Last night there was a full lunar eclipse. The picture at the right –granted the detail isn’t great– was taken at the peak of the eclipse.

Wondering what the Transmeta fuss is about? Arstechnica has a good article on their processors. The nickle summary is that the processors are designed to be intel compatible –so they can run Windows and Linux– with the lowest possible power consumption. The numbers floated by Transmeta indicate that under normal circumstances, the chip uses so little power that it’s negligible compared to that used by the LCD and harddrive. As an added bonus, the chips could just as easily be made to emulate the PPC chips that power Macintosh computers.

Walt Whitman once said that everyone is ignorant, just about different things. My corollary to that is ignornace can be cured, stupidity is terminal because the stupid think they know everything about everything so they can't be convinced otherwise. Low and behold, science cranked out a study –story at NY Times— backing this up:

“Not only do they [the incompetent] reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it,” wrote Dr. Kruger, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, and Dr. Dunning.

This deficiency in “self-monitoring skills,” the researchers said, helps explain the tendency of the humor-impaired to persist in telling jokes that are not funny, of day traders to repeatedly jump into the market — and repeatedly lose out — and of the politically clueless to continue holding forth at dinner parties on the fine points of campaign strategy.

There are best lists and worst lists, but the Onion has the Least Essential Albums of the 90's list.

With the high speed of UDMA IDE drives (66 MB/S), the only wise SCSI alternative is now Ultra 160. Not surprisingly, Adaptec has phased out their top-rated 2940 series in favor of their 19160 and 29160 Ultra 160 cards. The catch is they’re more expensive: $390 and up. Some general info and basic benchmarks, Ultra 160 FAQ and an overview of SCSI vs IDE vs Fiber-channel are all available different places.

The beast that is Apple continues to charm the investment community, hitting an all-time high of $119 as major Banks raise their target price for Apple to $135 to $145. This from a low of 12 and change a few years back. Coverage: