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To: Harvey Allen who wrote (23619)	11/19/1999 12:29:00 PM
From: Reginald Middleton	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

By breaking up Microsoft, you will be unlocking significant value. Imagine the value of MSN.com, Expedia.com, carpoint.com and encarta.com as separately run businesses - especially over the short to moderate term. Now think of them as a combined internet force, whose reach is second only to yahoo, but whose technology is superior and proprietary. Thier ecommerce to advertising revenue mix is much richer than Yahoo's, and they should have no problem at all attracting top talent if separated from MSFT - comp P/E ~800. Now think of Office, with 90% plus market share as a standalone company, which controls its industry with the defacto standard, moving into the ASP business and becoming a B to B .com company. Comp PE ~166 Now think of the only consumer OS that is compatible with over 90% of the PC hardware available. It has 88% plus market share, and is completely impervious to reverse engineering from practical perspective. It also has a corporate OS that is the second fastest growing product in the category and is setting records on a regular basis. This company also has the most feature complete web server technology available, bundled in for free. They also have a thin server version and are about to launch pace setting 64 bit technology in order to sell to a heretofore unprecedented (and unavailable) customer base which would bring even higher margins and consulting revenue. Comp P/E ~55 Add in some of the most popular tools and programmings languages, and you get a company that will explode in aggregate valuation. A blended mean PE yields something around the order of 340. Substantially higher than MSFT's current 56. I have a lot of room to be off here and MSFT will still climb in valuation. Comps are the way you value MSFT in a breakup, and comps reveal MSFT to be jewel in the making if it was broken. Remember, MSFT leads in practically every category. If they are broken up, it frees them to become VERY aggressive competitors. I will perform another analysis of MSFT, including breakup value for my finance site next week. It will have all of the supporting data.

To: Harvey Allen who wrote (23619)	11/20/1999 2:00:00 PM
From: Harvey Allen	Respond to of 24154

Melissa Virus Spreading (11/19/99, 5:54 p.m. ET) By Lee Kimber, TechWeb A dangerous Melissa virus variant was detected by antivirus experts Friday. Called Melissa.w, the new strain of the virus that wreaked havoc nine months ago has already been sent to at least three major U.K. banks and is spreading to businesses, according to Alex Ship, an anti-virus programmer at U.K. virus specialist Star Labs. Shipp said Star Labs' e-mail virus scanners quickly spotted infected e-mails from two different sources. He pointed to this as an indication that the Melissa.w infection is spreading rapidly. Like the original nine month old Melissa virus, Melissa.w, is highly contagious because it replicates by e-mailing copies of itself to the first 50 addresses listed in the Outlook address book on any machine it infects. The virus then causes damage by attempting to format the hard drives of infected computers on Dec. 25 -- Christmas day. Analysts are trying to establish whether the virus reformats user's hard drives only if it is infected on Christmas or if the virus lies dormant. Antivirus experts at Network Associates also said Melissa.w will format hard disks without asking users beforehand. NAI officials said the virus will not reformat Windows NT computers, but will destroy Windows 95 and Windows 98 machines the first time they are restarted following infection. Immediately prior to reformatting the hard drive, Star Labs said this message is displayed: "(C) 1999 - CyberNET Vine... Vide... Vice...Moslem Power Never End... You Dare Rise Against Me... The Human Era is Over, The CyberNET Era Has Come!!! [OK]" NAI found the virus hours before it spread and released patches for its VirusScan and Dr. Solomon's anti-virus programs at vil.nai.com. Antivirus experts said the infection highlights the vulnerability of Microsoft Word 97 to VBA macro viruses. NAI warned that Word 97 does flag the presence of a macro when a user opens a Melissa.w-infected document, but many users ignore the warnings or turn them off because so many documents contain harmless macros. techweb.com