What is more exciting to you, CES or the New Hampshire primaries?  Yeah, me too...  Man I must tell you it is cold down here.  Really freezing cold.  I spent the whole day huddled in my office with the space heater on.  No thought whatsoever of leaving the house, or riding.  So.

This is awesome - a comparison of the HD and DVD versions of LOTR.  [ via Kottke ]  This is the best advertisement I've seen yet for why I need Blu-ray.  A closeup of Liv Tyler would have sealed the deal :) 

Apple announced a new Mac Pro, with eight processors standard.  Did it the week of CES, not at Macworld, interestingly enough... to me this is further proof that the processor people have hit the wall at around 3.2GHz, and have been there for two years now.  So they have to have more and more cores, or they won't have anything to sell.  Interesting.  Erlang, anyone? 

Have I told you I love The Truth About Cars?  Well I do.  Today they note that GM have wished the Volt 'happy birthday'.  "How something that has yet to be birthed can have a birthday is beyond me."  Yeah, beyond me too.  The Volt was 100% announceware. 

Speaking of announceware, Sony BMG have fully confirmed their reputation for media cluelessness; they announce DRM-free music so stupid it hurts.  "If she gets one as a gift, all she’s going to do is ask me how the heck she’s supposed to use it. And then she’s going ask me to get the download for her. Like I’m not busy. And you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to return the card for cash, and then I’m going to download the album off of Pirate Bay, because you’ve confused and upset my mom. And annoyed me."  Big music deserves to lose. 

You may know, Scott Adams, author of Dilbert, has a blog.  Some of the stuff he writes is funny - like the urge to simplify ("Now the casinos have people trained, like chickens hoping for pellets, to take money from one machine (the ATM), carry it across a room and deposit in another machine (the slot machine). I believe B.F. Skinner would agree with me that there is room for even more efficiency: The ATM and the slot machine need to be the same machine.").   And some is pretty wonderful - like winning (about James Blake's tennis match against Roger Federer).  And some is amazingly insightful, like Respecting the Beliefs of Others.  Here he is serious, and he makes a serious point: "People keep telling me that I should respect the beliefs of others. That sounds entirely reasonable, at least until you think about it. The problem is in knowing where to draw the line... How about the people who give away all of their possessions because they have determined the exact date that the world will end? Do I respect their opinions up to the predicted end-time and then, after it passes, keep on respecting their opinion while they are begging the neighbors to give back their crap?"  Reminds me of, why is "motherhood" something everyone can agree on?  (Should every woman have as many children as she can?) 

Here's a link I saved for you: Clive Thompson wonders Should you pick an unusual name for yourself - so you'll be more Google-able?  You can probably guess my answer :)