This place is always good for a laugh. Here we go again!
Have you ever noticed that for some people, no matter how many times they lose their lunch, they just GOTTA go back and ride the roller coaster again and again.....I think there must be an adrenalin rush in this sort of business, ie, playing the role of righteous David going out to slay the evil Phillistine giant who, unfortunately, didn't know David's secret. Don't we all dream of doing that at some time or another....like Mike, if I could be like Mike; la da da dah la da dah da la da dah.....
I asked several times to visit IAUS to see a demo a couple of YEARS ago, but never did get to do so, actually, they effectively said "please don't come; we won't show you anything because you doubt us". The issues which the SEC is addressing probably won't be very technical, and certainly, not whether or not DWM can be made to work several years after it was used to promote IAS's stock over $50/share when the company's financials showed them to be at best broke, and probably deeply in debt, at least technically. They could probably care less if DWM works NOW and turns the world upside down. They just want to know if IAS broke any laws in their conduct over the past several years while promoting DWM with very exaggerated and often shaky claims of various kinds (for example, there is always talk of mystery customers who have offered to buy DWM for hundreds of millions of dollars but which IAS turned down flat).
The issue with the SEC will be that IAUS caused many millions of dollars to change hands by making statements about their company, publicly claiming there were several prominent customers whom IAUS alleged had signed huge secret DWM contracts, and finally, for the fact that this happened becuase IAUS convinced the world that they had a working prototype three years ago. Their claims were so fantastic, and so PUBLIC, that NOBODY disbelieved them. The thinking was, if IAS was making such bold, public statements, they must be very honest people; who would be CRAZY enough to shout to world as IAS did if they DIDN'T already have a prototype of SOME SORT running?? I know of several people who invested amounts in the $50K to $100K range (and lost virtually all of it) based on essentially that kind of thinking. I must admit, I thought like that too, to some extent, when I heard about DWM just a few months prior to the "demo". I anxiously called and asked for tickets to see this marvel which was not bound by the laws of science which so many patient professors had tried to hammer into my thick skull! Although I said out loud that I didn't believe it could be done, I admit that inside, I was thrilled and I operated as though I DID believe them. I'm certain that many others were caught up in this also. It's been a while since there was anything exciting and new around here to invest in, and here was a LOCAL company living the Cinderella story -- millions were pulled from bank accounts originally intended to become retirement funds, educational funds, etc., and used to buy IAS stock, as IAS did quite a good job of saying only just enough to cause this strange thing to come over a lot of people who live here. And then, when news spread to other parts of the country by overly-zealous promoters anxious to get "their share of the pie" before the rest of the world was beating a path to IAS's door, people EVERYWHERE invested millions. They took the risk because of the huge potential of the telecommunications markets of the world over the next decade or two, perhaps even longer. Anyone who is even marginally successful in that business is going to do VERY well, and it tends to draw people who think they will get rich simply buying and selling IAS stock at opportune moments. IAS simply took advantage of the situation, or perhaps even they got caught in "the fever" of the whole thing. Who knows any more......
As is evident by the price and volume of IAUS stock now, compared to the months leading up to the over-promoted "DEMO that never happened" almost three years ago, the stock rose to over $50 per share because of speculation which was fueled by IAUS making promises to the world of a demo, and IAUS did not produce a demo.
You and I had a lot of fun discussing the technical problems with DWM and I think those types of discussions exhausted the subject long ago.
But I've thought of a couple of things which are quite interesting. One which I find quite interesting is that IAS, after expendig a great deal of money and effort to promote and set up the "DEMO", and being "on the spot", so to speak, didn't discuss patent issues with their attorney until, apparently, the night before the "demo", then decided not to tell the wedding guests who were flying in from all over the country that the bride would not be able to attend the wedding because she had just found out that marriage might eventually lead to parenthood! If I had been in their situation, I would have discussed the patents years before I ever THOUGHT of making any public statements about such an earth-shattering discovery. In fact, everything that IAS has disclosed so far contains mostly prior art from various sources, as I'm sure you know, so it is unclear to me how a patent could stand up to the challenges which would ABSOLUTELY for certain be brought against the patents by huge communications companies who don't wish to give IAS billions of dollars for permission to use DWM. Prove it is prior art, get the weak patent(s) thrown out (it is very hard to defend even a STRONG one, as Apple and a few others could tell you), and rush products to the market and sell an occasional million or two to just about anyone in the world who uses telecommunications for any purpose.
There are a number of other issues like this one which knock the technical questions about DWM to second or perhaps fifth place on the list the SEC is working from. The beauracracy which the SEC must work through to bring ANY case against ANYONE is so bizarre it takes years just to get the wheels turning; the wheels turn painfully slow but they are so darned BIG that once they catch up with you they can simply roll you flat into the ground. I know, for example, that the state SEC offices are not allowed to decide whether or not to pursue a case; they must spend many months putting together a case which they send back to Washington D.C.; the guys in DC decide what will be done. If they decide there is enough merit to the charges, they order the state agents to prosecute the case. The whole process is so painfully slow and difficult that I was surprised to see the SEC bring ANY charges against IAS; I thought the SEC would have been too busy with the really big cases to "bother" with IAS.
