Yahoo Search Puts New Research Assistant to Work

Technology News: Search Tech: Yahoo Search Puts New Research Assistant to Work: "One-third of that time is wasted looking for information and not being able to find it."

I am a Google fan and I hope (and suspect) they are also working on a research tool such as the above Yahoo one. I don't want to switch to Yahoo but if they develop such a tool I probably just will have to switch for all the time saving it would mean!

FLV Splitters

I was looking for a program that could split Armstrong video into the relevant parts. Not surprisingly, that was not easy.

I first had to convert the FLV file into AVI. Most of the programs doing that pretend to be free but are not. I only found two really free ones.

One of these is called Super, but it's a freaking 30MB and it still had long to finish downloading when I found the other solution.

The other solution is beautifully explained on the http://worldtv.com/blog/guides_tutorials/flv_converter.php page, including the reason why it is so difficult to find a decent free program to do such.

Once in AVI, it was easy to split using the Windows Movie Makers included in Vista.

I am just writing this to reward that beautiful page above with a link and recommendation, and just in case someone else one day bumps in the same problem.

Gaza

VOA News - Israel to Vote on Gaza Truce

I have not followed this question closely and have barely read anything about it but I have seen a lot of spam mentioning what about all the deaths in Gaza etc.

What I do remember reading early on, before all this started, was that Hamas declared they are not going to renew the truce agreement they had with Israel when it expired a few weeks ago.

At first sight, again without having all the details about it, this seems utterly stupid to me, because without truce Israel is basically free to get in and do whatever operation they want which they could not if there was a truce. And what do the Palestinians gain from it? They are in no position to fight the might of Tsahal.

Waterboarding Is Torture

The Associated Press: Obama's AG pick breaks from Bush on torture, GTMO: "With just three words, Attorney General-designate Eric Holder capped years of angry debate over U.S. counterterrorism policy and declared a major break from the Bush administration."

Certainly a very welcome change from coward hypocritical idiot incompetent Gonzales.

Still, somehow, it reeks of too little too late... Will the US ever be able to make up for all the wrong the Bush administration has done for eight looooong freaking years ? I wonder... It certainly is not going to be overnight...

Obama to Close Guantanamo

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Obama to act early on Guantanamo: "Barack Obama will issue an executive order within days of entering the White House to close the Guantanamo detention centre, senior advisers have confirmed."

I am delighted to hear that.

This came as a good and refreshing news after I read about the press conference of *&(@#*^Bush that made me fall off of my chair of incredulity.

Traffic Analysis

Traffic raises a bit for xenu.net in January, but considerably more so for scientology.org!

OT: Lame Defense for the Worst Ever President in US History

I can't even start to fathom the depth of total and utter idiocy the "two most influential women in President George W. Bush's White House" (Mrs Bush and Rice?!) get into in trying to defend Bush presidency.

Mrs Bush about the shoe:

He's very quick. As you know, he's a natural athlete and ducked it.

??? a natural athlete, ducking a shoe???

"As bad as the incident is, in my view, it is a sign that Iraqis feel a lot freer to express themselves," she said.

??? because this is something people allowed him to do???

Jesus...

Condoleezza Rice:

Rice noted that while Germany was reunified in 1990, the work that made it possible was done in the 1940s

Duh?? No way. Germany was eventually re-unified because the high principles the US followed, together with inevitable results of prosperity it brought about, made the contrast intolerable.

Somebody should tell Condoleezza (that name is the only good thing I see in her), that the separation of Germany by the wall was precisely created in the 1940s. What Bush did is also not comparable to the Marshall Plan that happened after the war, because Bush was the aggressor, not the other way around, and is widely seen as such.

Or does Condoleeza really mean to say that the reunification was made possible because it was separated in the first place???

Mrs Bush:

She said her husband responded to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in a way that has kept the nation safe.

No. He fell right into Ben Laden's trap, right where he wanted him to be - to bring about a general distrust of the US and a general rally against what was until then the first power in the world, not just because of its military might, but most of all because of its abeyance to fundamental principles. Ben Laden is the winner here.

