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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: valueminded who wrote (61397)	6/4/1999 10:38:00 AM
From: Earlie	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 132070

Chris: It won't matter. The Rambus technology is just not going to be purchased in consequential amounts. Best, Earlie

To: valueminded who wrote (61397)	6/4/1999 1:37:00 PM
From: benwood	Respond to of 132070

<wouldnt you think that the attempt to force the (high end pc world) to accept a higher price dram (rambus) with royalties accruing (indirectly) to Intel (the monopoly player in the high end market) would be something the FTC would take notice of in its antimonopoly efforts. yes / no> Regardless of the FTC's position, I think the market would be very leery of embracing this arrangement. And there is a precedent in the PC industry about when a dominant company tried to get their finger in the pie. In 1987, the AT bus (which was really the 16-bit ISA bus), was getting rather long in the tooth. Combine that with IBM's bitterness over its having accidentally spawned the PC cloning business when they simply gave away the ISA specifications royalty free and you had IBM in 1987 presenting to the market their new bus design, called MCA (micro channel architecture). Catch up time for IBM in the 2nd round: they would license this bus for around a 5% per unit fee ($150 to $250 per unit). Outraged, the industry created it's own 32-bit extension to the ISA bus (EISA), then began working on a high performance local bus called VESA local bus, which came out in '92. Intel followed that with the PCI later that year. All these incarnations were royalty free. Meanwhile, the MCA simply went down in flames almost as fast as a Boeing launch.

To: valueminded who wrote (61397)	6/4/1999 3:47:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 132070

Chris, I am looking at a Depression scenario where Treasuries yielded almost nothing, but nobody else could borrow money at any rate. In order, Chase (biggest exposure), Citigroup (second dumbest), Bankers Trust (dumbest, but they now have a big sugar daddy backing their mistakes), and least like, JP Morgan (there exposure is huge, but they are simply smarter than the other banks). I think the FTC will take notice, but since Intel whupped 'em good in the last trial, they will be reluctant to take them on again right away. Unless they accidentally see MSFT get hooked, then they will get some liquid courage.