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I second that post. They have fought the good fight. God bless them and others too many to name. WHP and all the others that have the knowledge and know how to battle the bashers tireless
BS. Thank you all very much. Hopefully one day I will be able to thank them in person and with words that will fully portray
the depth of my gratitude. I stayed away from posting because my insight would not add that much. But would just add to the circus atmosphere, no pun intended. May Gods hand bless us all and show the venomous ones among us the error of their ways.
Good pengy. Nice find.I do not know about you all but it is nice to have some wind in our sails so to speak. LOL Also thank you Greg for making it such a good board. It has been a pleasure reading this week. Great balance. Call me a oshtrich. LOL Pengy I wish I would have had more time to be able to visit at the meeting. But I met my friend half way and we went to his friends new place to check it out. 130$+ for dinner and a few Heinekens. Thank God he didn't take me up on my offer to buy. LOL
Ps chrome how is our okok doing you touted? LOL
Well I thought the meeting was pretty good. John got tested with the powerpoint presentation but did not miss a lick. I took my friend who does not invest in otc's. He does real good in big boards. He thought is was worth a play, although not too large.
Though for him that says something. He said he wouldn't want to miss it, if it ran. But trying to decipher if they had it, he
did not know. He liked how they looked and talked. He Thought they were very capable. But for a low risk guy the fact he was goign to buy a few shares was a good sign to me. Of course he can always write it off. He took a lot of the literature and will study it more. I came away with a better feeling about my investment. I was not worried. I made my play, steeled my mind with patience. Also reminded God it was our investment. Teamwork LOL
Regards,
Back to lurking in the shadows. Just do not have much to add.
I figure if I do not watch the pot so close it might boil faster.
LOL
thanks excel. a true brother!
Movies Coming to a PC Near You, But Maybe Not Soon
No pun intended by the author I think. LOL
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?
type=technologynews&StoryID=81790
By Sue Zeidler
LONG BEACH, Calif. (Reuters) - Hollywood is in the deal-making phase of its campaign to distribute movies over the Internet and showtime for the resulting ventures is still some way off, executives said on Thursday.
The biggest challenge has been drawing the studios together behind a common platform that would provide viewers access to a wide array of movies -- seen by many in the industry as a needed step if beaming movies via the Internet is to succeed.
"The negotiations are proving far more difficult than technological issues," Yair Landau, president of Sony Corp.'s Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment told Reuters at the Streaming Media West conference, a major industry meeting.
So far the movie studios have not had to contend with a threat like Napster, which attracted nearly 17 million users to its all-you-can-swap music service at its peak in February, before a court injunction shrank its popularity.
Even so, security experts estimate that as many as 400,000 bootlegged films a day are already swapped on the Internet. The longer the studios wait to launch their own ventures, the harder it will be for them to control the final distribution channel of their movies, they said.
"There's still a lot more questions than answers regarding companies' commitments to an architecture for distribution and production," said Andrew Frank, technology officer for Viant Corp., a digital media consulting firm, who said the next few months are crucial.
SONY, DISNEY IN LEAD
Sony and the Walt Disney Co. have so far taken the lead with separate initiatives to use the Internet to distribute movies.
"We're in active discussions with other studios. Consumers have shown they want content from many studios," Sony's Landau said.
Sony Pictures had hoped to launch its own online movie service, MovieFly, this spring, according to sources. The service will rent hundreds of films from Sony, Vivendi Universal's Universal Studios -- and possibly News Corp. Ltd. unit Twentieth Century Fox.
The service's launch has now been pushed back to the fall, the sources said, although Landau said he was "reasonably hopeful we'll have an announcement soon."
"The films are encoded and ready to go. We're comfortable with the technology. But there are many other issues involved in trying to get a lot of studios to agree on this," he said. "MovieFly is about building an Internet protocol for movies."
Sony's video-on-demand model would allow users to download movies from its Web site to their personal computers where they can be viewed for a fee, sources have said.
Alternatively, Disney is said to be studying delivering films via the Internet on a wireless set-top box.
Disney Internet Group Executive vice president Dick Glover told an industry audience at the Streaming Media West conference that the transition from piracy to legitimacy for video on the Web would be difficult.
"When you think about the effort to convert an analog library, it is staggering and delaying. But we're not letting that daunt us," he said.
ALREADY INITIAL STEPS
Some studios have already taken initial steps with a video-on-demand service through the Internet.
In February, Universal Studios signed a multi-year deal with broadband network Intertainer to deliver films like Robert De Niro's hit "Meet the Parents" over the company's digital cable platform. Miramax Films also announced a deal with SightSound Technologies to release 12 films for download over the Internet.
Intertainer is one of several smaller companies releasing movie content using Microsoft's video compression technology. At the conference, Microsoft said it is working with several major studios on bigger initiatives.
"We're working closely with studios to provide video and (digital rights management) technology to distribute movies on the Internet," said Michael Aldridge, lead product manager for the digital media division at Microsoft.
"The technology is ready today to deliver downloadable movies," he said, noting that more than 18 million movies have been distributed already using Windows Media technology.
Yahoo Inc. is also "talking to movie studios about distributing their movies online," Yahoo's general manager of entertainment David Mandelbrot told Reuters.
While the studio initiatives have yet to come to market, many attending the conference had no doubt that the threat of losing control of the emerging market would keep them focused.
"There isn't a Napster for movies that we know of, but the big studios are being very aggressive and they want to keep the situation under their control," said Jonathan Edwards, chairman of VO24 Inc, a streaming consulting firm.
As the studios move ahead in these efforts, some of the stumbling blocks are how to manage relationships with cable companies, pay-per-view channels and video chains, major revenue streams that may wind up competing with the Internet.
Studios also need higher penetration of broadband, or high speed Internet connections like cable modem or DSL phone lines to make downloading films more bearable, experts said.
interesting article on shdsl and lucents stinger
tech. they paid (I think) 25 billion for. I think
we blow the lid off that technology.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/04/25/high.grade.dsl.idg/index.html
April 25, 2001
Web posted at: 11:48 a.m. EDT (1548 GMT)
By Stephen Lee
(IDG) -- Although some observers have questioned the long-term health of DSL, a new variant of the core technology, SHDSL (Symmetric High-bit rate DSL), could revive interest in the high-bandwidth, copper-based service, especially for businesses.
SHDSL promises data rates of 2.3Mbps over a single copper pair, as opposed to the 1.5Mbps speeds of conventional DSL lines. Moreover, the new standard can allegedly reach distances 30 percent further than regular DSL, and because it supports repeaters, latency for high-bandwidth applications (such as voice and streaming media technologies) is expected to be very low. The SHDSL standard was approved by the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) in early February.
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Although SHDSL is not expected to be rolled out in the United States until later this year or next year, vendors are already gathering around the standard. At the recent DSLCon trade show in Denver earlier this month, Lucent Technologies announced SHDSL enhancements to its Stinger line of DSL concentrators. Lucent spokesmen and spokeswomen said the upgrades will provide higher performance, better power consumption, and improved spectral compatibility over existing symmetric DSL technologies.
Lucent's SHDSL play will be aimed primarily at enterprises that want to extend broadband to telecommuters and deploy VODSL (Voice Over DSL) technologies. The upgrade is expected to cost less than $250 per port.
Smaller companies are getting in on the action, too. In June, Efficient Networks, a Dallas-based equipment manufacturer, will roll out its 5950 SHDSL Business Gateway, a customer-premises device aimed at small to midsize businesses and branch offices.
In addition to supporting the SHDSL standard (with a maximum distance of 20,000 feet), the 5950 product will come with an auto-sensing 8-port 10/100 Ethernet interface, a user-friendly GUI, and a built-in firewall. The $599 device will support TCP/IP and static routing, and a wire-speed VPN will be optional.
Many analysts are predicting that SHDSL will let ISPs deliver more stringent SLAs (service-level agreements) to subscribers, which could be especially attractive to businesses. Another key to enterprise adoption could be SHDSL's low implementation costs: Like standard DSL, SHDSL can be delivered over an existing copper-wire infrastructure.
"[SHDSL] will become the dominant choice for DSL in businesses," predicted Jon Cordova, an analyst at San Jose, Calif.-based Infonetics Research. "The providers are looking for different ways of making money in the DSL space, besides just providing connectivity."
Cordova cited the greater throughput, longer distance ranges, and support for services like VODSL and particularly VPNs as drivers for the new standard.
"The killer app for broadband connectivity is VPNs," Cordova said. "That market is becoming very real. Businesses are looking for ways to save money, and VPNs are a natural choice for that."
Accordingly, Efficient Networks' move into the SHDSL space is all about the enterprise market.
"When we look at the needs of the business user, we see needs not just for high-speed access, but also for high availability," explained Dano Ybarra, Efficient's vice president of business management. "They need a reliable, robust, scalable platform to meet their needs -- from simply sharing an Internet connection to the needs of tomorrow, including security, high availability, VPNs, manageability, and extensions into the space of voice and video."
"Efficient has a strong play," Cordova said. Cisco and Alcatel, with strong presence in the xDSL market, are also expected to be significant forces in the nascent SHDSL space.
But SHDSL is not likely to crack the large enterprise market. "There's other types of connectivity in the enterprise, where DSL is not the primary WAN technology, like ATM, Ethernet, and frame relay," Cordova said.
does at&t need us? hmm maybe see article below
AT&T: Broadband Is the Prize
By Eric C. Fleming
CNBC.com Stocks Reporter
Back to Previous Page
Apr 24, 2001 04:03 PM
AT&T 52-week stock performance
Shares of AT&T Corp. {T, News, Boards} traded in positive territory on Tuesday even after the long distance and cable giant reported a 10 cent per share loss in the first quarter and warned profits will be less than previously expected this quarter.
Investors may be preoccupied with figuring out what the widely held behemoth is going to be worth in parts. In fact, this earnings report may be the last before the company begins its planned breakup into four parts, tentatively scheduled to start around the beginning of summer.
The real jewel in the crown, according to analysts, may be the broadband piece of the puzzle.
The telecommunications company with a long-distance business facing massive pricing pressure, decided last year to parse itself into four separately traded pieces: consumer services, business services, wireless, and cable (including broadband).
The cable part is made up of the largest U.S. cable television provider with 16 million customers, one million high-speed Internet access customers and about 550,000 cable telephony subscribers getting local and long-distance telephone services through a coaxial cable. The Broadband IPO, as part of the four-way split, is expected to follow the IPO of its wireless unit {AWE, News, Boards} in the fourth quarter this year.
Why focus on broadband? It looks like the growth engine out of the four. The real worth of consumer services is up in the air, business services is in trouble, and wireless services looks like it may have already seen a peak in demand.
Looking at the full-year, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter analyst Simon Flannery, who rates AT&T "strong buy," expects broadband and Internet services to grow 29 percent in 2001, the strongest growth of the four units.
What's a good price for the broadband part? That's tough to gauge while still attached to the larger company. Since only the wireless unit is publicly traded, it's tough to get a clear bead on how to value the broadband piece individually. Most analysts are using a "sum-of-parts" methodology to value AT&T before its planned break up.
Kevin Roe, analyst at ABN-Amro has a 12-month price target at $40 a share on a sum-of parts basis. Jeff Halpern, analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, who rates AT&T "outperform," sees the telecom fairly valued between 30 and 32. Flannery has a 12-month price target at 35.
Breaking it down to the pieces, Gary Jacobi, analyst at Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown, values the consumer services at about $0.50 a share, business services between 7.25 and 7.50, wireless at 6.50 and cable at 10.50 to 10.75.
Using a cash flow model, Drake Johnstone, analyst at Davenport & Co. sees the broadband piece worth between 14 and 15 times 2002 cash flow or between 9 and 11 a AT&T share.
Others aren't so bullish on the value of the pieces. Jim Linnehan, analyst at Thomas Weisel Partners, cut his break-up valuation to 23 from 30 on March 30, because of the wireless and broadband units exposure to business cycles. Still, 23 is in line with other analysts' ratings.
Linnehan sees the broadband unit valued at 3 times 2001 revenue, and 13 times its 2001 EBITDA.
Of course, all these expectations are hinged upon the broadband piece maintaining or growing cash flow. "What's problematic is that cash flow has declined from a year ago," says Johnstone, who'd like to see a few quarters of growth under its belt before going public.
Another hoop that AT&T has to jump through is technological. Getting digital video, cable telephony and high-speed Web access to fly is one sticky wicket. "The technology isn't there at commercially viable prices," concedes Jacobi, who rates AT&T a "hold."
