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Technology Stocks : George Gilder - Forbes ASAP -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (4826)	9/8/2000 11:49:42 PM
From: k_maxwell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 5853

Frank, I thought Gilder liked TERN because it uses CDMA, not because it has anything to do with fiber optics. Qualcomm/CDMA has been a major theme with Gilder for years, and although there are tangents to the fibersphere paradigm, I think he sees CDMA as a separate paradigm. Just my opinion. Liked your post, though.

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (4826)	9/9/2000 3:51:32 AM
From: Dan B.	Respond to of 5853

Hello Frank, Well said. Briefly, I think George likes Terayon because he sees it as a cable solution that can bring broaderband service to certain masses sooner than might happen otherwise(i.e., while we wait on fiber), and he wants to out predict Bill Gates. It is surprising what services S-CDMA can offer even without HFC. S-CDMA just might help speed widespread fiber deployment by creating and feeding habits that will require stronger doses taken with lots of fiber one fine day. Re: "And in another example, citing the benefits of another company's approach, positioning that such and thus was a better way to catch a mouse because the alternative method would have required too many transistors and processors? That struck a small nerve in me because once, as a retort to a point I made on this very thread, George commented that bandwidth would some day be as free as transistors were, referring to the growing number of millions of transistors that sit on a single sliver of wafer." Frank, I think some of these things can be seemingly contradictory when they may not in fact be. I first think, why would he care about wasting free transistors? But then I remember...I think I'm correct in saying he's said we've been wasting transistors lately with fine results, but are coming to a time when we will need to conserve them again and waste bandwidth instead. Hence, he's consistently supporting "wasting" bandwidth in both instances, I think. Something to do with the approaching speed of light limit on a chip, no? In any event, and these perhaps somewhat nit-picking issues aside, everyone can see I don't think anyone close to these matters correctly fears Gilder is a charlatan, and that's my real point tonight, little more. Clearly, you and others have done much to bolster my position, so thanks. George Gilder is no God Almighty, and he's no intent Devil either, capish o doubting threadsters? Ok fine, if ya wanna say he's stupid for suggesting traffic won't need to be routed someday, fine(but I don't recall that he's ever suggested such a thing, Gary???Ref. on that?). Dan B

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (4826)	9/9/2000 9:37:54 AM
From: David Charlton	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5853

Frank, Small historical point, but the BW limiter product request came from PacBell. One unit was deployed in a systems test. The commercial premise advocated by PacBell failed, as did commercial interest in the product. I know because is was my patent. US4777663: Data rate limiter for optical transmission system Remember this was just after dereg1 and telcos wanted to preserve the price per service model. So far, they seem to have succeeded but the next few years will be tough. David

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (4826)	9/9/2000 12:41:07 PM
From: The Phoenix	Respond to of 5853

Frank, First - thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts regarding our discussion here. I, like many others on SI, always value your opinion so keep up the great work. Let me start by stating that I don't believe I suggested that Gilders comments are irrelavant and I retract it if I did since clearly they are not. All one has to do is look at how his comments affect a stock price to support that his comments are very relavant - at least to valuations. My main comment was that his articles are, in general, are not well researched opinions of what might happen which are then positioned as short term horizon views which uninformed traders then trade on bidding up stocks to nonsensical prices - all based on one mans comments. I guess that is the basis of my argument. Further I didn't mean to imply that Gilder is NEVER right - only that the items he is right about are quite obvious to anyone willing to do a little of their own research. On the other side of the coin he makes bold predictions which again are based upon a kind of "house of cards" architecture. Specifically to my point, your reference to the dark fiber. Gilder posted this in 1992 you say? Where is dark fiber today and furthermore where are the companies that he recommended back then? How did he position the market for dark fiber - did he in fact suggest it was 10 years or more out? To be sure it wasn't that difficult to guess right during the past 5 years so I will give him credit for his foresight on dark fiber. However, I would be interested in what his horizon time was in that aritcle. My point is this: From the few Gilder articles I have read (and they are far fewer than you have had the joy of reading) it's pretty clear that Gilder's understanding of technology, market direction, pressure points, corporate positioning/posturing is very shallow. It appears to me that he has some tight contact with a few industry luminaries and uses these folks as a sounding board for his guesses, which isn't neccessarily a bad thing. What is bad is that he takes this surface understanding, wraps some cute prose around it and forwards it on to 60,000 readers who then trade on this information as if it were gospel. It isn't. However as I mentioned earlier his comments become relevant as his followers trade on his writings - which as you yourself have pointed out have long term horizons and may or may not be accurate. In the recent article - which I guess set me off - Gilder makes some suggestions regarding the direction of communications. Has he researched the network processor, it's direction, it's current applications, network services and their functionality and underlying network element requirements. Perhaps - but it certainly wasn't clear in the article. Instead he relegated routers to CE platforms which communicated with one another - point to point - over an all optical network. There are so many flaws with this narrow thinking that it's senseless to begin to discuss it here and that is what started me up.... that someone, with such a large following, could be so reckless as to make such a flawed set of assumptions with almost zero supporting evidence and send it off to 60,000 devout followers. This all said, I'm all for sharing ideas and information. I do agree that Gilder provides some thoughtful commentary about how technology MIGHT evolve. It however is the makings of science fiction grounded in fact. Gene Roddenbery came up with Star Trek and no doubt we will travel through space at some point in the future but will it be like he envisioned? I doubt it. So, I guess I would find Gilders writings far more interesting if they were written and positioned as the "what-if" that they are rather than positioned as the "what-will" as he currently does. THIS is what I find as a dis-service. HOWEVER, you are correct in that no one is being made to listen to Gilder - there are only volunteers and with that I will back off on that type of rhetoric. I'll be away for a few days and will do some writing on the plane - hopefully I'll get the chance to do some justice to my position while I'm out and will post upon my return. FWIW: David Charlton knows what he's talking about. He still works at Corning... and it is this kind of insight into the market that I hope to bring... I'm not a writer, I'm not an analyst, but I'm very close to the market and close to the corporate and market dynamics that make it up. I believe the perspective I can add will be more realistic and have a more realistic time horizon. OG