In the news

biztech.57.635: Busy Techie (ronks) Wed 6 Nov 96 10:43 Penril Sells Modem Business To Bay Networks Penril Datacomm Networks of Maryland is trying to narrow its corporate focus and concentrate on remote access by corporate users into their companies' nets, by spinning off a company called Access Beyond Inc., and selling their modem division to Bay for $120 million. Network Company Execs Dump Own Stock SEC filings show that high-ranking insiders at four network firms are selling larger than usual blocks of shares lately. The companies have done very well, so they could just be taking profits; or they could all be buying new houses; or they could know something about the fourth quarter they are not sharing with us. Five insiders at Ascend are selling about $19 million of their stock, ADC Telecomm execs are selling $8 M, nine insiders at 3Com sold $29 M in just two days, and the CEO of Cascade Communications sold 100,000 shares, keeping only 8,000. biztech.57.637: Busy Techie (ronks) Thu 7 Nov 96 08:56 Iomega To Sell Zipettes For PDA's The name is my invention; what they say they will do is offer a smaller version of their popular Zip removable-disk drive, holding 20 megabytes, that will fit in PDA's, cell phones(!), and digital cameras. They will call it the "n-hand" for no apparent reason, and price it to OEMs for about $100; disks should run about $10 each. 3Com Publishes Big Attack Ad Just when the election is finally over and civility restored to public discourse outside of the Well's News conference (some places are just hopeless), 3Com takes out a full-page ad in the business section of the NY Times titled "Is your future HELD AT BAY?" (a little pun there you see, who says CEOs don't have a sense of humor). Anyway, a serious- looking Bob Finocchio goes on and on about how untrustworthy places like Bay Networks, Cabletron, and Cisco are, and how compared to these lowlifes "There is an alternative: 3Com." I'm sure those rumors about how Cisco would gut Medicare and Cabletron would flood the streets with Willie Hortons are...oh sorry, wrong campaign. biztech.57.642: Busy Techie (ronks) Fri 8 Nov 96 09:28 Banyan Prunes Staff The network company will lop off a hundred people, or about 15% of its workforce. Its chairman and CEO David Mohoney has been demoted to vice- chairman; his place at the top will be held for now by the company's CFO while it searches for new blood. TV Set-Top Web Browser Banned From Export As Weapon Not on account of its sharp corners but because it uses a 128-bit encryption key, an appliance available from Sony and Philips at munitions dealers like Circuit City and Sears has been classified as a weapon requiring an export license for overseas sales. To date, 40 bits are the maximum that can be sent abroad as it were, though the Web TV Networks company who designed these instruments of destruction says it has an OK for up to 56-bit keys. The government has not granted any export licenses for 128-bit key devices, according to "a Government official who spoke on condition of anonymity". Jeez. SEC To Revamp Edgar The system for the electronic retrieval of corporations' financial filings was designed in 1984 when the technology was somewhat more primitive, so the SEC is putting a redesign up for bids. They may also outsource some of the remaining public-sector functions like database maintenance to private firms. Another Internet Stock Scam Alleged The SEC has obtained an order freezing the assets of the head of a company called Systems of Excellence (stock symbol SEXI), as well as those of an electronic financial newsletter called SGA Goldstar. Trading in the stock of SEXI, "which says it makes equipment for video teleconferencing", was suspended in October. Basically the allegations are that the chairman of the company issued millions of unregistered share in the company to himself, his wife, mother, and niece (presumably three different women), and to the publishers of a newsletter called SGA Goldstar published on the Internet; then both he and the publishers made false or inflated claims about the company's prospects. One sounds straight out of the South Sea Bubble: an unnamed source "informed us of a rumored Federal order so large which [sic] we do not even want to rumor the size of the order". While the news report goes on about the Internet, its role here seems merely a faster and better way of spreading the same old lies. biztech.57.643: Busy Techie (ronks) Sat 9 Nov 96 12:52 AT&T Worldnet E-Mail Service Down For Over A Day Over 200,000 customers of the big hobby board were unable to send or receive e-mail from mid-afternoon Thursday till some time Friday when a mail server failed. Mail was not lost in either direction, the company says, just queued and queued and... biztech.57.645: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon 11 Nov 96 10:44 Web Designers Trying To Spoof Search Engines Like a constant battle between burglars and lock makers, some Web site builders are trying to tilt the results of searches to get their locations higher ranked on a search, and search tool builders are trying to prevent them. A company called NetDesign practices "word-stuffing", in which for example an introduction service repeats the phrase "computer dating" over and over, sometimes in the same color as the background for invisibility, to score higher in relevance points. One client, a vendor of rodent traps, tried to insert the word "sex" repeatedly into his site; I wonder what sort of customer he was looking for. Search engines are beginning to catch on to this, and are being told to ignore repetitions without punctuation and to look for context. Entirely abandoning subtlety, a search company called Open Text simply sold the top spots on its results page to the highest bidder; despite the straightforward nature of the approach, vehement criticism evidently forced them to go back to more devious means after a month. Cisco's Success, Strategy Analyzed Following last week's announcement of quarterly financial results that showed an 80% rise in revenue and a 77% increase in profits over a year ago, not to mention a share price more than doubled since the start of 1996, the NY Times does a look behind the scenes complete with factoids and some thoughts on open vs. proprietary systems. Cisco's market cap of $42 billion makes it third largest on NASDAQ behind Intel and Microsoft; they claim 44% of the network industry's profits (compared with Why is DES being replaced? My understanding is that despite enhancements like longer keys and triple encryption, DES is becoming more vulnerable to brute-force attacks from ever faster decryptor machines. Few argue that to be the case today, but some believe that within say ten years DES will be inadequate for the higher levels of sensitivity that it is used for now. The impression I have from colleagues who are more closely involved in this issue (and send me papers of mind-numbing complexity) is that it's not time to panic over DES' adequacy, but it is time to up periscope and think about a replacement for the long term. biztech.57.663: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon 18 Nov 96 11:21 Mr. MacOS Out Isaac Nassi refreshingly declined to claim he was "pursuing other interests" in resigning as chief of Apple's operating system division; his statement says "it was just time to go". So he went. One observer wryly noted that he closed the gap between Apple and Microsoft software, but unfortunately Apple was ahead at the start. Various causes are rumored: he denies that Apple's negotiations with Be Labs played a part in his decision, but the recent abandonment of the Copland project and differences with CEO Gilbert Amelio may have. CDMA Wireless standards Moving In On TDMA According to the report, AT&T has bet heavily on Time Division Multiple Access to drive its digital wireless phone service, which offers up to three times the capacity of analog by time-slicing a frequency into that many conversations. Now comes Code DMA to the party, sponsored by smaller companies like Primeco, with up to nine times analog over a collection of frequencies. The head of Northern Telecom's wireless unit suggests that marketing not technical superiority may decide the winner; but that's another topic. Intel, Apple To Open Own Restaurants Well not exactly, but close. Intel has allied with Starbucks to open a chain of cybercafes with Intel inside; and Apple is partnering with Mega Bytes International (really) of London to create the first Apple Cafe in LA, followed by London, Paris, NY, Tokyo, and Sydney. The link between caffeine and the Internet has never been closer; perhaps Jolt modems? US In Big Push for Electronic Banking With the exception of tax returns (more on that later), the government is moving to convert *all* of its payments to individuals as well as companies to direct deposit by 1999. The effects of this migration could be profound, and not only to Social Security recipients without bank accounts. EDI payments to vendors will become mandatory in most cases, so businesses will have to provide it and will be more likely to use it for transactions among themselves; companies like power utilities who also deal with consumers will likely promote ACH bill payments. Banks are being encouraged to offer bare-bones checkless accounts with direct deposit and a debit card; and the Treasury may even offer its own debit card to recipients of Federal benefits along the lines of a pilot presently underway in Texas. The scale of the change? As of now, about 47 percent of the government's 850 million annual payments of $1.2 trillion are transacted via paper check, costing about 42 cents each; an electronic deposit costs about 2 cents each. Electronic tax refunds will not be required (though they'll be encouraged) out of Congressional fear some that people wouldn't file tax returns at all if they had to disclose their bank account numbers. biztech.57.667: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon 18 Nov 96 18:06 Don't have the article in front of me, but it said check-cashing shops were thinking of installing ATMs, possibly with a per-transaction fee to take up the gouge slack. The electronic deposit initiative was said to be a result of Congressional legislation last spring; for example it was their idea to modify Clinton's proposal that proposed to electrify all tax refunds. biztech.57.669: Busy Techie (ronks) Tue 19 Nov 96 09:57 Headline of the Day: "IBM Surge Fails To Lift Blue Chips" Compuserve May Move Out Of Germany Due To Censorship The German parliament is considering legislation that would hold on-line services responsible for blocking access to pornography and "extremist" words and pictures. Compuserve says in response it is considering moving its offices and staff of 250 out of the country to reduce their chances of liability, though they would probably continue to serve their 335,000 German customers. Mastercard Buys 51% of Mondex Smart-card issuer and sponsor Mondex International was set up in July by 17 banks with an initial capitalization of 100 million pounds (~$170 M US), so the undisclosed purchase price is probably about half that. biztech.57.670: Busy Techie (ronks) Thu 21 Nov 96 12:25 Treasury To Publish Unpolicy on Taxation of Internet Sales A draft report is scheduled to go up on www.ustreas.gov today that outlines the absence of formal policy recommendations from the Treasury on taxing commercial transactions that take place over the Internet. Instead it