Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Wednesday Roundup

Web
Dr. Arnie Baker's presentation recordings from FloydLandis.com now mirrored on archive.org for 'just click' play, audio (various formats) and video (various formats).

Ancient (Aug 5) link to TBV on "steephill.tv", a video cycling site that looks interesting.

Quote of the Day

[Shorten the Tour?]

"I think they should shorten the long jump." (link)
News
UCI Protour Director Rumpf thinking about shorter Grand Tours to "combat doping", says IHT. And destroying organizations that aren't going along with his political agenda would be tragic collateral damage, I suppose. And they aren't his events to shorten anyway. Also touched on in CyclingNews.

Lamour selected as nominee to replace Mr. Pound, according to AP via VeloNews. Previously reported as a possibility.

VeloNews has Peirero frustrated with the way this years results may be reported. He wants the winner to be clear after all is sorted out, not an asterix with him second. Threatens not to ride the 2007 tour. Here's a grenade:
Echávarri even suggested that Tour officials knew that Landis failed his "A" sample following his victory into Morzine before the Tour finished arrived to Paris.
which would violate just about everything there is left about the already shredded process rules.

ProTour directors run for the cover of DNA tests, hanging Basso and Ullrich out to dry. They say they want all riders to "take DNA tests that would categorically prove" something, certainly that they have blood.

Tour Route Unveiling covered by AFP, reporting ASO sniping at UCI; Reuters concentrates on the route itself with what must be pre-announcement data; TodayOnline [courtesy Paula] says Oscar, no Floyd, Ivan, Jan or Vino; BikingBis too.

NY Sun Society Page discusses Halloween costumes of the would-be idle rich: Floyd Landis and his doping doctor.

WCBS/AP has Landis on a list of well known accused cheaters, along with Jayson Blair, James Frey, Stephen Glass, Tanya Harding, Martha Stewart, Jeffrey Skilling, Ken Lay, Sammy Sosa, Ward Churchill, Frankie Andreu and James McGreevey. Except all but Landis were convicted or open and shut cases.

Blogs
DPF has paid the price of popularity. Having been shutdown on the 24th by hitting a bandwidth limit on their server, they reached an accomodation with their ISP and returned to life about 16:50 PT on the 25th. With a wave of the magic credit card, the pumpkin transforms back into a working system.

Dugard is thinking about going back to the Tour, after saying never again, just to see Floyd win two in a row. Mulling the Griswold experience, which may be near the Cotswolds and the UK start.

SFTwin talks about Oscar the Grouch and the messed up process.


MedX-Flash: A few recent pictures suggest Landis has gotten antsy and tossed his crutches in the river. Maybe the DPF outage has gotten him wanting to see the outside world again. Courtesy ROAD Magazine. Click on pix for the original article.


DPF is back, but you may still Go read and help edit the LandisCase Wiki

[end]

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Imagine someone getting in the magazine business and then getting a call that says "We have a problem - people are actually reading it! This is causes all kinds of problems.

What a great idea to post interviews of Landis in Madison or Baker's interview. The technolgy now exists as long as you don't actually try to view them!

Yes, DP, start a forum it's a wonderful idea. Wait, people are actually reading it!! This is a problem!

Until the technolgy gods can work out this problems, the entire industry will remain "not ready for prime time" and continue to deserve every bit of the scorn we heap on them.

DBrower said...

In DPF's defense, the forum is a separate "charity" feature, and doesn't carry advertising. The month's traffic had to have been unexpected and unbudgeted.

Where were the Madison interviews and Baker's presentation posted that had bandwidth problems? I haven't seen non-text of Madison yet, and would like to hear.

I have mirrored the Baker presentation to archive.org, which is busily transcoding it to different formats as we speak. Posting a 79M .wav file was silly.

TBV

Anonymous said...

Per first comment made, the DP forum isn't "new"; it has been up and running for 4-5 years I believe. Floyd's presence in the forum caused more traffic than has ever been on the site--this is good for the DPF and good for FL too, I suppose, as he is getting a lot of research done in the on-going debates. However, the forum isn't free. In fact I think it is over $600 a month at the level it has been in the past, so who knows what the extra costs would be this month with all the additional activity? Hopefully it will be up and running again soon; I miss reading it, too.

Anonymous said...

Also in regards to the first comment:

"Imagine someone getting in the magazine business and then getting a call that says "We have a problem - people are actually reading it! This is causes all kinds of problems."