Talking about valuation may be more speculation than science at this point. While AT&T is in the process of this massive restructuring, it's anyone's guess how it'll actually end up.
One big overhang for every piece to be broken out - Lots of debt. AT&T has to pare down that debt, now at about $47 billion at the end of its first quarter.
Jacobi sees the broadband piece bearing about $15 billion of that debt. Using a per subscriber value between $3,500 and $4000 a year, or about $51 billion in market value - subtract the debt and that gets you to Jacobi's estimate of broadband at $11 a share.
There's plenty that AT&T could sell to pare down its debt. Let's start with the AT&T's 25.5 percent stake in Time Warner Entertainment and the roughly $3 billion of AT&T Wireless that AT&T. These events will help to cut AT&T's debt burden, which had spiked to $65 billion by the end of 2000.
AT&T could unload other assets that came with some of its acquisitions, such as the 49 million shares of Cablevision it picked up as part of the TCI merger. Halpern values the non-core assets that Media One is holding onto, which includes stakes in Microsoft {MSFT, News, Boards} and Vodaphone Plc. {VOD, News, Boards}, at about $29 billion.
AT&T shareholders looking for which piece to hang onto would do well to watch how AT&T whittles down its debt, while paying attention to its broadband unit's cash flow - if the wind blows right, it might be something to hang onto
DSL providers try to regain footing
NorthPoint Communications' woes a sign of fast-growth industry's turmoil
04/22/2001
By Vikas Bajaj / The Dallas Morning News
George Michael's Dallas public relations firm was one of 120,000 NorthPoint Communications Inc. customers that lost its high-speed Internet connections when NorthPoint went bankrupt. The strange thing is he didn't know the San Francisco firm provided his service.
Welcome to the wacky world of digital subscriber lines, where several firms can call a customer theirs.
Michael & Partners bought its Internet connection from WorldCom Inc.'s UUNET division, which contracted with NorthPoint to provide Mr. Michael with the front-end of the link. NorthPoint's equipment was operated from Southwestern Bell's switching office, because the phone company owns the copper wire used to provide the service.
"I took comfort in [UUNET] ... because they are supposed to be the best," Mr. Michael said. "Little did I know who my supplier was."
NorthPoint's bankruptcy highlights how unprepared the telecommunications industry was for the company failures analysts had predicted months ago. A flawed business model, legal and technological constraints and poor planning made the company's failure a display of the turmoil that has wracked the communications world.
"Nobody would believe that there was actually an elephant in the living room," said Jeffrey Kagan, an independent analyst based in Atlanta. "The industry was just so hot and furious for years, and the curves always went straight up."
The go-go world of wholesale DSL providers such as NorthPoint began to unravel late last year when investors and lenders tightened their purse strings because it was unclear when and how the companies would turn profitable. It didn't help that many Internet service providers that resold DSL to businesses and consumers weren't paying their bills.
Using special equipment on both ends of a copper phone wire, DSL speeds up data transmissions on lines that traditionally only carried voice signals and slow, analog data.
Searching for solutions
Since NorthPoint's bankruptcy, one of its peers, Rhythms NetConnections Inc., has said it was searching for a merger partner or financial alternatives. The Englewood, Colo., firm is running out of cash, and Nasdaq plans to delist it.
Covad Communications Group Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., has scaled back its DSL network and cut off troubled Internet service providers to focus on profitable regions and customers.
The companies' troubles have not been caused by weak demand. Analysts agree consumers and businesses are starving for faster Internet connections. It's the way DSL providers chose to meet the demand that is being criticized.
In the Internet's heyday, firms could raise money easily, albeit at high interest rates. Many communications firms became addicted to debt they could use to fund nationwide expansions, figuring profits could wait.
"We refer to high-yield debt as high-yield heroin," said Royce Holland, chairman and chief executive of Allegiance Telecom Inc. of Dallas. "Instead of putting that money in the bank and executing a business plan ... they would go as fast as they could because they knew they would have to be back in six months."
In the late 1990s and 2000, increasing the number of customers was the name of the game, said Michael Centrella, founder of Centrella Technology Partners of Sea Girt, N.J. Wall Street wanted to see revenues and customer counts go up and had little regard for when the firms would turn a profit.
Covad, which is owned in part by SBC Communications Inc. of San Antonio, says the market's fall in 2000 is to blame for the industry's current situation.
"Our business really hasn't changed in terms of what we do every day," Covad chairman Charles McMinn said. "What has really changed more quickly than anyone imagined is the financial market and their willingness to fund any growth businesses."
But analysts say it's erroneous to blame the financial markets for DSL firms' troubles. The companies raced at breakneck speeds, deploying a service that often left something to be desired, said Kathie Hackler, a Gartner Group analyst.
It took weeks to get a DSL installed because customer orders had to be routed through several companies and required technicians to hook up modems and routers. And customers who are more than 3.3 miles from a switching office can't get the service until the phone network has been upgraded.
People who use DSL rave about its speed, but some also complain about frequent outages.
"There is just so many things about this part of the business that has been fragile," Ms. Hackler said.
Communications firms concede DSL hasn't lived up to expectations, but they say new technologies are often imperfect.
"What we are witnessing is the short term and not an indication of what DSL can provide," said Kevin Belgrade, an SBC spokesman. "If you look at how it has matured in the past year, right now DSL is at a pretty good point."
Dissatisfactions
SBC and fellow local phone giant Verizon Communications Inc. serve most DSL lines and have been criticized not only for the quality of the technology but also their treatment of rivals such as Covad that rent their wires.
DSL is attractive because it can be supplied over the same wire that supplies a consumer with a dial tone. DSL providers want to share lines with traditional phone companies to reduce costs, but the bigger firms have taken time to implement the arrangements, Mr. McMinn said.
"While legally mandated in '99, it was really not operationally ready to roll out until 2001," he said. Shared lines cost Covad a fraction of using a line alone.
"We have played within the rules and spirit of competition and regulation all along," Mr. Belgrade countered.
DSL customers have often found themselves in the middle of such quarrels.
"The end user was very much lost sight of in this whole thing," Ms. Hackler said.
For example, NorthPoint customers, including 10,000 in Texas, have been told it can take up to a month to get them reconnected to a comparable service. Many businesses are having to go back to dial-up Internet access or upgrade to dedicated lines such as T1s that cost three or four times more than DSLs.
