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According to notes from the meeting made public yesterday, Gates also dismissed scrutiny by federal regulators at the time.
"This antitrust thing will blow over," he predicted, adding: "We haven't changed our business practices, at all."
Gates, the world's richest man, never actually changed the Microsoft policy that governs how long employees may keep e-mail messages before they are routinely deleted.
Company attorneys suggested yesterday that Gates may have been joking. They noted that even today the company has no formal guidelines on saving e-mail, although the government at trial frequently is using older messages to contradict Gates' recent sworn statements.
Gates' comments at the July 1995 meeting were recorded in handwritten notes by Intel Corp. Vice President Steven McGeady.
In July 1995, Microsoft Corp. had already signed a consent decree with the Justice Department to change some of its business practices.
This spring, Justice and 20 state attorneys general filed new antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft - the basis for the current trial.
The new allegations accuse Microsoft of illegally using its industry influence as the maker of the dominant Windows operating system to maintain what the government portrays as its monopoly power over personal computers.
McGeady testified yesterday that Microsoft in 1996 tried to discourage Intel's work with a new programming language from Sun Microsystems Inc., called Java.
E-mail from another recent, private lawsuit quotes Gates as "scared to death" that Java might reduce people's reliance on Windows, his flagship product.
Software written in Java can run on computers with Windows but also could run on a variety of other types of computers, including those using microprocessors made by companies other than Intel.
Microsoft wanted developers to design Java programs to use Windows-only technology, McGeady said. Intel at the time was trying to find ways to make Java software run more quickly on computers with its microprocessors.
"They wanted us to stop," McGeady said. "They considered it competition."
In videotaped testimony shown in court yesterday, government lawyers asked Gates whether Microsoft ever tried to convince Intel not to help Sun Microsystems and Java.
Gates, who was videotaped as he was questioned this summer by government lawyers, paused more than 30 seconds with his head bowed before responding: "Not that I know of."
McGeady, however, said in court that Microsoft discouraged Intel's work on Java "repeatedly, on multiple occasions."
Microsoft also questioned McGeady yesterday, at times pressing him on arcane, extremely technical details about microprocessors and software.
McGeady clearly grew frustrated when Microsoft lawyer Steven Holley began asking about conflicting work by Intel and Microsoft with "schedulers," software that juggles programs running simultaneously.
"You're using a term of art in computer language that I'm not sure you understand," McGeady said, calling the question Holley asked "not meaningful."
Microsoft used sworn testimony from senior executives at Intel to try to contradict McGeady's claims that Microsoft tried to discourage Intel's efforts to write software.
Microsoft, for example, opposed Intel's work in 1995 on a new technology called Native Signal Processing, which would have used instructions from Intel's chips, rather than software code from Microsoft, to run multimedia and communications programs more quickly. But Microsoft contends it opposed the technology because it didn't work with the upcoming Windows 95, then one of its most important software products.
McGeady's supervisor, Ron Whittier, acknowledged in sworn testimony that Microsoft's opposition "was a factor" in the decision to cancel NSP but said there were other reasons, including the company's support for Windows 95.
Earlier yesterday, to thwart attacks on McGeady, the government used a 1996 e-mail to Gates from Microsoft Senior Vice President Paul Maritz praising him. Maritz called McGeady "a champion of Java" at Intel and added: "Unfortunately, he has more IQ than most."
The findings, made public yesterday at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Los Angeles, are among a series of emerging insights into how the subtle ebb and flow of sex hormones change the brain.
Indeed, so responsive is the female brain to changing hormone levels that aspects of neural cell structure appear to change during the course of a monthly cycle, new research indicates. Overall, researchers are discovering that, compared to the male brain, the female brain retains a remarkable capacity for change throughout a lifetime.
The enriching effects of childbearing were discovered in an unusual series of experiments with laboratory animals by neuroscientists at the University of Richmond and Randolph Macon College in Virginia, who wanted to understand what effect higher hormone levels of pregnancy had on brain structures involved in learning and memory.
Pictures of the brains reveal that special brain cell structures called dendrites - essential for communication between neurons - doubled in pregnant and nursing laboratory animals. At the same time, the number of the brain's glial cells, which act as scaffolding and communication conduits, also doubled.
The mothering mice were bolder, more curious and energetic. They learned mazes more quickly, made fewer mistakes, and retained their new knowledge longer. And the effect appeared to be long-lasting, the researchers found.
"We are seeing significant changes," said Richmond neuropsychologist Craig Kinsley, who conducted the study with Randolph Macon psychologist Kelly Lambert. "Pregnancy, a perfectly natural biological experience for the female, appears to mark the brain for a lifetime.
