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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John F. Dowd who wrote (35266)	12/9/1999 10:23:00 PM
From: blankmind	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

- to see how corrupt the Clintonistas are, read today's Wall Street Journal. Which documents how they've raided & squandered the Indians' Trus Funds; been brought up on contempt charges; and even been fined. - all this by Judge Lamberth - worse yet, the Clintonista lawyers who've been aiding & abetting the shredding may be disbarred - I'm sorry, may the Clintonistas are such sick, lying, dengerates, that they have no business even questioning, much less prosecuting America's #1 success story in Mr. Gates.

To: John F. Dowd who wrote (35266)	12/9/1999 11:34:00 PM
From: Michael Kucera	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74651

Re: If these guys can develop a kernel with hackers at the controls what could be said if MSFT,ORCL or PSFT decided to gin up a Lin dux. They could do it over night and have their applications to lay right over it. This is madness.This is what everyone thinks is going to be the next MSFT good point...maybe Linux is still alive b/c msft wants it to still be alive...

To: John F. Dowd who wrote (35266)	12/10/1999 11:26:00 AM
From: Valley Girl	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

John, PMSW: Agreed, the valuations do appear to be madness. To be fair, it wasn't any of the boys from Carolina who priced RHAT stock at these levels, it's rabid speculators. I thought RHAT's distribution of pre-IPO shares to the development community admirable. In my book this gutsy "rebel alliance" deserves respect for showing the kind of gumption that built companies such as MSFT in the first place. The RHAT IPO price was, considering the low chance of a big upside, arguably fair. In fact you'll note that Wall Street continues to price these things far lower than what they trade at day one. My former classmates may be greedy but they're not stupid. This way when the collapse comes their, um, bums, are covered. Don't be so quick to dismiss Linux, or freeware generally. I'll bet they're taking it seriously in Redmond (and in Mountain View). Can you identify one of the ".com" household names that runs on the MSFT stack? Amazon is running "big iron" commercial Unixes for both front and back ends. Yahoo runs FreeBSD (another Unix freeware variant). I believe both are running the free Apache web server (part of the RHAT bundle as Lars points out). Linux's biggest weakness is JJ's infamous "application barrier to entry" that in my opinion will limit its uptake as a client, internet appliances nonwithstanding. Ah, but as a server OS! Ever checked the prices on Sun hardware? If Intel boxes become credible alternatives, watch out! Intel will make money, but customers will now have a choice of OS. You're correct that a potential weakness of Linux as a server OS choice is, who do you turn to when things don't work? Reputable suppliers like Sun are there to stand behind their products. You'd be crazy to bet your business on unsupported technology, no matter the low cost. In my view this is the other part of RHAT's value proposition. Others could enter the market and provide the same service, so RHAT's going to have trouble creating a sustainable competitive advantage here. They do, however, have the first mover advantage, and a big one it is. If they can get the reputation as the "obvious" (read: "safe") choice, then it's off to the races.