[From nobody Thu May 19 14:44:24 2005 Envelope-to: tec@moredata.pt Received: from transalp.md.pt ([10.10.1.211]) by ninja.md.pt with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1DYKbP-00038t-00 for <tec@moredata.pt>; Wed, 18 May 2005 10:12:31 +0100 Message-ID: <428B073A.80901@moredata.pt> Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 10:13:30 +0100 From: "F. Fernandez" <ferdez@moredata.pt> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050319 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Tecnicos <tec@moredata.pt> Subject: How Linux Could Overthrow Microsoft Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------000604010708020008070000" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------000604010708020008070000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/06/issue/feature_linux.asp?p=0 -- Fernando Fernandez http://moredata.pt/ --------------000604010708020008070000 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1; name="www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/06/issue/feature_linux.asp?p=0" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline; filename="www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/06/issue/feature_linux.asp?p=0" Content-Base: "http://www.technologyreview.com/articl es/05/06/issue/feature_linux.asp?p= 0" Content-Location: "http://www.technologyreview.com/articl es/05/06/issue/feature_linux.asp?p= 0" <html> <head> <title>How Linux Could Overthrow Microsoft</title> <meta http-equiv=3D"Content-Type" content=3D"text/html; charset=3Diso-885= 9-1"> <meta name=3D"keywords" content=3D"The open-source movement is the larges= t threat the software giant has ever faced. 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WIDTH=3D'336' HEIG= HT=3D'280' BORDER=3D'0' ALT=3D'' ALIGN=3D'RIGHT'></A>"); } </script> <NOSCRIPT> <A TARGET=3D'_blank' HREF=3D'http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/main.techrevi= ew.com/SOF;dcopt=3Dist;tile=3D3;sz=3D300x250;ord=3D5136?' TARGET=3D'_blan= k'> <IMG SRC=3D'http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/main.techreview.com/SOF;dcopt=3D= ist;tile=3D3;sz=3D300x250;ord=3D5136?' WIDTH=3D'336' HEIGHT=3D'280' BORDE= R=3D'0' ALT=3D'' ALIGN=3D'RIGHT'></A> </NOSCRIPT></DIV> <P>&nbsp;</P> <!---ARTICLE_TXT_2 ---> <BR> <P><img src=3D"../images/feature_linux.gif" align=3D"left" height=3D"174"= width=3D"150">For as long as most technologists can remember, there has = been "Wintel," the $250 billion industry dominated by Microsoft's Windows= operating systems and Intel's microprocessors. But "Lintel," or the Linu= x operating system and Intel, is now encroaching on this empire, and behi= nd it is the entire open-source software movement, which threatens to ove= rthrow the Windows industry. Faced with this challenge, Microsoft is show= ing classic symptoms of "incumbents' disease." Rather than remaking itsel= f, Microsoft is using legal threats, short-term deals, and fear, uncertai= nty, and doubt to fortify its position. But this strategy probably won't = work. The Linux operating system and the open-source model for software d= evelopment are far from perfect, but they look increasingly likely to dep= ose Microsoft.</P><BR> <P>With some improvements, the open-source model could even become the do= minant global production model for software. If it does, it will be an ir= ony. The open-source movement was launched 20 years ago by an antiestabli= shment technologist and for years was ridiculed by the mainstream compute= r industry. But it quietly drew more adherents every year, spreading firs= t among iconoclastic hackers because its legal structure and culture offe= red them freedom from "the suits"--that is, the entire managerial, financ= ial, and legal apparatus of the commercial technology sector. But now IBM= , Hewlett-Packard, and Intel have become supporters of Linux and open-sou= rce development. Their goal is to reduce Microsoft"s prices and power by = commoditizing mass-market software.</P><P>If that happens, it will be a f= urther irony. Microsoft achieved dominance by imitating the products of o= thers, encouraging the copying of the IBM PC and cannibalizing the propri= etary computer industry. But now a revitalized IBM, aided by Hewlett-Pack= ard, Dell, Intel, and Oracle, is fomenting revolution, while Microsoft in= creasingly resembles the old IBM, an entrenched monopoly that survives by= forcing the world to buy its high-priced, aging, increasingly bloated pr= oducts. (Microsoft said in April that one server product will run Linux--= a symbolically significant concession, but hardly a sign that the ship is= turning.)