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Technology Stocks : Applied Materials No-Politics Thread (AMAT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Ox who wrote (6096)	5/16/2003 11:34:48 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25522

Pardon me for butting in, but I don't think so. There are vacuumed cleaners that have fuzzy logic chips in them for recognizing the best traction and suction based on sensing what surface they are vacuuming. My dryer uses a similar concept to dry out the cloth in the best way without me selecting the time span. There is talk of fabrics with chips embedded in them to sense their environment, motion, etc. None of these are IT dependent. This may come as surprise to many people, but the leading edge products are often 10-30 years behind their prototypes or proven theories. In other words, even if we stopped dead on tracks for improving our IT, we could still have tremendous advances in products, so long as we advance in production related sciences (read material science, cheaper production process, etc). To advance in these areas, we do not need to advance much in IT. Here is another way of looking at it. My handheld has more power than what NASA used to send the first man to the moon. If I was a business exec who did not wish to spend too much money on IT, I could always find more efficient ways of running my shop with minimal IT spending.Pardon me for butting in, but I don't think so. There are vacuumed cleaners that have fuzzy logic chips in them for recognizing the best traction and suction based on sensing what surface they are vacuuming. My dryer uses a similar concept to dry out the cloth in the best way without me selecting the time span. There is talk of fabrics with chips embedded in them to sense their environment, motion, etc. None of these are IT dependent.

To: The Ox who wrote (6096)	5/16/2003 12:39:12 PM
From: Cary Salsberg	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25522

RE: "I think you are way off base here or maybe I just misunderstood your point." Guess which one I think is true!<g> First, I don't equate IT with software or computer science. Software and computer science have universal application, while IT is primarily concerned with data involved in business processes. Second, I question the incremental importance of IT "information." Sure, just in time manufacturing requires information, but that is being done. Stocking store shelves in huge supermarkets requires information, but that is being done. Software has played an important part in Genomic research, but I don't think that falls under the rubric of IT. The investment community and the computer industry is waiting for the return of IT spending. Business must replace Y2K computers they say. I am sure that spending will pick up when the economy picks up, but I don't think that this kind of IT spending will drive the economic recovery. The average worker is more excited about an electronic entertainment center in his family's mini-van or SUV then an upgrade from 500MHz to 2.8GHz in his business PC which is used for email, spreadsheets, word processing, data base retrieval, and to access corporate and industry websites.