James McQuivey, a principal analyst at technology research firm Forrester, said in the VHS-versus-Betamax war, porn provided a significant boost for the winning format.

He also noted the adult entertainment industry has often paved the way with new uses of technology -- such as streaming video on the Internet -- and said porn could help tip the scales in the current DVD format battle.

"If the porn industry wanted to break the logjam of HD-DVD and Blu-ray, it could," McQuivey said. "If they said 'We are going to go with HD-DVD' you would see a few million homes immediately go out and buy HD-DVD players. They have that power."

Sony screwed this one up last time too.

Porn could be the key to next-generation DVD war - Yahoo! News

Years ago I heard a rumor of a rare coffee that was collected from the droppings of a wild animal. For quite a while, having nothing to substantiate this I had dismissed this as either an urban legend, or something so rare I was unlikely to ever have access to it.

Well thanks to the coffee explosion this rare and unusual blend is readily available, though still very expensive. My interest in this was rekindled when I noticed Armeno Coffee Roasters, my favorite source for fine coffee is now carrying Kopi Luwak Coffee.

I don't even know what to say about this one. Coffee for $100 a pound?

Life After Coffee � The Straight Poop on Kopi Luwak Coffee

The pornographers’ progress with HD may also be somewhat slowed by Sony, one of the main backers of the Blu-ray high-definition disc format. Sony said last week that, in keeping with a longstanding policy, it would not mass-produce pornographic videos on behalf of the movie makers.

And Sony shoots thenselves in the ass again. It may not be everyone, but there is a large segment of the population that buys porn (see the $3.6 BILLION figure noted a few paragraphs later) and those are people who won't get Blu-ray, they'll get HD-DVD. Sont lost the VHS-Beta war by forcing a proprietary format on companies that didn't want one. They're positioned better to try it this time by owning their own movie studio, but I don't think that's enough to cover both people who don't want to adopt Sony's rules for publishing and losing the porn business.

Beta was by far a better technology, the resolution in 1975 was better than DVD is now, but they lost, badly. They made the same mistake with their "memory stick" mess, seemed to get it right with the PS1 and PS2, but they're back to their original screw up again here.

In Raw World of Sex Movies, High Definition Could Be a View Too Real - New York Times

"I am not opposed to her getting a vote," Brownback said before a lunch with potential donors and supporters in Davenport. "I would like her to come back through committee so she can testify what took place, factually ... her legal views on same-sex marriage and her ability and willingness to be impartial."

Neff has said she attended the commitment ceremony as a friend of one of the two women, a longtime neighbor.

She insisted in an Oct. 12 letter to Brownback that the ceremony had no legal effect and would not influence her ability to act fairly as a federal judge.

Hey Senator Brownface, she already answered the question unlike most of the asshats who show up, and you're holding her up, after she's already been passed by the committee, for something she's already done? This is called being a putz.

From our good friends at UrbanDictionary.com:
Putz
Literally, vulgar slang for penis, not to be used lightly. More offensive than the schmuck, which can be used affectionately or teasingly. Rarely used to describe the member, schmuck does that. Def. from the "Joys of Yiddish" by Leo Rosten

Brownback wants to re-question nominee - Yahoo! News

Congressman Markey,

While I'm not one of your constituents, your statements and actions often have an impact that reaches beyond your district. Yesterday you were quoted in several news media outlets as having called for the arrest of Christopher Soghoian, a PHD candidate at the University of Indiana Bloomington, because he created a web page that generates phoney airline boarding passes. As you are likely aware, your call was answered by the FBI who reportedly broke into Soghoian's house last night and seized all of his computer equipment.

I am a professional computer security researcher. I work for one of the worlds largest IT companies. My job involves finding vulnerabilities in software systems and getting them fixed. Responsible vendors are usually very responsive and willing to work with my team when we contact them with information about problems with their products. Through this process we are able to locate and repair vulnerabilities in IT infrastructure before the bad guys can find them and exploit them. However, there are always a few unsophisticated people who seek to shoot the messenger instead of dealing with the flaw.

