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To: Greg B. who wrote (15685)	9/29/1998 9:24:00 AM
From: Jon Koplik	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

To all - a "plain English" explanation of swaps and derivatives. I was just reading an article about Long Term Capital Management, and in it was a (theoretically) simple example to convey the essence of a typical swap arrangement (a common "derivative"). Even though I actually DO understand these things, the example was so poorly chosen that I immediately went into "Maurice / Super $D sleep mode." The best example I've ever heard (and the first one that me me think "okay, I've got it,") was the following : A copper mining company goes to Goldman Sachs, and pulls out a xerox copy of a Commodity Research Bureau chart of the price of copper (going back several years). The prices has zigged and zagged erratically between about 70 cents a pound and 95 cents a pound. The price that day was 88 cents. The copper producer says "We are sick of risking our entire company on a "fluke" decline in the price of copper, and we are sick of endlessly needing to fool around with the copper futures market; please propose us a swap arrangement." Goldman Sachs sends the data on past price performance of copper to their so-called "rocket scientists," who would do some serious number crunching, and then comes back with something like, say ... Goldman Sachs will buy all of your copper production for the next two years at a FIXED price of 91 cents a pound, regardless of what the actual price of copper turns out to be. This is a swap -- the copper company has switched from an undetermined, fluctuating future cash flow to a fixed, certain one. All swaps (I believe) follow this central theme. Jon.

To: Greg B. who wrote (15685)	9/29/1998 6:51:00 PM
From: Dave	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

Greg B. Having US Philips endorse CDMAone(IS-95) and CDMA2000 helps the Q. The Q and US Phillips have been striking at each other, though. I know that there is one patent infringement suit going on between the Q and US Phillips. US Phillips tends to use corporate patent lawyers, as does the Q, Motorolla, Lucent, AT&T and Nokia. Furthermore, US Phillips also uses private firms. However, US Phillips, in conjunction with a Lucent partnership, can't seem to make a CDMA phone. dave