By lying to the world and engaging in sheer aggression against a sovereign nation without a shred of evidence for his lies, bombing thousands upon thousands of innocents in full view of a powerless world, Bush trashed the trust people had in that nation for ever. And that makes the world a much less safer place than it ever was.

So no, he definitely not responded to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in a way that has kept the nation safe.

It would take many Obamas to try and restore that trust, but OTOH, I think somewhere it's irreversible. Things will never be the same again, and other nations will raise to take the lead

Bush was the President who made the giant stumble.

Rice:

Rice took a similar view in a separate interview, saying that claims that the Bush administration has been one of the worst ever are "ridiculous."

Yes, it's ridiculous - it's not one of the worst President ever, it definitely is the worst ever recorded in history.

Not only that. If I ever saw a world leader who deserves sentencing for crimes against Humanity, that would be the one. By very very far. I sincerely hope that once he loses his immunity, he will be held accountable for his crimes.

This lame attempt at defending Bush just makes him look even worst. They can't bring up a single thing that would actually speak for him apart for insipid and unmeasurable, almost irrelevant, generalities (supposedly fighting aids and corruption).

He "liberated millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq from oppressive governments"? Yes, that's true, but, while nobody is blaming him for Afghanistan (after 911, there really was little other choices), the Iraq one was a major goof.

My guess is that he saw that what he did in Afghanistan was good, and thought he had an opportunity to do the same with every other oppressive governments, and so write his name in history as the great liberator of the world.

The problem is that he had to turn the US into an oppressive government itself in order to "achieve" that. He should have had the intelligence to yield to the massive protests around the world (and in the US) against the war. By then it was probably too late for him to go back, so he had to push through in spite of everything.

The consequences of this are immeasurable. It made of him indeed, together with other heartless and aggressive policy decisions he took, one of the worst President in history, and this is to put it very very mildly. I think that the title of worst President ever is fully deserved.


Related blog entries - R-Bushoe-

John Holdren and Scientology

At first I thought, reading this article, that Obama appointed a Scientologist as the White House Science adviser, but then I found out that the author uses "Scientology" with the meaning of pseudo-science, or approximate science, not as a reference to the actual movement.

You can see this in these two other articles of his:

• Electric Cars, Their Grid, and Climate Scientology
• Horse Hockey Climate Scientology: “Getting Rid” of the Medieval Warming Period
  

PS - In another article today, an other author also use "Scientology" in a similar, albeit more political, manner:

"The political right, however, calls Kwanzaa a pseudo-Marxist phoney holiday which has been adopted by public institutions as part of a politically correct assault on the standing of Christmas. "It's the Scientology of holidays," says Erick Erickson, who writes the influential conservative blog Redstate.com."

Laptops Finally Take Their Rightful Place

Slashdot echoes other news stories about the fact that notebook sales have surpassed desktop sales for the first time in history.

It's been years since I only use laptops. It's so much more practical than desktops that I wonder why people still bother with them at all.

I always advise people to buy a laptop rather than a desktop and they invariably come back to me and say that this was a great advice.

There may be some ergonomic arguments for work stations, but it's easy enough to build one around a laptop too, and in addition it also allows you to take your work with you when you need to go on mission or on an extensive holiday (maybe that later is not such a good idea, though). As for "power", most laptops are now powerful enough to perform reasonably well.

Desktops are an endangered species.

Feel My Finger

Barbara Schwartz has a tread running in ARS about Travolta successfully giving a touch assist to Marlo Brando.

I am not convinced that the fact Marlo Brando told he feels better demonstrates anything, but this is not the point I want to make here.

I remember while "moonlighting" during my time on staff in Belgium that I gave a series of touch assist to the wife of my boss (in his presence). It did not seem to have much effect one way or the other (bad or good), but it did feel odd to repeatedly tell the wife of my boss "feel my finger...".