Customers' frustrations
Verizon says it has kept customers hooked to NorthPoint equipment, but in many cases Internet Service Providers have shut down the users' links to the Internet.
Many customers have voiced frustration at their Internet service providers.
"My biggest problem with UUNET was: Why didn't they inform us?" Mr. Michael said.
WorldCom says it was limited in what it could tell customers because of the bankruptcy proceeding. It couldn't switch customers to another provider because their contracts were up for sale, WorldCom spokeswoman Natasha Haubold said.
"If we decided not to use NorthPoint's service, it could have been viewed as a deliberate devaluing of NorthPoint's estate," she said. "Anything that could be viewed as a deliberate act could have exposed any of the resellers to litigation."
WorldCom and other Internet service providers had expected NorthPoint to be bought out by another communications company that would keep customers online. But when AT&T Corp. bought NorthPoint's nationwide DSL network for $135 million, it paid for the equipment, not the customers connected to it.
"When we went into the process they [customers] were on the table," an AT&T spokeswoman said.
"We took what was in our best interest."
DSL On The Rise
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20010406S0013
we could save them money and bank at the same time.
(04/06/01, 4:59 p.m. ET) By Darrin Woods, Network Computing
DSL swept across the residential broadband Web access market like a tidal wave, and now, after almost two years, the groundswell is finally reaching corporate customers.
While most broadband technologies start in the enterprise market, DSL is different.
The technology was once seen as simply an inexpensive route to high-speed Internet access: For less than $100 a month, homes and small businesses could connect to the public network at speeds approaching DS-1 levels.
Now DSL has grown to include voice and VPN services.
For companies paying more than $2,000 per month for a full DS-1 link to the Internet, DSL is a windfall, and enterprise customers of all sizes are weighing the pros and cons of using the technology to link remote and branch offices.
How did DSL evolve? Its development is written in the annals of security monitoring systems.
Monitoring companies needed instant communication with the alarms in buildings being guarded. Using regular telephone lines was an option, but the RBOCs (regional Bell operating companies) didn't like the idea of keeping a circuit nailed up 24x7 while being able to bill only $20 per month for it.
A solution was to use dry copper pairs that did not pass through the switched telephone network. Circuits didn't need to be nailed up, and most areas had enough spare copper pairs to accommodate the needs of the security companies.
By the mid-1990s, analog modem technology had peaked. Because telephone circuits are digital at their core, there was no way to go beyond DS-0's 56-Kbps to 64-Kbps data rate.
Enter those copper pairs used for security systems. The dry copper lines used for monitoring weren't connected to the PSTN (public switched telephone network), so they could be pushed to very high speeds. Thanks to low tariffs, these lines were also very inexpensive.
Manufacturers began creating devices that would use these inexpensive copper pairs to push data at nearly DS-1 speeds for a mere fraction of the cost of a DS-1 line, and DSL was born.
As with analog connections, devices are necessary at both ends to make DSL work. DSLAMs (DSL access multiplexers) are placed at the CO (central office) to terminate the service provider's end of the connection.
Because the DSLAM is located at the CO, all the DSL lines coming into that location can be multiplexed onto an ATM OC-3 (or higher) link that goes to the service provider's network.
And since most DSLAMs are modular, they can accommodate interface modules for every flavor of DSL supported by the manufacturer.
DSLAMs incorporate ATM or IP as their transmission method of choice, but ATM has until recently been the popular format because of its QoS (Quality of Service) abilities.
article on the need for speed.
By Jeff Fischer (TMF Jeff)
April 9, 2001
http://www.fool.com/portfolios/rulebreaker/2001/rulebreaker010409.htm
Last Monday's column on broadband Internet generated such a large response on the discussion boards and in email that I need a broadband connection just to read it all. Yet, last week I argued that broadband is not yet a necessity in the eyes of most Americans, judging from adoption rates. My argument met with disagreement from broadband users, and our Rule Breaker poll showed that 58% of readers who answered have broadband.
Fewer than 4% of homes in the United States have broadband Internet, so Rule Breaker readers are ahead of the curve. A participant bias aside, the poll is most important for the discussion that it generated. Almost everyone who has broadband loves it.
Broadband users love the always-on connection and the speed with which they can accomplish things on the Internet. The Internet becomes a much more convenient and versatile tool with broadband, and broadband connections for businesses are essential to survival.
This brings me to make clarifying points. After last week's column, many people believed that I was writing that broadband wasn't a need for most people, and by inference, that it wouldn't be a need for them later. The response was so strong on this point that I need to restate what I meant, or say what I meant to say for the first time.
Broadband's growth
I believe that broadband use will continue to grow by several-fold, until broadband is a mass-market service used by the majority, and far overshadowing dial-up users. I believe that broadband will prove essential in bringing the Internet to a new level of utility, and with that, it will bring the Internet to millions of additional users who wouldn't otherwise be online at all. Therefore, broadband is the important next wave in the Internet's advancement.
So, I do not question broadband's long-term potential for customers. Eventually, almost all of us will have broadband Internet access at home. My argument last week that a majority of Americans don't yet feel a need for broadband (based on the fact that 96% of Americans do not have it) was a statement on the present situation. The fact is that broadband's adoption rate has been much slower than anticipated.
However, this is largely a reflection of the poor marketing done by many broadband providers, of less than great availability, and of the fact that a killer application that will make everyone rush to broadband isn't yet apparent. Other reasons given by readers for not moving to broadband include considerably higher costs, complex setup procedures, and, 12% said that they just don't feel the need. But even given these shortcomings, broadband adoption is growing at a rate comparable to the adoption of the Internet itself in the mid-1990s, and that's impressive.
Investing in broadband
Most investors recognize the importance of broadband Internet. They also realize that broadband providers should be able to develop strong recurring revenues.,
AOL Time Warner (NYSE: AOL) hasn't cranked up its broadband hype machine yet, but it will. It wants to be present on more cable systems before it goes full bore, and that's partly why it's opening its cable to competitors like Earthlink (Nasdaq: ELNK). If AOL Time Warner's cable is open to others, it can argue that AT&T's (NYSE: T) widespread, larger cable system should be open to others, too.
Investors should also recognize the difficulty of the business, and the high cost. AOL does not own the phone lines over which it offers dial-up access. It pays telecom companies a commission, but even on this "light" operating model, it achieves very low margins in this division. And to date, access companies owning the infrastructure have struggled. Telecom companies (those that survive) are years away from earning a positive return on their digital subscriber line (DSL) investments, and the largest cable owners are even farther from positive returns -- especially AT&T, which paid tens of billions (in debt) for its cable network. Excite@Home (Nasdaq: ATHM) is the broadband leader, with more than three million cable subscribers, but it hasn't been profitable yet, either. (For a good summary of Excite@Home's situation, and broadband in general, view this post by Fool "duwhee.")
Summary
Who needs broadband? In the long run, most of us will want it. Which companies will make great money providing it? Almost any investment that you could have made in broadband so far hasn't seen a positive return yet. That could change when tens of millions of people are using broadband, but there isn't a guarantee. We haven't seen how broadband is priced when there are many competing suppliers running at full speed, and we don't know how high the ongoing costs of maintaining a network and its services will prove to be. There is promise, but also risk. Sometimes even the most useful industries don't turn out to be good investments.
OT nice article on ihubs latest addition to staff "SI Bob"
Stock chat pro back online
Start-up hires investor favorite to lead Web site
04/14/2001
Dow Jones News Service
NEW YORK – Bob Zumbrunnen doesn't just get mad, he gets even.
Mr. Zumbrunnen, known in online-trading circles as "SI Bob" or "SI Admin (Bob)," was the police chief at stock-discussion site Silicon Investor until he was laid off in February by the Web site's parent company, InfoSpace Inc. The move sparked a user campaign to bring him back, to no avail.
But now Mr. Zumbrunnen, 42, is back in the game.
Last week, he became operations manager at startup stock-talk site Investors Hub Inc., Tallahassee, Fla., and assumed a new screen name, "IH Admin (Bob)."
From his new home he wants to build the online community he always dreamed Silicon Investor could be.
Investors Hub "reminds me more of the old Silicon Investor than anything I've seen out there, from a philosophical standpoint and from a technological standpoint," Mr. Zumbrunnen said.
Investors Hub promises to be a kinder, gentler place to talk about the market – absent spam and personal attacks – and highly responsive to community complaints and suggestions for improvement. The way it's programmed also makes it speedy and secure, he said.
He will be a key figure at Investors Hub, acting as both liaison to the community and one of the site's programmers.
He has not invested his own money in the site, but part of his compensation includes a stake of less than 5 percent, he said.
Mr. Zumbrunnen, a resident of a Missouri town with less than 200 inhabitants, which he likes to call "Boogerville," will be "100 percent telecommuting."
The jump may seem risky considering the current environment for financial Web sites, which are facing both dot.com disdain and a steep stock-market decline. Most message-board sites have seen large drops in usage as surviving online investors seek more reliable educational content. Analysts and participants like Mr. Zumbrunnen expect the sites to rebound with the market.
It helps that Mr. Zumbrunnen has a taste for worlds of passion and risk. When he's not immersed in the online stock world, he's racing one of his souped-up Mustangs.
It also helps that he apparently found a site with founders who share his vision and will give him wide latitude to act.
"He was basically my golden opportunity," said Matt Brown, the 18-year-old president and co-founder of Investors Hub. When Mr. Zumbrunnen was fired by InfoSpace, Brown quickly offered him a job, figuring Mr. Zumbrunnen's experience in managing an online community, and his good name in the stock-chat world, would be a boon. With Mr. Zumbrunnen on board, Mr. Brown could focus on the business.
Investors Hub was founded in a year ago and is still in the beta testing stage while a number of other tools and stock-research features are developed.
Its message boards receive about 800 posts a day, Mr. Brown said. Mr. Zumbrunnen's debut Thursday caused a jump in usage, he said.
Mr. Brown is a pure product of the golden age of Silicon Investor, where he was part of an investing club that ultimately became the seed for the site.
He was introduced to stock trading at age 13 by his mother, who was an assistant to a broker.
His first stock purchase was ValuJet the day before the bottom fell out of its stock when one of its planes crashed and killed 110 people.
Mr. Brown lost most of the $2,000 he had saved during summer vacation.
"That's when I got mad, and I got on the investment boards," to learn about investing, he said.
But Mr. Brown became disillusioned as the quality of the discussions deteriorated. "It's like a trailer park out there," he said. "I don't want to lose what was once there and I enjoyed so much."
Mr. Zumbrunnen and Mr. Brown are of one mind about what their task will be – "making sure spam and personal attacks are no longer part of investment discussion forums," as Mr. Brown puts it – and how they will accomplish it: Community self-policing.
"There's nobody that knows the community better than the community. And the community can take care of itself if given the chance," said Mr. Brown, who disdains the "centralized-government" style of the leading message-board sites.
The heart of Investors Hub's strategy is the "chairman of the board," the founder of each discussion, who is charged with keeping the conversation clean and on the topic. The chairman may quickly and easily remove spam and objectionable messages and ban habitual offenders.
While Mr. Zumbrunnen prefers to be as unobtrusive as possible, he will intrude as necessary.
"You try to keep a lid on the pressure cooker," he said. "If you try not to interfere at all, you will have chaos."
not that I was worried about wireless but a few issues they
face.
http://www.dallasnews.com/technology/325930_spectrum_31bus.html
Government may not let wireless carriers use specialized airwaves
03/31/2001
By Vikas Bajaj / The Dallas Morning News
Cellular phone companies' efforts to roll out services that promise faster Internet access were dealt a setback Friday when two federal agencies said it would be hard to find new space on the nation's airwaves for them.
The carriers may be able to share some electromagnetic spectrum with the military but they are unlikely to get the rights to use airwaves currently occupied by schools and charities, according to reports by the Federal Communications Commission and the Commerce Department.
The cellular industry says a spectrum shortage will delay the introduction of high-speed wireless data services in the United States and set the country further behind Europe. But some mobile phone firms such as Sprint PCS say they can start the services with their current frequency allocations.
In October, President Bill Clinton ordered the FCC and the Commerce Department to do the studies, resolve spectrum issues by July and conduct auctions by Sept. 30, 2002. It's unclear how and if the Bush administration will meet those deadlines.
Wireless industry leaders, who met with Commerce Secretary Don Evans on Thursday to discuss the issue, said they were confident a solution could be worked out.