</P><P>How open source will fare without an enemy like Microsof= t is one of several open-ended questions it must face. But then, it's alw= ays faced open-ended questions, and those questions always, somehow, get = answered. Indeed, at a recent conference, Linus Torvalds, the inventor of= Linux, was asked about his long-term vision for it. He replied that he w= as an "anti-visionary." When people looked too far into the distance, Tor= valds said, they missed things in front of them and stumbled. In fact, th= e next step for Linux is obvious: it is becoming big business, fast.</P><= P>This because for all its flaws, the open-source model has powerful adva= ntages. The deepest and also most interesting of these advantages is that= , to put it grossly, open source takes the bullshit out of software. It s= everely limits the possibility of proprietary "lock-in"--where users beco= me hostage to the software vendors whose products they buy--and therefore= eliminates incentives for vendors to employ the many tricks they traditi= onally use on each other and on their customers. The transparency inheren= t in the open-source model also limits secrecy and makes it harder to avo= id accountability for shoddy work. People write code differently when the= y know the world is looking at it. Similarly, software companies behave d= ifferently when they know that customers who don"t like a product can fix= it themselves or switch to another provider. On the available evidence, = it appears that the secrecy and maneuvering associated with the tradition= al proprietary software business generate enormous costs, inefficiencies,= and resentment. Presented with an alternative, many people will leap at = it.</P><BR> <P><STRONG>How Open Source Grew</STRONG><BR>The open-source model was inv= ented by Richard Stallman, an exceedingly brilliant MIT computer scientis= t not known for his love of ideological compromise or corporate profits. = In response to the fragmentation of the Unix operating system into propri= etary, incompatible dialects, Stallman resigned from MIT in 1984 and star= ted a crusade. He began work on an anti-Unix operating system called GNU,= which stands (recursively, of course) for GNU's Not Unix. He created the= Free Software Foundation to distribute that work and the idea of an open= -source license to govern it (see <a href=3D"feature_people.asp" target=3D= "_blank">"Who Will Own Culture?"</A>). </P><BR> <P>Although Stallman is rather doctrinaire in his antipathy for business,= the world is indebted to him. In 1991, when a 21-year-old Linus Torvalds= wrote the original Linux "kernel"--the part of an operating system that = controls a computer' hardware--for his personal computer, Stallman's idea= s informed his decision about how to distribute it. Torvalds is a quietly= confident, consummately practical man who has proved to be an impressive= leader and manager as well as developer. His creation attracted interest= from other programmers, who began to contribute improvements, with Torva= lds informally coordinating their work. In the mid-1990s, Linux benefited= from two potent forces. The first was the Internet, which enabled electr= onic software distribution and decentralized collaboration among many pro= grammers working independently. The second force was growing frustration = at the limitations imposed by proprietary software vendors--particularly = Microsoft and Sun Microsystems.</P><P>And so Linux entered commercial use= =2E Its first, and still most successful, niche was Web servers; for at l= east five years, the majority of the world's Web servers have used open-s= ource software. Then, several years ago, IBM started to contribute money = and programmers to open-source efforts. IBM, Intel, and Dell invested in = Red Hat Software, the leading commercial Linux vendor, and Oracle modifie= d its database products to work with Linux. In late 2003, Novell announce= d its purchase of SuSE, a small German Linux vendor, for more than $200 m= illion. IBM invested $50 million in Novell. IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Del= l began to sell hardware with Linux preinstalled. IBM also supports the M= ozilla Foundation, developer of the open-source Firefox browser, and with= Intel, HP, and other companies recently created the Open Source Developm= ent Labs (OSDL), a consortium promoting the business use of Linux, which = has hired Torvalds and other open-source developers.</P><P>Now, Linux is = running on everything from $80 routers to cell phones to IBM mainframes, = and is much more common on desktop PCs. Red Hat is a highly profitable $2= 00 million company growing 50 percent per year, and commercial open-sourc= e vendors serve many important software markets. For instance, in databas= es, there is MySQL, which now has annual revenues of about $20 million, d= oubling every year. In application servers, there is JBoss, and in Web se= rvers, Covalent.