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To: Ausdauer who wrote (13952)	8/15/2000 10:31:33 PM
From: Starlight	Respond to of 60323

OT - Ausdauer - It would take more than a fifty. I'd have to buy the zoo! Betty

To: Ausdauer who wrote (13952)	8/15/2000 11:37:44 PM
From: rjk01	Respond to of 60323

A: Thanks (more on Tower and demand for flash today) Macronix to Outsource Chip Orders to Israel's Tower (Update1) By Chad Rademan Taipei, Aug. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Macronix International Co., unable to meet demand for the memory chips it makes, said it will outsource some production to Israel's Tower Semiconductor Ltd. Macronix specializes in making non-volatile memory chips, which retain data even when power is shut off. These include rewritable ``flash'' memory chips used in portable electronic devices such as mobile phones and handheld computers. Macronix joined the partnership with Tower because it is unable to meet demand from its own manufacturing capacity. ``We can enrich our offerings in non-volatile memory, and also get significant capacity immediately,'' Macronix Chief Executive Miin Wu said in a statement. Macronix's sales last month more than doubled from a year earlier, and its year-to-July sales have risen 86 percent to NT$14.0 billion ($450 million). The two companies signed a five-year agreement to cooperate in the development of technologies for manufacturing memory chips. Tower is the world's No. 4 build-to-order chipmaker. Its larger competitors include Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and United Microelectronic Corp. of Taiwan, as well as Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd. of Singapore. New Plant Macronix operates two chip factories in Taiwan. About 25 percent of the company's production is in flash memory chips, said Hsiung Fu-chia, a manager in Macronix's memory division. ``Demand is extremely strong'' for such chips, Hsiung said. The company broke ground in June for a third factory. However, the facility won't begin commercial production until about the first quarter of 2002. Israel's Tower is already making chips for Macronix, and output will approach 6,000 6-inch wafers per month next year. The agreement is Macronix's first such outsourcing arrangement for memory chips, though it has for several years outsourced some non-memory chip production to Taiwan Semiconductor. Investors are betting that Macronix will continue to generate stronger earnings than many of its chipmaking peers in Taiwan. Macronix shares have risen 20 percent so far this year, outpacing a 7 percent decline in Taiwan's broad benchmark index and a 2 percent rise in the Bloomberg-Jardine Fleming Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Index. Though Macronix hasn't released formal second-quarter results yet, director of administration Y.L. Lin said first-half pretax profit was about NT$2.4 billion, compared with a loss of NT$808 million in the same period last year. The company was unchanged at NT$65 at the close of trading on the Taiwan stock market today.

To: Ausdauer who wrote (13952)	8/16/2000 12:43:42 AM
From: Binx Bolling	Respond to of 60323

"4) Smart Media to Supersede Compact Flash. I will be buying rounds of drinks the day somebody finally shoots the Smart Media horse. With any luck, the idiotic Sony Memory Stick will take the same route to the dumpster. Compact Flash is better because it has more capacity, period. What is the logic behind using Smart Media in a market where pixel count is doubling every couple of years and high-capacity storage is paramount? I don't understand why these camera companies can't bite the bullet and kill Smart Media. Unfulfilled tech promises Updated 2:50 PM ET August 15, 2000 by John C. Dvorak, PC Magazine 'm guessing that every reader has a personal peeve based on an unfulfilled promise. Vendors have to be continually reminded of their follies. Halfway through the year 2000 it dawned on me that numerous promises given to us computer users have not been fulfilled. Many of the promises, of course, were implicit and never actually made. But still, we were expecting them. Here is my short list of promises, and I will be greatly amused by what you, the reader, add to it. I'm guessing that every reader has a personal peeve based on an unfulfilled promise. And I'm certain that as a group, we can uncover hundreds of these implied promises. Here are my top seven: 1) Satellite Uplink/Downlink Cheap Internet Connection. This promise has been with us for at least five years, and every so often I hear the promise again. First we were going to see cheap uplink gear made in Taiwan. After that, we were going to see some cheap rooftop lash-up. We have not only seen nothing, but even the downlink-only satellite scheme doesn't seem to be marketed correctly. I'm fearful that this has gone nowhere because of poor marketing by Hughes and its downlink system, DirectPC. Everyone looks there and says, "people do not want a satellite hooked to a PC." This reminds me of the ISDN debacle, where the phone companies figured nobody really wanted high-speed Internet connectivity because ISDN didn't sell well. 2) Inexpensive Digital Flat Panels. Has anyone noticed the lull in the conversation regarding digital flat panels? Two years ago we were led to believe that these things would not only push aside analog flat panels but would become so cheap that CRTs would be lucky to have any market share. Instead we see cool, flat screen CRTs. What happened? 3) CMOS Cameras. From the first time I saw an image from a CMOS camera, I never bought into its promise to dominate the digital-camera business once it was perfected. The argument behind these cameras was simple: CCDs were expensive to make, and CMOS was cheap. Another part of the CMOS promise: It wouldn't take long to perfect. Hah. 4) Smart Media to Supersede Compact Flash. I will be buying rounds of drinks the day somebody finally shoots the Smart Media horse. With any luck, the idiotic Sony Memory Stick will take the same route to the dumpster. Compact Flash is better because it has more capacity, period. What is the logic behind using Smart Media in a market where pixel count is doubling every couple of years and high-capacity storage is paramount? I don't understand why these camera companies can't bite the bullet and kill Smart Media. 5) Web-Based Computing. Where exactly is that thin-client revolution? I'm waiting. Oh, wait. Nobody wants it. Ah! 6) DVD Takeover of CD-ROM Storage Device. A DVD drive doesn't cost much more to build into a machine than a CD-ROM drive does. We were all given the impression by the researchers that DVD would be a standard device on all computers by the year 2000. Games would be stamped onto DVDs and all sorts of cool things would come of it. Well? We're still waiting. 7) Handwriting/Voice Recognition. Yeah, I know these technologies have improved a little, but they still suck. What bugs me about handwriting and voice recognition is that way back when the promise was first made regarding these technologies, we were led to believe that when processor speed got faster, the problem would solve itself. Well, the promises started back in the days of 20- and 40-MHz processors. The experts hinted that everything would be peachy as soon as we got to 100 MHz. Hellooo! We're at a gigahertz, and I was expected to be able to hold an intelligent chat with the computer by now. Yeah, right. These are but a few of the unfulfilled promises I see. And, as you can tell, I'm glad a couple of these promises have gone unfulfilled. But there are a lot of other unfulfilled promises to be identified, and the vendors have to be continually reminded of their follies. The public also has to be reminded constantly that a lot of new gizmos are just bad ideas. Otherwise the public is susceptible to the brute force of PR campaigns. This short list of seven unfulfilled promises only represents the tip of the iceberg, and it would be just as easy to do a list of great successes that were unexpected. Who out there would have predicted, say five years ago, that ink jet printers would be able to produce a color print that looked like it came from a Kodak lab? Still, though, the unfulfilled promises are disappointing. Let's put together a definitive list and see if any of these promises ever come true."