Windows Registry

Click here for an article by Bob Rankin entitled "Rubber Bands, Duct Tape, and The Windows Registry."

It's always good to start with a definition. I like to call the Windows registry "a hideously complex ball of string, rubber bands, duct tape and bailing wire that's supposed to keep track of Windows system settings, your hardware configuration, user preferences, file associations, system policies, and installed software." It was intended to be an improvement on the simple text-based INI files that stored Windows configuration settings, but apparently too many pocket protectors were involved in the design.

One advantage of the registry is that it enables each user of a machine to maintain his/her own settings; each user can have a unique theme, speaker volume setting, set of apps, and so on. But the registry can also apply settings to all users, or a group of users specified by the system administrator (e. g., “adults” and “kids”). The registry is one of the most important files on your hard drive. On the downside, this “all eggs in one basket” approach can lead to problems if the registry is damaged or edited incorrectly.

It may be necessary to edit the registry to correct an error or corruption; to add a setting that is not part of the original design; or to prevent some system activity that is undesired. The registry is a very powerful tool, and if it’s used incorrectly, YES, it can wreak havoc on your system. But with a basic understanding of how it works, and some simple precautions, you need not fear.

Walter and Marilyn Shelest, 65 Years

Click here for an article in the Prince George Citizen by Christine Dalgleish entitled "P65rince George couple celebrates 65th anniversary." Walter and Marily are my neighbors across Edmonton Street at the corner of 12th Avenue.

2020: Trump Should Have Lost Texas

Click here for an article at Newsweek by Jason Lemon entitled "Texas AG Says Trump Would've 'Lost' State If It Hadn't Blocked Mail-in Ballot Applications Being Sent Out."

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, said former President Donald Trump would have lost in Texas in the 2020 election if his office had not successfully blocked counties from mailing out applications for mail-in ballots to all registered voters.

Harris County, home to the city of Houston, wanted to mail out applications for mail-in ballots to its approximately 2.4 million registered voters due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the conservative Texas Supreme Court blocked the county from doing so after it faced litigation from Paxton's office.

"If we'd lost Harris County—Trump won by 620,000 votes in Texas. Harris County mail-in ballots that they wanted to send out were 2.5 million, those were all illegal and we were able to stop every one of them," Paxton told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon during the latter's War Room podcast on Friday.

Biden defeated Trump in the electoral college, 306 to 232. Texas has 38 electoral votes. If Biden had won -- and he should have -- it would have been 344 to 194. 

Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by exactly the same margin, 306 to 232, in 2016, and declared it a landslide. (It wasn't, really, but it's a good, solid victory). But 344 to 194 is pretty much a real landslide.

Unfortunately, Paxton and Texas governor Greg Abbott are in the process of making it even more difficult for Democrats to win in Texas.

Mark Meadows in the Last, Desperate Days of the Trump Regime

Click here for an article in The New York Times by Katie Benner, entitled "Meadows Pressed Justice Dept. to Investigate Election Fraud Claims."

I had a very low opinion of Mark Meadows before I read this article; now it's plumbing new depths.

Emails show the increasingly urgent efforts by President Trump and his allies during his last days in office to find some way to undermine, or even nullify, the election results.

Apparently Meadows was repeatedly pushing the Justice Department to investigate any far-fetched conspiracy theory he could come up with in a futile attempt to overturn the results of the election.

That included a fantastical theory that people in Italy had used military technology and satellites to remotely tamper with voting machines in the United States and switch votes for Mr. Trump to votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr.

There's lots of interesting stuff to be found in the right-wing fever swamps!

Tulsa 1921 - tip of the iceberg - down the memory hole

I didn't learn about the Tulsa massacre until a few years ago, when The Washington Post ran a feature article on it. How does stuff like this get buried?

Everyone knows about the atrocity at Kent State, Ohio, 40 miles south of Cleveland, when jittery 19-year-old members of the National Guard opened fire on a crowd of demonstrating college students, killing 4 and wounding 9, on May 4, 1970? A Neil Young song, an iconic photo -- everyone knows about Kent State.

But how many people know about what happened in Orangeburg, South Carolina, a couple of years earlier? It was South Carolina highway patrolmen, not the National Guard, but they opened fire on about 200 student protesters on February 8, 1968. 3 were killed, 28 wounded.

Didn't know about that one, huh? Do you think it could be because the student protesters were black?

Ugly stuff gets shoved down the "memory hole":

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

That's George Orwell, 1984. Convenient device, that memory hole. 

Anyway, click here for an article about the many racial atrocities committed in "Red Summer," 1919. Warning: it's painful to read.