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2251

Screenshot Captor / Re: Screenshot Captor 4.5 Beta - Request for testers

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 18, 2013, 10:35 PM »

Okay, the "misbehaving part" was Edit/Prefs/PostCapture/Copy to Clipboard was somehow set/reset to "nothing". Going back to "Image Bitmap" gets me half way there. We're back from "doing nothing" on Control-Printscreen.

Now the new question is it grabbed the "Whole window". Is there such a thing as it picking up the "active pane/dropdown within an application window"?

2252

Screenshot Captor / Re: Screenshot Captor 4.5 Beta - Request for testers

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 18, 2013, 10:21 PM »

I was just following the directions from the right-click tray menu.

dont use the tray menu to take screenshots -- consider the tray menu just a reminder of your hotkeys.
you can find hotkey configuration in the preferences dialog.

-mouser (June 18, 2013, 08:12 PM)

Sure, under Edit/Preferences,
Control-PrintScreen still says "Active Window" (I never changed it), but it wasn't working.

2253

Screenshot Captor / Re: Screenshot Captor 4.5 Beta - Request for testers

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 18, 2013, 08:01 PM »

Somewhere in X versions, by now with the new V4.5 I am having trouble with the keyboard grabs starting with control-printscreen to grab an active window. 1. First of all, as of right now, that sequence doesn't seem to do anything at all. But even worse, in the spreadsheet programs, it seems to activate some command in there, meaning you have a hot-key "fight". Any ideas?

Check the SC hotkey configuration and make sure ctrl+prtscr is set to do what you think it is.  If so, it sounds like your other spreadsheet program is taking it over.

2. As more of a "next feature enhancement", I am unable to get screen grabs of things like drop down menus because to go over and left click on SC "steals focus" so then the drop down window goes away. Examples are in the office programs, but likely in other places such as Yahoo Mail.

why are you trying to "go over and left click on SC" instead of just hitting the PrtScr hotkey to capture the screen?

-mouser (June 18, 2013, 07:28 PM)

Well at this exact second (it was fine an hour ago) it's misbehaving and not capturing anything at all, but I didn't think to try the plain screen capture hotkey. Does that "steal focus"? Left Clicking on SC was that little mini feature you put in a few months ago.

But where do I "Check the SC hotkey configuration"? I was just following the directions from the right-click tray menu.

2254

Screenshot Captor / Re: Screenshot Captor 4.5 Beta - Request for testers

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 18, 2013, 07:14 PM »

Mouser,
Somewhere in X versions, by now with the new V4.5 I am having trouble with the keyboard grabs starting with control-printscreen to grab an active window.

1. First of all, as of right now, that sequence doesn't seem to do anything at all. But even worse, in the spreadsheet programs, it seems to activate some command in there, meaning you have a hot-key "fight". Any ideas?
2. As more of a "next feature enhancement", I am unable to get screen grabs of things like drop down menus because to go over and left click on SC "steals focus" so then the drop down window goes away. Examples are in the office programs, but likely in other places such as Yahoo Mail.

Mini sidebar - Yahoo finally got aggressive this month and began to "bully" switching out of legacy classic mail as "unsupported". (It was no surprise, they began indicating that a year ago, but now they began using a mean full screen pop-up.) The new version has a lot of "soft rollover" menus, as well as some "click-drop" ones.

So for example if I wanted to SC some of those menus, it's that focus problem again. Any ideas?

Cheers,

--Tao

2255

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 18, 2013, 06:49 PM »

Separately from the money side, I have pondered a bit on different types of "weighted rating" systems for papers, then the reviewers. So very basically, Researcher A produces a Good Paper, and gets a "Good Researcher" score. Reviewer A reviews it correctly, and gets a Good Reviewer score. So in a simple world, if you get a paper from those two, you can generally "trust it".

But if one or the other goes rogue, then they will begin to collect "bad scores", and eventually like crying wolf game theory, they won't be believed even if later they start to turn around.

I know, everything can be gamed, but at the top of the basic theory, it becomes a shorthand for quality.

2256

Living Room / Re: WTF? A serious news story about 50-foot tall humans on a planet??

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 18, 2013, 06:35 PM »

That distinction bothers me - it's like they both suffer from spiraled twines of the same flaws.

