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Technology Stocks : COMS & the Ghost of USRX w/ other STUFF -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: David Lawrence who wrote (8852)	11/8/1997 2:05:00 AM
From: Wigglesworth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22053

AT&T buys minority stakes in 3Com/Fore/Newbridge. [Sorry, just a fantasy from a Forbes writer. :-) Brother Lawrence will have nightmare just daydreaming about this. Go to the Forbes site and see the 11/3 article on telecombination: Ascend buys Bay, Lucent buys Bascend, etc. BTW, there's nothing newsworthy in the recent thestreet.com 'interview' with Benhamou, the same old things repeated: inventory, pricing, competition,...] Excerpt from Forbes: This is a bit more scary than the Bay/Ascend combination. It brings the best brand name in the telecommunications world to the most widely distributed product line in the networking universe: every kind of gear to connect to the network (data, voice, video), the intermediary steps to get to the big networks (switches, remote access), and the world's biggest backbone network itself. This lets the giant telecom company move its tentacles out throughout the enterprise, tie into the switching revolution as a way to bypass routers, promote ATM in the manner it needs to succeed, and feed all that traffic into its massive, already built ATM-powered superhighway. Economies of scale make it economically feasible to have an enormous network, and this lets AT&T go hard after the telecommunications consulting business as the preeminent supplier. (Same as IBM's recent strategy on the computer side.) OK. When the dust has settled, who'll be left? Basically there is Shiva, with a decent but troubled remote access business, and Cabletron, with a core hub business, with some switiching, for the enterprise. Together they might make a poor man's version of the Ascend/Bay merger, and the natural partner would be Nortel--but this is an also ran. Mitel, or Siemens, the other big voice gear makers might want to get into the action as well. Beyond that, the telcos and carriers don't have much reason to buy hardware. It is better for them to stay unaffiliated and play vendors off against one another.

To: David Lawrence who wrote (8852)	11/8/1997 2:39:00 AM
From: Dee Jay	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22053

"* In August, Bausch & Lomb Inc. agreed to pay $1.7 million to settle a multi-state investigation in which attorneys general accused it of fraud. According to the states, the company sold the very same disposable contact lenses under three different model names, purporting to have different characteristics, for prices varying from $2.50 to $23 a pair. Said a New York investigator, "The lenses are the exact same physically--the only difference was their instructions for use." David, here's the story behind the story - about 2 years ago, maybe more, Consumer Reports nailed down the fact that B & L's extended wear disposable lenses (wear 'em for several days or a week & toss) were identical to the extended wear NON-disposable lenses that are worn for several days and then cleaned and sterilized for additional wear, as with conventional daily wear soft lenses. Consumer Reports was tipped off by an opthomologist or optometrist as to what B & L was doing, if I recall correctly. CR then contacted B & L and got verification from B & L that in fact the 2 lenses, sold for different purposes and at substantially different price points, were identical - not similar but identical. Only the packaging and the pricing were different, not to mention the instructions and promotion. The so-called disposable extended wear lenses are the Seequence IIs - I know because once I read that I tried them and they are indeed the same as the extended wear lenses. So now I wear them for up to a week, remove the protein buildup and clean and sterilize and rewear. Thus what had been a significant expense for soft lenses (either the conventional extended wear or disposable extended wear) are now inexpensive extended wear lenses. With care 6 pair will last a year - even longer but I do toss them after a number of weeks' wear. Dee Jay