Remember how Sony's UMD format for the PSP was unexpectedly taking off? And everyone was surprised at the sudden success of a proprietary format with nothing to offer anyone who wasn't a Sony shareholder?

Yeah, turns out that was bullshit. Walmart is dropping the format following poor sales, and studios are beginning to cease production of UMD movies.

So how's the proprietary-format scorecard looking, Sony? Betamax? MiniDisc? And how's Blu-Ray shaping up? The only reason Memory Stick is sold at all is because Sony devices require it. Nobody else uses it; its price and performance characteristics make it a loser.

I know, I know: Sony helped invent the Compact Disc standard, then successfully licensed it. But Phillips handled the licensing (and much of the technology) for that, did it intelligently, and consequently avoided dooming the format to proprietary obscurity.

It's a beautiful dream, locking people into a format you own and then squeezing money out of them. But it doesn't work anymore. It'd be nice if the Sonys (and Apples) of the world would knock it off, rather than stranding their customers with useless devices every half decade.

Oh, Howie, Howie, Howie. First you post a picture of Turkey and claim that it's peaceful, kite-flyin', tube-top-wearin' Baghdad. But sadly, people recognize subtle, seemingly impossible-to-notice inconsistencies — things like, oh, say, Turkish writing. Suspicions are raised. And then bloggers find a different photo of the same street corner, taken from another perspective, on PhotosOfTurkeyNotIraq.com (or something similar). The jig is utterly up.

What to do? Damage control. Blame an intern, put up a shot from your REAL Baghdad vacation, and apologize for the misunderstanding. It's a not-very-convincing aerial shot, but hey, it's something.

Except whoops! Looks like you didn't scrub the metadata from the new shot. Turns out the photo was taken on July 13, 2005. Which, it seems safe to say, probably doesn't qualify as occurring during your "recent" trip.

Also, now your website is down. Not the greatest example of an effective online political strategy, I'm afraid.

Metadata, kids. It bit the Post in the ass, too. If you're trying to hide something online, talk to a nerd first.

UPDATE: The date might match up after all. Apparently the guy just has a liberal definition of "recent".