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Technology Stocks : WAVX Anyone? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ecommerceman who wrote (9595)	12/17/1999 7:29:00 AM
From: 24601	Respond to of 11417

client-side metering: historical success Is your electricity metered at Con Ed, or at your house? Why? The Wave system for e.commerce combines encryption and metering capabilities to provide a comprehensive solution for the secure distribution of digital content to users at their personal computers, set-top boxes, or other devices. It enables microtransactions at the point of consumption. Amounts can be computed down to a fraction of a penny. Content can be distributed by wire, over the air, or on physical media. Users need not be online or tethered to a network. When they find content that interests them, they can try, rent, rent-to-own, or buy. The Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM costs $400. I have a genuine need to use it five times each year. If I can "rent" it for a reasonable cost-per-actual-use, I will. If I can access it outside of a well endowed library only by buying it outright, I will make do with something else. Thus, if it is WaveEnabled and available for one dollar per use, I will spend $5 per year where I will not spend $400 up front. The publisher, and Wave, and I all win. A CAD/CAM application costs $300,000. I have a genuine need to use it for 15 hours each year. If I can "rent" it for a reasonable cost-per-hour, I will. If I can use it only by buying the whole thing, I make do with something else. If it is WaveEnabled and available for $500 per hour, I will spend $7,500 per year where I will not spend $300,000 for all the years to come. The publisher, and Wave, and I all win. The Wave system represents a new distribution channel marked by the economic virtue of distributed metering. A fair and efficient meter is good for everybody. Wondering whether people will use the system misses the point that users will go after the content they want. Wave wants to provide a distribution mechanism that produces microtransactions that are so efficient that everybody benefits -- content seller, platform seller, and end user. People do not drive around looking for parking meters. They look for good parking spaces. Build fair and efficient parking meters and they will be used by people acting in their own interests. Wave's chip-based, client-side solution creates a win-win-win-win for content provider, platform builder, end user, and Wave. The value of the efficiency it brings to the distribution process can be shared among all sides of an e.commerce transaction. People sometimes question the commercialization of digital content. The Wave system should not raise frightening specters of nothing's remaining "free" on the net. The ordinary forces of economic incentive and disincentive -- supply, demand, competition, innovation, aesthetics, regulation-or-not, taxation-or-not, etc. -- will operate to make digital things flow according to their economic value just as material things do. The Wave system will make digital content that is worth paying for flow more efficiently than it has in the past. Things will be more readily available, on more flexible terms, with better protection of intellectual property rights. The economies induced by Wave's new distribution channel will yield savings that can be shared by all players in e.commerce transactions. But the Wave system is not going to spoil the frontier freedom of the net. People also sometimes question whether the Wave system poses a threat to privacy. I argue that it poses an enhancement. The security and privacy values of Wave's system do not depend on -- nor do they necessarily promise -- anonymity. But they will allow me to conduct e.commerce without fear that a credit card or personal information will be compromised, or that either side of a transaction might not receive its due, and without having to reinvent the transactional wheel again and again. I do not demand anonymity. I understand that my seller deserves to know who his buyer is. In fact, I want him to know who I am. I want to be able to assert my identity as his buyer, a holder of certain licenses or warranties with respect to his product. Wave's system is good for my privacy as a user of electronic commerce and a consumer of digital things. It can identify me to the entity on the other side of a transaction as "trusted" -- and it can leave it at that. It can say, in a virtual sense: "You can trust this guy. He purchases licenses to use intellectual property. He has bona fides. He maintains regular sureties. And he has met your specified prerequisites to engage in this transaction." My EMBASSY (the client-side Wave system in my platform) and its WaveNet know these things about me. I can regulate the degree to which they hold these things as confidential. I know why I am trusted. My EMBASSY and its WaveNet know why I am trusted. But the entity on the other side of the transaction does not need to know *why* I am trusted. It only needs to know *that* I am trusted. And I hope to have my EMBASSY vouch for that. This does not even get to the values of client-side security and ongoing customer relationships -- perhaps the more important drivers of mass deployment. Best wishes, parlex.tripod.com

To: ecommerceman who wrote (9595)	12/17/1999 7:31:00 AM
From: 24601	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 11417

a WaveEnabled amusement I have WaveEnabled an amusing riddle. If you have 25 cents knocking around in a WaveAccount -- or if you want to establish a WaveAccount to take the system for a spin -- you can find the riddle here: parlex.tripod.com This riddle came to mind as I reflected on the elusiveness of honest dialogue on the Raging Bull message board. Observing Jesse Livermore's knack for reading certain posters as barometers of board psychology or market sentiment got me thinking about dualities of truth and proof. Every once in a while you run across a person who is flatly unworthy of belief on any matter of importance but who, because he is consistently dishonest on any matter in which he has a personal stake, can be almost perfectly predictable. In an extreme case of this kind, predictability turns out to be just as useful as worthiness of belief. This called to mind a riddle popularized by the David Bowie movie "Labyrinth." I hope those who care to take a look will enjoy it as much as I do. Best wishes. parlex.tripod.com