Year of new leadership

It looks the 2008 is a year of leadership change with several elections in various parts of the world:
1. US Presidential Elections: This seems to the first US elections in a long while where the present President/Vice-President is not in the fray. With the primaries and caucuses complete in most of the states, the final contenders for the Democrats and Republicans are clearly known.
2. Russian Presidential Elections: There seems to be little information to the outside world about the presidential elections in Russia. The speculation is wide that President Putin would move to the role of a Prime Minister and one of his favored candidates would be the next president.
3. Malaysian Parliament Elections: Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi surprised most people in his country when he dissolved the parliament ahead of his term and announced early elections
4. Cuba: With President Fidel Castro's health failing, he's handed over power to his brother Raul as the next leader of the country. What remains to be seen is if this move brings about several changes to Cuba in the near future.

One thing looks for certain, change could be imminent as there may be new leaders to take charge in several parts of the world.

End of the high definition DVD format war?

As several sources (including Wired) have revealed today, Toshiba may be ending its plans for the HD-DVD format. This means that Sony's Blu Ray Disc is the clear winner in the high definition format battle which began since their introduction more than 1 year ago. The final death blow came when Walmart chose the Blu Ray exclusively for its retail sales. Recently, Netflix had announced that it would be using the Blu Ray format for its movie distribution. Amongst the movie studies, Warner Bros backing of the Blu Ray gave it a clear lead over the HD-DVD. The news may be a big disappointment for Toshiba, as it was losing in the recent months. This event is very similar to JVC's VHS and Sony's Betamax format war in the video tape era.