The day kissinger cried

Another excellent Salon article this one on the inimitable Dr Strang... I mean, Henry Kissinger.

it's all in the brand

A Wired article on why Macintosh is one of the best brands ever created:

The "1984" ad began a branding campaign that portrayed Apple as a symbol of counterculture -- rebellious, free-thinking and creative. According to Charles Pillar, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, this image is a calculated marketing ploy to sell expensive computers.

"Expressions of almost spiritual faithfulness to the Mac, although heartfelt, weren't a purely spontaneous response to a sublime creation," he wrote. "They were a response to a calculated marketing ploy to sell computers that cost much more than competing brands.

"I'm not making this up. Members of the Mac's original engineering and marketing team told me all about it. They did it by building a sense of belonging to an elite club by portraying the Mac as embodying the values of righteous outsiderism and rebellion against injustice. It started in the early '80s with the famous '1984' TV commercial that launched the Mac, and continued with 'The computer for the rest of us' slogan and several ad campaigns playing on a revolutionary theme."

falling arches

A Salon article on the woes of McDonald's.

JSE 1.5

James has an interesting entry with good links and comments (from Guy Steele, no less) on the changes proposed to the Java Language for JSE 1.5 ("Tiger" I think was the code name). Mind you, these are changes to the language not the libraries, including some long-overdue features such as Generics (i.e., templates) support.

the truth is out there!

[via Karlin] At last, conclusive, irrefutable proof: NASA Faked the moon landings. Hilarious.

Cringely on P2P and media

Robert Cringely on how Peer-to-Peer file sharing is going to change Big Media. Interesting read.