Bill Gates

Be careful what you wish for. Your wish might be granted. At this moment, many people involved in printing are wishing for, and spending time and money promoting, digital and specification standards for our industry. I wouldn't dare suggest that they do otherwise lest I be charged with denigrating the flag, motherhood and apple pie. What I dare to remind all well-intentioned parties is that there are tyrannies imposed by the deadly legacies that standards often become. Prime example: the inch, foot, yard and acre are standards in the United States. Try, just try, to change to the metric measure standard in use by

You gotta love America. Only here could Bill Gates be watching almost idly as the Justice Department prepares to dismantle his empire just as changes in information technology were about to do it for him. Ironically, while Microsoft is about to be broken up into two or three pieces, just about every other industry seems to be moving toward larger and larger conglomerates in search of so-called synergies. That the payoffs are few and far between doesn't seem to dampen anyone's enthusiasm—and certainly not that of the investment bankers and corporate lawyers that put these deals together. Of course, this has been going on for some

Two years ago, Apple was in trouble. Its stock was plummeting. Consumers were flocking to the domain of Bill Gates. Business Week reported the creator of the Mac was in a certain-death spiral. Enter (for a command performance) Steve Jobs. Four straight profitable quarters, several technology announcements and the company is now the Wall Street Journal's most successful technology stock for 1998. Why? Because Apple "Thinks Different," of course! BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO "Think different," the latest ad campaign of the inventor of the Macintosh, symbolizes creativity, innovation and truth. The "Think Different" theme also taps into the core desire that burns in the