Linux-Advocacy Digest #932, Volume #27 Tue, 25 Jul 00 00:13:05 EDT
Contents:
Re: MS advert says Win98 13 times less reliable than W2k (R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard
))
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From: R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: MS advert says Win98 13 times less reliable than W2k
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 03:49:02 GMT
In article <mrSd5.3443$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
"Spud" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [snips]
>
> "R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard )" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:8l7ei4$vte$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>
> > However, Windows 98 runs quite nicely on a Pentium 200, with 32 meg
> of
> > RAM, a 4 gig HD, cheap sound, cheap video, Windows 98, and Works -
> for
> > about $400.
> >
> > Linux runs on a Pentium 90, with 16 meg of RAM,
> > a 2 gig HD, cheap sound, cheap video, Linux,
> > and one of 3 office suites - for about $250.
>
> Fine; find me a shipping machine from a volume commercial vendor -
> Future Shop, Computer City, etc - that comes in such a configuration.
> Not some backyard yokel selling third-hand machines, new machines with
> full warranties and the works.
You are assuming that:
1- There is no market for used computers.
2- There is no source of supply for used computers.
3- That all "brand new" machines must be configured to run Win2K.
4- That all "brand new" machines must be preloaded with Windows.
1- There is no market for used computers.
There are 6.8 billion people in the world, and only 500 million of
them have PCs. Only 300 million have access to the internet. Even
in the US, only 60% of the population has a Personal Computer.
This means that Microsoft's Strategy has successfully penetrated
less than 10% of the potential available market.
You also assume only one computer per person. This is a reasonable
assumption with Windows which doesn't support GUI access to multiple
machines. Linux on the other hand allows users to use multiple
concurrent PCs through a single X-Windows console.
2- There is no source of supply for used computers.
The Fortune 500 corporations (companies with over 10,000 employes
dispose of roughly 25-40% of their PC inventory every year, and
replace their entire inventory every 2-3 years. With 21 million
machines being "rotated" every 2-3 years, and the electromechanical
life-span of a computer exceeding 7 years, there's no lack of supply.
There are a number of "recycle" dealers including at least 2 national
franchises.
3- That all "brand new" machines must be configured to run Win2K.
A number of PC makers, including the "big 10", offer machines as
"Bare Bones" models. These are machines with no hard drive (therefore
no requirement for Microsoft licenses). In most cases, because the
hard drive is offered as an aftermarket add-on the entire package
comes to less than $400 for a Celeron or K6 processor and a low end
machine.
4- That all "brand new" machines must be preloaded with Windows.
A number of vendors are now offering machines preloaded with Linux.
The cost can be as much as 30% MORE than a comparably equipped
Windows 9x machine, on down to about 1/2 the price for an "as is"
machine from a no-name dealer.
The core components for a $300 PC are pretty easy to obtain.
Add a 15" monitor, and bubblejet printer and you're still coming
in for under $500.
> Whoops, can't do it? Okay, so the _minimum_ machine you're likely
> going to be able to buy off the shelf is about comparable to the one I
> listed. So, we add $100 for some extra RAM and... whoops, those 3-5
> times costs vanish.
There's the TIVO box (Linux inside). There's several "mail machines",
and there's several "appliances".
Meanwhile, I've noticed that even your $500 Windows 98 box as
described above is getting very scarce.
Some people go to the car dealer, buy a brand new car for a premium
price, and enjoy the satisfaction of owning a new car. Many others
lease the car for 2-3 years because they won't be driving that many
miles and they can get tax benefits. Then there are those who buy
those lease returns and save as much as 1/2 the sticker price. There
are those who buy the car from the new car buyer for as much as 1/3
the "brand new" sticker price.
The people who have to have the biggest, fastest, and newest computers
will still buy them. Some may put Linux and Windows on the same
machine and run VMWare so that they can run both at the same time.
But there are still about 5 billion people who would LOVE to get their
hands on your old computer. There are about 150 million right here
in the United States.
> By this logic, I could say that Linux's hardware requirements are 3-5
> times that of DOS... because DOS will run on an 8086 with < 1Mb RAM,
> and you can probably throw an entire working machine together from
> scrap dealer parts for about $50. Ooh, look, Linux is *five times* as
> expensive, just in hardware - guess Linux sucks.
