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To: Paul Lee who wrote (19279)	7/14/1999 4:11:00 PM
From: shane forbes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25814

This is the problem with excess liquidity. It is not that the stocks are cheap but instead there is nowhere else to put the money to work. So they (as from time immemorial) chase the winners irrespective of the valuations. Some of those stocks on that list are way too expensive by any rational standard. But explaining this to the 55-65 years old who do not have enough money to retire on or the speculators for whom any money is never enough money is like explaining medicine to a deaf quack - they won't listen because they don't want to listen and in any case they can't listen because if they did they'd be out of business. Eventually, like a 20 lb brick hitting one's noggin', reality will hit. It happens every now and then and it will happen again. We shall see...

To: Paul Lee who wrote (19279)	7/16/1999 4:09:00 PM
From: Moonray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25814

7/16/99 - New Chips May Bring 'Smart' Television A Step Closer Jul. 16 (Contra Costa Times/KRTBN)--Two Silicon Valley companies are trying to make like the Wizard of Oz and give the television set the digital age's equivalent of a brain. The latest advance in creating a "smart" box for TV came Thursday from National Semiconductor Corp. National Semi disclosed it has packed the power of a computer onto a single chip. The tiny device could become the electronic brain of a new wave of intelligent devices capable of enhancing the performance of TV sets and other information appliances. That breakthrough puts National in position to battle LSI Logic Corp. for big chunks of the emerging market for advanced set-top boxes and computerlike information devices. Those businesses are expected to grow as much as 10-fold by 2002, estimated International Data Corp., a market researcher. Big consumer companies like AT&T, which this year bought cable TV giant TCI, have become eager to deploy set-top boxes that would connect to TVs, according to Andrew Johnson, a spokesman for AT&T Broadband & Internet, which oversees the company's cable TV operations. "We have a keen interest in products that would bring the convergence of the TV and the computer to the consumer more quickly," Johnson said. "In essence, these boxes are a mini-computer that brings the two appliances together." Because National and LSI have been able to pack many computer functions into a single chip, that makes it much less expensive to build TV boxes that can do a lot more than what's possible today, which doesn't go much beyond delivering broadcast, cable or satellite TV signals to a TV monitor. "Using the TV as a monitor, the box would be able to bring the Internet to the living room, interaction to the TV experience," said Alan Bernheimer, spokesman for National Semiconductor. "This is becoming a major component of our business," said Karen Suty, an LSI spokeswoman. What would people be able to do? They could use the big electronic pipes of a cable TV system to check news related to a news story, get more information about a particular automobile during a commercial about the vehicle, play along with a live game show, or obtain sports statistics during a live game. A consumer also would be able to pause or rewind a live TV broadcast or join multi-player video games. "We're pretty optimistic about interactivity on the TV," said Sean Kaldor, an analyst with International Data. "There are some real revenue opportunities here. Consumers will like this stuff, and they're going to use it." Efforts to meld the TV and the computer have suffered uneven results, however. A company called Interactive Network imploded after several years of attempting to deliver interactive TV. TCI boss John Malone once boasted of a 500-channel world complete with movies on demand, anytime consumers wanted to see them, but it never happened. Time Warner launched a grand experiment to bring advanced TV viewing to parts of Florida, but found it would lose trainloads of money were it to commercialize the technology. Still, Kaldor opined, about 11.5 million computer-like TV boxes are expected to be sold worldwide in 2002, up from 1.4 million in 1998. And all information appliances, including advanced hand-held computers, wearable computers, and advanced TV boxes, are expected to account for sales of 55.7 million units in 2002 up from 5.8 million this year. The market for all of these gizmos in 2002 is expected to total $15.3 billion. AT&T and TCI hope to deploy the first generation of set-top boxes in their cable markets late this year or early next. The initial versions would add to the TV experience the ability to make local telephone calls and access the Internet at high speeds via cable modems. Later versions would have more interactive technologies. "It's not a question of if," Kaldor said. "It's a question of when." o~~~ O