The view widely held by American anti-trust lawyers is that Microsoft will win its case at which point the company may find itself

The view widely held by American anti-trust lawyers is that Microsoft will win its case, at which point the company may find itself under increasing pressure in other jurisdictions. Microsoft monopoly

IT IS not entirely accurate to say that increasing returns are simple economies of scale (“The simple idea that lies behind Microsoft’s aim to rule the world”, 19 February). Increasing returns mean that a product is more likely to succeed simply because it is more widely used. The implications of this argument for the Microsoft case are that the company becomes a “natural” monopoly, and will retain this position irrespective of market or government pressure.
What Microsoft does matters. One would anticipate a small reduction in the death rate, but it will continue to be of tragic proportions.MARK WALMSLEYStoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. This amounts to about 58 cents’ worth of food and medicine per person per day in Central and Southern Iraq.Adequate technology and chemicals for sanitation and medical infrastructure will, of course, continue to be disallowed.

If a similar pattern is followed this time, about $2.2bn would be available over six months. We all recognise the desire for more access, but believe more can be achieved by voluntary agreement than enforcement. Seeking consultation and consideration is not selfish: maintaining a viable, working countryside is as important to many urban people as it is to rural dwellers.Tony Blair has stressed his desire to govern “one nation”. Recognising that the countryside is part of that nation, the Government may need to seek compromise solutions to problems that The Independent presents as either/or.ROBIN HANBURY-TENISONChief ExecutiveCountryside AllianceLondon SE11. UN mission to Iraq

A $5.3bn oil-for-food programme to Iraq sounds impressive but would do little to alleviate suffering (“Annan offers oil-for-food deal worth billions”, 20 February).
Deducted from the previous $2bn deal under UN Resolution 986 were war reparations (30 per cent), UN operations (5 to 10 per cent), costs of pipeline (5 to 10 per cent), and humanitarian aid earmarked for the Kurds of northern Iraq (15 per cent). Town and country

THE countryside cannot be divided into neat little compartments – some good, some bad, as your leading article (20 February) seems to suggest.

The Countryside March organisers recognise that, regrettably, there is an urban-rural divide. But if the project is a “national event” and not an issue of party politics, as he insists, then he should take Lord Richard Rogers’ advice, and appoint a non-politician as ringmaster to oversee it.. It was not a good reason, and it demonstrated a lack of confidence at the heart of his rhetoric of “national renewal”.Mr Mandelson’s attempt to co-opt the Tories should prompt hollow laughter – we can be sure that were it to succeed, New Labour would take the credit. We seek to promote a wider understanding of the problems the countryside faces so that town and country can work together.
Hunting will be the focus for many, but most hunting people are also country people, and many are farmers. Mr Mandelson went on to ask: “What would the rest of the world have thought of a country that decided the event was just too big for it to pull off?”It was the fear of not having anything to show at a time when the world would be going silly over a round number that prompted Mr Blair’s decision. “All eyes will be on the Greenwich Meridian on 31 December 1999. It would have been a telling comment on ourselves if all we had to offer was bunting and 300 acres of contaminated wasteland.”In fact, all eyes are not on the Greenwich Meridian but on its opposite, the International Date Line on the other side of the world.

What has really caught the eye has been the laughable antics of various Pacific Islands as they try to move the Date Line and so be first to see the sun rise in a year with a lot of zeros in it.But it was clear that national pride was at stake. Let us hope it will be more serious of purpose than we fear, and that we can learn from the mistakes of throwaway Disneyfication.But it is also quite important to understand why pounds 400m of public money is being spent on something hardly anybody wants. Even if people like it when it opens, there would always have been other more popular – and more worthwhile – things on which the money could have been spent.It was, after all, Mr Blair who made the point most forcefully that National Lottery proceeds are public money, when he allocated some of them to health and education services under the slogan “The People’s Money”. Just to underline the point, the Chancellor floated the idea at the weekend of spending a similar amount of lottery dosh on free TV licences for pensioners.So why did Mr Blair, who had played hard ball with the Conservative Government when it appealed for bipartisan support, give the go-ahead? Mr Mandelson, now appealing equally unsuccessfully for bipartisanship, wrote in December: “It will provide a huge boost to jobs and the economy from visitor spending and tourism.” Bunkum.It was the negative reasons he gave which were more interesting. The “Experience” could still widen the debate about our future as a nation: how we will live in the Information Age, our values, our place in the world. It seems that, as soon as anyone started to work out what to put in the Dome it turned out they needed a different building altogether.But back to the first argument The big Dome will be built Indeed, the skeleton of the structure is already up Should we not try to make the best of it? Yes, of course. Mr Blair cannot undo the fact that the Dome as architecture came before a decision as to what it was for.The Dome will be home to a year-long show so fuzzily-defined it is only called an “Experience” An Expe rather than an Expo A theme park without a theme A “mind-boggling multimedia spectacular” (P.