The big flaw is the distance problem. So it's almost/more useless to craft messages to aliens, because you then even get a distance-aim problem! Again we're waiting for one of Star Trek's breakthroughs (really, brilliant in 1966 from a fiction perspective!) So we need Subspace. Except it's gonna have to be an alien to tell us how to do it. Or by chance we do it ourselves, then hope the alien picks up on the "Weird protocol", then fires back a message.

2257

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Kingsoft Office 2013 PRO giveaway

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 18, 2013, 05:57 PM »

Actually, be "reeeealy" careful with the file extensions - somewhere in fiddling with Libre and Kingsoft, my file extensions broke pretty badly, and I'm having some real trouble getting them to behave again.

It's a systemic problem I've seen before - the last time was on the music-file side.

Update:
In general, the approach I have used before worked, with an extra wrinkle.
1. Uninstall both/all of the "fighting" programs.
2. Install one at a time and only give it partial defaults. (Here, Libre only gets Word files.)
3. Install the other to give it other defaults. (Kingsoft gets the other office files.)
Bonus: It just so happens for me that Libre 4.1 Beta simply doesn't correctly grab extensions at all, so it became a red herring. So I removed that, and went back to the 4.0.3.3 Stable build and then back to the steps above.

2258

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Kingsoft Office 2013 PRO giveaway

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 18, 2013, 04:55 PM »

Update:
I might be sold for Spreadsheet, on the UI side. I had begun trying to put out of my mind just how much Libre had moved stuff for whatever reasons. There are over twenty big ticket "moves" and bunches of smaller ones. The Exec Overview is that lots of stuff from the File menu got smashed into Libre's "Format" menu. Workhorses like Page Setup, and the Sorts and Filters and Print Area, all got moved around, and slowly, all that "it moved, deal with it" began to wear on me. Doing projects here at home felt "second rate" after having "trained" on MS at work.

So yes, if use cases come up with really fancy features, be it charts, rotating lists, maybe scripting, etc, I dunno. You can maybe always "chain" the programs together - pound out the basics in Kingsoft and then import it into Libre. But day in day out those twenty some low-level "moved features" count more for me than the fancy theoretical stuff.

So Phoeni's review is in! Now the tides are reversed! Kingsoft gets to play Default, and then something will have to break badly for me to head over to Libre's side to see what's going on!

Meanwhile, presuming nothing silly happens on the activation side, "see you in a year". And as y'all speculated, they might do a Giveaway update to 2014 by then.

Meanwhile as a weird little social thing, I was trying to quietly promote LibreOffice, but I kept feeling I had to preface it with "but watch for formatting errors etc". Since Kingsoft is "so out there" basically no one will have ever heard of it, I'll just "handwave" it away as "different versions of office sometimes don't play nice with each other".

BUT:
It doesn't seem to like docx at all, so it might be a split - Kingsoft for spreadsheets, Libre for documents! So if I were in fact to pay for something a year from now, I'd have to see the price for Spreadsheet Only. In our discussion of "what's worth paying for", that's starting to tip the balance if it's value priced say $30 as opposed to getting dragged all into MS Suite for hundreds. With missing docx support, Writer isn't enough to pay for, for me, so that one goes to Libre.

P.S. The two programs seem to fight each other a little for defaults, so be careful.

2259

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Kingsoft Office 2013 PRO giveaway

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 18, 2013, 03:23 PM »

4. In MS Office Excel 2010, the "custom ribbon" feature was activated by "right-clicking in a ribbon". Since that doesn't seem to be possible here, I went back to the Classic layout. Interestingly, since I've never worked with "powerpoint/clones" in my life, that might be really fascinating to switch back and forth those layouts to test "intuitiveness".

A wild question might be, if LibreOffice is a US-Based project and "easier to get at", maybe advice from legal counsel forced them to move their settings around to avoid legal issues from MS. But what if K-O, being Chinese, is "harder to get to", and could afford to actually match the MS settings!? That might just be a tipping point! Plus that "double interface" could be fascinating - you go Classic to "Get your work done" then occasionally flip to Ribbon to poke at new features on a rainy day when you decide you want to think "outside the box". That's because there IS in fact stuff on those ribbons - it just caused frustration because the 30 "workhorse features" you used to use vanished on you.