Actually, You COULD get a Window 3.1 machine with MS-DOS that would
run quite nicely on an 80386 with less than 8 meg on it. It would
crash pretty regularly (just like it did back then), you'd have to
get your own TCP/IP stack (just like we did back then), you'd have
a hard time finding a web browser (just like we did back then), and you
dial-up would be less than 9600 baud due to Windows limitations (just
like it was back then).
You ***could*** run Linux on the same box, and you could even run
X11 if you ran TWM (like we did back then), 16 color mode (like we
did back then), and used mostly Athena2D windows interfaces (just
like we did back then) and you could read e-mail while you waited
for the web browser to load (just like we did back then). And Linux
would stay up for months (just like it did back then).
> It's a bizarre and silly argument - no matter which way it's sliced.
>
> > No. Linux BIGGEST problem is that it is competing against a system
> > which is preinstalled by the OEMs
>
> Wouldn't know about that; I've never bought a machine (other than a
> second-hand XT way back when that had DOS 3.3 installed) with a
> preinstalled OS. I've bought plenty of machines, but never one with a
> preinstalled OS.
No, but 99% of all machines sold in the U.S. were sold with Microsoft
Software preinstalled. On PCs it was Windows and either Office or
Works. On Mac, it was Office. In each case, the preinstallation
agreement was with the OEMs, not the end-user. In many cases, the
corporate customers did make requests for alternative configurations
and were told that alternate configurations (OS/2, Linux, dual
partitions, Word Perfect instead of Office...) were not available
due to the contracts with Microsoft. Several corporate customers
were concered about security issues related to IE and requested that
it be disabled permanantly, and the OEMs told them that they must
accept IE because of their contract with Microsoft.
The one alternative to these OEMs was to go to a third party
vendor who sold machines configured machines from well known
components produces by top-name manufacturers and put them into
a case. The whole process took only a few minutes (a good assembler
with the right tools can build a machine in about 15 minutes).
Even there, Microsoft would attempt to capture market share by
allowing resellers to offer OEM pricing exclusively at the computer
show. In some cases, it was possible to get a fully licensed copy
of NT for as little as $49.
> > Furthermore, any reinstallation of either Windows 95, Windows 98, or
> > Windows 2000 will result in wiping of the Master boot record,
> > repartitioning of the hard drive (wiping out the Linux partition),
> > and
> > setting the C: drive as the boot partition. This means that Linux
> > must be restarted and LILO needs to be reinstalled on the root
> > partition and Windows has to be fooled into thinking that the Linux
> > root partition is the boot partition - and all this must be done
> from
> > either a floppy or from Windows.
>
> Ah, I see. "Someone else's OS doesn't go out of its way to make sure
> *our* OS is happy." Umm... so?
Windows NT 4.0 gave the user control over partitioning. It still makes
NT more desirable in multiboot environments than either Windows 9x or
Windows 2000. Furthermore, if the lilo was installed on the /root
partition, it was trivial to switch the primary drive to the "D:" drive
or second partition, giving the user the ability drop into dual-boot.
If a Linux distributor trashed a customer's Windows partition, it
wouldn't be in business very long. If a commercial application such
as Java or Lotus Notes trashed competitor's software, there would be
lawsuits galore. If a shareware program contained a malicious virus
that mucked up the hard drive, there would be federal agents and
criminal prosecution. But when Microsoft destroys major functionality
specifically installed by the end user, they are protected by the EULA
from all liability.
Tell you what, why don't you do all the work, and I'll collect your
paycheck. Furthermore, I'll use some of the money I collect from
you paycheck to make sure that you can't quit, can't ask for a raise
without giving me 80% of the raise, and furthermore, I'll have all
rights to you wife, your children, your sisters, your mother, and
the income of your father and brother too.
Essentially, this is what Microsoft has done to the UNIX community.
The UNIX community developed a set of standards, published them under
a public license contract, enjoyed billions of dollars worth of support
from some of the top people in the profession who worked as volunteers,
sometimes as much as 1000 hours/week, to create the infrastructure
for what became a $1 trillion industry. Now Microsoft is demanding
the right to make proprietary enhancements. They are demanding that
the UNIX community be excluded from all future innovation. They are
demanding that all future standards be designed exclusively for
Microsoft destop machines. They refuse to follow any of the standards
which are available (upon which their standards are based) without
making proprietary enhancements (even when such enhancements are
explicitly forbidden in the license contract).