But carriers were notably tight-lipped Friday about the reports' conclusions. Cingular Wireless, the nation's second-largest wireless carrier, said it was studying them and may have a comment in the coming weeks.
At an industry conference held in Las Vegas last week, wireless executives pleaded with the FCC to make more spectrum available quickly and cheaply. It's needed to alleviate capacity constraints for current users and provide 3G, or third-generation, wireless service, officials said.
"The uncertainty will remain an overhang on the entire industry because at some point you will begin to run into technology constraints," said Ben Abramovitz, an analyst at Jefferies & Co.
Spectrum has become a burning issue around the world. European carriers who bid spectrum prices sky-high in auctions now say they can't afford to pay for it and the network equipment needed to provide 3G.
There is a finite amount of useful spectrum that can accommodate communications, radio and TV services. The National Telecommunications Infrastructure Administration, a Commerce Department division, manages frequencies used by the military and other government agencies and the FCC regulates and auctions the rest for commercial uses.
Most of the frequency bands the wireless industry wants to use for 3G are already occupied by various players – schools, military, broadcasters and other communications firms.
The FCC report said forcing schools and fixed-wireless firms that provide high-speed Internet service to share their spectrum with cellular operators "would raise significant technical and economic difficulties."
"The FCC continues to recognize that fixed wireless services that are being deployed today are vital to bringing high-speed Internet access to unserved and underserved Americans," WorldCom Inc. spokeswoman Julie Moore said.
By the end of 2001, WorldCom plans to begin selling high-speed Internet service over a wireless network it shares with groups such as the Catholic Diocese of Dallas and several other cities.
Another FCC plan to reallocate certain frequencies currently owned by broadcasters to wireless firms has stalled because the current owners don't want to part with the spectrum without being well compensated.
Does anybody know if they plan to add to the John doe list.
I see plenty room to go to at least 53. I have already
emailed John once this week and do not won't burden him
for a duplicate issue. Some of those guys cannot be
disgruntled shareholders on Ragingbull. If we do get rich lets play of game of tracking them and play pratical jokes on them
the rest of there petty existence. Just enough to annoy
them.LOL Vengence is mine saith the LORD. Between the lines I read into it pratical jokes and minor nuecenes are our discrection. LOL
Best wishes.
I tries to go to chat this week but with my new schedule
I was home on trickleband which I cannot get to load.
Let me know if you all are in week end nights.
intesting article on pricing and boadband and economy slowdown
what would they pay for 50 meg?
[Article ID: 459-2301]
http://www.broadband-daily.com/subscribers/index.htm?article_id=2301
Broadband Pricing All over the Map
As broadband penetration hurtles toward the 20% mark and with the prospect of a recession looming, one big question is: Will consumers cut back on what many consider to be the luxury of high-speed Internet access, slowing down broadband’s take-rate?
The largest factor driving the consumption of any product is, of course, price, and lately two (SBC and EarthLink) top broadband retailers have felt confident enough to implement price hikes. SBC and EarthLink both raised the monthly rate of their DSL offerings from $39.95 to $49.95, although in the case of SBC, the price change simply brought its DSL service charge back up to where it was last summer.
Whether consumers react to the economy’s weakness by cutting out faster and always-on Internet connections remains to be seen – the whole Internet market, much less the high-speed segment of that market, is too new to yield any insight into how price-sensitive customers are.
But, a review of the range of broadband rates offered by selected telco, cable, satellite and wireless providers does show one thing: Prices are all over the map, with downstream and upstream rates varying widely (see table below).
At one end of the price spectrum, the lowest cost option for broadband service, satellite provider DirecPC, which extends a $19.95 option for quicker access. The problem, however, is that this rate applies to only 25 hours per month and only 400 kbps service, not to mention the problem of telco return technology (although DirecPC is now gearing up to deliver two-way satellite broadband connections).
At the other end are $100+ options that provide for multiple PC connections and even routers, although these are primarily aimed at small office-home office users. Further complicating the picture is the advent of the long-dreamed-for bundling of telecommunications services. Long distance and telco giant Sprint is rolling out packages that include multiple voice lines, enhanced features and other goodies combined with high-speed service starting at $119.99.
Cable still offers the lowest price on a bit-by-bit basis, delivering three Mbps up to 10 Mbps for around $40/month. With this kind of variability, not to mention consumer confusion, the impact of an economic slowdown on broadband could be very hard to measure indeed.
HIGH SPEED INTERNET ACCESS SERVICE MONTHLY RATES FOR SELECTED ,
CABLE, TELCO, WIRELESS AND SATELLITE SUPPLIERS
Provider Monthly Fees Speed- Down Speed-Up
INCUMBENT TELCOS
SBC
Basic DSL 49.95*** 394 kbps - 1.5 Mbps 128 kbps
Enhanced DSL* $79 384 kbps - 1.5 Mbps 128 kbps
Enhanced DSL* $199 1.5 Mbps - 6 Mbps 384 kbps
Verizon
Personal Infospeed $39.95 640 kbps 90 kbps
Professional $99.95 1.6 Mbps 90 kbps
Power $189.95 7.1 Mbps 680 kbps
Bell South $49.95** na na
Qwest
MegaBit 256 Deluxe $30 256 kbps na
MegaBit Office $65 512 kbps na
Mega Business $80 768 kbps na
OTHER TELCOS
Sprint ION (DSL)
xt4SM (see below) $149.99 8 Mbps 1 Mbps
xt2SM (see below) $119.99 8 Mbps 1 Mbps
Direct $44.00 1.5Mbps na
DLECs
Covad (sold via multiple ISPs)
TeleSurfer $49 - $69 608 kbps 128 kbps
TeleSpeed (incl. multiple users,
service guarantees, routing -- all for
residential customers) $89 - $500 144 kbps - 1.5 Mbps 144 kbps - 1.5 Mbps
INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS
Juno DSL $49.95 608 kbps 128 kbps
EarthLink DSL 49.95*** 1.5 Mbps 256 kbps
Telocity DSL $49.95 640 kbps 90 kbps
SATELLITE
StarBand $69.99 500 kbps 150 kbps
DirecPC $19.99 - $49.99**** 400 kbps - 768 kbps telco return/64 kbps
CABLE
At Home $39.95 - $44.95 3 - 10 Mbps na
Road Runner $39.95 average 3 - 10 Mbps na
High Speed Access Corp. $39.95 average na na
RESIDENTIAL FIXED WIRELESS
Sprint Broadband Direct $44.95 - $49.95***** 512 kbps - 1.5 Mbps up to 256 kbps
* dedicated services
** $40 per month when bundled with other Bell South products.
***Applies to new customers
after 03/01/01.
