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

To: Bernard Levy who wrote (5068)	10/19/2000 10:11:48 PM
From: Mark Fleming	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5853

I'll ask it again: Now where on his web site did you see that he "advertises that his subscribers should leave the arduous task of understanding technology to him?" I just looked and didn't see anything like that. Support your charges, please.

To: Bernard Levy who wrote (5068)	10/20/2000 2:02:13 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5853

"... `opaque' networks could become a real possibility." Agreed, Bernard. Transparency seems to have a divine quality about it that engenders popular appeal. But as one examines what happens to optical signals -- whether due to the effects of attenuation, or from dispersion impairments and properties and other anomalies, or because of the need to simply route it through lambda translations -- then a form of opaqueness (if not light inhibiting, then light altering) becomes apparent. Signals launched in optical form don't always last very long in their native state. The classic case where they do is on very long haul routes, as will be the case when Solitons are used. But when "networking" of those signals takes place, in a growing number of manipulative ways, those signals undergo changes. Either due to attrition caused by attenuation, or more likely due to the need to change its colors, so to speak, from one end to the other. The latter applies to some of the things that Avenex and others are doing, which has to do with wavelength manipulation instead of emulation of conventional switched circuit techniques (i.e., simply mimicking status quo legacy schemes in the electronic realm). Here's a question to think about on this score, and this has just as much to do with our use of terminology as it does with physics: If an optical signal is transformed from one wavelength to another in order to, say, effect an optical bypass, then does the medium carrying it maintain a transparent quality or is it opaque? More to the point, if a signal is launched at 1541 nm, and it arrives at its final destination at 1573 nm and never gets converted to the electrical state in the process, is it the same signal as when it started out? And, did it arrive over a medium that was entirely transparent? FAC