So, quick summary, this might be a serious contender for me UI wise! More info to come later!

2260

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Kingsoft Office 2013 PRO giveaway Trial Notes Part 1

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 18, 2013, 02:28 PM »

Kingsoft Office Trial Notes "live" as they happen:

1. The EULA still lists the trial as 30 days. So I have to either ignore that or find where it becomes the free year. Also it connects to Giveaway site with some special file so you need to actually install it in this trial period, not just download it and "do it later".

The latest wrinkle in EULA's seems to be this clause:

Admission
You acknowledge that you have now read and understood the EULA and have expressly agreed to be bound by all the terms and conditions of it.

2. Yep, the whole interface thing is definitely between "Office 2003 look-alike" and "After-Ribbon 2007+". One key feature of MS Office 2010 that I haven't yet mastered from the LibreOffice side is making your own custom Ribbon, so I'll glance at this one to see if that's there or not. I'll also look to see if the interface toggles in-program at a single switch or if you have to re-install it! (But see above about the time limit on installs!)

Watch out for the attempt for it to insert itself into browser favorites and the PermaTab extension for Firefox (which it informs me is not even available in this edition for Firefox 20+!)

It pulls a "thank you for installing" browser page. Among other things, note this sentence:
"Just add our application to your Facebook page and it will remind you and your friends about a new giveaway on a daily basis."

So that means Facebook is also usurping what used to be "newsletter emails" by now making them "newsletter posts on your facebook page, but this time they get your friend's eyeballs as well"!

3. It tries to put "authorship" on your documents - I can see how someone could want that, so if you want your privacy, for "name", I just put a random letter character in.

Meanwhile it does pop a box "hey click here to change user interface", so that's smart - it saves you from having to fish for it right off under some awful "tools/settings/advanced/interface/" kind of menu, though I bet it's somewhere in there like that too for later. FYI it's a little "shirt" icon in the top right corner, so after you get rid of the big "hey you" box, there it is. Not bad of an idea. More notes on that side later.

There is a sort of "pseudo-home" button in the top left that seems to have some of the old style command breakdowns, so that's nice. But the button sits there changing colors dynamically, so that could get annoying quick. There might be a setting somewhere to make that go static. I'll hunt for that later too.

It does also look like you can use that "pseudo-home" button to drop down to "tools/options" for typical "option-y" stuff. Also "Switch-UI" is there too besides the shirt icon. Remember, the UI's are modular so you can have for example the new Ribbon-y interface on Spreadsheet and the Classic one on Writer.

Speaking of Writer, either they are trying to fly under the radar / paid MS for some rights, but they seem to have done a better job matching up to the MS location of features, and that might be the kind of thing that begins to be a selling point vs LibreOffice. (Which I just installed to give this program "free shot at defaults" because I had a strange bug in L-O Spreadsheet that locked some old data into the default template somewhere!)

Meanwhile assuming it doesn't have a "time bomb" that blows up in a year, I can't see where it's doing any 1-year countdowns, so it might just possibly last longer than a year as is. (Which would be nice!) But even so, a year is a "long time", so let's say stuff like these switchable UI's finally sell you on one of these programs, part of my changing focus is to "get this year's work done, and worry about next year, next year". A year is TOTALLY different than 30 days. P.S. It's a Chinese company, if that matters to anyone.

Okay, so it's a done deal leaving K-S Writer on Classic. I'll go re-install Libre and compare the two of those later via UI stuff.

On a test file in K-S Writer, it's doing the whole "red-underline" thing for "auto-spellcheck", which isn't bad. I might have turned that off in Libre, but I now do vaguely recall wrestling a little with the spell check in Libre Writer. The regular spell check seems okay with only a 30 second test.  Word Count is under Tools/Word Count.

2261

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Kingsoft Office 2013 PRO giveaway

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 18, 2013, 02:13 PM »

oh yeah, the advertised price was not the full $70, but merely $30. Yet another important detail missed. I am beginning to be really embarrassed...

-Curt (June 18, 2013, 02:08 PM)

Heh Curt, go back and edit your topic Newspaper Style! After all, anyone who believes they saw anything different is a lunatic, right?!

But yeah, you just blasted out a review, but then it's easier for others to poke holes in an existing item than to nail it cold from scratch! So hang in there!