To make matters worse, Microsoft seems to feel justified in bankrupting
not only it's competitors, but also any allies who establish a
profitable niche to the point where it might be attractive to
Microsoft.
Bill Gates assumes that anything that doesn't have the Microsoft brand
exclusively attached is worthless, and anything that does have the
Microsoft brand attached is worth all future pay increases. There are
about 600 CEOs who agree with him, and they control the choices of 21
million employees. I'm not sure I'd want to work for those companies,
or buy from them, or even do business with them - - if I had a choice.
In fact, I don't. When I'm offered a 4% raise because my Employer
decided to spend 20% of my salary on Microsoft driven PC upgrades,
I switch jobs. So do a lot of people. Some companies are finding
it hard to keep people because it's easier for them to "jump" for
a 20% raise than to "stick" and give Microsoft all of their
incentives.
Many professionals are taking the approach "I'll buy my own computer,
upgrade it when I feel like it, and run what I want to run on it".
Then they turn around and charge DOUBLE, even TRIPLE their salaries
to the Fortune 500 companies who decided that the loyalty of Microsoft
was more important than the loyalty of employees.
> > IBM, Dell, Gateway, Compaq, HP, Micron, and the other "Top 20" are
> > offering lines of preinstalled Linux workstations, many of which
> > include support for Wine which supports many windows 3.1 and
> > Windows 95 applications. Microsoft, of course is "encouraging"
> > software vendors to exclude this technology with APIs not available
> > on Windows 95 (DCOM, MSMQ, MTS) and peripherals not available on
> > Windows 95 (USB, DVD-ROM).
>
> Perhaps... but 95 is, let's face it, outdated.
Actually, I find it quite functional. For accessing the net,
burning a CD-ROM, or running gaming software, it's pretty darn
good. What's funny is that Linux is still giving Windows 2000
a run for it's money and yet you are saying Windows 95 is outdated.
> 98 supports USB just fine, thanks.
Microsoft took over the USB standard and then promoted proprietary
protocols above the frame layer.
> Oh, Wine doesn't do USB?
Actually, Linux/Wine can do USB mice and keyboards. I think they
can even do USB modems. It's just those machine that use proprietary
protocols (similar to SCSI) that are difficult to support.
> Well, so?
> It's not as if Microsoft is selling Wine,
But Microsoft feels that it has the right to take software developed
by the UNIX community, for the purpose of expanding the UNIX market,
and violating the licenses under which they obtained these intellectual
property rights. Microsoft feels that they have the right to be the pig
at the trough when it comes to expropriating IETF standards, TCP/IP,
WWW, HTML, SGML, XML, C, C++, Java, and nearly all of the other
technology which constitutes the backbone of the Internet, and of the
Corporate technology infrastructure, and feels that it has no moral,
ethical, or legal obligation to give ANYTHING in return without
encapsulating it in a blanket of nondisclosure and trade secrecy
protections which often explicitly exclude the Linux and UNIX markets.
> so why should they play that game? Talk to
> the folks who develop Wine... if they can't deliver the technologies
> you need, well, Windows can. If they can deliver it, what's your
> point?
>
> > > Example: I use Office 2000. What has Linux got to
> > > offer that allows me to maintain all my existing O2K documents -
> > > including all the scripting and suchlike behind them?
> >
> > You're asking the wrong question. What you have in you O2K
> documents
> > is information, information you would like to publish, archive,
> > distribute, print, display, and retrieve. O2K saves documents in a
> > default format which is neither efficient (uses a great deal of
> > storage), secure (microviruses, activeX viruses, vbscript viruses,
> > embedded ole viruses...), nor managable (not practically searchable,
> > archivable, displayable to non-O2K systems...). In effect, you have
> > hundreds, perhaps thousands of documents which you can't publish
> > or distribute (because of the viruses), you can't display them
> without
> > very expensive equipment, and you can't retrieve them from a very
> large
> > searchable archive (using search by content).
>
> Let's take these in order.
>
> >format which is neither efficient (uses a great deal of> storage)
>
> Can actually store in about 2 dozen formats, with varying degrees of
> size and features.
