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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: axial who wrote (10086)	1/7/2001 8:24:03 PM
From: Solid	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Jim, I had always assumed that IT was the acronym for Information technology but now I see the real meaning from your post... We are at the dawn of a historically important time: the confluence of IT, :) Good post. Frank pointed yours out to me, appears you and I are on the same quantum wave tonight as I posted a less detailed argument, with point similar to yours, on the ATHM thread. In a free market if costs are not covered when the fiddler needs to be paid ain't no business gonna keep on dancing. Message 15139064 Just about anything [business, government, culture, persons, etc.] may subscribe to any interpretation of reality preferred, perceived or desired...for a while, whether truth based or not. Over time, the neutrality of truth with no allegiance to outcomes or 'sides' wins out...every time. In business, this results in survival or obsolescence. In persons it can be anything an individual wishes, for quite a while, due to the fact that our survival is mostly a group effort currently that provides a lot of wiggle room for incompetence. For example, I can think all business exists to steal my money, yet I still buy groceries, clothes, gas, etc. My attitude may belie a false premise but my ego allows me to ignore it and I continue to exist. In a 'free market' disconnecting from reality should not be possible for business if they wish to survive. They need to make it on merit and balanced finances. Ah has had volumes to say about how the 'free market' has been tampered with. Look at the current mess in Ca. with PG&E. Tinker'ers in political positions can alter reality to fit their agendas...for a while. These periods, when truth at least begins to become more universally self-evident, fit your description of the dawning time we are now within. Our biased projections determine our perceptions but are not able, thankfully to alter truth. Maybe Al wasn't that far off when he coined the time of the market bubble growth as, 'IE'.

To: axial who wrote (10086)	1/8/2001 5:00:54 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 12823

<We are at the dawn of a historically important time: the confluence of IT, the rapid decline in fossil fuel resourves, the effects of global warming, and the time when one or two more doubles of human population will have hellacious consequences. In that time, the 'net will become a necessary, indispensable resource: a true infrastructure cost. It will flourish, even as we see the grass start to grow in the cracks in our highways. If it is to work efficiently, prices should properly reflect the cost of usage. It is not, and never will be, 'free'.> Good comments! Being an It fully-paid fan club member, I'm all for real costs and reality Internet and also think that it is an Important Time. But I disagree with the doomster undertone. While it's obvious that fossil fuel supplies are reducing, that fact is relatively inconsequential. We need think of energy cost rather than source. Whether it's a tree grown for the purpose, a photovoltaic farm in the desert, shale oil, Orinoco heavy crude oil, gas via zeolite to gasoline or methanol for fuel cells, wind, geothermal, wave, sugar beet, insulation, small engines, internet use instead of transport use, we need to think in terms of cost. There is no shortage of energy. The universe is made of the stuff. What matters is the cost of getting it where we want it. Oil will never run out. It will simply get more expensive and people will use other energy sources, insulation or do different things. People who want oil for particular reasons will find no shortage at a price. Neither do I believe global warming will be a significant event. CO2 is part of an extremely active balanced system. A push in one direction will see rapid and huge rebalancing forces in the opposite direction. Plants love to eat CO2. It dissolves in oceans. I doubt if we could get a decent greenhouse effect if we tried. Even if we do get a greenhouse effect and a 50m rise in the ocean levels, it would take 100 years and over a period of 100 years, it's no problem to move uphill a bit. Ocean levels have always gone up and down a long way, so it's nothing new. Buildings and other facilities at sea level would have fulfilled their economic life in 10 or 20 years, so it would be no great loss. Nobody would drown. Neither do I think we are going to get one or two doubles of human population. I think by 2100 there will be about a third the number of people there are now. The numbers are coming in fast, from Japan, China, Russia, Europe and North America and they tell us that women are NOT choosing to breed like bunnies any more. They have contraception and they are using it. None, one, or two is how many children they are having for the most part, with the average being well below replacement rate. The population Japan and other countries are already dropping. Even if we did get a doubling of people, I'd consider that a GOOD thing. People are good. One person can invent something and 5 billion use the idea. Those ideas are free to produce these days - a piece of software costs nothing to copy, unlike a new design of steam engine valve. ASICs are cheap. The more people the better - huge creativity, great economies of scale. I have met few people who I consider surplus to humanity. I have met almost nobody who considers themselves surplus to humanity and even suicidal people are generally unhappy because they can't find a niche within their social realm rather than because they are suffering 'population pressure'. Suicide was around long before the 20th century population boom. We are also getting a very high rate of evolution due to complex pressures and sexual selection in the modern world. More people lived during the 20th century than just about all of human history. The rate of evolution is huge because evolution depends on a LOT of people living and dying and being sexually selected or not. The quality of people is going to go up, especially when we can dump our rotten genes rather than inflict them on our long-suffering offspring. But whatever the actual outcome, your core point is totally dominating = the internet will be BIG! It will make oil, greenhouse effect, population outcome all trivial. Your other main point - somebody has to pay is also true. That's my theory anyway, Mqurice