"Linux Sucks, NT Rocks," the headline blared.

"No, no, no, no, no!", the old white-bearded fellow shouted at the new kid. "That's supposed to be 'Use Linux, NT Sucks Rocks'."

The diaper-clad cherub chomped down on his cigar. "Look Pops, you gotta get with the times. Your year in the sun is just about over. Linux is old news, yesterday's buzz. Don't you get it, man? 2000 is the year of 2000, Windows 2000, that is."

Showing unbelievable agility, the old man leaps forward and skillfully slices the cigar in two with his scythe. Startled, 2000 jumps back.

"Hey, look here, '99. You had a great year with Linux. That silly Finlander's face was everywhere. But you are nearly over. It's my turn now and I'm bringing lots of cool stuff to the table."

"Like Client Access Licenses?", the old year smirked.

"Hey look, you can't serve your customer's needs without a revenue stream. Besides, I was talking about things like Active Directory and improved performance. We're going to knock you and your stodgy old Unix mentality back to the penguins."

"Oh yeah, Active Directory," the old year mused, " that will be a problem."

"You bet your sweet patootie, it will," the little cherub chuckled.”

"True. Active Directory will challenge Unix SysAdmins to move their DNS servers forward to or see them replaced with Windows. But the new bind solves that problem and I think it's production-worthy now. It's NT users who'll have the biggest problems. NT-based networks will have to be completely overhauled to support Active Directory. I hear that W2K and Active Directory aren't very happy playing with legacy NT stuff. I seem to recall some pretty important players got tired of waiting and went with NDS instead"

"Hey, no pain no gain, Those guys who jumped ship? Casualties of war, know what I mean?" 2000 chimed in. "Besides, going to W2K brings a lot of other bennies as well. For example, the new Scripting Host lets you do a lot of your routine maintenance with scripts. You can even use perl, just like Linux."

"Well, I'll be! Windows introduces the Command Line Interface. How could Linux ever hope to compete?" The old year nearly choked on his own sarcasm.

"Hey look, you old Coot. I admit that some of the old-fashioned tools make life easier. Now Windows has 'em. Not only that, you don't have to re-boot every time you install a new driver or change the network, or ..."

"Sneeze?," the old year interrupts.

"Yeah, yeah, have your fun." 2000 sounds a little testy now. "But the ol' W2K has a lot of features and a lot of improvements in reliability and performance."

"Say, are you going to commission MindCraft to do another round of tests?", 1999 snickered.

2000's face brightened with the light of a devilish grin. "Maybe, maybe not. That's the beautiful thing. Everybody thinks those tests were a fiasco, but they weren't. By the time everything was said and done, most folks thought that NT was faster than Linux for some things, but less reliable. Picture this. We let everybody know how much more reliable W2K is and then we compare its performance to NT 4.0. Of course, we don't use the MindCraft results, we use "real world" NT 4.0 numbers to show that W2K is twice as fast as NT, but much more reliable. People put 2 and 2 together and W2K is twice as fast as Linux and much more reliable than NT. We won't fool the techies, but the suits'll buy it."

"Hmmph," 1999 sneered, afraid that 2000 might be right about the suits, "It's not like Linux is sitting still. The 2.4 kernel will be out about the same time as W2K, It'll include improvements in performance, scalability, security and device support. Let's see. Great new journaling file system and management software from SGI, all enterprise tested with IRIX. The new Intel IA-64 stuff will get a lot of attention. Remember, Intel used Linux in it's first public demonstration. While Windows was imploding to an Intel-only OS, Linux was ported to System 390. That's the big leagues, Sonny. No Windows there. Linux is everywhere! We won't even mention Windows CE. Oops!! Too late," the old year giggled uncontrollably. "And the price stays exactly the same. Zero. Nada. Not one thin dime. Compare that to Microsoft's magical mystery price hikes. Large organizations could save millions in software and hardware by deploying Linux. That'll buy a few executive retreats in Maui, won't it? Did you notice that Sun made StarOffice free for business use? That's a whole lot cheaper than Office, little guy. Finally, Linux plays nice with your other systems and doesn't crash. Just plain doesn't. The only thing that scares me is that Linux guys might not believe that Microsoft can pull W2K off and get caught napping."

2000, lost in thought, doesn't say a word. Finally, he responds. "Y'know , old fella. I think my guys are gonna win, but it's gonna be a heckuva year. You did a great job of getting things rolling. Why don't we bet a dollar, payable next year when I come join you at the retirement calendar? That way, we can stop arguing, laugh at all those damned fools running around scared of me and concentrate on having a happy new year."

The old year laughed as if he were six months old again. "It's a deal, little guy. Y'know, you’re not nearly so scary as some folks make you out to be. Happy New Year."

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