2008 Presidential Race: Now With Kung-Fu Action Grip, KungFuElection.com: Apparently the original lyrics were “Replace these pricks, who will you pick?”, which became, “Replac them with…? Who will you pick?”

In the Future Your Computer Will be a Bigass Table: Microsoft Surface at CES: Stuff still hasn’t gotten the Surface video up on their site that I could find, but I’ll keep checking back and post it here when they do.

Huckabee and Obama Jump Nationally: Since this blog post Clinton and McCain won in NH and threw the whole election into a tailspin, McCain is a statistical deadhead with Romney for Michigan(my home state), and Clinton and Obama’s battle is making headlines every day.

Dear Sony, FREE THE MUSIC!: Sony has since announced that they will be offering DRM free music on Amazon. Additionally, Trent Reznor has suggested that a music tax is the way to go(not the first time this idea has popped up), and finally, in the DRM free world that is apparently now upon us, the music industry is now experimenting with digital-watermarking technology as a DRM substitute according to Wired.com.

Will the Porn Industry Ultimately Decide the HD Format War?: A far less reported event in the MSM then the CES is the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, also in Las Vegas. PC Magazine is reporting that the porn industry may be shifting to Blu-Ray, Jeff Thill the director of video operations for Hustler Video Group has said he is “leaning Blu-ray” and that “it could be a real sign that things will shift.” Thill has said that Hustler had success with its recent Blu-Ray release Jenna Haze Oil Orgy which it released in Blu-Ray with an HD DVD and regular DVD copy in case users had trouble with the Blu-Ray. In March Hustler will release its latest “Barely Legal” DVD in Blu-Ray. Hustler has so far released two titles in HD DVD, and will release 15-25 HD videos in the next year, most probably being Blu-Ray according to Thill. Vivid Entertainment home to Jenna Jameson has two Blu-Ray titles and three HD DVD titles on the shelves. Blu-Ray apparently does better online and HD DVD does better in retail stores according to Vivid. Vivid does not currently have a format preference. Wicked pictures has chosen to forgo Blu-Ray entirelyand has about six titles in HD DVD format, but their vice president of DVD productions, Jackie Ramos, has since been able to track down porn-frindly Blu-Ray producers and is now, “agressively” looking at those options.

Most porn producers seem to indicate that HD DVD is cheaper but the market outside of porn will ultimately decide this battle with the most interesting line in PC Magazine article being this one,

Albert Lazarito, vice president of Silver Sinema, also believes the consumer is key to winning the DVD battle. “With the Warner Brothers decision, the market will direct the outcome,” he said. Lazarito is “more than confident that it won’t be the adult realm” that selects a final DVD format.

and also this

“Everybody’s going to want to have both options,” Kysar said. “Blu-Ray could be the next step, but not if nobody uses it and it stays too cost prohibitive.”
Kysar also expressed concern about how much the camera would capture in high-definition, a sentiment echoed by Lazarito.
“Imperfections are magnified,” Lazarito said.

Making Your WiFi Available to the Public, Is It the Right Move?: Since writing this article I have read about Whisher, a piece of software available in beta that lets you share your WiFi network and in exchange being able to connect to access points that others have made available through Whisher. I have yet to check out it out, but if its any good I’ll be sure to blog about it, because it may be a way around the majority of problems with making your WiFi available to the public. In my original blog post I talked about Meraki, a service attempting to bring free WiFi to San Francisco, its worth noting that they are attempting to do things far beyond SF, if you’re interested in having an initiative from them around you, check out there site here.

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