Yes, and most of those formats are portable, flexible, and can be used
by both Linux and Windows users. Unfortunately, Microsoft Software
wants to default to the most proprietary format, then procedes to
mangle your formatting horribly (the primary reason you chose this
software in the first place) if you make any attempt to switch to
any other format. I've had a "delightful" time trying to reformat
Windows 2000 documents into something that Office 97 could read.
Saving these documents in WP5 (used for legal documents), or RTF
(used for publicly viewable documents), or even HTML, generates
some of the most hideous looking abominations I've ever seen. In
some cases, it's easier to just convert the whole document to flat text
and apply the markup after importing it to another Word Processor.
Office generates Office Documents for Office users. Furthermore
Office 2000 generates Office 2000 documents for Office 2000 users.
Office 97 generates Office 97 documents for Office 97 users.
Office 95 generates Office 95 documents for Office 95 users.
and god help you if you have an Office 2000 user who opens a document
to read it, accidentally saves it (in O2K formats) and makes it
unreadable for anybody else.
> >secure (microviruses, activeX viruses, vbscript viruses, embedded ole
> viruses...)
>
> If you don't embed a virus, you can certainly save the document
> without them. Why simply saving a document would magically cause it
> to become virus-ridden, I'm not sure... if you're really that paranoid
> about it, save as RTF.
BINGO!!! Saving as RTF gives you some control and security. Saving
as Word/Excel/Powerpoint means that any ActiveX control can come along
at any time and add it's own little goodies. To make things even more
interesting, the really nasties (the ones that ship company secrets
to your competitors) are generally undetectable by the virus checkers.
> >not practically searchable
>
> Funny... I just saved an office document, told "search" to look for
> any documents in the folder which contain the word "release" and
> voila! Got one - in Word 2K native format. I can search 'em, even if
> you can't.
Now, try that with about 2 million documents. If you have a large
company, with just 100,000 employees, and each one issues only one
communication a day as a Word attachment to an outlook document,
you'll have 30 million documents to sort through. Now, if you
suddenly have a lawsuit and you have to come up with all relevant
documents from the last 10 years, you are going to have to sort
through 300 million documents. Let's make it really interesting.
Let's assume that each document contains an average of 10 pages.
You now have 3 billion documents - and that's just within you own
company. Now, consider that each employee has contacts with an
average of 10 other people each day.
> >archivable,
>
> "Archivable"? InfoZip had no problem with this document. I can also
> readily burn it to CD for my archives, store it to tape for backups...
> not sure what the issue here is.
There's a difference between sticking a pile of documents into a trash
compactor and storing the crunched documents in an moldy storage shed
(will you actually be able to use Office 2010 to read those 10-year old
documents?) and having billions of documents stored in such a way that
you don't have people sending thousands of copies of the same document
to hundreds of people. The classic:
To: Everybody
From: CEO
Subject: Annual Report
Please feel free to review the attached copy of the company
annual report. This year we've included more pictures, charts,
photographs, and charts
<Attachment: AnnualReport.doc size: 128,000,000 bytes>
And everybody includes every one of their 100,000 employees,
every one of their 1 million investors, and every on of their
300,000 corporate customers.
If Outlook had a kill file, this would be a sure way to get on it.
> >displayable to non-O2K systems.
>
> No? The last version of WordPerfect I used couldn't be viewed on
> other systems... unless you had appropriate translators for your
> program. Corel Draw doesn't seem particularly suited to that sort of
> thing, either. Nor do any of the CAD programs I've used. Nor do....
Again, there are plenty of published standards including SGML, XML,
HTML, RTF, GIF, JPEG, CGM, CSV, EPS, and "flat text" to cover nearly
any publishing need. Furthermore both Office and Linux support all of
them. But NOOOOOO. MICROSOFT wants you to use Office <latest version>
EXCLUSIVELY (giving them a monopoly on information that directly
affects your paycheck).
> Oddly enough, most of these - including all versions of Office I've
> ever seen - offer other formats you can export to if you need to send
> the data to incompatable platforms. Can't do it in the native format?
> Whoopee.
This is precisely my point. You asserted that I had to be able
to read and write all documents in your proprietary formats.
I've said that there are plenty of formats which allow simple
exchange of information between both Linux and Windows.
And you just agreed with me.
Thank you.