</P><P>In the server market, the eventual dominance of Li= nux seems a foregone conclusion. Michael Tiemann, Red Hat's vice presiden= t for open-source affairs, told me, "Unix is already defeated, and there'= s really nothing Microsoft can do either. It's ours to lose." Of course, = Microsoft, which refused all interview requests for this article, sees th= ings differently. But surveys from IDC indicate that in the server market= , Linux revenues are growing at more than 40 percent per year, versus les= s than 20 percent per year for Windows. Unix, meanwhile, is declining.</P= ><P align=3Dcenter><img hspace=3D"0" src=3D"../images/feature_linux_g1.gi= f" height=3D"440" width=3D"434"></P><P>Technologically, Windows and propr= ietary Unix systems, such as Sun's Solaris, still have some advantages ov= er Linux. But Linux is widely considered to be faster, easier to maintain= , and more secure than Windows. As for Solaris, "Sun is very schizophreni= c," observed Tiemann. "They're dead, too." Sun recently decided to "open = source" Solaris, but most observers feel that that decision has come too = late. (Sun, naturally, demurs. "Open sourcing Solaris is a huge step forw= ard," says Simon Phipps, Sun's chief technology evangelist.) When I asked= Tiemann whether Microsoft could recover control of the server market if = Windows went open source, he said no. "Windows is a proprietary, big-comp= any product," he said. "It isn't modular or clean enough for outsiders to= understand or work on, and it's too big."</P><BR> <P>In the desktop market, Linux"s progress is more difficult to gauge. Th= ere is sharp disagreement about how quickly open-source operating systems= and productivity programs are colonizing PCs. IDC estimates that Linux h= olds about 3 percent of the global desktop PC market and that its share w= ill double by 2008. Red Hat, Novell, Linspire, and others offer desktop L= inux packages, and you can now buy Linux desktops and laptops from many c= omputer retailers, including, interestingly, Wal-Mart. The Firefox browse= r, which runs on both Windows and Linux, already holds more than 5 percen= t of the world browser market. And then there is OpenOffice. In one of it= s quixotic attempts to snap at Microsoft"s heels, Sun decided in the late= 1990s to purchase and then "open source" a small German competitor to Mi= crosoft Office, just as Linux was starting to destroy Sun"s Unix business= =2E OpenOffice runs on both Windows and Linux and, though presently a tin= y player, is increasingly being adopted by individuals and businesses wor= ldwide. Conversely, in the last quarter of calendar 2004, Microsoft"s rev= enues from Office and related software declined 3 percent relative to the= year before, according to Microsoft"s publicly released financial statem= ents.</P><BR> <P>Of course, Microsoft Office makes use of proprie-tary document formats= , and OpenOffice reads them only imperfectly. (For this article, I sent s= ome documents back and forth between the two suites; no data was lost, bu= t formatting often suffered.) And Linux still lags Windows badly in suppo= rt for the thousands of peripheral devices available for personal compute= rs, in the number of applications that run on it, and in its ability to w= ork with Palms and Blackberries. But for simple things, OpenOffice works,= and its compatibility with Microsoft products is improving.</P><P>It is = not clear that Microsoft can do anything to stop the open-source encroach= ment onto the desktop. Many of Microsoft"s PC products are now mature. Fe= w users need any additional functionality, and Office exhibits very slow = technical progress. Equally importantly, Microsoft has grown heavily depe= ndent upon high prices and forced upgrades for its revenue growth and pro= fitability. But many groups simply cannot afford Microsoft"s prices: stud= ents, poor people, educational institutions, and the majority of the deve= loping world (see "South Africa," April 2005, p. 50). Microsoft"s product= s now represent a significant fraction of the total cost of a new desktop= personal computer. Not only is Linux free or cheap, but because it is sm= aller than Windows and runs on many more devices, it can run on very inex= pensive hardware.