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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Patriot Scientific - PTSC -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bob who wrote (4712)	4/7/1998 10:30:00 AM
From: David B.	Respond to of 8581

Great news. A strong endorsement of the PSC1005. Maybe a stronger endorsement of PTSC's software skills. It looks like Olea is looking for some programming help--high value add. Let's hope Olea pays their bills.

To: bob who wrote (4712)	4/9/1998 8:02:00 PM
From: cksla	Respond to of 8581

to all: think about the type of future applications mentioned in the olea pr and then read this article: As connected as a Japanese Coke machine Copyright c 1998 Nando.net Copyright c 1998 Scripps Howard (April 9, 1998 08:49 a.m. EDT nando.net) -- Few Americans are as plugged into the telecommunications revolution as are an estimated 800,000 soft drink vending machines in Japan. But that is going to change, quickly and inexorably. "The Coca Cola machines in Japan have a chip in them so that they are all inter-connected. Just imagine what that means for marketing and merchandising, instantly knowing how fast each product sells," said Boston telecommunications author Stan Davis. Computers are becoming smaller, easier to use, increasingly more portable and much, much cheaper. At the same time, global networks for digital communications are becoming more accessible and much, much cheaper. The combination of these two revolutions will result in a burst of information access within a few years, if not months, that will bring changes ranging from the profound to the bizarre. "I just met with somebody from Sweden who makes uniforms used in hotels. It's a $110 million business. They have sewed an embedded radio-broadcast micro-processor into every one of their uniforms," said Nikolas Kron at the Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation. "That chip captures the name of the person to whom the uniform has been assigned, the number of times it has been washed, how long it has been worn since it was last washed, and where it has been assigned. It broadcasts this information. And it costs just 80 cents per chip." In short, hotels in Sweden have uniforms that announce when it is time for them to be washed, whether they have been stolen and even when they should be replaced. Economist magazine senior editor Francis Cairncross, in her 1997 book "The Death of Distance," describes the enormity of the imminent change that telecommunications will bring. Low-earth orbiting satellites starting next year will eliminate the need to actually "plug in" to communication networks like the Internet. Although wireless digital communication has been available through cell-phone systems in most major metropolitan areas for several years, the next generation wireless links will surpass the capability of most home telephone lines to link a personal computer to computer networks. Cairncross predicts that electronic data, rather than traditional voice impulses, will occupy the majority of telephone circuits in the United States by the year 2000. Three years later, she suggests, voice will represent less than 2 percent of all telecommunication traffic. In the very near future, voice communications will mostly be carried by computer networks rather than visa versa, Cairncross said. Davis agreed. "You've got a situation in which today 90 percent of all telecommunications is voice. But the non-voice transmissions are growing at 40 percent a year. By 2002 the percentages will be reversed," he said. Davis and Christopher Meyer have just published "BLUR: The speed of change in the connected economy" which describes the coming communication capabilities in almost messianic terms. The key will be the natural market forces that will make the next wave of telecommunications cheaper than the more limited technology today. Much cheaper. "Time was not so long ago that people only had one telephone in their home. Today most people of at least middle-class means have more than one. And with the bandwidth (the volume of information that a link can carry) getting bigger and cheaper, we have a situation in which all sorts of boxes get hooked up in the electronic world," Davis said. "If you go into a modern hotel, you discover that every doorknob is hooked into a system. That is an intranet, in a sense. But what is coming is much bigger." Every home appliance, lock and light switch can be hooked into an inexpensive local network. Lights will know when a room is occupied and will turn themselves on, or obey spoken commands as to how bright they should be. "We will be able to adjust the price of any product in the grocery store according to its expiration date," Davis said. Products will contain disposable microprocessor chips within their disposable packaging. Such technology will allow grocery store owners to keep precise tabs on perishable foods, reducing the billions of dollars of waste that occurs in the meat, vegetable, and dry foods each year. The coming wave of inexpensive computer chips that broadcast information about the products to which they are attached will be used because they will save money. By THOMAS HARGROVE, Scripps Howard News Service