> >can't publish or distribute (because of the viruses)
>
> No such issue; we publish and distribute Office documents all around
> the enterprise on a regular basis.
And if one of those machines has a virus that hasn't been plugged
into your virus guard, you suddenly have outlook pumping ILOVEYOU
all over the internet.
The problem with a proprietary format which allows you to embed
executables, unreadable scripts, and modify files (create, execute,
read, write) is that you really dont know what you are getting.
You could be getting a resume from a terrific candidate, or you could
be getting a stealth virus from one of your competitors.
> >can't display them without very expensive equipment
>
> Expensive? Oh, right; the $1,000 machine we were talking about
> earlier, the bottom end of the currently shipping machines scale.
> Okay, so it's not a bottom-feeder system, but it's hardly "very
> expensive".
Were we talking about a machine that could read and write Office 2000
formats, ran Windows 2000, and could publish and receive these exclusive
formats? And print it on USB printers and compose using USB scanners?
Because if we're talking about exchanging RTF, HTML, GIF, and JPEG
files I can use either a really cheap Windows 95 machine or a really
cheap Linux machine. I'd have to pay a bit more (quite a bit more)
for Windows 98, and MUCH more for Windows 2000, I could go hog wild
and get a Linux on PPC or ALPHA - that'd be really expensive! :-).
Or how about Solaris on an Ultra?
Hey, what the heck, I plug my Ultra into a cluster of E-10Ks or S-80s
and generate my MPEGs from simulation software in real-time.
And guess what, you'd be able to read all of the above on Linux,
Windows, and UNIX.
> >you can't retrieve them from a very large searchable archive
>
> Depends how one defines "archive", doesn't it? Oh, sure, you can't
> stuff 'em into a tarball and expect to grep it... but let's get
> realistic here, that's old-school.
No, I was thinking more in terms of a text search engine such as
freeWAIS, Verity, TexIS, Lycos, or Google. There are over a dozen
really good search engines for HTML/XML/SGML, but the few I know of
for Office 2000 proprietary-format documents are limited to only
a few thousand documents.
> >You can print them,
> > but you can't publish them in a format that can be printed by
> others.
>
> What format would you like? RTF? Word Perfect 5.0? HTML? ASCII
> Text?
Precisely! Rather than trying to get Linux to produce Word 2000
documents, we'll just send each other RTF documents (for printing)
or HTML/XML (for viewing). And I prefer SGML to ASCII text (for
publication documents). But then again, that's only because I've
been spoiled by what publishing companies like Dow Jones and
McGraw-Hill use in their archives. It's really easy to use a
PERL Script to convert XML to SGML (and back).
> > Put simply, you must either purchase very expensive hardware and
> > software for every person you intend to publish this document to,
> > including everyone they wish to publish their documents to.
>
> Or you buy a clue. If you're an enterprise, the cost of hardware and
> software is completely insignificant in the first place... and if you
> want to save a few bucks, you bulk-purchase your hardware and you buy
> *licenses* for the software - at a much lower price.
But you still pay installation (including back-up, hardware replacement,
restoration, training, and disposal costs - several hundred times the
cost of the licenses). The only time you can simply drop a ghosted
machine onto somebody's desk is for new-hires. Other than that,
a typical upgrade from NT to 2K can take 8-16 hours, which translates
to about 10-20 staff-hours.
> Bulk-buying machines alone can more than overcome the cost of the
> software. Example: I can buy one machine for $1700, or 50 of them for
> $1400 a piece, or 150 of them for $1200 a piece. If I'm buying for an
> enterprise, I'll buy 150 of them, saving $500 a pop... and that $500
> is, quite likely, enough to either completely or at least mostly pay
> for the licenses for the common software I need. Obviously that's not
> going to include *all* the software, but that's not the point, is it?
Actually, most of the companies I've dealt with make purchase
guarantees of 10,000 to 40,000 within 12 months. They get them for
about $700 each. Unfortunately, when Microsoft comes out with the
next "really big thing" (Windows 2000, Office 2000) the prices jump,
or the vendor goes on "allocation" making the newest machines (the
ones that can run the new goodies) available at a premium price
(usually $1000 each).