</P><P>Sensing a power shift, multinational companies an= d governmental bodies such as the European Union are beginning to insist = that Microsoft provide open interfaces--that is, public descriptions of i= ts software that let other programs interoperate with it. China, in parti= cular, is determined to avoid dependence upon proprietary American softwa= re. It is concerned about trade disputes, about building its own software= industry, and also about vulnerability to "back doors" that could be use= d for espionage. This last fear is not entirely irrational. Although ther= e are no publicly known cases of espionage against China involving softwa= re, other technologies have been so employed. Five years ago China purcha= sed a new, unused Boeing jet and hired U.S. contractors to refit it in Te= xas as China"s equivalent of Air Force One. Upon taking possession of the= plane, Chinese security officers found that it harbored more than two do= zen highly sophisticated, satellite-controlled listening devices, hidden = everywhere from the bathrooms to the headboard of the presidential bed.</= P><P>Geopolitical paranoia, however, is not the principal reason for the = success of open source. The most commonly cited explanation is that evolu= tionary, decentralized, voluntary efforts can yield better results than t= hose ordered by hierarchical management (see "Can Technology Raise Societ= y"s IQ?" p. 80). But while this may be true, there is something even more= fundamental at work.</P><BR> <P><STRONG>The Open-Source Model versus the Proprietary-Software Industry= </STRONG><BR>Proprietary software is licensed, not sold, with severe acco= mpanying restrictions on copying or modification. This scheme was not dev= ised by fools. It reduces piracy, rewards risk, and allows vendors to enf= orce compatibility. And when a proprietary vendor controls industry stand= ards, it generates fantastic amounts of money; Microsoft alone has create= d about ten thousand millionaires through employee stock options. And yet= there are now literally thousands of open-source development efforts lik= e OpenOffice, Firefox, Linux, and Apache that have been downloaded tens o= f millions of times. Why?</P><BR> <P>Proprietary products cannot be customized by users. Product quality is= uneven, in part because outsiders cannot examine source code. If a vendo= r controls major industry standards, as Microsoft does, it can force cust= omers to upgrade--change to a newer version, and pay more money--almost a= t will. Furthermore, because lock-in to a proprietary standard is so prof= itable, imitation is a major threat. Software vendors therefore spend lar= ge amounts of money pursuing patents to deter clones and lawsuits by riva= ls.</P><P>Perhaps most importantly, proprietary vendors also treat plans,= source code, and technology as secrets that must be carefully guarded. B= ut in software development as in other activities, secrecy allows mistake= s and abuses to be covered up. Bad work goes uncorrected; managers hide i= nformation to gain career advantage. To ferret out bad work, companies hi= re testing and quality-assurance groups that are kept separate from devel= opment groups, but this is wasteful. And if a software vendor has financi= al problems or an executive loses an internal political battle, a product= can languish for years. If customers have problems, they tell the vendor= and hope that it will listen. Sometimes it doesn"t, and that"s just too = bad.</P><P>Open source inverts this model. Under the terms of the most co= mmon open-source licensing agreement, the GNU General Public License (GPL= ), a program"s source code must be made available whenever the program is= distributed. Other programmers may do what they want with it, on one con= dition: any modifications they make must also be covered by the GPL--that= is, their code must be made available. The GPL, in combination with the = meritocratic culture of software technologists, has yielded a highly tran= sparent, decentralized approach to software development, controlled by co= mmunities of engineers who determine the direction their efforts should t= ake. Open-source development groups generally post all their work publicl= y, including specifications, source code, bug reports, bug fixes, future = plans, proposals for enhancements, and their often vitriolic debates. Lin= ux is open in this sense (and yes, Microsoft monitors it closely).</P><P>= Relative to proprietary efforts, in open-source development there is litt= le management hierarchy, strategic game-playing, patenting, and branding,= and few flashy product launch events--in short, less crap. Even though t= he total Linux workforce is large--as many as ten thousand people--most o= f it is technical. Red Hat still has fewer than a thousand employees, tho= ugh it is growing fast. By contrast, Microsoft has 57,000 employees. Micr= osoft"s legal department alone probably costs more money than the governa= nce structure of the entire open-source movement. And there is no questio= n that for many engineers, the comparative absence of crap is one of the = major attractions of working on open-source projects--either as volunteer= s or as paid employees. "We have people lining up to work for us," Red Ha= t"s Tiemann told me. "There are so many people interested in working on o= pen source that we can be very selective."