Back in the early 80's there was a punk band, Black Flag.  Although an excellent band to go down in the annals of great American music, the most important achievement of this band was to introduce the world to Henry Rollins.  He's no ordinary musician.  Henry Rollins is a really smart guy who is witty, passionate, and loves his country.

Rollins has for years continued to inspire me to believe in superheroes.  Sure, you might notice the guy isn't popularly considered "the best" at anything he does, but he's pretty darn good and he does just about everything. He has got to be the most well-rounded human being on the planet and certainly he is one of the most talented and intelligent.

He's a rock n' roll, tatooed, poetic, muscle-bound, comedic, political activist who always has a thought-provoking point to make, always makes it well, and usually injects some black humor to soften the blow when dealing with tough issues.  He's hugely popular, known well and well-known within certain circles but he's never gotten long-term mainstream exposure.  And that's really everyone's loss.

So when I discovered he was all over YouTube I figured I'd do everyone a good turn and write about it for those who might not know of Henry or haven't seen him in a while.  Keep in mind, he may say the occasional non-work-safe word, so turn the volume down, parental guidance is suggested for children under the age of 13 and all that.

Getting back to the Republican thing, it's not fair to characterize Republicans negatively, but I think it's perfectly fair to say that a lot of the people who have caused a lot of the problems over the last few years have been Republicans.  Henry has a few things to say regarding some of those people.

This first one I'll just link to.  It's pretty intense and worth a watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtmjC76Jk8o

Here are some other great Rollins clips.

[coolplayer]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouObpcD67IE[/coolplayer] 

[coolplayer]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRNp2VT1U_U[/coolplayer]

[coolplayer]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgSBhlw-o9E[/coolplayer]

Microsoft, in their infinite Wisdom… I'm sorry, did I say Wisdom?  I meant Greed.  Anyway, in their infinite greed they decided that the Windows Vista Upgrade Disc would no longer accept the CD for a previous Windows version as proof enough to qualify for an upgrade.  Windows has to actually be installed on the hard drive in order to qualify.

Apparently, some small group of people who have never owned Windows before and happened to be building their own PCs decided to borrow their neighbor's Windows Installation Disc to "qualify" for the upgrade editions of previous versions of Windows, thus unfairly getting a lower price and cheating Microsoft out of a portion of their profits.

This new requirement is apparently designed to squeeze just a little bit more of that money out of the few people who are doing what I just described in the previous paragraph, but are too lazy to actually install their neighbor's version of Windows on the hard drive before using the Vista Upgrade disc. This had the side effect of forcing anyone who wants to do a clean install of Vista to purchase the full version, even if they already own a previous version of Windows. Of course, Microsoft is all broken up about this.

Unfortunately, Microsoft is working multiple marketing angles, and the "let's make it impossible to do a clean installation of Windows Vista using an upgrade disc" angle had an unforeseen collision with the "let's get them hooked first, then start charging them" angle.  Windows Vista permits itself to be installed as a trial version without any license-key — temporarily.

( For those who don't know, doing a "clean" installation means installing Microsoft Windows on a blank hard drive as opposed to upgrading from a version that is already installed which inevitably leaves some of the original files and drivers, sometimes causing problems. )

But temporary is all you need because once Vista is installed you can apparently then run the Vista install/upgrade program again (from inside Vista), type in your license key and opt to do a clean installation. — Special thanks to DailyTech.com for this fascinating Vista Trivia.

You read that correctly, you can use the upgrade disc to temporarily install Vista on a blank hard drive without a license, and then you can run the install program again and use the installed version of Vista to qualify for the upgrade.

Which means that Microsoft, in seeking to increase revenue by squeezing every penny out of people who were cutting corners, has inadvertantly released an upgrade edition that can be used to qualify itself for an upgrade to itself — so anyone who knows this little trick wouldn't have to buy the "full" (non-upgrade) version of Windows Vista in order to perform a clean installation — they wouldn't even need to own a copy of a previous version of Windows.

Of course, I don't recommend anyone do this.  It is in violation of Microsoft's licensing agreement and therefore not legal, however it is ironic that in it's greed to pinch every possible penny from people playing with loopholes that Microsoft themselves created the biggest loophole yet.  Some might say it's Karma.

- one

This AP story is fairly widely distributed, showing up at Yahoo!, ABC News as well as the Boston Herald.  In a nutshell, the story is about how with two black coaches in the Superbowl, black football fans won't know who to root for.  That is pretty much the most racist thing I've ever seen in a modern newspaper.

Granted, it isn't the traditional "back of the bus" racism, but it is racism nonetheless.  Any serious football fan has his or her favorite teams. I'm certain that many people welcome the fact that both coaches are black, and that makes it somewhat historic — I am even sure some people feel exactly how the article assumes, but it's downright racist to assume any plurality of black football fans pick their teams based on the color of the coach's skin.

Obviously we've come a long way, although there is still a fair amount of the "really bad" racism if you know where to look, so this isn't an enormous issue but since it's in a widely distributed AP article I just thought I'd point out that eliminating racism doesn't mean being super-sensitive to minority issues and trying to kiss their ass.  It means treating everyone like they were your brother, cousin, neighbor or drinking buddy. 

If you're white and you saw an article about how happy white people are because both Hockey coaches in the Stanley Cup were white, in fact you were so happy that you didn't know which team to root for — how would that make you feel?

I hope I've made my point.  Oh, and just one more thing: if you're ever having a conversation with anyone who's gay, there's no need to start an uncomfortable conversation about how much you like Ian McKellan.  None.  Stop trying to be sensitive and just be.

- one