Wombat Mobile I should be coding or sleeping instead of this...

Damn, reading the SF Chronicle makes me want to put on my crankypants and go off on someone. Great Mark Morford column today.

Here's an excerpt:

This, then, is the bottom line. The rules are changing fast. Great songs want to be free. Fiona Apple is singing anew, despite the corporate crackdown and the RIAA sneers, and it's all just more proof positive that you can't really contain or restrain raw human talent, can't kill the need for true creative prowess, and that goddamn flower is gonna crack through that corporate concrete no matter how much weed killer they pour on it. The commercial dictatorship is crumbling. New songs are being sung, in spite of the old rules. Really, really good songs. Sung by a goddess.

Actually, this image isn't exactly how I feel, but I felt it was funnier this way. I don't really expect either Blu-ray or HD-DVD to win, I bet both of them will stick around in some sort of battle of attrition. It'll probably end up like the SACD vs. DVD-Audio battle, with no winners, just a bunch of losers and pissed off consumers.

I know that I'm not planning on buying two separate devices to watch all movies in HD, I don't have enough space left in my home theater rack. Meanwhile, I'll be like everyone else sitting on the sidelines bitching.

This could all change tomorrow, but here's a highlight of what the fight card looks like as of today. Hmm, Blue-ray has a huge list of supporters on their website, but HD-DVD will be out first.

Blu-ray Sony (+MGM & Columbia) Panasonic Samsung Philips Dell HP Mitsubishi Pioneer Hitachi Thomson TDK Twentieth Century Fox Sharp LG Electronics Disney JVC

HD-DVD Toshiba NEC Sanyo Memory Tech Warner Bros. Viacom/Paramount Universal Pictures New Line Cinema Microsoft