>and you could do parallel makes on multi-cpu machines.  :)  The whole
>concept of runlevels is silly, methinks...

Who said anything about run levels?

Why is it that people keep thinking that service start/stop
scripts and run-levels are related?

I _often_ want to bounce named, ntp, httpd etc etc without rebooting
[with up to 100 xterms running on  my desktop - I don't even like 
logging out :-)]

Having the magic to stop/start/check/bounce a service in one location
simply makes good sense.

--sjg