I noticed that IBM's share price has usually been about $30 higher than Microsoft's over the past 1-2 years. However, whenever IBM seems to rise faster than MS (particularly now, when the difference is about $50 per share), somebody spreads some kind of rumor about IBM and the shares begin to close to the $30 range again. Is this some kind of "capital war" between MS and IBM?

-- Tom Nadeau (pcassembler@mindspring.com), May 21, 2001