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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: divvie who wrote (52884)	4/27/1999 1:38:00 AM
From: H James Morris	Respond to of 164684

divvie, think about this. Ebay up 8 7/8, Bids up 6 11/16, Ebid up 43c. It's an auction "Thing"! Don't you think?? Ps Then the sluts will follow.

To: divvie who wrote (52884)	4/27/1999 8:48:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

Plugged In: The future belongs to broadband By Scott Hillis LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Are you among those Web surfers bored with endless pages of scrolling text and fed up with pictures that take ages to download? Take heart, because tomorrow belongs to broadband. Broadband, or high-speed, connections are hailed as the future of the Internet, delivering high-quality video and audio to an audience growing hungrier for richer content. Using cable television lines or dedicated wires carrying digital signals, broadband technologies attain speeds up to 140 times faster than traditional systems. That translates into faster download times for Web pages as well as gargantuan video, sound and graphics files that can easily swamp the analog modems used in most computers today. Moreover, the new technologies keep you plugged in to the Internet 24 hours a day, eliminating dial-up times and pesky busy signals. Entertainment companies are rubbing their hands in anticipation of the day when their wares can be readily sold and delivered to the online masses. "When broadband is a reality and you have a decent pipe into the home, people can download my product," said Bobby Kotick, chief executive officer of California-based video game maker Activision. Analysts say the growth of online music offerings will help fuel the broadband market as more customers insist on the ability to grab CD-quality songs off the Internet in a matter of minutes. "The availability of this kind of content is going to drive demand for high-speed access," said Paul Bandrowski, chief executive officer of Reciprocal, a music rights clearing house partly owned by Microsoft. But the road to a broadband world is bumpy. Companies must overcome lofty prices, spotty availability and a Congress wary of anti-competitive activities. While there are several broadband technologies, it is now essentially a two-horse race between cable and digital subscriber lines, or DSL. Those that do not seem able to cut it for the mass market are costly satellite systems and ISDN, which is much slower than the alternatives. The cable camp pairs local cable television companies with national cable Internet firms such as AtHome Corp., majority owned by AT&T, and RoadRunner, a joint venture child of technology heavyweights like the MediaOne Group, Time Warner, Microsoft and Compaq. Cable boasts the ability to zip signals around at up to 4 megabits (Mbps) per second, 70 times faster than the fastest current modems, through which data trickles at a mere 56 kilobits per second. But all that speed doesn't come free. Subscribers have to pony up for a pricey cable modem, which can cost several hundred dollars. Internet access is also more expensive -- expect to pay at least double the typical $20 monthly bill for regular telephone deal-up services such as America Online. Nonetheless, the cable Internet business is booming. Bill Ruehle, chief financial officer for Broadcom Corp., an Irvine, Calif.-based maker of chips for cable and DSL modems, said he expected cable modem sales to double or even quadruple last year's 500,000 units. And the editors of PC Magazine landed on the side of cable in a comparison of high-speed services in the April 20 issue. "In most cases our tests showed cable modem services to be a better deal for the residential user today than DSL," they concluded in their "Editors' Choice." "Cost per Mbps on our performance tests was generally the lowest for cable modems, and though our cable modem reviewers had a few more installation and customer support problems than DSL ... reviewers, they found performance in general to be excellent," the magazine said. So a clear victory for cable? Not so fast. DSL has a few tricks as well. While the 60 million homes that have cable television hookups are a fertile field for cable Internet to take root, DSL's reach is potentially even greater because it wor...