elegy-for-a-mogul dept.

This is the most interesting song I've heard for quite some time now -- Boom Like That from the recent album Shangri-La by Mark Knopfler. As usual, the music is smooth, and the guitar rocks. But its the wry, whimsical lyrics that really grabbed me. I couldn't figure them out at first - they seemed to be some sort of stream-of-consciousness juxtaposition of words at first. But the word 'Kroc' rang a bell, and I finally got it, thanks to a little help from this page in wikipedia, and this interview on NPR.

Boom Like That
-- Mark Knopfler

I'm going to San Bernardino ring-a-ding-ding
Milkshake mix is thus my thing now
These guys bought a heap of my stuff
And I gotta see a good thing shooting up now
Folks line up all down the street
Now I am seeing this girl devour her meat now
And then I get it Wham as clear as day
My pulse begins to hammer then I hear a voice say

These boys have got this down ought to be one of these in every town
These boys have got the touch It's clean as a whistle and it don't cost much
Wham bam don't wait long, shake fries plenty of gum
How about that friendly name, heck, every little thing gotta stay the same
Or my name is not Kroc, that's Kroc with a K
A crocodile is not spelt that way now
It's Dog eat dog, rat eat rat
Kroc style - Boom like that

You gentlemen are to expand
You're gonna need a helping hand now
So gentlemen well what about me?
We'll make a little business history now
Well we'll build it up and I'll buy him out
The man they made me grind it out now
They open up a new place flippin meat
So I do too, right across the street

I got the main I need town, sell em' in the end and it all shuts down
Sometimes you gotta be an S.O.B. you wanna make a dream reality
Competition sent em south, they're gonna drown or we're hosing em' out
Do not pass go go straight to hell
I smell a lotta meat .....da smell

Or my name is not Kroc that's Kroc with a K
A crocodile is not spelt that way now
Ohh it's Dog eat Dog, Rat eat Rat
Dog eat Dog, Rat eat Rat now
Ohh it's Dog eat Dog, Rat eat Rat
Kroc style - Boom like that

this-summer dept.

Funny Impressions.

don-camillo dept.

When I was in school, we were handed a reading list of classics to first read and then write a book report on. But one of the most enjoyable books I read was one that my friend Gaurav Trivedi had picked -- Italian satirist Giovannino Guareschi's The Little World of Don Camillo.

It seems that someone called Vajrang Parvate has posted this book online -- with legal permission from Guareschi's children -- the current copyright holders. Guareschi was also a famed cartoonist, and its great to see his artwork available here too.

Looks like the links to the HTML versions of the stories don't work, but you can download a PDF of the book here. Other books in the Don Camillo series are also available on the site. I haven't read any of them, and haven't checked out the online versions either. These can be found here.

boot-camp dept.

A lot of the A-list techno-bloggers in the blogosphere are speculating furiously over Apple's release of Boot Camp, a program that allows Intel-based Mac owners to dual boot OS X with other OSs. Robert X.Cringely has been the most imaginative, coming up with ever more fanciful ideas about the business logic behind Boot Camp.

Guess he doesn't have anything more interesting to write about.

Apple has a much more marginal market share than windows, as far as the personal computer market is concerned, and is never ever likely to prove a serious threat to the Windows/Intel juggernaut. Today their business is more about selling music, than about personal computers. My reasoning behind their releasing boot camp is much more mundane -- it is just an acceptance of market reality from Apple.

People have always run Windows applications on the Mac using VirtualPC. This is just a move to retain the market, and create another incentive to people who otherwise might shun apple hardware for compatibility reasons. So many people out there only buy Wintel machines because they *have to* use Windows software at work. So many games exist only for windows. Boot Camp will allow Apple to make inroads into that market, where people would buy Macs as high-performance PCs that run all the great mac applications out there *and* can run windows side-by-side.

The apple website recently linked to this story where XP benchmark results were compared for Apple hardware (Macbook Pro and the iMac -- wish they'd also covered the new iMac mini core duo) versus other high-end PC vendor machines. Apple either lead or was behind very marginally on most benchmark results.