will advocate "an overarching goal of neutrality" which treats cybersales no differently from those that occur the old way. Some states like New York are nevertheless looking into taxing them, and will probably not be deterred by Federal policy papers. Of greater concern to the authors is the ability of money launderers to use electronic cash for anonymity on washday, and the potential of key- escrow encryption to deal with it. biztech.57.672: Busy Techie (ronks) Thu 21 Nov 96 18:41 Topic 197 over in the Windows conference is all about MS Bob; apparently he's still kicking, or at least being kicked. biztech.57.673: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon 25 Nov 96 10:17 Japanese Patent Win May Lead To More Litigation When an American patent-holder goes after a Japanese company with a claim of infringement, the Japanese firm usually caves in and signs a license agreement to avoid being sued here and facing an American court, even though the case on the merits looks doubtful. A now-bankrupt company called Alpex claimed a 1977 patent on technology (#4026555) that enabled video game characters to move around, and by threatening to sue got a number of game makers like Atari to knuckle under and pay. But Nintendo refused and went to trial; a $25 million trial judgment was reversed on appeal by the Federal Circuit, who held Nintendo used newer technology. The plaintiff has requested an en banc rehearing, but the decision is making other foreign firms think about standing up to infringement claims they consider unjustified. Toshiba Holds Back on US DVD Units - Nothing To Run On Them Citing the absence of disks that can use the new high-capacity drives, Toshiba will not introduce them here till next year. Matsushita who also makes them is undeterred by such details and will ship them this year as planned; they've been available in Japan since Nov. 1. Advertiser To Invade Chat Rooms After Peeking In Last spring Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising sponsored "cultural anthropologists" to observe live interactions in groups like Widowed World, Herpes Self-Help, Romance Connection, and American Woodworker. What a combo; anyway they wanted to see if there was money in it for potential sponsors. Apparently to their surprise they discovered "there are people there with mainstream American interests" including "women who buy laundry detergent" and even parents. They are now working on how to invade the places. One proposal floated publicly is to sponsor them; they don't mention planting shills but I won't be surprised to see some chirpy voice trumpeting Tide in a MUSE next month. biztech.57.675: Busy Techie (ronks) Tue 26 Nov 96 11:11 Delbert Yocam To Head Borland The former chief operating officer at Apple and Tektronix, who is not related to either Dilbert or Li'l Abner's Mammy Yokum, will commute weekly from his Oregon home to run Borland as its chairman and CEO, replacing the interim execs who have been occupying the positions since Gary Wetsel quit in July. Borland staff is around 950, down from 4,000 at its peak; their stock at $7 goes for a third of its 52-week high. Its current challenge/ threat is the explosive growth of Java popularity which their software is not designed to take advantage of. Mr. Y says they will ship products next year that address both Java and the Internet better, though one analyst (Jeffrey Tarter) suggests there is not a lot of money to be made in the Java tool market for some time. Power To Be Apple clone-maker Power Computing Corporation has licensed the Be operating system for use on its systems. They will ship with the MacOS pre-loaded but the BeOS on a bootable CD-ROM. Both parties to the otherwise undisclosed agreement stated that it does not affect the status of Apple's negotiations to license the software or buy Be. It's suggested that Apple may want to take the OS apart and incorporate components from it into neo-Copland or whatever they're calling it. AOL Commits To Excite As Only Net Searcher I can't tell from the article if AOL users will be able to use Altavista, Lycos, etc. by going through gyrations, but apparently they will be told Excite is the exclusive available way to search the Internet on AOL. Excite Inc. is also buying AOL's Webcrawler for $20 million in stock (the paper says AOL paid $1 M for it a year ago - not bad), and AOL gets 20% of Excite (up from 12%) and a seat on their board. biztech.57.676: Busy Techie (ronks) Wed 27 Nov 96 08:48 IBM Awash in Money, To Buy $3.5 Billion Of Own Stock Since the start of last year they have bought back 66 million shares for about $10B total, and they're at it again even at a share price of $158. (Not bad considering it was $41 in 1993.) Estimates are they have $6-7B a year to play with; last year they bought back $6B of stock, spent $3B for Lotus, and had $8B cash left over. With all that money and nothing else left for them to buy, they have decided to buy themselves. France To Lower Groupe Bull Stake (Looking for a pun on "steak" but nobly foregoing the opportunity for a cheap laugh..) The French Government presently owns 54% of its largest computer company; 37% on its own and 17% through France Telecom. (NEC and Motorola each own 17%) They will sell off at least 5%, to bring their ownership down to less than half. Bids must be for at least 1.4 million shares, at a price the Finance Ministry will announce to the "winner", who must promise not to sell them for a year; what a deal. Perhaps IBM would like it? biztech.57.680: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon 2 Dec 96 10:08 WIPO Meets In Geneva, US Presses For Stricter Copyright The UN-sponsored World Intellectual Property Organization meets infrequently (on the order of once a decade); the current one that ends December 20 is working to draft a treaty on copyright protection for the first time since PCs and the Internet became a significant force. US representative Bruce Lehman (Patent and Trademark Office Commissioner) has three proposals to present, covering increased protection for literary and artistic works, phonorecordings, and databases or compilations of information. Critics observe that there has been little public debate of his treaty proposals, except that some of them were rejected by Congress this year, and if they come back as a proposed treaty they will simply be subject to an all or nothing yes/no vote to ratify. They are said to narrow drastically the concept of fair use, and the protection they offer for compilations of public-domain data far exceeds current law. Mr. Lehman, described as "a former lobbyist for the copyright industry", argues that the infrequency of WIPO confabs and the length of time to ratification means he has to look far ahead to prevent dissemination of works that could stifle creativity by undermining authors' / composers' / agents' / etc. incentives. Informix Takes Aim at Oracle Having moved up into the number 2 database-vendor spot when Sybase faded this year, Informix is set to ship its "Universal Server". While the name sounds like an automated butler (a sort of cyber-Jeeves), the system is apparently a data-independent DBMS for storage of audio, video, geographic, and other types of information in addition to plain old letters and numbers. Based on a combination of the original Informix and a program called Illustra, it relies on plug-in modules, some from third-party vendors, to manage the more outre data formats. Oracle is not expected to match it for 6 to 12 months in Oracle 8. biztech.57.682: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon 2 Dec 96 13:34 Perhaps the reason the news does not emphasize the role of copy protection in fostering creativity is that all parties fundamentally agree on that as a goal; where they differ is in assessing the harm that "fair use" and the like will do to it. WRT the 10-year product cycle, it may be the global reach that prevents WIPO from being more nimble; their product is a worldwide IP treaty, and those things move slowly. Even in this country, we're not that far from the day when a copyright case involving player piano rolls was the main precedent for computer software. biztech.57.684: Busy Techie (ronks) Tue 3 Dec 96 10:55 AOL Repricing Angers AG's, Floods Lines Effective December 1, America Online converted all its customers from a monthly price of $10 for 5 hours and $3 for each additional one, to a new flat rate of $20 a month. For those who used it less than, um, nine hours a month it was essentially a unilateral price increase, and the attorneys general of 18 states asked them to give users the option of sticking with the old plan. The company says it will arrange to give _existing_ customers the option of either plan. In any case, so many users decided to take advantage of the flat rate on its first day that they signed on eight million times - not bad considering that there are only seven million subscribers to the service. Busy-signal city. biztech.57.689: Busy Techie (ronks) Wed 4 Dec 96 09:42 Isn't he the brother of Chevy Case? IBM Issues Centuries Joining a small number of corporations, IBM has issued bonds with a 100- year maturity. $850 million of the debt was sold at 7.22%. Though the instruments seem like a long-term prospect, they are callable: that is, IBM can pay them off early like a mortgage under certain conditions. That will be more likely if a Treasury proposal becomes law to reject tax deductions for securities of over 40 years' maturity. LEP's To Replace LED's? An English company called Cambridge Display Technology Ltd. is developing screens for electronic devices that use light-emitting polymers or LEP's. Such displays could be flexible to the point of being rolled up, and both lighter weight and cheaper to make. Apparently the phenomenon in its currently patentable form was discovered by accident, when a scientist who was trying to create semiconducting polymers turned off the lab lights on his way home and noticed his experiment was glowing. (Sounds like a sci-fi movie.) Unfortunately they seem to be stuck on an inability to produce blue light, but for monochrome displays in watches, cell phones, and other appliances this should not be a problem. biztech.57.691: Busy Techie (ronks) Thu 5 Dec 96 10:12 Mondex E-Cash Card Gets Backers, But Future Unclear The Mondex USA corporation is due to be announced today; its owners are Wells Fargo with 30%, Chase Manhattan with 20%, and 10% stakes for AT&T, Dean Witter Discover, First Chicago, Mastercard, and Michigan Natl Bank. Mastercard also owns 51% of Mondex International, the overseas version. Non-owner banks are also eligible to offer the cards, and a Citibank pilot on the Upper West Side of Manhattan is due soon. Mondex's main rival today seems to be Visa Cash, offered by you-know-who. Mondex claims the advantage of inter-card funds transfers, for say a parent to give lunch or allowance e-money to a child. Success is uncertain: tests at the Atlanta Olympics demonstrated that while the technology works, people's interest in it is "tepid". Not to mention that there are costs associated with the startup: merchant terminals cost $500, the cards themselves $10 each wholesale, and Mondex wants 25 cents from banks for every time someone puts money in the card. Microsoft Nobility Dances In Circle With over 30 vice presidents, MS has created a committee at the top to deal with its complexity. The new Executive Committee replaces the 7- member Office of the President begun in 1992. Two senior VP's will join the