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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Matt who wrote (2934)	10/24/1998 3:49:00 AM
From: ahhaha	Respond to of 29970

AOL is scared. They're scared because they see that there is only one threat to their little empire, the cable modem boys. It is natural to resent the encroachment of competition. Competition makes you work harder for less. That's the ignorant perception. Actually, it makes you work better for more. The latter isn't what is taught in the war against wealth. Don't be like them. AOL doesn't know what they want. They want something called a level playing field. Why does anyone want that? If you have the tilt against you, you learn to be a much better competitor. At the quarter you switch sides. Then who has the advantage? I'm not trying to evade your question. Not much is the best that can be done. We could speculate that an AOL subscriber would have to be charged $40/mo for cable access. $25 goes to AOL to fatten fairness margins and $15 is split between the carrier MSO and ATHM. Who would object to that arrangement? As far as special or supplementary services including broadband, they would have their appropriate add-on costs. The AOL email model and $9.95 group rates are ridiculous and are mostly loss leader strategies. Email should never be charged. NSCP browser is fine. I use both. Each has certain advantages. TCI and other MSOs are just the physical fiber optic wires spread out all over the place which were originally only carrying cable tv. Now the fiber cable is being upgraded to HFC so that it can be bidirectional. That means you can send as well as receive. You do want to interact on the internet don't you? You have to be able to go out as well as let stuff come in as in a download in order to do that. The various sites you quote are programs in a server computer or on a desktop, or even a mainframe somewhere at the end of the fiber optic cable or at the end of the copper telephone wire. The telephone wire message goes through the telco central office where it gets cooked and batched and sent en masse all over hell and gone including where you don't want it to go. One place it can go is to ISPs like AOL, Worldnet, Mindspring, Earthlink, etc., where it is processed in their server computers and sent back out to some destination mostly to another telco central office where it can be distributed down to the jerk to whom you're trying to email. ISPs are just toll booths. They bill you for maintaining their server computers in cold , dark rooms. They don't add value. They're just cash cows. They give a lot of regular milk. TCI and the other MSOs don't actually compete with anyone. They have protected territories. Don't you like to pay the protection money? Your home page has nothing to do with all of this. You can have a blank sheet for your home which is provided off your hard disk, or you can have your home logged to your ISP, or Yahoo, or wherever. If you have your own site or a site hosted by an ISP, usually you have your own personally designed home page that resides in your designated memory space in one of your ISP's server computers or maybe in your own computer. Netcom, for instance, is a more specialized ISP. They go for a premium because they provide tiered service or different levels of quality at different costs. They also provide higher speeds or special feeds. They are more for business purposes in comparison to consumer ISPs like AOL. You aren't missing much. Just the physical layer of all these gadgets. If you understand the above, you now know about all there is necessary to know. Trying to figure out how all these guys are affording through advertising their presentations is hopeless. They aren't. They're going bust. The first big net bust is quickly approaching. E-commerce, is on the ropes. The net is for information or entertainment, not for actualizing what you do when you become informed. Then you turn off the computer and go have some fun in life. Any ISP copper or fiber can offer special premium services. You probably won't ever need them. With cable the premium services are more transparent in why you might want them from time to time. They just aren't available in low speed copper. AOL has a canned presentation that groups information and presentation in ways that many find appealing. Most people aren't adept at configuring computer software of arranging things in pigeon holes. AOL provides that out of the box. They also have extensive graphics that people grow fond of. They don't mind a slow load. Why do people buy Variety or the National Perspirer? They like whatever is there. Same at AOL. If you spend time chatting or using a few ways to interact, AOL can be the way to go. But if you want to get anything done and you don't have all day, you need to go somewhere else. They are famous for having horrible service and unbelievably irritating problems. Probably what made them so popular outside of a wicked advertising campaign, is the $10 group rate. You're right about Bell's non-compensation. They are too scared of the FCC to take action. That won't last very much longer. The free ride is about to terminate. I can't agree about government buying and running any business. The purpose of government is to interfere and make business worse so the companies can be blamed and government can be extolled. If government got into business, then they would be blamed for the mess they would create. It's not possible for government to accept the truth. Government can't do anything simple. Lastly, government is the only agent that enables monopolies to persist. It is in government's attempt to destroy monopoly that they create laws which enable the monopoly to survive where natural free market competitive forces would have destroyed it. The best intellectuals in the universities can't accept this profound truth. The intellect is blind where inherited prejudice fixes the focus.