Although it is much easier to make a case against DWM from a technical point of view, because the claims which would be covered by patent would either prove to be true (when a physical, working prototype was shown to widely known people beyond reproach who could vouch for IAS's claims), or, it wouldn't work for any of a thousand scientific reasons, and that would be that. A one or a zero; it would work or it wouldn't.
However, I believe it will be the lack of a demo three years ago, and all the laws that mistake broke, which will interest the SEC more than whether or not DWM works. But what do I know about the SEC anyway? Maybe they just put all the cases in a hat and pulled out a couple dozen......
I spent a couple of years at BYU earning my engineering degree (yes, I learned about "old fashioned analog filters", but my whole education was not built around them!!!). During that time I worked for the engineering department of BYU because I'd had quite a bit of experience working at HP and other companies before I finally made it to college, and BYU had a lot of HP equipment for me to repair and maintain.
One of the jobs I enjoyed while there was participating in the review of "inventions" which the local inventors had come up with on paper. They would bring the paper designs to us hoping for a pronouncement from us that they worked; in the community of Utah as it was that many years ago, any "invention" which got the "blessing" of passing "review by BYU", as we jokingly called it, would definitely get enough funding to start their businesses and do well. Ever heard of, for example, Novell, WordPerfect, Eyring Research, Beehive, Evans & Sutherland, and a few little places like that? Virtually all of them succeeded because they had at least the moral support of either BYU or the University of Utah. And of course, the success received those "blessings" because they proposed to build products which did not need to shatter all of science to succeed. Most inventors who are not, at least in the early stage of the invention, well educated and well known, decide that they must do something ten times more spectacular to succeed as those who have all the degrees and know a lot of others with degrees who will give them enough money to make it through the perilous first five years of business. It wasn't long before I saw this pattern in 99.9% of every "invention" I saw at BYU; power generators which produced enormous amounts of energy from small sealed enclosures but which did not consume any material inside nor do anything else to trade one kind of energy for another such as we do when we use huge amounts of running water to turn generators to create electricity ,transforming mechanical kinetic energy of rushing water to electrical energy in very predictable ways. All the inventors overlooked what seemed like a very small detail, but it was that small detail which would make them fail. Some managed to get funding and build their inventions; reminded me of the old black and white newsreels I see on public TV, showing what the daring inventors of the early part of the century were trying to do to make flying machines. The machines looked wonderful to them; often, they simply built a thing which physiclly resembled a bird and expected the form and shape of the machine to cause it to fly. The instant power was applied to the wings the whole machine would fall apart, often injuring or killing the dedicated, honest, well meaning but poorly educated inventor who was certain he had found a way around all the complex analysis and sets of rules that most others were burdened with; being a visionary was far more important than being a scientist! In fact, those fools (like those two idiot Wright brothers)were TOO educated; they couldn't see past the complexity of their own scientific rules and lacked the "special gifts" which were claimed by those whose intuitions were assumed to be enough to conquer scientific principles derived from observing what makes the natural world work, and what doesn't, and then, translating that into mathematical models which were more suitable for their small facilities than actually using natural models.
I'm always so long winded! I really do need to stop being so lazy and learn to write better.
I really do hope IAS has been able to work out all the bugs, as has been stated so often here as the reason why the demo hasn't happened in the three years since it was promised. I have nothing to gain or lose by whatever happens with IAS; I never invested a penny in them. A number of people have called me and asked my opinion of DWM, but I have refused to render one, and have referred them to this www site (I give them IAS's site also but there is so little attention paid to it by IAS that there isn't much there for the average investor who cannot handle the technical analysis, etc.), so they may decide for themselves whether to speculate on DWM. Some have, some haven't. I guess it isn't the first confusing situation on the stock market and won't be the last. I'm very comfortable with your assessment of the technical aspects of DWM; your messages here a couple of years ago, along with those of a couple of others, were well written and contained factual information which others, even non-technical investors, could have used to at least see what an enormous leap of faith it would take to believe IAS's claims WITHOUT A WORKING PROTOTYPE. The lack of a public demonstration of a prototype, as was promised, in my opinion, is why the SEC filed against IAS.
Well, I'd better hang it up for now and go play somewhere else; my chair is hurting me where I don't like it to. Perhaps IAS WILL do well enough with IFIM that the dWM thing won't pull them under. Although I like to talk about or to IAS once in a while because the situation is so bizarre it is interesting, I have no desire to see them hurt and especially, to see the small investors hurt by the failure of DWM. So I criticize IAS on the one hand and wish them luck, of a sort, on the other hand. Sheez; I'm schizophrenic, and so am I !!!
Nice to type to you again; maybe some day we can meet at a technical show or some other way. Or, perhaps we'll both work shoulder to shoulder for the only employer who sill survive the collapse of our society due to the revocation of natural laws -- IAS.
regards,
Larry |