group: James Allchin and Brad Silverberg, who still report to group VP Paul Maritz. Silverberg, the former nemesis-designate of Netscape, will manage MS Office development, and Allchin will take over Internet server apps from Silverberg. The more things change,... Company Can't Give Away E-Mail Services CMG Information Services has abandoned its Freemark free e-mail offer, when only 45,000 out of a minimum required 100,000 signed up for it. The company said advertisers were not interested in such a small number. biztech.57.692: Busy Techie (ronks) Fri 6 Dec 96 09:09 Government-Business Encryption Compromise Off The brief era of good feeling between the administration and vendors of encryption products that began in October will probably end before the year does. Roel Pieper of Tandem is calling the fall compromise "a bait and switch situation", and other companies are jumping off the bandwagon as the government modifies its terms. The plan was for the US to allow export of encryption software with a key escrow mechanism overseen by the Commerce Department (instead of one considered less friendly like State, Justice, or Defense); some companies at least figured that was better than endless wrangling. Unfortunately in a Nov. 15 announcement transferring responsibility to Commerce, the government added a few changes: (1) the DOJ cops will be "consulted" by Commerce; (2) export licenses even for 56-bit and shorter keys will be considered on a case- by-case basis instead of just permitted; (3) in considering the application for an export license, it will not matter if comparable technology is available overseas; (4) the government will determine the key recovery system unilaterally; and (5) that system might allow for decryption of messages as they are transmitted instead of afterwards. TI Moves Notebook Manufacturing Overseas They will lay off 500 workers in Texas and move TravelMate fabrication to Asia, where the Extensa line is made now. Stratton Oakmont Gets NASD Boot The brokerage firm that sued Prodigy over accusations of fraud made in one of their forums was expelled by the National Association of Securities Dealers as "an egregious boiler room that manipulated stock prices and defrauded customers". Its president and head trader were also barred from the business. They already owe something like $28 million in settlements for customer complaints. Their latest argument was they should be allowed to stay in business to pay off their debts, but NASD decided it was not a good idea to let them "commit fraud in order to use the revenues to pay prior customers". (_They_ said it.) biztech.57.696: Busy Techie (ronks) Fri 6 Dec 96 15:05 I am shocked - shocked - at the intimation that politics was involved. biztech.57.697: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon 9 Dec 96 14:19 Streaming Multimedia Software Gains Market A Massachusetts company called Narrative Communications founded and managed by Lotus refugees in 1995 has produced a suite of programs to enable net users to view multimedia files while they download. Apparently existing software requires the entire file to be received before it can be played; the Enliven product requires only receipt of a header, then begins to show the A/V in real time even over POTS lines. The viewer, which can be downloaded now at www.narrative.com and will be bundled with future versions of MS Internet Explorer, is free. The "Producer" for creating viewable files is $250, and the server runs about $6,000-$11,000. The company's chairman is John Landry, a former senior VP at Lotus. Sites using Enliven today include Ben & Jerry's, Broderbund, Life magazine, and Sony. Cisco Sells Gear Over Web Well, who doesn't anymore; but $75 million in less than five months? Execs confirmed a Communications Week story that since opening their Web site to sales, they have derived that amount of revenue. Their goal is $1.8 billion by the end of their fiscal year next July, or about 30% of total sales. Pointcast "Push" Browser Attracts Competition The current big thing among net-commerce mavens seems to be the active broadcast of material to end users with web browsers (no longer a very descriptive term) that receive and display it automatically. Since Pointcast pioneered its service in February, it claims 1.7 million viewers of news, stock prices, weather, etc. And ads. Other companies like Marimba from ex-Sun employees, Incommon from ex-Oracle employees, and Backweb (whose people don't all seem to have come from one place), offer a slightly different take by not functioning as a middleman like Pointcast but simply offering the technology for media companies to run on their own. Pointcast counters that many clients don't want to run their own site and prefer to rent Webspace; they say they looked at Marimba but decided it didn't scale up to the volume they needed. Microsoft is reported planning to include broadcast reception capability in the next release of Windows. I can't help wondering if this might have some applicability to corporate intranets, but no specific ideas come to mind. I bet they will to somebody soon, though. biztech.57.699: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon 9 Dec 96 16:05 Well I see that Narative Communications got $3 million from somebody called Greylock Management, and another $5.25M from Accel Partners of San Francisco. The article on Pointcast and its siblings didn't mention anything about intranets; it just discussed pitching the products to consumers. biztech.57.701: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon 9 Dec 96 19:40 We have a topic (#36) on "The Microsoft Monopoly", BTW. biztech.57.702: Busy Techie (ronks) Tue 10 Dec 96 10:11 $6 Million Carpal Tunnel Verdict Against DEC A Brooklyn jury awarded a total of $6 million to three women for stress injuries from the use of DEC keyboards. This is reported as the first court victory for plaintiffs: Compaq and IBM have successfully defended suits on the subject, and others have settled without going to a jury. DEC says it will appeal. A major factor in the case may have been that despite its denying there was any link between keyboard use and injury, DEC was cited by "Federal regulators" (probably OSHA) in 1989 regarding its own employees and created "an extensive program to protect" them from the supposedly non-existent threat. Chips Move Faster The domestic book-to-bill ratio for November was 1.15, up from 0.81 in April and 1.10 in October. So for every $100 of chips sent out, makers received $115 of new orders. Perhaps hoping to quit while they're ahead, the industry association will drop reporting the figures after December's and go to a global ratio. MSN Re-remakes Itself For the second time since it opened in August 1995, the Microsoft Network has reinvented, re-engineered, or whatever the current word is, itself. The first time was a year ago when they dropped the proprietary AOL-like persona and "embraced the Internet". This time they embraced the television, with channels, film and animation clips, and of course interruptions for commercials. Reactions so far sound pretty negative, like "it's neat to glance at for a few minutes, but there's nothing on" and "It is an empty experience". Yep, just like TV. Apparently all the online services are having trouble: AOL has yet to show a profit, Compuserve is retrenching, and Prodigy is almost off the radar screen. Netscape Signs Alliances with RBOCs The Web browser will offer users an easy way to select the phone company as their Internet service provider from Netscape's site; in return, the five Bell companies (Ameritech, Bell Atlantic, BellSouth, Pac Bell, and SW Bell) will make Netscape their chosen browser. One analyst colorfully points out the effect of this marriage of titans is "Basically the poor old mom-and-pop ISP gets axed." biztech.57.706: Busy Techie (ronks) Tue 10 Dec 96 19:52 MS Bob must be a couch potato. biztech.57.710: Busy Techie (ronks) Wed 11 Dec 96 14:11 About the defense budget, wasn't it? Java-Minus-One Alliance Formed To Stamp Out Deviance Sun announced that over a hundred companies had joined a group to ensure their Java specifications are "100 percent pure". The goal of the group led by Sun's Javasoft division is to ensure that its members stick to the Java standards and don't add their own extensions. Microsoft was not in the alliance because it was not invited; they have already been sort of naughty (or impure) in that department with added features that favor Windows, but they're certainly not alone. Sun seems to be concerned that Java not go the way of Unix, whose variety of incompatible flavors "ruined the operating system's chances of emerging as a common computing platform" and paved the way for Windows dominance. Miscellany Autodesk bought New Hampshire-based Softdesk for $72 million in stock; and Microsoft bought Web and intranet toolmaker Netcarta of Scotts Valley for $20M cash. Both of those purchasees sound like they picked names that played on familiar trademarks. And Bay Network's chief financial officer William Ruehle is leaving. biztech.57.714: Busy Techie (ronks) Wed 11 Dec 96 18:11 > Was Unix ever really a contender for the mainstream desktop market My guess is yes, it had a chance in the late eighties and early nineties. DOS and Windows 3 lacked elements it had, and it could scale from a workstation OS to a terminal server driving a workgroup and on up. I know of automation consultants to law firms who were certain it was the only way to go, around 1991. And many businesses were deciding then where to migrate from Wang and other minicomputer systems. But the incompatibilities between Sun's Unix and IBM's and SCO's and etc. (glossed over by a Sun rep I heard once as "source-level compatibility") were one factor in its becoming an also-ran. biztech.57.718: Busy Techie (ronks) Thu 12 Dec 96 07:11 Many of the law firms I interviewed for an article in 1991 actually did not depend very heavily on DOS or Windows systems. The secretaries used WordPerfect, but the company business was often based on outdated minicomputer systems they were looking to replace. biztech.57.719: Busy Techie (ronks) Thu 12 Dec 96 09:32 Microsoft and Pointcast In Deal When MS announced that the next release of Windows (I wonder if they will call it Windows 00 three years from now) would incorporate a new Internet Explorer that allowed channels of Web "push" services on the desktop, it looked like they were set to move in on Pointcast like they are moving in on Netscape. But for the short term at least, they look to be coexisting. The two companies announced plans to cooperate: Pointcast will distribute MSNBC content and "embrace Microsoft technology", and the new Windows will feature the Pointcast system on the desktop. Since most Pointcast users today are said to run Netscape Navigator, guess who loses. DuPont Does $4 Billion Outsourcing They awarded 10-year contracts to Computer Sciences Corporation and Andersen Consulting to manage corporate systems that include 300 sites in 70 countries, with 65,000 computers. Andersen also got $550 million to run DuPont's application development. biztech.57.722: Busy Techie (ronks) Thu 12 Dec 96 14:36 I didn't mean to suggest that Netscape users lose; it's the company itself that may take a hit. From the article: The agreement is a potential blow to the Netscape Communications Corporation...Most Pointcast users now use Netscape's Navigator browser when they want to look at a site on the Internet. That could change soon."