Uh . . . happens all the time. It's called running out of stock. Same thing. You print a certain number of magazines, they sell out. You pay for a certain amount of bandwidth, you use it up. DP couldn't have imagined that Floyd would show up. Vaughn's a nice guy and is doing all he can. It's not like he's a media tycoon. He's a cycling fan whose website is getting a lot of attention.

Anonymous said...

Oh MAN, I need a fix REAL BAD. This went down last night at 12:45, and I've been up all night clicking reload every 30 seconds.

I just posted some correction calculations, and I have to have a response. I NEED it. It's IMPORTANT. Can't you SEE what this is DOING to me, man?

Where do I have to send TBV's credit card number to get DPF back on line?

HELP!!!

tom

[and for the record, $600 per month seems ludicrous. There are numerous web hosting sites that allow multiple gigabytes of bandwidth per month for a paltry $5-$10. Aventurehost.com (which registers the DPF domain) has a highest price of $25 per month, which buys 625GB per month (which for a mostly text site would be an INSANELY high amount of traffic).]

DBrower said...

Dear Tom,

Calm down. As you know, caffeine is on the watch list, and you may experience periods of nervousness and depression. Our advice is that you take two primary document links and a shot of WIKI and see if that doesn't calm your nerves.

No DPF 9000 has ever made an error; it has always been a human problem.

TBV

Anonymous said...

Vaughn is working on the problem...seems he upgraded on the 20th but the boost isn't showing, so maybe this will get cleared up real soon. In the meantime you can post on the old message board to give yourself a little fix. It's not perfect but it might keep the tremors at bay!

Cheryl from Maryland said...

Hey, I'll contribute at least $20.00 to the DPF just to keep Tom the WIKI Master functioning. Where do I send my contribution?

Anonymous said...

Where were the Madison interviews and Baker's presentation posted that had bandwidth problems? I haven't seen non-text of Madison yet, and would like to hear.

----

I was referring to your comment that you could not get the video of FL's Madison Wisconsin interview to work. It worked for me just fine, first try. Regarding the Baker interview, the fact that it has to be mirrored on another site is yet another sign of technology's failure to deliever as promised.

Current technology is simply not ready for primetime. We would never stand for any other consumer product to work as poorly as technology does.

Lastly regarding the analogy of out of stock magazines. Yes, but this is more like when your magazine runs out of stock, all previous copies vaporize.

Anonymous said...

Question for TBV

Just saw the video of Arnie Baker. Are you the guy wuth the French accent?

DBrower said...

Non.

I thought about it, but plane fare was going to be like $500 plus hotel, and I'm a cheap bastard. Having read and digested the slides pretty thoroghly, it didn't seem worth it. Well, maybe if I'd bailed and turned out to meet FLTM at Starbucks. But probably I'd have stayed and shook my head at the conspiracy theories.

For the hearing, I'll take vacation and drive down. It's cheaper, doesn't take all that much longer, and leaves me with a car in SoCal which is always a good idea.

I haven't had time to listen to it yet -- is there anything revelatory?

TBV

Terry21 said...

There is a question and answer session towards the end. Its probably the only thing worth listening too for someone like yourself. I'm sure you've already heard some of these answers.

Everyone seems to start to get pissed off at the Dr., b/c of the way one of the lab procedures and accusations work. The lack of check and balances or something.

Anonymous said...

I hear that Baker is speaking again at El Tour de Tucson.

Anonymous said...

TBV - I agree watch the Q&A, the rest you know.

Question, will anyone from the doping agencies be at FL's arbritration? Will they rebut FL's point in the open hearing?

If the hearing is one-sided, where FL/Jacobs only speak, we hear nothing from the doping agencies, and he is still found guilty, it will not sit well with many in the American cycling community.

The doping agencies have a credilibity problem right now. Two questions 1) do they know this? 2) do they care?

DBrower said...

Question, will anyone from the doping agencies be at FL's arbritration? Will they rebut FL's point in the open hearing?


You may count on that. They are the "prosecution" in the case.


The doping agencies have a credilibity problem right now. Two questions 1) do they know this? 2) do they care?


Yes. They are quaking in their boots in fear the case has already been messed up, that they can mess it up more, and then when the debris from the fans lands, much of it will be on their own heads.

Since Landis is already in what Private Pyle would call a world of excrement, he doesn't care where any of it lands.

TBV