</P><BR> <P>Furthermore, much of Microsoft"s technical workforce must work on qual= ity assurance and bug fixing, which in open-source efforts often come for= free from "the community." Given its lower growth rate, Microsoft thus f= inds itself a victim of the forces that it once exploited: its average co= sts are fixed and high, while those of Linux are low and declining. Dion = Cornett, who does investment research on open source for Decatur Jones Eq= uity Partners, a Chicago-based investment firm, told me, "We estimate Mic= rosoft"s development costs for server operating systems, from its public = filings, at about $300 per unit. Sun"s costs for Solaris are even higher.= Red Hat"s costs are about $100 per server now, and they"ll be under $75 = within a year."</P><BR> <P>Yet open source isn"t a perfect production system, either. Its strengt= hs are also its flaws. Sometimes an old-fashioned top-down decision is us= eful, and the open-source model may not provide sufficient revenue to sup= port everything users want when they want it. BitMover, a vendor of softw= are development tools, used an intermediate model until recently. Its pro= duct was free to open-source developers on the condition that they did no= t use it to develop competing products. For proprietary software develope= rs, it charged normal money. Recently the firm ended the free version, al= leging that it had been abused. Larry McVoy, BitMover"s founder and CEO, = has long been involved with open source, but is nonetheless somewhat skep= tical about it. "Microsoft is successful because in open source, nobody g= ets paid to do the grunt work, like writing boring drivers for every prin= ter on the market," he told me. "Furthermore, open source is largely a co= pying machine, doing reimplementations of existing products; there"s very= little innovation, in part because the rewards for it are so low."</P><P= >There is some truth in this. And while the problem is declining as comme= rcial demand for open-source software increases, this creates a final iro= ny. One objection to open source is that, in the end, it might just produ= ce a new generation of big, bad, rich monopolists. With the growing impor= tance of Red Hat, some critics see Microsoft all over again. In an open-s= ource world, one might ask, how could Red Hat possess power in the way th= at Microsoft presently does? The explanation lies in the premium placed u= pon compatibility, stability, and service by large corporate customers. R= ed Hat examines every piece of code it ships; it certifies applications; = it ports its code to seven different processor architectures; it provides= and tests device drivers; it writes code to improve performance on speci= fic machines; it guarantees service for seven years; it provides the same= products in more than a dozen languages; it has someone there to answer = the telephone 24-7. Customers who run their businesses on Red Hat won"t s= witch easily, even though a rival"s source code is equally available. The= code that Red Hat ships therefore becomes, to some extent, the real Linu= x standard.</P><P>But for all this, Red Hat will probably never wield the= same power that Microsoft currently has. One reason is that, because its= products are subject to the GPL, other firms can and do take Red Hat"s c= ode and sell it themselves.</P><BR> <P><STRONG>What the Future May Hold</STRONG><BR>Given its profound benefi= ts, it is interesting to speculate on how the open-source model might evo= lve. Many believe that the model can spread to other industries. An obvio= us possibility is publishing; several interesting experiments are under w= ay, including Wikipedia, an open-source encyclopedia that lets anyone con= tribute articles or edit existing articles (see "Larry Sanger"s Knowledge= Free-for-All," January 2005). Another is the Public Library of Science, = which provides free refereed scientific journals on the Web that visitors= can reproduce or use to make derivative works, provided they credit the = original authors. This scheme bypasses the huge, expensive (and phenomena= lly profitable) proprietary technical publishing industry. Biotechnology = and pharmaceuticals are also considered to be fertile areas for open-sour= ce experimentation.