"The majority of my time will be spent with our product groups, devising the technologies and products of the future. . . I'm more enthusiastic about and committed to Microsoft than I've ever been."
- Bill Gates scotching rumours of his early retirement in a memo to employees after announcing the appointment of Steve Ballmer as president.
"The Internet is growing quickly, we still have a lot of work to do to cover the planet. There is now an effort under way to design and build an interplanetary Internet. The space research community is coming closer and closer and merging. We think that we will see planetary Internet networks that look very much like the ones we use today. We will need interplanetary gateways and there will be protocols to transmit data between these gateways."
- Vinton Cerf, senior vice-president of MCI Communications Corp and 'Father of the Internet' looking to the future at the annual conference of the Internet Society in Geneva.
Computimes is edited by Tom Moriarty. Monitor compiled by Conor Pope. Send email only (no attachments, faxes or letters please) to computimes@irish-times.ie (private correspondence should be marked NOT FOR PUBLICATION).