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To: greenspirit who wrote (477)12/2/1997 8:34:00 PM
From: Investor-ex!  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 686
 
Hi Michael,

Well, it's becoming obvious you are a big CSCO fan, which is what I sensed in your original post, which is why I made my comment about the appropriateness of that post.

Don't get me wrong, it's just that this particular thread has had relatively little of that type of posting to date and I was just trying to keep it that way. Maybe I stepped over the line -- in fact, in retrospect, I did.

It's also obvious we have very different (investment) world views, and that's not to say one is superior to the other. I absolutely cannot tolerate even a hint of hype, especially when it originates from a company's staff, especially the CEO. In my opinion these guys should project quite conservatively and deliver the moon, not the other way around. I like to be surprised on the upside!

Would I invite Chamber's to an Internet commerce roundtable? I wouldn't necessarily invite a heating-cooling systems manufacturer to an architects' convention, which is about the best analogy I can come up with right now. A nuts-and-bolts guy's opinion might be interesting, it might be irrelevant, it might be a distraction.

Finally, congrats on the CSCO pop, a new high! May all your future positions be as rewarding.

P.S., there are lots of computers that aren't PC's, of those that are, a fair bunch don't use INTC processors. Intel is NOT the "heart and soul" of the "computer", though after several years of TV commercials, the layman might readily, and understandably, believe so. Also, the microprocessor would naturally be marketed as the "heart and soul" of the computer by a microprocessor manufacturer. The operating system author would also claim, and rightfully so, that his contribution is the "heart and soul" of the computer. The BIOS chip manufacturer (a very critical piece of firmware in every PC) would claim, "No, the BIOS is the heart and soul of the computer"! Yadda, yadda, yadda...

Incidentally, the Von Neumann fetch, update, decode, execute model, realized digitally and encased in silicon, is but one possibility. As sacrilegious as this sound, given high enough chip densities, computers of the future may not have a microprocessor at all, per se, as all code could be executed directly in memory. Computers of the future may be built of glass fiber and lasers instead of silicon and copper wire. Further out yet, at least for certain applications, computers may become organic, DNA based devices, reconfiguring themselves based on the problem at hand. What's the microprocessor in this? If today's so-called "heart and soul" are no longer present, will the computer become even more heartless and soulless than it already is? :-D

The point being, like routers (which are in danger of being replaced by IP switches), Intel's chips are simply a means to an end, a convenient stepping stone on a long and interesting path to some unknown technical future, regardless of their current ubiquity.

Have fun,

Investor-ex!