If you’re not familiar with Digg, it’s a site that works like this: people submit stories from around the web, and other Digg users vote on them. The more popular the story gets, the more prominent it gets. There are other similar sites, like Reddit, but Digg is among the most popular, able to drive vast amounts of traffic that often seems to overpower many sites. Getting dugg can be both a boon and a curse to a webmaster.

Yesterday, someone leaked the cryptographic code (a 32 digit hexadecimal number) that can be used to decode content on high definition HD-DVD discs, making it possible to essentially rip HD-DVDs, something which has long been possible with conventional DVDs. The story made it to Digg, where it was subsequently removed by the administrators at the behest of the HD-DVD advisory group, who considered the story to be infringing on their intellectual property rights (the HD-DVD people have also threatened legal action on other sites that contain the number).

Unfortunately, while this may have seemed like a logical step for the HD-DVD folks to take, it was also frankly, pretty darn stupid.

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Emily may have outdone herself on this one, coming up with her two best ideas ever in just one blog post:

1. Make a parody site for Facebook that critiques politicians relationships’ and activities, thus educating through ruthless mockery.

2. Plus, the following sound bite alone should be enough to secure her immortality: “Facebook is the social networking equivalent of watching your friends do their taxes—voyeuristic yet utterly uninteresting.”

I find her proposed project interesting because it is sort of bizarre but in a way that actually offers useful information in an amusing way and a sort of youth-culture vernacular. Plus, I am curious which politicians would list each other as poke buddies.

The man who brought down Saddam’s statue says: “I really regret bringing down the statue. The Americans are worse than the dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day.”

It appears that that bastion of neutrality, Switzerland, accidentally invaded neighboring Liechtenstein yesterday.

I picture it being kind of like that scene in The Boondock Saints where the brothers MacManus, having just decimated a room full of mobsters after falling through an air vent and getting tangled in a rope, find themselves dumbfounded.

Murphy: That was way easier than I thought it would be.
Connor: Aye.
Murphy: On TV you always have that guy that jumps over the sofa…
Connor: And then you’ve got to shoot at him for ten fucking minutes.
Murphy: We’re good.
Connor: Yes, we are.

You never know: now that Switzerland realizes what it’s been missing all these years, who knows what’s next? Maybe they’ll sneak up the French border and grab Luxembourg. Oh march down to Mediterranean and take out Monaco? We need one of those maps they had in WWII propaganda films, only instead of a swastika taking over Europe, it’ll be like, I dunno, chocolate and cheese.

Crap, imagine if they started adding guns to their Swiss Army Knives? They’d be unstoppable.

Is the world more insane than usual, or is it just me? In quick succession, I saw a pair of stories on Slashdot that made my eyebrows achieve heights Olympic pole vaulters can only dream of.

Take, for example, the story of Julie Amero, a 40 year old substitute teacher in Norwich Connecticut. On October 19th, 2004, she was subbing for a seventh grade language class when her computer became infested with pornographic pop-ups, which were in turn seen by many of the students. She was found guilty on four counts of risk of injury to a minor, or impairing the morals of a child, for which she could face a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison.

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Banksy’s site—and overall approach to art, really—is everything the Obey campaign could and should have been. Or the other way around, depending on your priorities, I guess.

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Massachusetts residents! Jack Thompson is drafting video game sales legislation at Mayor Menino’s request. This would be pretty much identical to the law that was just blocked in a Louisiana court for unconstitutionality. The general legal approach taken by the bill has already failed in other states, and each state has had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in court fees to the Entertainment Software Association. It is time to write to your local representatives and tell them that you don’t want the state wasting your tax dollars on legislation that simply will not pass.

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Want to get angry about video games but don’t really mind the ones that let you beat up hookers? Friends, there is something for everyone to protest. The BBC reports on how much some people hate the video game based on Left Behind, a series of books about the the years following the rapture, leading up to the second coming:

An alliance of liberal groups including the Christian Alliance for Progress, the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, and Talk2Action, have urged the giant retailer Wal-Mart, among others, to stop stocking the game, which was released last month.

The Campaign to Defend the Constitution is trying to silence a private company’s creative work? That’s pretty rich.

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When we last checked in with Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, he was marching to the Star Wars soundtrack and accusing President Bush of trying to kill him. This week, the Guardian reports that Chávez has been elected for a third six-year term. He cast his victory as a defeat for George W. Bush.

“It’s another defeat for the devil who tries to dominate the world,” Mr Chávez told a crowd of red-shirted supporters listening to him under pouring rain. “Down with imperialism. We need a new world.”

Chávez won with over 60% of the vote, and is known for “spending the country’s oil wealth on free health and education programmes for the poor majority.” His opponent, Manuel Rosales, “drew his main support from the middle and upper classes,” and “called the election a choice between freedom and increasing state control of people’s lives. He also decried rampant crime and corruption, widely seen as Mr Chávez’s main vulnerabilities.”

Arguably, a more-or-less openly corrupt government that makes the disadvantaged majority happy could be better than a secretly corrupt bureaucracy that favors those who already wield substantial economic power. Still, describing “rampant crime and corruption” as mere “vulnerabilities” strikes me as a bit of an understatement, and this little tidbit really gives me pause:

Current law prevents him from running again in 2012, but he has said he plans to seek constitutional reforms that would include an end to limits on presidential terms.

My general ignorance of global politics usually makes me hesitate from commenting on political matters not directly related to media, but I can’t help but find this guy both fascinating and disturbing.

I’ve written here before about fantasy football, but apparently sports fans aren’t the only ones using real people to play their games. For you political buffs, a recent article from the New York Times explains a similar sort of pursuit, Fantasy Congress. In summary:

“Especially this time of year, all you hear is people talking about fantasy football leagues,” Ms. Montgomery said. “I couldn’t care less if I tried, either about real football or fantasy football. But hey, I actually pay attention to what goes on in Congress.”

Just as in fantasy football or baseball, each player picks a team — in this case, 4 senators and 12 House members of varying seniority levels — and competes with other players in a league typically managed by a friend or a co-worker. Members determine whether to play for money or the thrill of victory. But that is where the similarities end.

On the Fantasy Congress Web site, www.fantasycongress.us, leagues have names like “We the Peeps” and “Foley4Prez,” in addition to the usual school and workplace affiliations.

Players accumulate points as the legislators they have chosen go about their business on Capitol Hill. A House member or senator earns five points for introducing a bill or an amendment, and more points for negotiating successfully each step in the legislative process.

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