2262

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Kingsoft Office 2013 PRO giveaway

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 18, 2013, 02:12 PM »

With LibreOffice and OpenOffice available for free forever, see no need to ever pay for an office suite except maybe MS if your needs dictate.

-Midnight Rambler (June 18, 2013, 05:23 AM)

I'll go back to this for a minute.
Having glanced at the spirit of the LibreOffice split, OpenOffice is apparently on its way out.

But then even then it's a "two horse meta-race". There's MS from way back for all its reasons, and then for a long time what is now LibreOffice has been generally seen as the most steady contender on the free side.

For me it's not even really about the money - free is nice as long as you tap that angle, but eventually I might shell out for a copy of MS Office 2010 or something Just Because. Instead, it's about the details of the features and bugs and interoperability and use cases.

Let's do a couple of notes:
Switching away from IE to Firefox was pretty easy, and for better or worse I'm on Firefox for a long time to come.
Using LibreOffice on a home machine that never had MS Office has done okay so far, though I haven't tried to do any really fancy scripting practice etc. I've warned a couple of recruiters to watch for minor formatting glitches etc, but no catastrophes there yet.

But then it gets murkier. I haven't yet found any fatal flaws in LibreOffice that would lead me to keep galavanting around multiple office suites from these companies scrounging for the mindshare scraps. I get the spirit of it all - but my last brief foray there ended with Gnumeric beginning to fall fatally behind when it stopped being able to handle newer items from MS Office.

So I'll go look at it after this post as more of a "gee, this is a fun hour's entertainment" point of view, probably looking for holistic impressions on the GUI. But to me it feels a little dangerous to bounce back and forth at whim between office programs until some combination of quirks stacks up on your document until it finally breaks and then you don't know which one (or maybe just the anti-synergy!) broke it.

Edit: I just saw this part of the site promo:

"The first thing you’ll see when you open the newly released Kingsoft Office Suite Pro 2013 is a clean, new interface. The old features are still there along with 38 major improvements.
...
    Two interfaces: 2013 and classical ones. Two color schemes for 2013 interface: elegant black and water blue."

So that gives me something to chew on, to see what they fiddled with for the two interfaces. Quick early wondering: Whether it's "Before and After Ribbon".

Also the site seems to say there's under 12 hours left, so if y'all wanna try it, don't dawdle!

2263

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 18, 2013, 09:06 AM »

"Satan, Get thee behind me"?!
 

2264

DC Gamer Club / Re: Incredipede for free! (Linux only)

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 18, 2013, 09:05 AM »

Maybe some of the auxiliary parts like making it a tar file, one of the shell installer scripts, etc?

2265

Screenshot Captor / Re: Screenshot Captor 4.5 Beta - Request for testers

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 17, 2013, 10:29 PM »

Well, I was all the way back on version 3.4 so I took this chance to upgrade! It seemed to install just fine for me, so that's my limited testing report! : )

2266

Living Room / Re: Ministry of Truth - Washington Post changes wording in its archive about PRISM

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 17, 2013, 10:06 PM »

The proper procedure is to print a correction.  It's like 1984 all over again.  There is ZERO excuse for changing content vs. disclosing an update.  

-Rover (June 17, 2013, 08:59 PM)

There seem to be lots of excuses!!  Just none that are supposed to be acceptable to polite informed company.

2267

Living Room / Re: 29K word sample of my sci-fi ebook, due on Amazon and B&N in October

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 17, 2013, 08:13 PM »

1. How many forum members/visitors are reading this work? I know about 40hz, 4wd, and Perry Mowbray. Anyone else?

-kyrathaba (June 17, 2013, 08:04 PM)

I'm "lurking nearby"! : )

2268

Living Room / Re: Ministry of Truth - Washington Post changes wording in its archive about PRISM

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 17, 2013, 05:34 PM »

Those are the conclusions I've drawn as well.  The harder question is what do I do about it?  And funny enough, the most reasonable answer I've been able to come up that actually works in practice is......ignore it.

-superboyac (June 17, 2013, 05:16 PM)

Well, you can't quite "ignore" it because the foundation of all modern life outside your immediate location is someone else's report/anecdote. (If you want to go to the Basement, it's one more reason you can't ask your Deity for immediate verification of the facts!)

