The U.S. joins the SARS victim community: Nine cases reported in North Carolina.

Oracle has launched a hostile takeover bid for Peoplesoft.  Interesting.  "This is a consolidating industry," said Ellison. "Only the strong get stronger."  I'm a little confused about what industry is consolidating...  business software?  Software in general?  This seems like a preemptive strike to take out a competitor, nothing more.  Very little value gets created in this type of deal.

Takeovers to take out a competitor are like patent fights.  Lots of value sucked off by the lawyers, nothing new created, nobody benefits.  Pure defense.

When I was at Digital Insight, early on we had a chance to buy a smaller competitor.  Some in our team thought it was a great idea, good synergy, etc.  Paul Fiore, our CEO, thought it was a terrible idea.  Paraphrasing: "The only real synergy is the customers.  Instead of buying all those customers, let's just take them in the market one-by-one."  And we did.  Pure offense.

3Leaf posts a great list of attributes desired in a new hire.  I like #2: "You are not arrogant. If you're not arrogant, but everyone else seems to think you're arrogant, then for the purposes of this discussion, you're arrogant."  I guess I don't qualify :)

Ned Batchelder: Business Card Cubes.  I like it!

The 37th Carnival of the Vanities is up (but who's counting).  They're getting longer - lots of blogsurfing to do.  They should have an RSS feed.  Oh, but there is no they.  Yet.  There could be a they.  Hmm...

My pick from this litter is Daniel, etc.  (I put him on my extended blogroll.)  After reading I really like Daniel.  Isn't it so much more attractive when people don't try hard to be attractive?

Have you ever wondered if SCSI is really better than IDE?  If so, then this article is for you.  The punch line: yes, SCSI is faster, especially for a Windows boot drive.  Interesting...

Boing Boing notes: "It costs NASA less to send a probe to Mars than it would cost Hollywood to make a movie about it."

Greg Costikyan was"inspired" by the fact that actor Hugo Weaving plays both Elrond and Agent Smith:

"You seem to live two lives, Mr. Baggins.  In one, you are a peaceful and productive resident of the Shire.  In the other, you flit about the world in the company of wizards, dwarves, and other low lives, apparently attempting to hurl a magic ring into a volcano."

"One of these paths has a future, Mr. Baggins."

[ Later: I was thinking about this.  The Matrix is designed to fool humans being used as batteries into thinking they're living "normal" lives so they function normally.  But what's "normal"?  Couldn't there be more than one matrix?  Perhaps Middle Earth is a matrix.  Perhaps the elves are really agents.  Perhaps Elrond is Agent Smith.  (Perhaps I have stretched this too far...) ]