BL>   Very preceptive, Bill. A duopoly is better than a monopoly, even if

 BL> both are American with no feelings for Australia.



the americans are not guilty of having no feelings for australia, just

of being totally unaware of it's existence 



 BL>   I agree totally. I am an admitted racist, but you keep saying you

 BL> are not. Asians are total aresholes when it comes to considering

 BL> others. At least the Yanks think of us as "one of
theirs," and only

 BL> root us incidentally. The Asians root us intentionally.



its not that the asians are out to root *us*, they are out for revenge

on the white part of the world as a whole. its just that we are one of

the easier targets. its taken the chinese a long time to get revenge for

the opium war etc, but revenge is all the better for being a long time

coming. i'm not sure that i blame them after what the british did to

malaya, and burma, the french did to indochina, the yanks did to

indochina also, and to japan (and i'm not talking about ww2), and

everybody did to china. if you think that the yanks consider us to be

"one of theirs" then you are in for a sad disillusionment, we were a

convenient place for them to beat the japs single handed from, a

marginally profitable market for some of their goods, and a bystander

caught in the crossfire of their trade wars with the ec.



its a big hard world, and the only friends that we have are those caught

in the same boat as us, at least we make more money out of the japs than

they make out of us - that ain't true of the yanks, or many others for

that matter. the superhighway, and indeed computers in general are just

minor sideshows really, it's still hard yakka on the farm, and in the

mines, and waiting table for our esteemed foreign guests that keep this

country in some semblance of being afloat. the rest of us thee and me

included are merely deckchair arrangers on this titanic of ours.



                        Keith



... Hard DISK? Gee lady, I misunderstood you.



--- PPoint 1.88