> > If you
> > have 1000 employees, you'll need to pay about $10 million every 2
> > years to support the routine upgrades (just because everybody
>
> That's $1000 per machine per year. Our office schedules $300 per
> machine per year, and has been cutting that *back*. Why? Because
> having initially invested in halfway decent machines (PIII-300's w
> 10Gb drives as the base), 90% of the upgrading costs are dropping
> extra RAM in. Since there's no need to drop in another 128Mb of RAM
> every year, the $300 per machine budget is overkill.
This was certainly adaquate for Win NT with Office 2K, but when you
are running W2K, O2K, Project 2k, SQL, VB, VC++, or some other
nasting combination - adding in for saving documents passed around
on outlook - you'll be running out of disk drive space really quick.
You probably have 100/T ethernet, but the switches and routers get
clogged, and when you do get to shared servers, the hard drives fill
up even faster than the software.
> Oh, wait, how do we do it for less than $300, when you claim it costs
> $1000 or more? Well, first, we aren't bottom-feeders; we don't buy
> complete crap and replace it with more complete crap that has to be
> completely replaced every year. Second, thanks to Windows networking
> support, we can greatly reduce per-machine storage requirements...
> while increasing overall reliability *and* reducing costs. Contact a
> competent network administrator if the mechanisms behind that aren't
> obvious.
I'm going based on budgets established over the last several years
from experience in several very large corporations. I deal with those
decisions up-close-and-ugly. More often, I deal with the decisions
after the fact, trying to clean up the mess that happened because some
new manager figured the $1000/year/user/machine was too high and
then blew away his budget.
You see, when a CIO grossly underestimates his upgrade costs, the CEO
expects the overrun to be recovered by the IT department. This usually
means cutbacks, layoffs, contract terminations, and double the workload
for the survivors, along with pay-cuts or raises that are insulting.
The best people jump ship and the folks waiting to retire stick around.
> Could you do the same under Linux? Presumably. Still, you've not
> really supported your side of things, especially in terms of costing,
> very well. Case in point; with 1000 employees, and an average salary
> of, say, $45,000 a year, every 2 years you'll pay $90,000,000 in wages
> alone... but with sensible machine policies, you'll pay about $600,000
> for the same period for the client PCs. Hardly the thing that's going
> to bankrupt you.
Under Linux, I can deploy sensibly, in a more relaxed time frame (no
panic to get to the next upgrade), the machines can be rotated more
slowly, and there is less of a crisis to purchase when supplies are
at their tightest. I can book contractors who are happy to get the
work during quieter periods, and I won't have as many retraining
costs (after the first release of Linux).
Again, by adopting corporate standards that support BOTH Windows
AND Linux, I don't even have to panic-upgrade everybody to Linux.
I can start with programmers (who should be learning Linux to better
handle UNIX servers), Customer Service people (who need more reliable
machines, faster access to multiple information sources, ability to
switch desktops based on needs, and ability to get real-time feedback
on a proactive basis (as opposed to polling). Later we can do
the high level managers and executives (needing real-time feedback
from a large number of data-sources to provide optimal deployment
of resources). Eventually, you'd do the project managers, once
good project management software is available for Linux/UNIX.
Alternatively, they could use something like CA-SuperProject
for UNIX (using Linux as an X11 workstation) or Sun Project Manager.
> > gets Windows 2000 and Office 2000 this year doesn't mean that
> > Microsoft won't be coming up with more "upgrades" (designed to
> > force you into buying more hardware
>
> Why would MS want to force you into buying more hardware? Are they
> getting kickbacks from Kingston Memory Systems, Quantum and Maxtor?
Actually, they get OEM contracts on terms that they would otherwise
never get. Microsoft waits until the market is lame, prices are
falling like a rock, then tells the OEM that unless he signs a contract
that excludes all competitiors from the marketplace, he will be
selling last-year's product next year (kiss of death for any OEM).
The value of this has already been outlined by the DOJ, but grossly
underestimates the cost to consumers of manipulating prices this way.
Not only does Microsoft rake in most of the profit (Microsoft earns 50%
on revenue, most OEMs squeak with 10% or less), but they also
put almost nothing at risk.
Not a bad little racket. That's why I'd like to create a little
competition.
--
Rex Ballard - Open Source Advocate, Internet
I/T Architect, MIS Director
http://www.open4success.com
Linux - 40 million satisfied users worldwide
and growing at over 5%/month! (recalibrated 7/2/00)
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
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