****Rates reflect 25-100 hrs./mo. Additional hrs=$1.99/hr.
*****$39.95 bundled with long distance.
Sprint packages include (1) xt4SM, which includes four voice/fax lines with enhanced features such as
Voice Mail and Caller ID, unlimited local calling, 750 minutes of domestic long distance, plus
use of the Sprint ION Control Center web interface for controlloing telephone services.
(2) xt2SM which includes two voice/fax lines with enhanced features, unlimited local calling, 400
minutes of domestic long distance and use of the Sprint ION Control Center web interface.
check out etherdude comments on the lu board post 47464
to see how he really feels. LOL. pretty good reading.
he still believes in ehternet solution but other than that
great venting. LOL
there is a great site to find info.
it is http://www.broadband-daily.com
you get a free two weeks subscription
but after that it is 300$ for three
months. my two weeks is almost up. If
we rotate and stick together we can
keep each other informed on a shoe
string, till we get fair weather market
conditions or soon arrives. lOL
Look on the bright side
We all have a second degree blackbelt in
patience thanks to our beloved stock.
Not only are we investing but we are
building virtues. LOL
Ondigital Says Its Net Strategy Is on Track
ONdigital, the UK digital terrestrial TV company, has played down market speculation that its Internet TV strategy is faltering, following the decision by TV broadcaster Granada, one of its owners, to stop selling the ONnet box in its 500 retail outlets across the country. But given the lackluster performance of Microsoft's WebTV in the US, the move is a reminder of the limited attraction to consumers of Net access through the TV, especially while not providing broadband connections.
ONdigital last year became the first UK digital TV operator to launch Net access through the TV. The company's million-plus digital customers can receive the service by buying the ONnet device – supplied by French manufacturer Netgem – that enables ONdigital's set-top box to access the Internet.
Granada said its decision had "nothing to do with lack of confidence in the product", but rather with the fact that its Box Clever stores represented only a small fraction of total ONnet sales. Currently 70% of ONnet devices are sold directly by ONdigital, with the remainder coming largely through big electronics retailers, including Currys and Dixons.
An ONdigital spokesperson said the ONnet service, which has more than 70,000 subscribers, continues to do "pretty well" and that retailers were "queuing up" to get on the site. In addition to an email service, it offers a platform for t-commerce (e-commerce on the TV set).
Internet through TV has long fascinated digital TV operators around the world, with its promise of bringing new revenue streams in the form of t-commerce. However, analysts say the lack of broadband technology makes surfing the Net through the TV a not very user-friendly experience. ONdigital's subscribers, for example, have been much happier to use the email service rather than surf the Net. Another reason for this is that Web pages don't look so good on a TV screen. ONdigital maintains its service is the "absolutely next big thing to the PC."
But with the rollout of broadband – be it xDSL, cable or satellite – things should change. "In the future a significant proportion of UK Internet users will get access through the TV," said Dan Stevenson, an analyst at Jupiter MMXI. The Internet market research firm said Monday the number of people going online from home in the UK had risen by one million to 13.5 million between October and February. Websites related to popular TV programs proved particularly successful, with broadcasters transferring their audiences onto the Web. One such example is itv.co.uk, which links to Popstars, a popular music TV program for teenagers.
Still, some observers maintain that basic Internet access through TV will not be enough to lure consumers. The key to success – and to new revenue streams – is to roll services based on interactive-TV and Internet technologies into much wider digital packages that would also include premium TV services, such as sports, movies and video on demand, it is argued.
Digital terrestrial television operators, which have limited bandwidth compared with their broadband cable and satellite peers, could have their work cut out here. "WebTV in the US and Freedomland in Italy have shown that offering simple Internet access through the TV is not a very appealing proposition," says Julien Roch, a media analyst at Lehman Brothers in London. Four years after launching, WebTV has only managed one million subscribers, while Freedomland, a provider of Net-top boxes, is on the verge of bankruptcy.
Earlier this month, Netgem, which also provides the Net-tops for Freedomland, said it expects to sell significantly fewer products this quarter than it sold in the first quarter of 2000.
Into Networks, Total PayForView and AtomShockwave Push Broadband Entertainment Ahead
(3-22-2001)
The rapid fall of the Internet sector has turned many investors away from anything web-related. The real dead dogs are Internet players that banked on the now-vanishing but formerly escalating ad revenue gold rush, or dot.com's that sought to transfer traditional businesses to the web's inherently ethereal realm.
But, one solid legacy of the Internet boom is stepped-up development of new forms of information and entertainment delivery. And, the increasing penetration of broadband connections is bringing forth new entertainment and communication alternatives every day, despite decimated confidence in the Internet revolution.
Just a few examples over the past two days: Cambridge, MA-based game software delivery company Into Networks forges yet another path to deliver games-on-demand to broadband users; a new web site, called PayForView.com, pushes pay-per-view closer to the Internet and AtomShockwave Corp. , the new web-video company formed following Shockwave's buy of Atom Films, debuts.
On the broadband games front, Into Networks, along with EBWorld.com, an arm of Electronics Boutique Holdings, and Enron Broadband Services Content Systems announced 3/19 a long-term licensing deal to deliver games on demand. Into is licensing streaming software technology to EB and Enron will provide financial and operational services to Into with the goal of providing secure streaming media access to Into's 700 game titles.
Starting 6/1, EB will offer Into's software service via its website, giving Into a wide reach across the net -- to date, Into has primarily made its on-demand service available to cable modem and DSL customers through deals with broadband service providers such as Road Runner and Excite@Home. Into's platform is currently available in 203 markets in the U.S. and Europe, covering 3.3 mil. broadband users.
Inching closer to the day when pay-per-play movies are available over the web, web-based advertising and entertainment start-up PayForView.com announced 3/20 the creation of a new subsidiary, Total PayPerView (TPPV), to provide viewers and user with text and video information on the pay-per-view options available across a host of platforms.
