In a nutshell, Digg got a story that had a key that allowed people to make a copy of virtually all DVDs published to date. It got to the front page. The HD-DVD consortium sent Digg a cease and desist letter. Digg pulled the story. HD-DVD is also a sponsor of Digg. The Digg users saw the story pulled and assumed that Digg was censoring them. In protest, a storm of submissions developed with people encouraging each other to digg anything that had the HD-DVD key.  I shot a few diggs for all my peeps at digg. Funny stuff. Digging cuz i give a damn.  Kevin Rose, owner of Digg, finally waved the white flag. Free Speech and Piracy wins.

<h2>HD-DVD lost the code and won the format war.</h2>

The real outcome of all of this I believe is that Sony loses the HD war. HD-DVD wins. Blue Ray Loses. With the ability to copy HD-DVD content, users will flock to HD-DVD when they need to make that decision. Just like they did with VHS over BetaMax. Less than 1% of all users will ever copy a HD-DVD I’m betting, but it will take over. Didn’t cost them anything either, just the legal fees for the cease and desist letters so they can put up a “reasonable effort” at protecting the content. It was the smartest move they could have ever made to win the format wars.

Is this really worth moving?

I’ve had an Orbitrek elliptical machine for a while and it’s been a pretty good home cardio machine. Since I’ve started mountain biking, I haven’t used it all that much since the 2 hour rides are plenty of cardio. So it went into the “No Move” pile of things in the house.

It’s a pretty large piece (3 ft wide x 5 ft high x 4 long ) or so, so shipping it after an ebay sale would probably not make a lot of sense. Instead, I listed it on craigslist locally. I put up a nice pic and some Grade B marketing copy and waited patiently. In about 2 weeks, it sold. I put a little money in my pocket, the buyer gets a good cardio machine for a great price, and it’s one less thing I have to move. Sweet.

I’ve listed some throw pillows for sale too and plan to get some paintings up there this week. No fees for listing on Craigslist and you get it up there for 45 days. Not bad at all. Craigslist, i love you

The funny thing is, I look through some of these old posts and I wonder why I even bothered. I’m sure it’ll help my PageRank though. lol.

America is in crisis. Much like the homo sapien citizen, our elephants have succumbed to too much TV and super-sized meals. And in that vein of thinking, Americans, as the world’s fitness experts, have done for our elephant brethren what we do for ourselves: buy exercise equipment. Yes, an elephant in Alaska now owns a treadmill. Here’s the story.

Now how long do you think it will be until visitors to the zoo walk by the elephant enclosure and see it being used as a clothes rack. I’m guessing 3 weeks.

The old site: GELATOMETTI
The new site: Sun of GELATOMETTI

He writes, draws, inks, and does whatever else a cool comic book needs. I got a recent set of his Batman comics. They were impressive.

Stan Lee, unfortunately, is not Korean, but he is also quite good. Let us mourn and rejoice at the same time.

Notice that Mike Brown has stepped down from FEMA due to everyone realizing that the emperor has no clothes. Could this be the first of many cronies to be removed from key government positions? Don’t get me wrong, I understand you have to try and get your friends and family a job, but one they are wholeheartedly unqualified for? This kind of stuff is ruining America.

NPR said today that there was a Plum book that is given to the president, which lists all the jobs that don’t require any kind of committee approval or congressional approval to appoint a person to. The people should take the opportunity and look through this book and find all of the other Mike Browns in government today.

FEMA used to do a decent job before cronyism and lack of funding messed it up. Based on this same logic, we should continue to move away state and local responsibilites to the federal government in those cases where the federal government is responsible in the case of a national crisis. To this end, I propose we put the education department under the military. Also, driver’s licenses and testing should be done by the Pentagon. After all, the interstate system does run across states and it connects local roads to federal roads.

Hopefully, when this comes to Congress they will not try to pass the disaster relief buck to an already stretched thin military, but will solve the underlying issues. Homeland Security must fulfill its mission of coordinating information and capabilities to protect the lives and security of U.S. citizens. Whether the attack be by terrorists, weather, disease, or other threats, we need to have coordinated preparation and response. Not the finger pointing and buck-passing that has occurred as of late.

I’m allowing comments on this post for the next week or so.

I was reminded about my days in college, rowing for the crew team. The many hours spent on the old Concept 2 Model C.

Apparently the new Model D is quieter, so you can hear yourself crying as you do a long row. That was pretty much impossible with the C. Nice work. It also has the ability to upload your data to a website so you can see how bad you stink compared to the rest of the world. I used to only get beat by the other people in my boat and team. Now I have a whole world of rowers!

I’m thinking I want one. Here’s the link: Concept2

Hillary in 2008 = Democrats lose again
Bush needs to go away = Cheney in power = I move to Mars
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