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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Earl who wrote (18598)	11/20/1997 11:43:00 AM
From: Don Earl	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, 19 NOV 1997 (NB) -- By Craig and Sami Menefee, Newsbytes. This year's fourth main Comdex keynote speaker, Dr. Eric Schmidt of Novell [NASDAQ:NOVL], took as his theme the need to put a simpler, more human face on networked and Internetworked systems of ever increasing complexity. In describing his view of how to do it, the Novell chieftan went opposite to most other corporate speakers. Schmidt, speaking to an unresponsive crowd that only half-filled the Aladdin Theater of Performing Arts, took the position that information is good but ungoverned information is a waste of time. Time, he said, is both the ultimate resource and the ultimate constraint, and time is always in short supply. In Schmidt's ideal networked company, or world, directory-enabled information -- that is, information made available to people depending upon where they work or what they need to know -- would eliminate waste and turn information into a resource. To help organizations deal effectively with the "complexity and creativity that networks bring to them" will take information management, said Schmidt: "The end user has to feel empowered but the CIO has to be able to set up the framework." He continued: "The correct way to think about this is that a set of services will evolve so that end users will have permissions granted through a set of directory-enabled solutions that will allow them to get access to the things they care about." Schmidt said no two people hook into the network with the same "digital persona," Schmidt's term for the relationship of each user to a network. Some need e-mail, some to send a fax, some to research a product or solve a technical problem. Newsbytes notes software exists to record people's preferences and help them find more productive channels. Schmidt, however, took a more top-down view, repeatedly assigning the responsibility for simplifying network access to a company's CIO (chief information officer). To that end, said Schmidt, the CIO must be given the power to set up permissions for all the other employees. In this, Schmidt swam against the currents followed by most other big fish in this year's Comdex pond. The day before, Cisco Systems' John Chambers and, in a separate session, Borland's Del Yocam both dwelled on the need to tie humans more freely to their network information sources. Chambers even predicted companies will fall behind or fail if they do not treat information technology (IT) as a resource, not a cost center, and do not make corporate information widely available to employees in order to help them avoid making stupid decisions based on incomplete information. The Novell CEO's opposition was brought home during a demonstration in which an IT specialist set up a networked system for a fictitious new CEO at Novell based on a "digital persona" needs assessment. It led to a situation in which the mock CEO tried, and was unable, to access the Playboy Channel on his office information center. There were muffled chuckles from the audience, proving that some of them were still breathing. The skit moderator discussed the incident as an example of applying "need to know" principles wisely across the board. Ogling Playboy models was apparently not a wise use of time. "We're busy building worlds on the Internet," he pointed out early in his talk. "It shouldn't surprise us that there are criminals, banks and churches where people go to pray." The task of making the complex network more effective for the organization, said Schmidt, must be a task assigned to the CIO for legal, security, and simple business management reasons. Reported by Newsbytes News Network: newsbytes.com .

To: Don Earl who wrote (18598)	11/20/1997 9:46:00 PM
From: dwight vickers	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

Don and BP, From my days working at Dean Witter I can assure you that the bid/ask spread is owned by the Market Makers. No one else gets to trade there. No matching orders. Forget it. These guys don't make their money on commission anymore. It's on the spread. Everyone should be extremely careful of the $15, $12, $8, $0, commission companies. Guess how they make their money? Everytime I've been filled at a buy under the ask, or a sell over the bid, it's been a sign that the stock was going in the opposite direction of the trade I made. That's the only reason I got a "deal". I've sat 1/8 under the ask on a 1/2 point spread for days, and never been filled. It's a scam, and no one cares. BP's concern that it's a conspiracy to push the price down is a bit too conspiratorial. Much simpler...profit, on the spread. Conspiracy gives them too much credit. Dwight