TPPV will pull together promotional information from the leading PPV players, including studios, cable, DBS suppliers and Internet programmers, allowing viewers to preview trailers and order events and movies, as well as give rights holders a central site for finding out about promotion, production, financing and distribution. The next step, actually selling on-demand movies directly via the site, can't be far away.
Finally, AtomShockwave dropped its kimono 3/20 to detail the new company's strategy. The new entity, which proclaimed its mission "to be a leading entertainment provider for businesses and consumers online and offline," plans to offer two separate brands: AtomFilms and shockwave.com. Working overtime to monetize the 150 mil. viewers captured by Shockwave and AtomFilms over the past three year, AtomShockwave plans to attain profitability before the end of this year.
AtomS also announced 3/20 that it has closed its latest round of financing, securing $22.98 mil. in funding from Macromedia, Sequioa Capital, JPMorgan Entertainment Partners, Arts Alliance, Waterview Partners and Intel Capital
Broadband: The New Electricity, Says Telewest March 23, 2001
Cable operator Telewest will have 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps) Ethernet available to its cable modem customers by the end of the year – although, according to CEO Adam Singer, there's not much sign of demand for it at this point. But for Telewest, the broader the end-to-end bandwidth, the higher the potential revenues per subscriber it can make in future.
Asking customers whether they want 'GigE' right now is a bit like asking them which controls they want on their spaceship. Certainly Telewest is not alone in thinking it will become a crucial differentiator between its service and that of competitors, particularly among small to medium-sized companies (SMEs) – the part of its business that grew strongest in the year to December.
"To make money and fill your bandwidth, you need to own the access ramps," said Andy Johnson, UK manager for LuxN, which sells optical access equipment. Owning the last mile is Telewest's advantage over competitors that have built metropolitan networks but don't own the last mile. That's why it is making SMEs a key customer target.
At stake is Telewest's word that it can provide end-to-end services. Globalizing a company means unifying its enterprise applications, like enterprise resource planning and voice-over-IP service. Getting those applications onto a common platform means getting big bandwidth from one end of the network to the other and reducing the variety of protocols to a minimum, for maximum end-to-end delivery.
"We are only starting to explore the potential products and services that customers will need, want and pay for in a world of high-speed, always-on connectivity," said Singer. "Many different types of device will be able to connect to our network, making broadband, in a communications sense, the new electricity. You can see the seeds of our future in the thousands of customers who spend over £65 [$92] per month with us for approximately 4Mb of service in video, telephone and high-speed Internet."
All well and good. But, in the meantime, Telewest has plenty of problems to contend with, including a wider fourth-quarter net loss of £225m ($321.7m), compared with £142.6m a year previously. Not to mention £4.4bn of debt. Still, it has some formidable backers, including Microsoft and Liberty Media Group, which each own around 25% of the company's outstanding share capital.
Fourth-quarter sales rose 38% to £289m and full-year revenues jumped 42% to £1.12bn, helped by its acquisition of Eurobell. Telewest says it now has more than 500,000 subscribers to its digital service. But the company and its other European cable counterparts are still waiting for their two-way networks to come into their own. That will happen as the price of server technology continues to fall, making it cheaper for devices of all kinds – from MP3 players to PCs – to communicate.
The speed with which prices continue to fall will be important in determining how quickly customers start asking for buttons on their spaceships.
interesting article,
03/23/2001 - Updated 07:36 PM ET
Bush administration mulls high-speed options
MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) — The Internet is so important for improving education that the Bush administration will consider several ways to extend high-speed access throughout the country, including tax incentives for broadband companies, Commerce Secretary Donald Evans said Friday.
After a breakfast meeting with high-tech leaders and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, Evans said high-speed access, or broadband, could be "an incredibly powerful tool to play a role in the education of America, going to the very basics of teaching our children to read."
"I think it's important that we understand why we need to move it out there as quickly as we can to the inner cities, to the rural areas of America, and get as many children and homes connected to it as quickly as we can," Evans said.
"It's how you transport information and how you transport knowledge as we rapidly move into this knowledge-based economy," Evans added. "We want all of our people to have the knowledge. So to me that's a pretty fundamental part of the infrastructure that needs to be out there in America."
Evans, who met with Gov. Gray Davis, Mexican President Vicente Fox and business leaders in Southern California on Thursday, said he had come to Silicon Valley mainly to listen to the high-tech community "and let them know that they have a friend in Washington, D.C."
Among the companies represented at the meeting with Evans were Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and broadband provider Excite@Home.
"People seemed to be very comfortable giving him some frank advice," said Rick White, chief executive of TechNet, the high-tech lobbying organization that organized the meeting.
03/23/2001 - Updated 07:36 PM ET
Bush administration mulls high-speed options
MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) — The Internet is so important for improving education that the Bush administration will consider several ways to extend high-speed access throughout the country, including tax incentives for broadband companies, Commerce Secretary Donald Evans said Friday.
After a breakfast meeting with high-tech leaders and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, Evans said high-speed access, or broadband, could be "an incredibly powerful tool to play a role in the education of America, going to the very basics of teaching our children to read."
"I think it's important that we understand why we need to move it out there as quickly as we can to the inner cities, to the rural areas of America, and get as many children and homes connected to it as quickly as we can," Evans said.
"It's how you transport information and how you transport knowledge as we rapidly move into this knowledge-based economy," Evans added. "We want all of our people to have the knowledge. So to me that's a pretty fundamental part of the infrastructure that needs to be out there in America."
Evans, who met with Gov. Gray Davis, Mexican President Vicente Fox and business leaders in Southern California on Thursday, said he had come to Silicon Valley mainly to listen to the high-tech community "and let them know that they have a friend in Washington, D.C."
Among the companies represented at the meeting with Evans were Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and broadband provider Excite@Home.
"People seemed to be very comfortable giving him some frank advice," said Rick White, chief executive of TechNet, the high-tech lobbying organization that organized the meeting.
Question for gallery. they say they are planning on releasing
product at the comdex. Now they haven't said any field tested
has been done of yet. It seems like they are pretty damn sure that it will succeed. Going by great character of management -due you all think limited field tests have already been done with success? Some of the loyals seem to be pretty good at reading tea leaves. LOL Maybe a wink or nod, guess ect. opinion.
Also maybe we could all meet at comdex in vegas for the
(God willing) relase of product. I plan on trying to work it again this year.
p.s Excel where is the spell checker? LOL Got any pull around here?
God bless,
theforce3