its own folder in Program Files.  The hell?

2.  The file wouldn't even play.   All I wanted was an .avi with Xvid encoding and it can't even get that right.

Handbrake thus officially sucks.

B.  All Text/Hex Editors suck, because they cannot handle significant but very simple search strings.   In my
case, this simply means that I was trying to divine a way to
search-and-replace section numbers out of a large number of text files.

So, let's say this was a fragment of my text:

text text text text

23

text text text text

24

text text text text

All I wanted to do was to remove the 23, 24, et cetera so it looked like this:

text text text text
text text text text
text text text text

However, remarkably, this is apparently something that the world's programmers have never considered.  Oh, I can remove the digits in one maneuver and then remove the spaces in another, but only at the risk of removing other useful digits in the text (e.g. a line starting with "56 times" or something might have the "56" deleted). 

You would think that there would be a simple way to tell a program to find "linebreak-linebreak-digit-digit-linebreak-linebreak" and remove it, but amazingly there is no such thing.   Oh, there's an "extended" expression type that makes finding linebreaks a little easier, but you can't find numbers at the same time.   The regular expression type won't let you find linebreaks worth a damn.

C.  RegexMagic is supposed to help with regular expressions . . . you're supposed to be able to input a bit of text and tell it how you want it parsed, and then it will come back with the regular expression coding for you.   I figured it might help me find a way to bypass the absurdity mentioned in B. 

However, it did not do crap.   I'm a pretty smart guy, usually able to operate even less-than-intuitive software with relative ease, but this was ridiculous.  So I spent an hour going over all of the instructions carefully, marking my text precisely, and yet all I found was that the software continued to fail to do anything of value.   Its big idea of the sort of regular expression I needed to use was to delete all of the text in the file.  Seriously!

Don't waste your money.   I'm glad I just used the trial version.

Leftist Trash vs. Glenn Beck

Sick and evil people are trying to start a rumor/whisper campaign on the internet against Glenn Beck.  Originating from a comedy routine of associating someone with insinuations, the original perpetrator and those who are spreading it are trying to hurt Beck by insinuating a violent crime in his past, though they are relatively careful about not actually making the claim.  However, by trying to spread the idea and thus bring it to the forefront of Google and the like, they are creating a myth which, if it took root, would be virtually impossible to dispel.

Leftists will think this a stroke of brilliance without ever pondering what it means or what it would be like to be the target of such a thing. 

Worse is their attempt to justify it, claiming that it was meant to flip the Obama birth certificate / citizenship questions back on the right wing, "using Beck's tactics against him".   Bull!

First, I don't even think Beck questions Obama's citizenship, but even if he did, what the hell is the similarity between the "where's the beef?" citizenship people (who have yet to be given the beef) and this insidious rumor campaign?   Proof positive is what the so-called Birthers are asking for, and the lack of it from Obama and Hawaii is the wind in their sails.  Obama has a very simple solution . . . have the damn birth certificate shown so these people will shut up.

However, in the case of this evil maneuvering against Beck, there is no solution, because the wicked rumor-mongerers demand that a negative be proven.  It's fallaciousness is similar, emotionally speaking, to the question-begging of "so when did you finally stop beating your wife", which presumes that you did.  You are thus in the position of having to disprove the claim buried in the question.

But how do you prove a negative?   Oh, sure, he could show he was somewhere else, or otherwise prove that every single bit of their claim was wrong.  But that's not the same, and is wrong for Beck to have to do that besides.  (e.g. Where was I in 1990?  Up yours!  I am a free man and owe you no
answer.  If you require one then "I was banging your mom" is your
answer, you trash.)

All that Beck's point-by-point response would do is to disprove the claims of the rumor-mongerers, who aren't even really trying to prove their claims as factually-based anyway.  And by even responding, Beck would be giving fuel to their fire.  And even if he was somehow able to do the impossible and prove this negative (that he did not commit the crime they claim), there is nothing to stop them from doing it all over again with another crime the next day.

It's just more sick behavior from leftist trash, and it's enough to make one wish for the existence of Hell just so there's a proper place for such animals.

Another LGF Classic Moment

Obama as Witch Doctor re: ObamaCare (e.g. making fun of his health care)

LGF calls this disgusting, racist, the creator a creep, and uses it to attack the Tea Party movement.

Now let's flash backward a bit . . .

Bush as Witch Doctor for no apparent reason

What's the difference?  Just because Obama is of African descent doesn't make topical fun-poking about his health care ideas racist, you twits, any more than poking fun of Bush as a European king-figure (from the same site as the Bush witch doctor pic) is racist.

So, LGF is getting to the point where they are cordially invited to eat me.   Too bad they won't allow new commenters as they continue to drive off the deep end.  Echo chamber, anyone?

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.

What a Ho

Be glad you didn't get caught, boy . . . now run far away, 'cause her kind is no good.

JournoList

Seems the liberal media does indeed have its own little support group and information hub where they can get their stories straight. It's called the JournoList . . . and it's not the first such meetingplace for lefties to get their spin aligned, but it is the current one.

(The rest of the time they seem to just quote Democrat talking points memos.)

“There is nothing comparable on the right. E-mail conversations among bloggers, journalists and experts on our side tend to be ad hoc,” Goldfarb said. “The JournoList thing always struck me as a little creepy.”

Kaus, too, has seemed put off by the whole idea, once talking on BloggingHeads about how the list “seems contrary to the spirit of the Web.”

“You don’t want to create a whole separate, like, private blog that only the elite bloggers can go into, and then what you present to the public is sort of the propaganda you’ve decided to go public with,” Kaus argued.