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"I can't emphasise enough the importance of the PC connected to the Internet. It really is quite revolutionary

"I can't emphasise enough the importance of the PC connected to the Internet. It really is quite revolutionary. People are still underestimating what this means. On the Internet, you have people come in and just specialise without any branch infrastructure and offer products that are very profitable. So the whole way that you relate to the customers, in most businesses will never be the same again."

- Bill Gates at a Tokyo business conference.

"I want to say this as clearly as I can. . . as long as I'm chairman of the Federal Communications Commission this agency will not regulate the Internet." - The chairman of the US Federal Communications Com- mission, Bill Kennard, after he had been bombarded with email from consumers fearing government regulation of the Internet.

"I took the initiative in creating the Internet." - US Vice-President Al Gore staking his claim for immortality in an interview on CNN.

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"If the vice president created the Internet, then I created the Interstate highway system. When historians write about the Internet, I don't think they'll put the vice president in the same category as Thomas Edison."

- US Congressman Dick Armey, a Texas Republican.

"The vice president is mistaken. The only thing he has ever invented is another tax. He did not invent the Internet but he sure did tax it."

- Florida Republican Representative Mark Foley.