</P><BR> <P>Finally, one wonders whether the best features of open source could be= combined with the advantages of the proprietary model. One possibility w= ould be to add mechanisms for compensating independent open-source develo= pers. There are interesting precedents. For example, in the music industr= y, members of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers = receive compensation whenever their work is performed in public or played= on the radio or television. Similar compensation rights could be built i= nto open-source code without causing the lock-in problems associated with= proprietary software. Vendors and users could choose whether or not to a= ccept code that required compensation; they could rewrite expensive code = and replace it; compensation rights could be negotiated, including the po= ssibility of automatically terminating them after a period of time.</P><P= >Whether this happens or not, there seems little doubt that further evolu= tion will occur. Steve Weber, a political scientist at the University of = California, Berkeley, who has studied the open-source industry extensivel= y and consults with IBM and other companies, says, "The model is still ve= ry young. There"s no doubt that the model will evolve along with the tech= nology and the industry." Its achievements are already impressive, both s= ocially and technologically. </P><P>Creators, unite; you have nothing to = lose but your suits.</P><P align=3Dcenter><img hspace=3D"0" src=3D"../ima= ges/feature_linux_g2.gif" height=3D"429" width=3D"469"></P><P><EM>Charles= Ferguson has a PhD in political science from MIT, where he also complete= d postdoctoral work and where he will be a visiting scholar this fall. He= is the founder and former CEO of Vermeer Technologies, which he sold to = Microsoft for $133 million in 1996. Ferguson still holds a substantial qu= antity of Microsoft stock, a position that is partially but not completel= y hedged. He also holds a smaller quantity of Red Hat stock, a position t= hat is similarly partially hedged. He has no other financial interest rel= evant to this article.</EM></P> <!----END ARTICLE TXT----> <!---- IF LAST PAGE - PRINT AUTHOR BIO ----> </td> </tr> <tr> <!---- BUILDS PAGE NAVS - CALLS PAGELINK FUNCTION IN INCLUDES.ASP --= --> <td><div align=3D"right" class=3D"ArtPageNav"></div></td> </tr> </table> <!---- END MAIN ARTICLE TABLE ----> <div id=3D"relatedhtml" style=3D"position:absolute; left:1px; top:1px; = width:10px; height:10px; z-index:1; visibility: hidden; overflow: hidden;= "> </div> <div id=3D"slideshowDiv"> <table width=3D"100px" border=3D"0" cellspacing=3D"0" cellpaddin= g=3D"0"> <tr> <td width=3D"4px" height=3D"30px" rowspan=3D"2" class=3D"drag" style= =3D"background-image: url('/images/slideshow/lcorner1.gif'); background-r= epeat: no-repeat;"></td> <td width=3D"20px" height=3D"30px" rowspan=3D"2" class=3D"drag" style=3D= "background-image: url('/images/slideshow/lcorner2.gif'); background-repe= at: no-repeat;"></td> <td width=3D"100%" rowspan=3D"2" valign=3D"bottom" class=3D"drag" styl= e=3D"background-image: url('/images/slideshow/headerFiller.gif'); backgro= und-repeat: repeat-x;"><div style=3D"background-image: url('/images/slide= show/header.gif'); background-repeat: no-repeat; width: 122px; height: 30= px;"></div></td> <td width=3D"22px" height=3D"6px" colspan=3D"3" class=3D"drag" style=3D= "background-image: url('/images/slideshow/tButtons.gif'); background-repe= at: repeat-x;"></td> <td width=3D"2px" height=3D"30px" rowspan=3D"2" class=3D"drag" style=3D= "background-image: url('/images/slideshow/rcorner1.gif'); background-repe= at: no-repeat;"></td> <td width=3D"4px" height=3D"30px" rowspan=3D"2" class=3D"drag" styl= e=3D"background-image: url('/images/slideshow/rcorner2.gif'); background-= repeat: no-repeat;"></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan=3D"3" class=3D"drag" style=3D"background-image: url('/imag= es/slideshow/headerFillerlow.gif'); background-repeat: repeat-x;"><a onCl= ick=3D"javascript:hideSlide();" onmouseover=3D"movepic('button','/images/= slideshow/bCloseHover.gif')" onmouseout=3D"movepic('button','/images/slideshow/bClose.gif')"><img = name=3D"button" border=3D"0" src=3D"/images/slideshow/bClose.gif" align=3D= "right"></a></td> </tr> <tr> <td class=3D"slideLbar">&nbsp;</td> <td colspan=3D"6" align=3D"center" bgcolor=3D"#000000"> <!----OBJ_CODE----> </td> <td class=3D"slideRbar">&nbsp;</td> </tr> <tr> <td background=3D"/images/slideshow/bottom.gif"><img src=3D"/images/= slideshow/lbCorner.gif"></td> <td colspan=3D"6" class=3D"bottom"><img src=3D"/images/slideshow/bot= tom.gif" width=3D"100%" height=3D"4px"></td> <td align=3D"right" background=3D"/images/slideshow/bottom.gif"><img s= rc=3D"/images/slideshow/rbCorner.gif"></td> </tr> </table> </div> </TD></TR></TABLE> </noindex> <!-- END FOOTER --> <!-- SiteCatalyst code version: G.5. 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