So then what Wikipedia made famous is "Citation Needed" as the very rawest of the raw stopgaps from stuff like the Aliens in the next thread over from the Guardian.

So then the entire concept of news is, underneath all the kaleidoscope spin doctoring, "something" is supposed to have happened. So if you tell anyone else, you basically get handed "Citation Needed".

But when your *Citation Changes*, they don't sweetly do Version Control like all you programmers do for a living. They just change it at will.

So yes, the more rampant this gets, it is absolutely PAST the slippery slope, because then you can't believe anything at all anymore, ever. Once you get past cute little bits of "common sense" like gravity, then it goes all Alice in Wonderland and it's almost not possible to function if the minute you pointed at a source, it has changed and then you can't prove why you're the only one that you can get hold of that ever saw the original version (versions!).

Cue all the SciFi stories - this is "locally" close to "alternate timelines".

It gets very very fast to a Matter of Degree.
After all, Obama isn't President. What? You are deluded into thinking he is? Why, because he said he was in the oath on the lawn, you think that matters? Who told you that? Were you there? What, you think the "nice steady stream of Obama-y things" means something?

2269

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 17, 2013, 11:51 AM »

I think it's cute. How the heck do people find such parallels? (Or is it photoshopped?)

-IainB (June 17, 2013, 09:59 AM)

Remember, one of the fun things about Da InterWebz is that you get to tap a world's worth of rare talents. So some people have a talent for pattern recognition. So I certainly imagine someone saw that news photo and their brain peeled off the matching cartoon graphic. 

It's related to the concept and talent for puns. I have a modest talent for those on "fast" days.

Try these:

A. This food dish:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frittata

Makes me think of:
A1: This person:
http://en.wikipedia....g/wiki/Nelly_Furtado

A2: And this song:
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=ITDD4doC6iw
"It means no curries, for the rest of your days!"

B. This Collectible Gaming Card:
http://magiccards.in...scans/en/mprp/10.jpg

And this politician:
http://en.wikipedia....g/wiki/Arlen_Specter

 

2270

Living Room / Re: Worth Reading: Trevor Pott's editorial on NSA PRISM and its real ramifications

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 17, 2013, 09:27 AM »

I'm actually a bit amazed/amused at the lack of unity in the dismissal spin stories.
Agencies deny it, companies deny it, then they admit it, but "only a little bit", etc.
Newspapers edit their own stories in the archives, etc.

Meanwhile here on another angle the Washington Post says that driver's ID's are in a searchable database at the local level.

So wait a min ... the big dogs "only look at 300 numbers", but the locals search millions of licenses?!

(Slashdot's version)
Officials Say NSA Probed Fewer Than 300 Numbers - Broke Plots In 20 Nations
http://news.slashdot...-plots-in-20-nations

2271

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Desktop Window

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 16, 2013, 01:02 PM »

Interesting, Chris.

As an example of alternative workflows, it's interesting that your choice is about the *desktop*, because I consider that among the easiest places to get to. However, just for the sake of "different folks", I do it with TranDesk Desktop Splitter, because at the click of the mouse in the tray, I get "copies" of my desktop instantly. So then I can access the stuff there just about as quick.

2272

Living Room / Re: Ministry of Truth - Washington Post changes wording in its archive about PRISM

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 16, 2013, 12:53 PM »

On a new angle, this isn't a tabloid "professional gadfly" rag at stake. If you have *Forbes* calling 'Dis on *The Washington Post*, it's already hit the Meta Level. Even in "Orwell" the "people" knew history was changed but "couldn't prove it" etc.

Here now you have one first tier source calling out another one, and then of course now Forbes' copy is Out There.

Check out this bit from the Forbes meta-article:

"Flat denials from the technology companies seem to have staid criticism for now and may have been a factor in convincing the paper to make revisions to its reporting."

The thing about Flat Denials is they are aggressive but risky. If this were the old days, all of this would have been hushed up. But the internet is Made For Viral (viral everything - 1.0 was Pr0n, 2.0 was Social Cats, so maybe finally 3.0 is Freedom!?).

So then that leads to crumbling statements like: (Double Quoted from Forbes)
"It is possible that the conflict between the PRISM slides and the company spokesmen is the result of imprecision on the part of the NSA author."