"In a way, the brain of a late-pregnant female resembles a toy factory at Christmas time, receiving orders and gearing up for the increased demands about to be placed on it," Kinsley said. "It looks like this does something to make their learning much more efficient than females without that experience. It suggests there is a permanent change in that female's behavior, reflective of some sort of permanent change in the brain."
The new findings are at odds with earlier clinical research at the University of Southern California that showed how pregnancy temporarily interferes with intellectual functions. Pregnant women performed poorly on a battery of cognitive tests designed to test memory, perceptual speed and learning ability.
Other researchers discovered that women's brains even shrink slightly during pregnancy, perhaps affecting concentration. While no one is certain, some researchers attribute those feelings of fuzzy-mindedness among many expectant mothers to the emotional stresses of pregnancy, which provoke higher levels of a hormone called cortisol that interferes with memory.
The Richmond study, however, suggests that more fundamental changes in brain structure also may be at work, with the promise of a more lasting beneficial effect.
In recent decades, supplements of sex steroids have become powerful tools to control or alter human biology - from birth control pills and fertility drugs to muscle-building performance-enhancers and postmenopausal estrogen therapies. But only recently have scientists come to appreciate how these sex hormones continuously affect the brain.
Although researchers traditionally have focused on how sex hormones control reproduction, scientists have long been aware that these natural steroids - estrogen, testosterone and progesterone - set the basic gender mold of each brain.
The newest pregnancy research adds to a small but growing body of evidence that demonstrates how reproductive experience can alter the nervous system.
Last year, for example, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, reported how sexual experience can change brain structure in male animals, by enlarging or shrinking nerve cells, in the same manner as genetic changes.
In recent years, there has been a flood of evidence from imaging studies of the human brain that highlight how male and female thinking differs as a matter of brain function. Those differences in brain organization are controlled by powerful surges of hormones at crucial stages of prenatal development and then again in puberty.
But only now are scientists learning how these powerful steroids promote survival of brain cells, encourage new neural connections, guide the growth of many brain regions well into old age, and prompt distinctively different cell structures in male and female brains.
Demonstrating how fundamentally steroids influence the brain, researchers also reported at this week's neuroscience conference that sex hormones:
-Influence which neurons in the male brain survive or die. Physiologist Margaret McCarthy of the University of Maryland Medical School, who conducted the study, also reported that testosterone and estrogen affect how the brain wires itself. In some parts of the brain, neural synapses differ dramatically in men and women. Glial cells also take different form in the male brain and the female brain.
-Guide normal development of motor neurons and other areas of the nervous system. The hormones appear to promote the production and release of neural growth factors. Male hormones called androgens "are changing the nerve's ability to gain protective support," said Nancy Forger, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who conducted the research.
-Steer new brain cells into position during development. Stuart Tobet of the Shriver Center in Waltham, Mass., found that in the prenatal period, sex steroids and steroid receptors influence where different types of cells end up in the brain.
-Change the characteristics of brain cells in the hippocampus, which is involved in learning and memory. John Morrison, a neurobiology professor at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York, found the number of receptors on hippocampal cells fluctuates depending on how much estrogen is present.
Police believe Joshua Rudiger, 21, cut the throats of three homeless men and one homeless woman in the last three weeks.
The woman died. Rudiger considers himself a vampire, a police source told KCBS radio.
He was arrested shortly after the latest victim was found staggering about near Chinatown.
Asian characters or symbols were written in red liquid at three of the four crime scenes. Police had not determined if the symbols were written in blood or what they meant.
Although a suspect in all four slashings, Rudiger has been charged in the latest attack only.
Prior to the arrest, advocates for the homeless complained police were not treating the attacks as seriously as they should have.
"If a rash of tourists were stabbed over several days, there'd be a major response," said Paul Boden, head of the nonprofit Coalition on Homelessness.
Police Chief Fred Lau called the charge "absolutely untrue."
The first attack came Oct. 16 when a sleeping man has his throat cut. Hours later, a homeless man approached police and told them a man had come up to him and slashed his throat without warning. Both are recovering. The latest victim was in stable condition.
Shirley Dillahunty died shortly after she was slashed while sleeping on a sidewalk in the city's Mission district on Oct. 29.
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Netanyahu has postponed the Cabinet debate three times, saying he needed more clarifications from the Palestinians about their campaign against Islamic militants.
But a late night drive-by shooting yesterday near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank left two Israeli soldiers with injuries. The soldiers at the scene said they believed the assailants headed for Palestinian-controlled territory a few miles away.