Topic 57 [biztech]: In the news for 1996 #748 of 749: Busy Techie (ronks) Sun Dec 29 '96 (09:56) 21 lines Scientific American has an interesting article in its January 1997 issue about developments in fiber-optic bandwidth and their implications for the telephone industry. Companies including AT&T, Fujitsu, and Nippon T&T have already used a single optical fiber to transmit data over "many kilometers" in excess of a trillion bits per second. NEC has gone them one better by using wave division multiplexing to create multiple channels transmitting at different wavelengths; with WDM they sent 132 channels, each carrying 20 billion bits per second, over a single optical fiber. While these "hero experiments" are not yet ready for commercial deployment, they seem to demonstrate big changes in store: glass cable is much cheaper than copper, and WDM is said to eliminate both the need for expensive boosters along the path to clean up the signals periodically and for a separate laser on each channel. As the cost of providing humungous bandwidth plummets, the phone companies' revenue and even their monopoly status could be in jeopardy. A rogue spokesman at British Telecom says technology will make "bandwidth free and distance irrelevant." The director of H-P's labs says phone companies will become digital utilities something like the water or the power company, and an independent analyst estimates "telephone service should cost about three cents a month." (This and forthcoming comments by ronks are reprinted with author's permission).

Topic 57 [biztech]: In the news for 1996 #748 of 753: Busy Techie (ronks) Sun Dec 29 '96 (09:56) 21 lines Scientific American has an interesting article in its January 1997 issue about developments in fiber-optic bandwidth and their implications for the telephone industry. Companies including AT&T, Fujitsu, and Nippon T&T have already used a single optical fiber to transmit data over "many kilometers" in excess of a trillion bits per second. NEC has gone them one better by using wave division multiplexing to create multiple channels transmitting at different wavelengths; with WDM they sent 132 channels, each carrying 20 billion bits per second, over a single optical fiber. While these "hero experiments" are not yet ready for commercial deployment, they seem to demonstrate big changes in store: glass cable is much cheaper than copper, and WDM is said to eliminate both the need for expensive boosters along the path to clean up the signals periodically and for a separate laser on each channel. As the cost of providing humungous bandwidth plummets, the phone companies' revenue and even their monopoly status could be in jeopardy. A rogue spokesman at British Telecom says technology will make "bandwidth free and distance irrelevant." The director of H-P's labs says phone companies will become digital utilities something like the water or the power company, and an independent analyst estimates "telephone service should cost about three cents a month." Topic 57 [biztech]: In the news for 1996 #751 of 753: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon Dec 30 '96 (11:38) 47 lines Emergency Services Seek More Bandwidth The last allocation of frequencies for police, fire, and rescue services was about 23 megahertz in 1987. The amount of traffic over those frequencies has risen dramatically in the last ten years, and the public-safety agencies are asking for 97 MHz by the year 2010 from the FCC, who was all set to auction them off to private carriers. There are various issues like the different characteristics of the 800 MHz and the 30 MHz frequencies, and the fact that 10 channels are available around 220 MHz with no equipment capable of using them. The one I find most striking (and dangerous) is that equipment from each of the two primary manufacturers is incompatible with gear from the other: Motorola says their units meet standards, but Ericsson says Motorola won't license the technology they need to be compatible. Makes you wonder about standards. Bigfeet Moving Into Cell Phones The two biggest manufacturers of wireless phones are Motorola and Ericsson (now where did I just hear those names?), followed by Asian makers like Matsushita/Panasonic, Samsung, Sanyo, Sony, and Toshiba. Conspicuous by their absence are the two infrastructure heavyweights Lucent and Northern Telecom; until now. Both companies are building facilities to make handsets for a couple of reasons. One is the fact that globally it's a $26 billion a year business (58 million units, 17M of them in the US; expected next year, 71M and 20M); the other is the upcoming obsolescence of most existing cell phones. New personal communications services (PCS) technology is incompatible with the old units, and the efforts of cellular networks in retooling to compete with PCS will require new phones. Chances are that Lucent and NT will try to stake out the high end of the market via service provider alliances. Apple Clones: Good News and Bad for Apple Around 300,000 licensed Mac clone machines are expected to sell in 1996, according to an article that suggests they will cost Apple about $100 million in profits from lost sales. No one who purchased a Mac clone seems to have picked it over a PC, but instead bought it over an Apple. In terms of long term effect, though, clones may help Apple by slowing the Mac's erosion of market share to PCs and keeping developers writing for the platform. Apple is hoping cloners will focus on developing markets like Asia and leave the US for it. A boost in clone volume is expected to come next spring when CHRP machines arrive, made from standard components.

Topic 57 [biztech]: In the news for 1996 #751 of 754: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon Dec 30 '96 (11:38) 47 lines Emergency Services Seek More Bandwidth The last allocation of frequencies for police, fire, and rescue services was about 23 megahertz in 1987. The amount of traffic over those frequencies has risen dramatically in the last ten years, and the public-safety agencies are asking for 97 MHz by the year 2010 from the FCC, who was all set to auction them off to private carriers. There are various issues like the different characteristics of the 800 MHz and the 30 MHz frequencies, and the fact that 10 channels are available around 220 MHz with no equipment capable of using them. The one I find most striking (and dangerous) is that equipment from each of the two primary manufacturers is incompatible with gear from the other: Motorola says their units meet standards, but Ericsson says Motorola won't license the technology they need to be compatible. Makes you wonder about standards. Bigfeet Moving Into Cell Phones The two biggest manufacturers of wireless phones are Motorola and Ericsson (now where did I just hear those names?), followed by Asian makers like Matsushita/Panasonic, Samsung, Sanyo, Sony, and Toshiba. Conspicuous by their absence are the two infrastructure heavyweights Lucent and Northern Telecom; until now. Both companies are building facilities to make handsets for a couple of reasons. One is the fact that globally it's a $26 billion a year business (58 million units, 17M of them in the US; expected next year, 71M and 20M); the other is the upcoming obsolescence of most existing cell phones. New personal communications services (PCS) technology is incompatible with the old units, and the efforts of cellular networks in retooling to compete with PCS will require new phones. Chances are that Lucent and NT will try to stake out the high end of the market via service provider alliances. Apple Clones: Good News and Bad for Apple Around 300,000 licensed Mac clone machines are expected to sell in 1996, according to an article that suggests they will cost Apple about $100 million in profits from lost sales. No one who purchased a Mac clone seems to have picked it over a PC, but instead bought it over an Apple. In terms of long term effect, though, clones may help Apple by slowing the Mac's erosion of market share to PCs and keeping developers writing for the platform. Apple is hoping cloners will focus on developing markets like Asia and leave the US for it. A boost in clone volume is expected to come next spring when CHRP machines arrive, made from standard components. Topic 57 [biztech]: In the news for 1996 #752 of 754: Sofia's Choice & biztech hostly type (amicus) Mon Dec 30 '96 (11:46) 1 line What's your source(s) re emergency spectrum? Topic 57 [biztech]: In the news for 1996 #753 of 754: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon Dec 30 '96 (15:53) 6 lines > source(s) re emergency spectrum Today's NY Times business section includes a spectrum with the emergency bands marked on it. Topic 57 [biztech]: In the news for 1996 #754 of 754: Busy Techie (ronks) Tue Dec 31 '96 (09:08) 25 lines Spindler Outdraws Amelio for Apple Money As of the end of September accounting, Apple CEO since February Gilbert Amelio received $3 million ($655K in salary plus a bonus in excess of $2.3M) while his predecessor Michael Spindler took away $4.7M ($557K salary, $382K bonus, and severance of over $3.7 million). There is no need to take up a collection for Poor Gil, however: his stock options could be worth another $42M if Apple shares rise 10%. Iomega To Lay Off 700 The company will move manufacturing from its Utah plant (site of the layoffs) to one in Malaysia, which they said is now capable of producing all its data storage products such as the popular Zip drive. IBM Triples Disk Density Their current PC hard drive stores around 1.5 gigabits per square inch; the new ones can hold 5 gigabits in that space, or "625 full-length novels" according to a spokesman. Commercial availability is expected to be a few years off.

Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #1 of 6: Busy Techie (ronks) Thu Jan 2 '97 (10:53) 58 lines Bankers Move To ToonTown Barnett Banks has launched a cable-TV home banking service as a joint venture with Time Warner in Florida. Barnett customers can check their balances, review statements, transfer funds, and pay bills through their television. Viewers switch to a designated channel (97) on their cable service, and are ushered into an imaginary community known as "Barnett Town," where computer-generated cartoon characters (such as Bugs Barnett?) lead viewers through the various banking functions. Son Of DES Conceived, NIST To Aid Pregnancy From the January 2, 1997 issue of the Federal Register: A process to develop a Federal Information Processing Standard for an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) incorporating an Advanced Encryption Algorithm (AEA) is being initiated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). As the first step in this process, draft minimum acceptability requirements and draft criteria to evaluate candidate algorithms are being published for comment... It is intended that the AES will specify an unclassified, publicly disclosed encryption algorithm capable of protecting sensitive government information well into the next century. The purpose of this notice is to solicit views from the public... so that their needs can be considered in the process of developing the AES. DATES: Comments must be received on or before April 2, 1997. ... Electronic comments may be sent to AES@nist.gov. ... It is NIST's view that a multi-year transition period will be necessary to move toward any new encryption standard and that DES will continue to be of sufficient strength for many applications. NIST will consult with all interested parties so that a smooth transition can be accomplished. ... PROPOSED MINIMUM ACCEPTABILITY REQUIREMENTS AND EVALUATION CRITERIA Draft minimum acceptability requirements and evaluation criteria are: A.1 AES shall be publicly defined. A.2 AES shall be a symmetric block cipher. A.3 AES shall be designed so that the key length may be increased. A.4 AES shall be implementable in both hardware and software. A.5 AES shall either be a) freely available or b) available under terms consistent with ANSI patent policy. A.6 Algorithms which meet the above requirements will be judged based on the following factors: a) security (i.e., the effort required to cryptanalyze), b) computational efficiency, c) memory requirements, d) hardware and software suitability, e) simplicity, f) flexibility, and g) licensing requirements. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #5 of 6: Busy Techie (ronks) Thu Jan 2 '97 (21:30) 12 lines > Does this dictate that the *AEA* will be publicly defined? "It is intended that the AES will specify an unclassified, publicly disclosed encryption algorithm..."; from the FedReg entry, that's how I read it. > There's already a lot of good symmetric encryption algorithms I didn't quote the whole article, but the impression I got was that an existing algorithm might be anointed as a FIPS if it met the criteria, which include availability terms. NIST seems to be looking for a long-term replacement for DES so as not to be caught short when its usefulness fades. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #6 of 6: Busy Techie (ronks) Fri Jan 3 '97 (16:18) 10 lines Spyglass Reports Loss The company announced quarterly losses would be about 10 times what analysts expected, on revenue of $4 million; this includes $400,000 (instead of an anticipated $1.5 million) from Microsoft for Internet filter software used in MSIE. Seems like only a short while ago Spyglass was thought to have sewn up the Web browser market when they bought the rights to Mosaic. Sic transit...

#8 of 9: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon Jan 6 '97 (14:40) 45 lines Apple Reports Greater Than Expected Loss Analysts were looking for a quarterly loss of about 4 cents a share; instead, the company says it will be about 20 to 30 times that, or $100 to 150 million. They blame slow Performa sales, and a shortage of laptops based on the PowerPC chip. In the quarter ended September 30, compared to a year ago Apple's market share worldwide fell from 9 to 5 percent; domestically from 13 to 7%. An expected upcoming problem is competition from Intel's MMX-enabled Pentium chips; the PowerPC is said to lack parallel processing capability the MMX chips have along with DEC's Alpha, H-P's PA-RISC, SGI's MIPS, and Sun's Sparc. The shortfall in revenue and the other bad news may make it harder for Apple to persuade both developers and customers it has a bright future. SGI Stock On Roller Coaster After reaching $46 a share in July 1995, Silicon Graphics dropped to $18 as growth slowed from 40% a year to around 25%. Part of the problem seems to be analysts' expectations of continued fast growth the company didn't dampen in time; but there are other concerns. The company's engineers admit the Pentium Pro matches the performance of their MIPS chip, though they claim faster memory access; and Intel is moving in on the workstation market once owned by SGI and Sun. Digesting the $745 M purchase of Cray Research is another. The company's big hope seems to be expanding their market to business intranets and movie makers, and getting beyond their earlier base of engineer types. Pentiums With MMX Due This Week Intel announcement of the multimedia enhancements for its Pentium chips last March was considered a major factor in slow holiday PC sales, though the company says they only targeted developers to prepare them for the added features. MMX is said to improve Pentium graphics performance by a factor of about 1.6, less than some graphics accelerator cards, and not to be slated for the Pentium Pro. The paradox is that it will most benefit low-end CPUs but make them cost a great deal more, so the rollout Wednesday may be a bust. The PPro chip will be enhanced in the second half of 1997 with something called the Accelerated Graphics Port; the AGP should raise CPU-memory bandwidth from 100 to 500 megabytes a second, slower than SGI's new O2 system at 2 gigabytes/second, but still respectable.

Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #10 of 22: Busy Techie (ronks) Tue Jan 7 '97 (08:58) 22 lines Cray Dumping Suit May Backfire Last May, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado announced plans to purchase a $35 million supercomputer for weather modeling from Japanese maker NEC. Cray responded in July by accusing NEC before the US International Trade Commission of "dumping", or selling below cost by the staggering amount of $65 million. NCAR has more or less been held up from moving while the dispute unfolds with a counterclaim by NEC to the Court of International Trade accusing the Commerce Department (evidently including the Trade Commission) of bias and favoritism toward US companies. So to get some work done while the attorneys duke it out, they are purchasing an H-P supercomputer, a domestic product immune from dumping charges. While they would prefer a vector machine like the Cray or the NEC to a massively parallel system like H-P's, a new generation with pooled memory makes the H-P easier to program, and it can be beefed up to equal the power of a Cray. If NCAR buys the H-P and NEC wins its bias suit, the whole Cray initiative may go down in the roster of Really Bad Business Decisions, since they have pretty much poisoned their relationship with NCAR, till now a major customer. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #12 of 22: Busy Techie (ronks) Tue Jan 7 '97 (14:35) 3 lines The voice of cynicism suggests that Apple could hardly dare to announce anything other than aiming for compatibility with existing apps. To do otherwise is like saying "Please take your business elsewhere". Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #17 of 22: Busy Techie (ronks) Wed Jan 8 '97 (09:00) 34 lines Experienced Computer Buyers Avoid Stores In 1992, 65 percent of consumers who purchased computers were doing so for the first time and 35% were repeat buyers; in 1996 those figures are reversed, and the differences in the two groups' buying patterns are significant. Two-thirds of the newbies' buys are made at big stores, while more experienced consumers go there only two times out of five. Or in other terms, companies like Dell, Gateway, and Micron show sales up 20 to 30 percent over last year, but Circuit City, CompUSA, and the like are down 15 - 25%. Overall, home computer sales were up 15% in the fourth quarter compared with 4Q95. Videoconference Companies Consolidate Austin maker of desktop and group VC units Vtel Corporation will purchase Compression Labs Inc. for $80 million in Vtel stock. Neither is a giant in the field today, but combined they may be in a better position to compete with Intel and PictureTel. Vtel is promising to come out this year with a board that will run over either a LAN or dialup ISDN at speeds up to 384 KB; that will enable them to integrate into nets that include their 384 KB group VC units - at last. Batteries To Go This probably belongs in the "press releases" topic, but I found it in the news and I'm lazy. A San Jose company is developing the niche business of 7x24 available replacement batteries for PCs, cell phones, etc. to business travelers and others. The company's name and phone number is (are?) 1-800-Batteries or www.powerexpress.com. They claim to stock over 6,000 types fresh monthly and ship overnight. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #18 of 22: Sofia's Choice & biztech hostly type (amicus) Thu Jan 9 '97 (06:52) 8 lines FCC Expected to Approve Wireless Plan The FCC is apparently expected to approve setting aside 300 MHz of spectrum for unlicensed use... was this the SuperNII proposal Apple had originally made? Presumably we'll see everyone rushing to put cheap local networking infrastructure on the shelves. Only downside seems to be the fairly short (1-2 mile) range, which makes this good for wiring up a school to a fixed link to the Net, but bad for carrying a connection cross town. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #19 of 22: Busy Techie (ronks) Thu Jan 9 '97 (08:56) 39 lines I wonder how many transmitters they can sell before the interference becomes unbearable. IBM To Put Its Patents On the Internet The company plans to make all its patents dating back to 1971, over two million of them comprising about 400 million pages or 3000 CD-ROMS, available without cost on the Web. The facility at www.ibm.com/patents will permit searching by subject, inventor, and other keywords. Presently the US PTO permits free searching of patent abstracts, but charges for orders of the full text; commercial companies like Questel charge $2000 a year for access to their US patent database, which does not include downloadable drawings and images like the IBM service. The search may be slow, though; the patents are stored on CD-ROMS (about 3000, I bet) mounted in jukeboxes and probably not instantaneously online. The effort is not entirely altruistic, since IBM plans to use it to show off its Internet technology like DEC does with Altavista. Rumor has it that IBM may later add Federal Election Commission data like campaign contributions, to expand the audience for its service. IBM Sees Money In Internet No, really. They claim they will break even this year on their Internet products like Net.Commerce and World Avenue, and that revenue will exceed expenses thereafter. By their estimates, the Internet overall was responsible for $900 million of business this year, and they estimate $3-4 billion this year and a trillion by 2000. Shiva Loses Big Order, Earnings Drop The Massachusetts network company named for the many-handed Hindu god of death or something lost a $5 million order from IBM last quarter, and announced their income would be about a quarter of what analysts expected. Their stock fell about 44% on the news. NOW *THIS* IS VIDEO-ON-DEMAND A Dutch company thinks it's cracked the video-on-demand nut with a new approach called electronic digital delivery (EDD). EMC International Holding B.V. is marketing a technology that allows consumers to download a video to their VCRs using a compression process that takes about 10 minutes. Movies can be ordered via a toll-free number, an on-screen display or the Internet. Consumers can buy or rent the films, but if the film is rented it can be viewed only twice before special embedded technology renders the movie unusable. The service will be available in about a year, but will work only with VCRs with built-in EDD capabilities. EMC says that capability will add only about $50 to the cost of a VCR. (Investor's Business Daily 9 Jan 97 A6) Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #21 of 22: Busy Techie (ronks) Fri Jan 10 '97 (11:46) 28 lines It will be interesting to see if VCR makers go along with Mr. Edd's little add-on; I suspect they will need some sort of incentive. And what kind of bandwidth will the customer need to download that movie in 10 minutes? It's hard to imagine that happening over POTS. SkyTel Spams Own Pager Customers A new customer of the SkyTel pager network received a PIN number exactly matching a company code that broadcasts news headlines to all users who have the news option, about a hundred thousand of them. So when the guy dialed in and keyed his PIN, whatever he tried to enter went to all 100K. Apparently when they in turn tried to respond to the message, *that* sent off another cascade of messages, and so on for about a half hour until the problem was vigorously called to Skytel's attention. Later in the day, SkyTel tried to reactivate the news service and triggered another barrage for about five minutes. Massive Fax Technology Patent Suit Filed Most modern fax machines include a feature that distinguishes automatically between incoming data and voice calls; the makers probably didn't think that technology was patented. Ha, ha, says Mr. David Fink, attorney for Automated Business Companies, the Dallas firm who is suing 15 companies like Canon, Sharp, and Xerox for infringement; the defendants represent 95% of the machines used in this country. .

Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #23 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon Jan 13 '97 (11:07) 28 lines MS Slate Decides Not To Charge For Self Originally the online magazine planned to charge $20/year to subscribe, effective last November; then they postponed it to February; now in an article titled "Slate Chickens Out" they abandon the whole idea. Their reasoning is that with 30 million free Web pages competing for viewers' attention, even asking visitors to provide information about themselves drastically reduces their numbers, and asking them for money as well would leave the place a deserted and unattractive venue for advertisers. Caruso Pans Macworld Denise Caruso had very little good to say about the company's performance at last week's gathering of the faithful. She did like the demo of an e-mail reader that converts text to speech, and a document summarizer that selects relevant sentences out of long passages. But given that this is a kind of pivotal time for CEO Gilbert Amelio to keep software developers still writing for Apple, she felt he showed no strategy and wasted time on photo ops with himself and Wozniak, Jobs, Muhammad Ali, and an actor. She says Ellen Hancock admitted that Apple spent $400 million to buy Next but hadn't even decided if Rhapsody (their joint OS) would be based on the Next software or on the MacOS. And she observes that the delay of Intels' MMX chips till after Christmas gave Apple a fat opportunity to push their own multimedia Macs to consumers; an opportunity they simply ignored. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #24 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Tue Jan 14 '97 (15:32) 40 lines IBM Wins 1996 Patent Derby For the fourth year, the most US patents were awarded to IBM: 1,876 of them. Runners-up were: Canon 1538 Motorola 1064 NEC 1042 Hitachi 961 Mitsubishi 932 Toshiba 912 Fujitsu 868 Sony 854 Matsushita 837 GE 819 Musical Desks At Intel Everybody in the executive suite seemed to go up a notch. Craig Barrett moves from COO to president; Andy Grove moves from president to chairman; Gordon Moore moves from chairman to chairman emeritus. NCR Strikes Deal With CA Similar to a deal that Computer Associates did with DEC last April, CA will develop a version of Unicenter for NCR machines, and NCR will drop support for its own systems management software and sell Unicenter instead. Though most of CA's $4 billion in annual revenue is said to come from mainframe software, Unicenter is their fastest growing product. Gee, is NCR still around? More Mergers Veritas Software is buying Openvision Technologies for about $400 million in stock, and Teleport Communications is acquiring Cerfnet from owner General Atomics for ~$70 M in stock. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #26 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Tue Jan 14 '97 (18:09) 5 lines No doubt the condom patents emerged from IBM's Special R&D division; the first person to make a joke about "firmware" will be, well I don't know what but I'll think of something. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #32 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Wed Jan 15 '97 (10:43) 29 lines "Conductive"? To avoid a buildup of static electricity? Intel Profit Doubles+ Supported by high volumes and fat margins, the company's quarterly earnings rose to $1.9 billion from $867 M last year. Since they practically own the microprocessor market with a 90% share, they can price as they please, which they did by skipping planned cuts in November to maintain their 60% gross margin. No one seems to know if the 40% growth rate of the last two quarters can be sustained or if it's cyclical; but for know, the company is rewarding its 48,500 employees around the globe with a $1000 cash bonus. That's on top of the two semi-annual profit-sharing cash bonuses and the special group awards for meeting targets. Hilton Hotels To Offer High-Tech Services To Frequent Sleepers The international division of Hilton will provide a group of regular customers with their own individual "follow me" phone numbers; to reach such a VIP you just dial a toll-free number that routes you to whatever hotel they're at now, and you can leave a voice message, fax, or e-mail; or even talk to them if they should deign to appear in person. The company is also planning to offer encrypted e-mail, videoconferencing, and Internet access to guests, and make the services available to the US division of Hilton. (But I remember they announced VC services last year; when I called to ask about it, nobody knew a thing.) Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #33 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Fri Jan 17 '97 (07:05) 11 lines AOL Asks Users To Log Off Faced with at least four class-action lawsuits from angry customers unable to log on to their hobby board since the introduction of flat-rate pricing, America Online is taking the unusual step (for them) of throttling business. In addition to suspending TV ads, Steve Case has posted a letter to users asking them to hang up rather than stay online out of fear they will be unable to reconnect; of course only users who can get online will see the letter. Perhaps the next step will be to ask everybody to mail back those diskettes. http://www.merc.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=1140680-1a7 Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #36 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon Jan 20 '97 (12:20) 17 lines Microsoft Profits Up, Says Future Cloudy Apparently Microsoft has gotten pretty good at making pessimistic noises about their financial prospects so they can exceed expectations when the real news comes out; that seems to be happening again. Earnings for the quarter ended December 31 were up 29% from a year earlier to $741 M and revenue rose 22% to $2.7 B, about 12% better than analysts were led to expect. Best sellers were Win 95 and Back Office, as the company cut back on Office 95 to clear the way for Office 97. Now for next quarter's predictions (cue funeral music and sound of wailing): their core desktop applications business is growing slowly at ~10%; OS sales could be hurt by slow sales of PCs; Back Office is growing fast but only contributes a small fraction of the gross; they are increasing R&D spending; and (get this) "the personal computer software business remains inherently risky". Pass the crying towel, please. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #39 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon Jan 20 '97 (19:31) 9 lines I can just see some guy selling pencils at a streetcorner with a sign around his neck saying "Didn't buy Microsoft at IPO". What a sad story.. PC Week had an article recently on the need for patches to the patches in the latest update to NT code. As I recall, 3/4 or more of the problems were the result of a conflict with certain virus scanners. The part I liked about the MS announcement was how their operating systems sales could be affected by slow PC sales; who else would manage to find bad news in the fact that nearly every PC sold today runs their company's OS? Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #40 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Tue Jan 21 '97 (10:52) 33 lines Sun Claims To Outrun Mainframes Their new line of Ultra Enterprise 10000 Servers, which will set back the purchaser from $500,000 to $2 million, are said by the manufacturer to exceed the processing power of an IBM mainframe by a factor of four or more. That's not to say they will run or emulate IBM machine code, of course, so a direct substitution seems to be out of the question. Prime Minister Promotes "Cyberjava" Although my atlas shows the island of Java to be located in Indonesia, the head of Malaysia's government is planning to construct a high-tech 9x30 mile area in his country with a new city in it called Cyberjava, the Orient's answer to Silicon Valley. Matathir Mohamad was in the US talking about tax incentives with Jim Barksdale of Netscape, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Scott McNealy, and Lew Platt of H-P. Perhaps instead of just calling it Cyberjava, he could put it up for bids: say 3Com Island? Netscape Bumps cc:mail At Accounting Firm Peat Marwick will replace its current e-mail system with Netscape Communicator for 17,000 employees at 120 offices and offer the product to its own clients, though they claim to retain this poses no conflict of interest. Communicator includes collaborative groupware and a Web browser in addition to e-mail; post-beta availability is expected late this year. Netscape is hoping to leapfrog both Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange with the argument that those products were built around proprietary standards that don't interoperate well, while their own is based on the more common open Internet protocols. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #41 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Thu Jan 23 '97 (07:23) 19 lines Research Community Drives Creation of "Internet II" This looks like a potential big deal for the future of the Internet. A consortium of seventy universities and the NSF has committed resources to a project for a new, large, high-speed network for themselves, separate from but with links to the existing Internet. Some features (which will probably percolate over time into the Internet) are: - multiple negotiated quality of service levels to replace "best efforts packet delivery" with RSVP and RTP protocols - IPv6, the next-generation IP addressing protocol - switches/routers supporting *at a minimum* OC-12 622 megabit/sec volumes for both switched data streams and packet routing - direct SONET and ATM-over-SONET services Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #45 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Thu Jan 23 '97 (20:39) 18 lines There are not many biztech news items that send me to the periodic table, Webster's Unabridged, *and* the history of chemistry, but one just did. The first three Iridium satellites were launched into orbit last week. These new moons are to form part of a low-orbit network of 66 satellites that will offer wireless phone, fax, pager, and data communications starting late 1998. The rumor is that the Iridium name (for both the company and the network) was originally chosen because its atomic number matched the planned number of satellites; when the network turned out to require a different configuration, the PR guys said the new name wouldn't sell, stick with Iridium. So, OK; iridium has an atomic number of 77; it was named for Iris, the rainbow, on account of "the colorful appearance of some of its solutions". Atomic number 66 is dysprosium. It was named by its discoverer around 1880 because of the difficulty he had in separating it from its neighbor element holmium, and it means "hard to reach"; appropriate for an orbiting satellite, but definitely not the best connotation for a communications system. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #48 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Sun Jan 26 '97 (09:20) 3 lines Imagine if they turned out to need 82 of them. I bet even Stratton Oakmont would have trouble selling shares of the Lead Satellite Company to investors. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #52 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon Jan 27 '97 (09:09) 16 lines Global PC Sales Up 18% in 1996 About 71 million systems were shipped, up from 60 M in 1995. The five largest companies lost ground as smaller ones sold 66% of the units. And those big five were (the envelope, please): Compaq: sales up 19%, had 10% of the worldwide market IBM: up 28%, had 8.6% of market Packard Bell/NEC: down 6%, had 6% of market Apple: down 22%, had 5% of market H-P: up 30%, had 4% of market Apple's fourth place depended heavily on foreign sales; in the USA they were in fifth place behind Dell, whose sales were up 71% from 1995. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #54 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon Jan 27 '97 (16:04) 13 lines ..not to mention micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) like those being developed by Xerox PARC. There was an article on them today as well. Example: an airplane wing covered with a "peach fuzz" of cilia about 0.2 millimeter that both sense air flow and move to divert it and guide the plane in place of rudders or ailerons. MEMSes (?) are being touted as The Next Big Thing on a scale with microprocessors and laser technology. Didn't see Gateway mentioned in the PC market-share article; they're probably in the second group of five domestically, and maybe below that globally. At a guess. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #55 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Tue Jan 28 '97 (08:16) 8 lines Lotus Predicts Sharp Notes Growth - Again In 1995, IBM and Lotus execs estimated the total number of Notes users would shoot up to 20 million by the end of 1996. Instead it reached 9.5 M. More or less undeterred, they now predict 18 million by the end of 1997 largely on the expected strength of Domino, their Internet link. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #57 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Wed Jan 29 '97 (09:41) 8 lines Quote of the day, from an InfoWorld article on high-speed network backbones: "ATM is like a five-star restaurant where you can order any delicacy, no matter how exotic - provided you can describe its exact molecular structure." Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #58 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Thu Jan 30 '97 (11:12) 25 lines Kodak Buys Wang Software Division In a $260 million cash purchase, the 700 employees and all assets of Wang Software (I bet they get a lot of jokes over that name) will become a Kodak subsidiary. Incredible Shrinking General Magic Saws Quarter Off Staff They will reduce the number of workers from 187 to 138, in an effort to reduce costs while they reinvent themselves as a provider of Internet software. Court Makes Stratton Oakmont Disappear The stockbrokerage firm that made headlines when they sued Prodigy for allowing users to criticize them had attempted to continue in business after being disciplined for defrauding customers. They filed a plan in bankruptcy court to reinvent themselves (seems to be a lot of that going on) as a merchant bank. But after a SIPC finding that many customers' assets are missing after unauthorized trades by SO, the court ordered the company liquidated. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #62 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Fri Jan 31 '97 (08:29) 22 lines Samsung to Own All of AST In March 1995 Samsung bought 40.25 percent of AST Research, the PC maker, for $307 million; they have since bought up to the 49% level. Now they will purchase the remaining 51% for $162 million. Can you say "price slide"? Apparently AST has only survived through cash transplants from Samsung; they had $540M of operating losses from June 1995 through September 1996. The company's big mistake, analysts say, was in not following Compaq and others in price cuts to compete; instead they continued to charge 1980's style prices that nobody wanted to pay. Nielsen Report Say AOL Users Watch 15% Less Television ...than non-subscribers, about seven hours less a week. My first thought was they spent the time trying to reach AOL; but no it turns out the discrepancy is not during prime time but in the day from 10 AM to 4:30 PM, so it's probably got more to do with the demographics of daytime-TV viewers. Note that nobody says there is cause and effect here, just a correlation. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #63 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon Feb 3 '97 (09:10) 32 lines Good News, Bad News For AOL Content Providers Most of the hooraw over AOL's December change to a flat rate pricing structure has concentrated on its effects on subscribers: light users see higher monthly prices, heavy users get busy signals, etc. Less publicized is the simultaneous policy change that puts a cap on usage fees paid to the ~300 companies who provide news and other material to AOL. Though their traffic has doubled since flat pricing, their fees will not (details on these private contracts were not available to the reporter). Analysts say AOL's strategy is to drive them to other revenue sources like advertising and online business; but an unintended effect may be to drive them to other service providers or to the Web. Especially those content providers that aren't "commercial" and likely to attract big ad revenues; they are the ones most likely to be left behind in AOL's push to triple its ad revenue from 10% to 30%. Sounds like a shakeout's a-coming. Major Cuts Expected At Apple Their annual shareholders' meeting is this Wednesday. Last quarter the company lost $120 million, compared with $69M a year before, and revenue was down 32%. Reports are filtering out of Cupertino that a plan to cut costs by 25% will mean major job losses, as the company reorganized into three divisions: education, publishing/graphics, and the Internet. Analysts guesstimate 2000-3000 of their 13,000 employees will be offed. Less dismal news: it's believed Apple will use the Mach OS (not to be confused with the MacOS) as the heart of Rhapsody, its next (not to be confused with its Next) operating system. Mach is described as a variety of Unix and the basis of Nextstep. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #64 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Tue Feb 4 '97 (09:31) 33 lines AOL Disconnects Users A report says the online service has begun a routine of asking users every 45 minutes if they want to stay logged on; if they don't answer in 10 minutes, they are disconnected. Unclear if this is limited to people who have been inactive for 45 minutes, or everybody. 56-bit Key Crypto Software Approved For Export Not on a blanket basis, but for three companies and with a fourth application in the hopper. Cylink, DEC, and Trusted Information Systems announced they had approval to export the software, which lacks the key- recovery feature beloved of the current administration. Without Commerce Department blessing, only 40-bit key crypto is exportable. Rockwell's 56 Kbps Modem Chips In Production They say they expect modems incorporating the new chips to be available at retail by March. They are not compatible at the higher speed with existing USRobotics 56 kbps modems, and there is apparently no standard protocol for this yet. Quote of the day From a review of the newly redesigned Microsoft Network: "It is meant to resemble television. It reminds you that TV has better sound and video, installs in a flash, changes channels instantly, requires no tedious downloading, and is not limited to users of Windows 95." Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #67 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Tue Feb 4 '97 (20:09) 8 lines > plans to produce a key escrow system in the future Not according to the (very brief) article; I got the impression that the licenses were an example of the looser standards at Commerce now that they have taken over the issuance function from State(?). TIS notes that the user can choose to go to a lower security level, but that doesn't sound relevant for the export licensing. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #70 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Wed Feb 5 '97 (22:11) 7 lines > Apple, of course, did not announce big layoffs ...yet. Amelio has spoken of attaining profitability by third or fourth quarter at substantially lower gross revenue levels. That means deep cost cuts. Nice to see the Woz back, though. Hawking Hawking Modems on TV Professor Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University's physics faculty has been hired to do television ads for US Robotics modems. The relativity maven notes that with the Internet his mind "can go to the end of the universe" even though his body remains behind in his wheelchair. Another Stephen (Wozniak) was also retained by USR. While TV ads for modems are rare, surveys suggest these have been effective due to the high credibility of the spokesmen; it's likely that more are coming, as the Internet market seeks to include TV-watchers via WebTV and the like. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #79 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Thu Feb 6 '97 (21:09) 4 lines #78: I agree, Eric. If the ad agency is at all wise, they'll emphasize Hawking as the author of "A Brief History of Time" rather than, say, his work on Chandrasekhar's Limit, which is what I remembered him for before he became a Big Shot. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #80 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Fri Feb 7 '97 (11:31) 40 lines AOL Revenue Up, Losses Too They grossed $410 million in the quarter ending Dec. 31, 64% more than a year ago; but they lost $155M (and $354M the quarter before). $24M of that loss was for customer refunds after the busy-signal debacle, and about $75M was a charge for restructuring; that leaves a $56M operating loss for the quarter. They also announced plans to install another 50,000 modems to increase their capacity 60%. I saw an op-ed piece a couple days ago that likened AOL's strategy of lowering prices in the hope of making it back in advertising with a failed strategy some magazines took in the 50's and 60's. NEC Produces 4-Gigabit DRAM Chip The article thoughtfully revealed that this was equal to 64 copies of the complete works of Shakespeare; somehow they forgot to work in anything about the thickness of a human hair. More importantly they are 256 times today's 16-megabit chips. Anyway, NEC hopes to bring them to market by 2000. Hitachi and Samsung have announced prototypes of a one- gigabit chip. Also of interest: the chips were made by writing the circuits with an electron beam rather than light. And each cell holds two bits instead of one, because it can occupy any one of four states corresponding to 00, 01, 10, and 11. Individual Inc. To Sell Freeloader Individual bought the developer of the Internet browser in June for $38 million, has spent a few million more on it since then, and hopes to unload it by the end of March. First Pacific Networks Lays Off Entire Staff This is not usually a good sign for a company's long term prospects. The article says that losses coupled with falling revenue have led its owners to "evaluate all serious proposals for sale of the company". Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #87 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Sat Feb 8 '97 (19:10) 3 lines The article didn't elaborate on how the four-state memory cell operated and I don't have it in front of me; but I think it was from a paper presented at a recent conference that might have gone into greater detail. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #88 of 94: Sofia's Choice & biztech hostly type (amicus) Sun Feb 9 '97 (06:13) 3 lines Why couldn't you just think of a four-state memory cell as two two-state cells? Wierder was a Soviet computer called the Setun', which was apparently based on trinary logic. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #93 of 94: Busy Techie (ronks) Sun Feb 9 '97 (19:22) 6 lines My impression is that Windows 97 won't have the industrial-strength security and other features of Windows NT; but I never looked for NT to be the logical upgrade for folks who are happy with Win 95. I see a two-track Windows product line for some time, though as the requirement for DOS compatibility diminishes over the long term it might be possible to merge them.

Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #95 of 100: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon Feb 10 '97 (11:54) 30 lines Flat Screens Advance Typical technology for laptop displays (up to 12 inches diagonal) is called Thin Film Transistor / Liquid Crystal Display or TFT LCD. New flat TVs (up to 42 inches) use color plasma displays. A hybrid system called Plasma-Addressed Liquid Crystal or PALC replaces the TFT part of TFT LCD and shows promise of enabling larger displays (up to 25 inches) without the high cost, high voltage requirements, and misty image of pure plasma technology. Jury Still Out On Fee-Based Web Street Journal Of 700 newspapers with Web presences, only the Wall Street Journal requires paid subscriptions ($50 a year) to access content, though some charge for premium services or morgue searches and the NY Times bills overseas readers. Microsoft Slate recently decided not to charge, for fear of starting a mass exodus of readers. The WSJ fee regime became final Jan. 1, so it's too soon to say if it's a success yet, but there are concerns. For one thing, 90% of people who tried the free trial did not stay on after it ended. For another, an unscientific survey of eight who did turned up only one who was not planning to drop their existing subscription to the printed version. Last but far from least, its value as an advertising medium is in question: vendors pay each time an ad of theirs appears on a user's screen, but one stopped advertising after they determined that almost no one who viewed the ad actually clicked on it to visit their site, much less actually place an order. They suggest number of click-throughs is a better measure than views. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #98 of 100: Busy Techie (ronks) Mon Feb 10 '97 (15:04) 2 lines I think existing WSJ subscribers get a break on the $50 fee for the Web version to like $30, but still... Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #99 of 100: Busy Techie (ronks) Tue Feb 11 '97 (11:39) 29 lines Cyberscouts (Hosts?) Reappear As Guides An Internet search site that uses human searchers to scout for interesting places and material was featured in a recent news article. The aim of The Mining Company (www.miningco.com) is to combine the aspects of an online service like AOL with those of a search service like Altavista. They are specifically trying to distinguish themselves from the television or broadcast-channel model of say MSN. But the more I read the article, the more it sounded like this new idea wasn't. Their plan is to employ part-time "guides", who get $250 a month plus 40% of the ad revenue, to sniff out interesting stuff in their area of interest and expertise and to publish it to users of the service. They apparently also moderate online forums on the subject. I don't see much difference between this business plan and EMinds'; take away the money, and I don't see much difference with the Well (except we probably have more intense thrashes). $250+ a month for hosting; hmm... Chip Fabricator Improves Compaction With Insulation By improving the quality and the application of insulation between a chip's transistors, the Plasma and Materials Technologies company claims a four-fold improvement in the density of components it can fit on a single processor. To me it's reminder that creating the tiniest imaginable circuit or switch, like that single-electron gizmo of a few days ago, is only part of the job; packing them together has room for optimizing as well. Topic 79 [biztech]: In the news for 1997 #100 of 100: Busy Techie (ronks) Tue Feb 11 '97 (13:55) 9 lines Quote of the Day Alan Braverman, a Credit Suisse analyst on Web search tools like Lycos: "Without search engines, there's no way the Internet growth...could have happened. But do search engines really work? The answer is No. In my mind, we are at the point of the $300 calculator that subtracts and multiplies."

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