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I get a 1.5% speedup on Win2K, baseline versus whatever 
this patch does.  Go for it,

Skip, as I said before,

"""
_Py_CheckInterval needn't be delcared volatile, BTW; i.e., 
take the "volatile" out of

+ PyAPI_DATA(volatile int) _Py_CheckInterval;
"""

The patch won't compile under MSVC6 unless this is done 
(as is, the declaration conflicts with the definition).