The King James Bible--my edition, anyway--contains 2,352 pages. The U.S. tax code--my personal copy, at least--is 9,451 pages. But these are mere pamphlets compared with the documentation for PeopleSoft, which manages to squeeze its wisdom into a little more than 20,000 pages. Since I haven't received my edition, I'm left to wonder whether it comes in a crate, or if I have to back up my truck to a palette next to the pine bark mulch at Home Depot. And yet it seems that even more pages than all of those combined have been written about the battle between Microsoft and the Justice Department. We've contributed a few of our own, which you'll find within.

You may notice in our Microsoft article, featuring the opinions of Christy Hudgins-Bonafield, David Willis and Art Wittmann, that nobody asked for my opinion--and I do have one. It's my belief that the FAA--not the Justice Department--should be taking Microsoft to task. In case you haven't heard, there is a flight simulator hidden inside Excel 97.

If you don't believe me, follow these instructions found by Eric Hall, who writes this issue's workshop on Ethernet Quality of Service (page 94): "Open a new blank worksheet. Press F5 ('go to' function) and type 'X97:L97' in the 'Reference' box, then click OK. Now hit your tab key once (you should end up in cell M97). Press 'Ctrl' and 'Shift' while clicking once on the 'chart wizard' icon (the one at the top with the blue-yellow-red bar chart). After a few moments you should be flying. Steer with the mouse, accelerate and decelerate with the left and right mouse buttons, respectively, and look for the monolith with the programmer credits. You can exit the screen by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc."

I suspect either somebody had too much free time or a team of monkeys was hired to pound away on keyboards--Microsoft Natural Keyboards, no doubt--to discover this.

The Airline Pilots Association is already beside itself. With Excel, the theory goes, Microsoft is providing a vehicle by which people can convince themselves they can fly a real aircraft, jeopardizing jobs and commoditizing the profession. The Air Traffic Controllers say that before you know it, its flight control software will be hidden in the next release of SMS. Microsoft is suing itself because this makes it harder for it to sell Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 ("the next best thing to flying a real airplane"). And, naturally, the FAA is afraid Microsoft will soon challenge its market dominance.

The biggest loser will be the poor consumer, because, after all, with Microsoft at the helm, flights will likely be delayed for months.

Rumors circulated in Washington that Microsoft tried to get Congress to name National Airport "Gates International." Even though Congress chose "Ronald Reagan Washington National" instead, Microsoft took solace in the fact that its leader's name is plastered every 100 feet or so (Gates 1 to 10 to the left, International Gates to the right through customs...).

If Microsoft put a flight simulator in Excel, imagine what's hidden in the gluttonous Windows95 and Windows98. Inside sources inform us that Microsoft plans to hide the following in Windows NT 5.0: Linux source code, The Congressional Record, and Bill Clinton's Little Black Book Vol. 1 to 3 (with the addresses built right into ADS). Beta 2 includes copies of The King James Bible, the tax code and PeopleSoft documentation. You can also get to the Netscape source code by hitting "Ctrl U."

--Fritz Nelson, fnelson@nwc.com