He said he has "yet to see" the print version of the 1999 IBM annual. "But if it’s half so good as last year’s IBM report on the Internet, it’ll be exceptional, precedent-setting."

He singled out the IBM annual on the Internet for its innovative technology ("Lines materialize into a block of text, a marvelous readability technique") as well as its presentation of CEO Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.’s letter to shareholders not only in English, but translated into Chinese, Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish and French as well.

On another subject, Cato said his fall annual report conference—the Conference in the Millennium—Sept. 20-22 at the Park Hyatt San Francisco already has registered nearly four dozen men and women who have attended prior Cato events. He said one registrant, from DTE Energy, was at Cato’s 1989 conference in San Francisco. He said registrants will come from South Africa, Australia, Sweden and the U.K., as well as the Czech Republic.