Uh ... so they're not saying it's a photo-shopped fake slide, right!? So how does one reconcile "apparently real presentation slides" with "flat denials by the companies"!?

2273

Living Room / Re: Ministry of Truth - Washington Post changes wording in its archive about PRISM

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 16, 2013, 12:48 PM »

Well yeah, once you open THAT can of worms, courtesy of the Pandora Box Company, then all kinds of fun can be had! Restated for "Today's Audience", if you weren't around for the two days when the "real" story hit the viral web, then if you go back to it say, when you have time over a weekend, what might be there in the archive could already be Spin-Doctored.

Since I am also a fan of reporting on Int. Prop. mischief, if you're fast enough to quote the original "Real" article, and happen to have an over-documented link (meaning time it was pulled and more), then when the story behind the link changes, what's the copyright status of your original quoted article? What's the copyright status on a version that "doesn't exist"!?

Are you now a _______ (Insert attack noun here) because you're now quoting a "no longer authorized version of a news story"!?

2274

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 15, 2013, 11:54 PM »

So with this text based one you can point out what I am supposed to be seeing and then I can see it.

But for the normal ones, I have tried all the suggestions over the years that involved defocusing, looking at it cross-eyed, looking at it from certain angles, or from a certain distance, with my glasses off, etc. And even when you tell me what it is that I am supposed to be seeing, even when you take your finger and point it out to me, all I see is the noise.

-app103 (June 15, 2013, 11:34 PM)

Maybe a variant of the same kind of diagramming could work. Those things "work" (when they do!) because the un-focussing involves Dot A and Dot B (and lots of other dots - but I'm not yet sure if more than two "merge as a unit" at the same time) have to "merge together". So for example take a sharpie pen (or do it digitally etc) to one of those, and make a big black dot in two places and then say "fiddle with your eye focus until both of these dots are together".

2275

Living Room / Re: Worth Reading: Trevor Pott's editorial on NSA PRISM and its real ramifications

« Last post by TaoPhoenix on June 15, 2013, 01:44 PM »

Well, all I can offer is "proto-ideas".

1. "Feckless and Divided", but maybe the Judiciary is our first stop for hope. Legal precedent does work differently from both legislative and executive precedent. The latter two can just do absolutely whatever they want whenever they want. But the judges do get grumpy when someone violates precedent too badly. So occasionally a judge gets to lodge a nugget of precedent in the right direction. A nice simple example is the judge who got grumpy at Prenda Law. *Theoretically* the Judiciary can knock down both Exec and Legis side stuff with the "Unconstitutional Cannon". One problem is that if you misfire that cannon, it takes a long time to repair the damage. And figuratively they only get to fire it twice vs 100 proposed cases. So then they have to let a lot of stuff slide for another day. Sometimes they "code this" with a strange looking ruling that seems too narrow, but then a few of the smarter reporters have decoded it to say "we're with you, right idea, but one election cycle too early for the political gestalt. Watch this space in about three years." Meanwhile the "next level down" a "Federal Judge" can have a great time repairing medium sized problems, before the rather large wheelbased Powers of Mean finally encircle him/her and take the judge down.

2. "Sleeper Agent President (for good)"
Cynicism is what it is, but *theoretically* you do get a new chance for a new direction each eight years, if not each four years. (Incumbent effect.) So get one of those Big Dogs that we have "never heard of" who found out that he'll die of cancer in two years to blow out his entire fortune to fix the country, and then you do have about a 2 year window to go all Katrina on the establishment before anyone quite realizes what's going on. It's a Sacrificial President. He doesn't WANT to be re-elected.

The basic way that works is:
A. Executive Orders. The President "Says Things" and off they go to be done. So just go all Gambit from the comics and start wheeling out Exec Orders For Good. Someone in Congress will panic and try to make a bogus law to prevent "too many exec orders", but it will take them a long time to override a veto.

B. Sacrificial Political Capitol.
The things with this approach is, it basically works exactly once. Blast a broad swath of groundwork laws into place as fast as possible. Get the mood of the country excited that finally some stuff will change. Then get the mood of the country that any congressperson "Against Healing the Country" will get voted out.

It's a bit of a wild animal, but maybe we need a wild animal.