Christopher Soghoian is one of the good guys. He is not a criminal and he is not enabling criminals. He did not create the vulnerability in the boarding pass screening process. This problem has existed for years, and it has been noted in other quarters, most recently by Sen. Chuck Schumer. However, the problem hasn't been fixed. Soghoian's website was intended to demonstrate how simple this is, and he has clearly and repeatedly stated that his intent in creating the site was to raise awareness about the problem so that it will be fixed. His website does not make this much easier than standard desktop publishing software available on anyone's personal computer.

Your call for his arrest, and the subsiquent events that have unfolded over the past 24 hours, have done serious harm to the national security of the United States. You could have simply contacted him, informed him of the legal problems that one could face for operating such a website, and discussed shutting it down. By choosing instead to prosecute him you are sending a message to security professionals in this country that if you observe a problem with national security policies or practices and make people aware of those problems in good faith so that they might be fixed, the government will treat you as an enemy and will prosecute you if possible. The inevitable result will be that people will hold their tongues, and problems will persist until they are discovered by someone who has malicious intent.

I strongly urge you to reconsider your position on this matter. The current course of action is not in the best interests of this country.

Respectfully,
Tom Cross

Congressman Markey also go a letter from myself. Christopher Soghoian is a whistleblower. Any number of people have already blown it but sometimes it takes loud and clear for that blow to sound. I have no dobt this will get Mr. Markey to add some substantial additions to his message, but I have serious doubts about the status of Mr. Christopher Soghoian.

God help him in a counntry where waterboarding has been given a green light.

My Letter to Ed Markey

A post about Travolta's fly-in house.

[That's cool, but check out the house!]

Google Sightseeing Jumbolair

"How good would it have looked for the government in general if we still couldn't have stopped the fourth plane an hour and 35 minutes [into the attack]?" Azzarello asked. "How good would it have looked if there was a total breakdown in communication and nothing worked right?"

This is just scary.

9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes

(Of course in its discussion of legislative history the Court wholly ignores the President's signing statement, which explicitly set forth his understanding that the DTA ousted jurisdiction over pending cases.)

Of everything in the opinion, concurrences and dissents, nothing is as scary as this one line from Scalia. He is assigning, at minimum, the equivalence of legislative intent to a signing statement. The executive is not the legislative and equating them is a grossly pernicious error.

HAMDAN v. RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, et al.

Why the anger? It can be summed up in one run-on sentence: We have lost two towers in New York, a part of the Pentagon, an important American city called New Orleans, our economic solvency, our global reputation, our moral authority, our children's future, we have lost tens of thousands of American soldiers to death and grievous injury, we must endure the Abramoffs and the Cunninghams and the Libbys and the whores and the bribes and the utter corruption, we must contemplate the staggering depth of the hole we have been hurled down into, and we expect little to no help from the mainstream DC press, whose lazy go-along-to-get-along cocktail-circuit mentality allowed so much of this to happen because they failed comprehensively to do their job.

George W. Bush and his pals used September 11th against the American people, used perhaps the most horrific day in our collective history, deliberately and with intent, to foster a war of choice that has killed untold tens of thousands of human beings and basically bankrupted our country. They lied about the threat posed by Iraq. They destroyed the career of a CIA agent who was tasked to keep an eye on Iran's nuclear ambitions, and did so to exact petty political revenge against a critic. They tortured people, and spied on American civilians.

You cannot fathom anger arising from this?

A fabulous rebuttal to Cohen's quite honestly absurd arguments from a few days ago.

William Rivers Pitt | An Open Letter to Richard Cohen

The veteran rocker hired the luxury Royal Suite at the five-star Imperial Hotel in Vienna, Austria, for June when the Stones are due to play a gig in the city.

Bush’s aides then tried to book it to tie in with a summit meeting.

But Mick put his foot down and insisted he was keeping the booking.

Sorry W, they're just looking out for their future interests.

The Sun Online - News: Mick beats George to suite