Man, is eBay a money machine, or what?  They again beat their numbers, easily, and raised guidance.  Of all the business models to emerge from the dot-com era, theirs is one of the most novel, and clearly the best.  I used to think they couldn't keep up their growth, but it is hard to bet against their track record...

New monitor: SARSWatch.  The graphs on the home page pretty much tell the story.  Nobody can say this virus is under control or even understood yet.  The BBC is reporting the SARS virus is mutating rapidly.  Bad news for would-be vaccine developers, but could be good news for the rest of us; perhaps the virus will become less virulent.  The CDC confirms "we are not out of the woods yet".  They know that in Bejing, they've closed all schools for two weeks.  Scary.

Ralph Peters considers Palestinian Reality in the NYTimes.  "The Arab world is as addicted to blame as any junkie was ever addicted to heroin."  [ via LGF ]

Ken Layne revives the fascinating tale of "that photograph" of the space shuttle Columbia (remember the purple corkscrew?)  Yeah, why haven't we seen it?

VodkaPundit: Hit the road, Jacque.  No more French wine and cheese for him.  (Nor for me, either.  You see how useful the blogosphere can be - I found an American Camembert in the comments.)

Remember the great Wither Apple debate?  Well, John Gruber pretty much nails it in this article; he makes great points about why it would be hard and stupid for Apple to go to Intel, and in the process explains Apple's positioning and strategy.  So be it.  [via No Signal, who also links the cautionary tale of Next, a Steve Jobs company which tried the transition from proprietary to commodity hardware, and failed.]

Speaking of processors architectures (we were, sort of); it's hammer time!  Today AMD released the Opteron.  Of course Tom's Hardware has conducted benchmarks, and finds a dual-Operton dusts a dual-Xeon.  IBM has noticed; these babies will really cook with Linux.  Yeah, if I were Intel I would not enjoy this; the Itaniums live in a different world.  And Microsoft can't be thrilled either - Windows can't take advantage of their 64-bit architecture...

More Napster stuff - Universal and EMI have sued Hummer Winblad, John Hummer, and Hank Barry, alleging that their investment in Napster contributed to widespread Internet piracy.  I totally disagree with the premise and the idea that investors can be sued for investing, but I must say it couldn't happen to a nicer group of VCs :)

Finally - have you noticed how many commercials are widescreen?  Is the programming starting to go that way, too?  Maybe 16:9 is the future of TV.  It sure makes sense for viewing movies.  Although PCs are going to stay 4:3, I would guess...