Netanyahu adviser David Bar-Illan said the government was waiting for more details before it could assess how the shooting would affect the peace process.
Last Friday, the ministers had just begun their second day of debate when the militant Islamic Jihad group carried out a suicide-bombing in Jerusalem's market, killing the two bombers and wounding 21 Israelis.
In response, Netanyahu broke off the Cabinet meeting and said he would not reconvene the ministers until the Palestinian Authority outlined how it would prevent attacks against Israelis.
Earlier yesterday, Netanyahu said new guarantees led him to believe that Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority would take "practical steps" against Islamic militants.
The Cabinet was scheduled to meet in Jerusalem today.
Both the United States and the Palestinians welcomed the announcement.
In Washington, State Department spokesman James Rubin said, "We are pleased. It should be possible for both sides to carry out all the steps in the Wye agreement."
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had urged Netanyahu to stick to the original 12-week timetable of the accord under which Israel is to withdraw from 13 percent of the West Bank by the end of January, in exchange for a Palestinian anti-terror campaign.
If the Cabinet ratifies the agreement, Israel might still be able to meet its first commitment on Nov. 16, an initial troop pullback from 2 percent of the West Bank.
"I hope that the agreement will be ratified tomorrow and that they will begin to make up for lost time," said senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. He said the delays have already held up, among other things, the opening of the Palestinian airport and the establishment of several committees stipulated in the accord.
While agreeing to place the accord before his Cabinet, Netanyahu suggested he would stop the troop withdrawal if the Palestinians did not meet an Israeli demand concerning the procedure for revoking clauses of the PLO founding charter.
The Wye agreement, signed in Washington on Oct. 23, says the Palestine National Council and other Palestinian organizations will meet in mid-December to "reaffirm" a January letter by Arafat to President Clinton that lists the PLO charter clauses considered annulled.
Israel insists the agreement requires the PNC to take a formal vote, while the Palestinians say only approval of the letter by acclamation is required.
"If the Cabinet approves the Wye agreement, it will add to the decision the following stipulation: the implementation of the rest of the agreement will be conditional on the PNC convening and voting to change the charter," Netanyahu said in a statement.
Erekat indicated that the Palestinians would not change their opposition to a vote.
"Netanyahu should count on the Palestinian Authority carrying out the agreement to the letter. I hope he will refrain from the use of threats and conditions because they undermine the much needed partnership and cooperation that the Palestinians and the Israelis need."
Not since the region's civil wars ended early in this decade have so many dignitaries planned stops at these tiny countries. Now they're bringing aid for victims of Hurricane Mitch, distributing clothes and contributions for medicine and food donated by ordinary people.
What remained unclear is whether this immediate concern will translate into the long-term measures that the region's leaders insist are necessary.
to recover from the disaster.
Central American presidents meeting Monday in San Salvador said they need better access to U.S. and European markets; an easing on deportations of illegal immigrants from the region; and forgiveness of at least part of the $14 billion foreign debt of the four countries that suffered most from Mitch: Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.
"A great part of the aid we have received is to take care of the emergency: food, health and transportation to countrymen who have been harmed," Honduran President Carlos Flores told reporters. "But another phase is coming that is crucial for us, a phase of rehabilitation. ... Rebuilding is going to take many years."
Hundreds of millions of dollars will be needed just to build bridges to reconnect places like La Ceiba with the rest of the world. Bridges across both major highways into town collapsed as Mitch stalled along this coast for days, dumping water into rivers and normally dry gulches.
The World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other international financial organizations have offered loans to help pay for rebuilding roads and bridges, but that will add to the debts of nations already deep in the red. Further, the countries hit hardest by Mitch - Honduras, where an estimated 6,000 died, and Nicaragua, with a confirmed death toll of 1,952 that is expected to increase - are the most indebted. Nicaragua has $6.5 billion in foreign debt and Honduras $4 billion; each already spends about 30 percent of its national budget on debt payments.
"If we cannot pay for even the most basic (things) now, we are hardly able to pay on a debt that has been unpayable from the beginning," Flores said.
The Central American proposals have received some support. Cuba, itself heavily in debt, announced yesterday it will forgive $50 million in loans made to Nicaragua when the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front held power in the 1980s. The European Union is reportedly willing to talk about debt relief. France has already said it will forgive the debt. The Germans have said that they favor it, although they will not unilaterally write off their Central American loans.
Still, the nod that the region needs is from the United States, its biggest creditor and largest market. And that has not been forthcoming.
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