Don't underestimate the power of Microsoft now that the US has a new administration that believes the department of justice should take a hands off approach to enforcing anti trust laws. If you want to see how MS operates, read the findings of facts from the DOJ VS Microsoft trial. It can all happen again, and it can get pretty rough for any startup business trying to make it with linux and other open source based products.

Talking about "FUD", this one really takes the cake. First of all, if the antitrust case had been a really good case, I wouldn't doubt President Bush and Attorney General-Designate Ashcroft (who is the former senator from my state, btw) would continue the case. HOWEVER, it was a bad case built on losey evidence. I mean, Judge Jackson was obviously waaaay-biased, which creates a bad case to begin with. Secondly, the case was built on Windows 98 having Internet Explorer (and that it shouldn't) - an argument, that IMO was unreasonable. The Findings of Fact were way out there, saying Linux wasn't much of competitor, and piling on charges I think even some Penguinistas would agree are unfair. This doesn't mean that Microsoft isn't a monopoly, and they do engage in anti-competitive practices. However, the DOJ and Judge Jackson ruined this case, I can't see anyone (except those who just hate Microsoft, and don't have good reasons to do so) thinking this was a good case. And a breakup would only (1) make things worse for the click-and-drool crowd, and (2) create two Microsofts with the same practises. But, back to Linux, I don't see anything happening to it. There is simply no way Microsoft can force open source to die. Since the real backbone of open source is volunteers, no amount of billions of dollars can destroy it. And those shops that already use it, will be unlikely to switch back, as they have already trained their IT staff on how to use Linux. -Tim NOTE ON BIAS: I do not own any stock in Microsoft or Linux companies, and I use both operating systems, so I am not biased towards MS (actually, I'm more biased towards Linux, thank-you very much). Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah.... ----------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy R. Butler Universal Networks Information Tech. Consultant Christian Web Services Since 1996 ICQ #12495932 AIM: Uninettm An Authorized IPSwitch Reseller tbutler@uninetsolutions.com http://www.uninetsolutions.com ============== "Information Powered by Innovation" ==============

Right enough here, Jerry, I know I've just had an extended moan about browsers, but Netscape has topped itself this week by crashing every time I tried to show the value of various forms of *nix to the interested but wary. Netscape 6 just locked the keyboard and mouse of a Solaris 8 installation I was messing with, leading to a hard reset (standalone machine), and it did the same here yesterday, with SuSE 6.4, though I could ssh in and sort things out manually. So since last Thursday I've had 3 people telling me 'I never have this problem with Windows'. It's one thing our knowing that it's not *nix that has crashed, only the windowmanager or whatever, but if you end up having to press the reset button the result is much the same in the eyes of the Windows user you've just been preaching to. Konqueror is really nice, but the 2.0.1 I have here has SIGSEV'd three times today on various sites which seemed unexceptionable to the dreaded MS Explorer. Mind you, I think competing with Word and Excel is an even bigger problem when it comes to winning over the desktop. Word is now very bloated, but it's still a fairly effective thing if you want to do a lot of complicated things in a graphical editing environment, and above all it's got such enormous market share it will be very hard to see off. Keep the faith Fergus The

The battle is far from over and Linux could still lose. The big problem is the browser arena. If M$s share of the web browser continues to grow it could leverage Linux out of the server room and off the Internet.

Mozilla has so far failed to step up the plate with a browser that people can trust. They got sidetracked into thinking they were an OS. Konqueror, IMO, is the best Linux based browser out there and the only one with the correct paradigm and active development crew to meet the challange. GNOME is too difficult to develop for, so I don't look for any solution to come from MZ or GNOME anytime soon.