Gates addressed the differences in computing and Internet experience between the "have and have not's" as well as rural and urban residents and the developing and developed worlds.

Gates enrolled at Harvard College in 1972, but left the University two and a half years later. He founded Microsoft in 1975 with Paul Allen. While attending school he lived in Currier House and concentrated in Applied Math.  --By Amita M. Shukla

Pesatori Says 'Net Has Changed American Business

The proliferation of the Internet is forcing American companies to change the way they do business, said Enrico Pesatori, vice-president and general manager of the Computer Systems Division at Digital Equipment Corporation, in an address on Thursday.

"The Internet is creating new business models and new measures for success," Pesatori said.

Business over the Internet presents numerous advantages for businesses from lower infrastructure costs and greater flexibility in management to increased power in the hands of consumers, according to Pesatori.

At the same time, Pesatori said that the Internet itself is so vast and complex that experts characterize it in a number of different ways.

"There is not a single vision of the future of the Internet; in fact; the number of visions roughly equals the number of speakers," Pesatori said.

Pesatori admitted that the Internet alone is not sufficient to guarantee the success of an organization. "We have learned that technology alone does not create opportunities or solve problems," he said.

"We are finding new ways of harnessing this power," Pesatori said in reference to Alta Vista, a tool designed by Digital that has become more frequented than Yahoo for conducting searches on the 'Net.

"The AltaVista Search Service (altavista.digital.com) is accessed 12 million times a day," Pesatori said.

The Digital executive also emphasized that much of the power of the Internet has emerged from the fact that it has expanded freely in its early years.

Today there are 14,000 newsgroups and about 30 million Web pages on the 'Net, according to Pesatori, and the numbers are rapidly expanding.

"We fully expect the Internet to become as pervasive as the telephone is today," he said.  --By Amita M. Shukla

McNealy Plugs Sun's Programming Language, Java