I usually don't respond to people who are afraid to disclose their identity when making biased solicitations for support of a company or it's stock, however, there are a couple of things which I woulld like to state, to set the record straight:
(1) You are attempting to base your arguments on the concept that there are only two classes of thought about DWM: either you support it blindly, without question, or, you are educated and therefore believe it won't work because you didn't learn about it in school. This reminds me of the joke: "There are only two types of people in the world: those who believe there are only two types of people, and those who do not".
I, as well as others who have posted here, do not fit either of those categories. From your statements of position I assume you consider yourself to be "uneducated", at least as far as DWM is concerned, and voicing a popular folk opinion, you state that those who are educated are really less qualified to judge the technology than those who are not. But, I have yet to meet an "educated" engineer/scientist/etc. who stopped learning and thinking as soon as the diploma was awarded; in fact, what impresses me MOST about those who have received formal education is not the specific rules and facts they may have learned, but, their ability to THINK, REASON and IMAGINE. What I see happening here is that those who know something about communications and the technologies it is based on are asking SPECIFIC questions and requesting to see SOMETHING TANGIBLE, while those who do not understand technology, logically, are backing IAS for other reasons. And it seems that those who least understand what IAS is claiming are the most radical in their defense of what they, by their own admission, do not comprehend.
If IAS stock sold via NASDAQ or some other vehicle, what has happened may be OK, because purchasers of stock would know that the company at least met minimum NASDAQ requirements. However, IAS is a pink sheet company, and a lot of "little people" lost all they had investing in IAS, (I recall a post here from a disabled woman who invested all her savings in IAS based on the kind of "faith" you are promoting, and she lost it all. Those are the kinds of situations which can come about when the officals of a PUBLIC company play loose and free with the facts). Which brings me to:
(2) Check the price of IAS stock prior to their promise to provide a public demonstration of DWM, then, check the price after they promised a public demonstration, which many people took to be a HUGE sign of good faith on IAS part (which is why so many were upset when they found such faith to be misplaced). There is a steady increase in the stock just after the demo announcement as the stock went to $60+, then a sharp decline shortly after the "demo" meeting. The stock climbed because IAS heavily promoted a public demonstration, requiring interested parties to contact IAS via FAX and obtain tickets for the DEMO, etc. It was all very official looking and it impressed many who were not experienced with small CAP companies. I submit that it was this promotion of a live demo which raised the interest in IAS and shot the stock price through the roof, not AFIM, which has been around in physical form for quite a while. However, this is only my opinion, and lest we forget, an opinion about something that happened two years ago. Whatever may be happening with AFIM, or even DWM, now, I have no knowledge of and do not comment on.
I, like many others who may have been skeptical, had at least a partial change of heart when I heard of the demo. I came to the demo expecting to see a DWM modem, as was specifically promised. I called the company several times in the weeks before the demo to check on the progress of DWM, and, although the information I received from IAS employees was often confusing, they never hesitated to state that the hardware would be ready and that it would be shown at the public demo. My last call was only a couple of days prior to the meeting, at which time I was assured that DWM would be at the meeting in all it's glory. These, as well as other factors, caused me to attend the demo. I did not go there to "shoot down" DWM, but rather, to admire it.
The "demo" consisted of a very confusing oral/grease pencil lecture by IAS president. I came away confused and unconvinced, but mostly, disappointed, because I had BELIEVED that IAS was going to demo DWM, based on the highly public and intense promotion of the demo in the months leading up to the meeting. Regardless of how well the oral presentation may have gone, the fact remains, there was no demo. Could that be why lawsuits were filed and why the SEC filed? It is not because the SEC and some who invested in IAS are nefarious hoodlums who have no faith; it is because they are experienced at what they do; each individual, at this point, is left to infer what the SEC action means, and I agree, it does no good to speculate about what it is about.
If IAS had merely continued to make claims about DWM by sending out faxes (I remember receiving one years ago, quite some time before IAS began promoting a demo), promoting DWM on their web site, and to work with the OEM clients they have continuously claimed to have, the present situation would not exist. Nobody forced IAS to produce a demo; they did so to "prove" to the world that DWM is real, and they failed.
I have nothing personally against any of the people at IAS; as you say it could very well be that they were simply inexperienced in such matters and they committed one of the largest and loudest blunders in recent memory. I speak only of the facts of the case, ie, that IAS promised a demo two years ago, that they postponed it and promised those who attended that another demo would be held very soon, as soon as "patent issues" could be resolved, etc. IAS has failed to live up to any of the public promises they made; that's all. If you and others don't think that is significant for a public company, you are free to invest in IAS as you see fit. I COULD have faith in a small company which was forthright in stating that they were still a long way from implementing a DWM IDEA, but, not in one which publicly announced they were capable of publicly demonstrating DWM when they were not. And potential investors ought to know both sides of this history.
Oh yes, one more thing about me: if you knew me, you'd know that I would be the LAST person to stand on formalities or established "laws" when evaluating anything. I believe I have the distinction of being the only graduate of the BYU engineering program to have been given a special award for asking too many questions, challenging too many "rules", and being too imaginative for my own good. For you or anyone else to accuse me of not being imaginative enough to consider that DWM could work is almost a complement, as I am usually the one who wants to depart from the past and break new ground! I repeat the offer I've made many times in the past: I will be happy to view a working DWM prototype and, if it is properly demonstrated to work under real-world conditions, I would be glad to become a DWM advocate. It isn't necessary for me to know anything about how it works; put two of them behind a curtain with two sets of "INPUTS" and two sets of "OUTPUTS", and let me send a signal through conventional line simulators at the rates claimed by IAS. If such a test succeeds, I'll sell everything I own and buy IAS stock, apply for a job with IAS, and become the staunchest DWM promoter in creation! But, if it doesn't work, all I require is the right to say "I tried it and it didn't work". Of course, we'd negotiate the definition of "works" and "doesn't work" ahead of time, the methodology of the test, etc. All I've ever been interested in is a fair test, but in the present climate, IAS probably can't do anything like this even if they wish to. So, to me, this is a moot issue, part of the past, and not worth further expenditures of mental energy. DWM works or it doesn't; by definition, it works when we see it work, until then, we just have to wait and watch.
Hartley and Shannon's work, as well as that of Nyquist, Einstein, and others, would contradict claims made about DWM; IAS claims that these and other pioneering giants are simply wrong. (By the way, Hartley was a professor and the University of Utah, just up the road from IAS). The work of the great pioneers in communications theory and physics is complex, but, it can sometimes be generalized in amazingly non-technical terms. Shannon/Hartley, for example, simply proved that there is a limit to the amount of information which a given channel can carry, and the limit is established by the ability to distinguish an intelligence-bearing signal from random noise in the channel. That is, when the channel noise is "louder" than the signal, you are at the limit of the channel. (Just as your voice would be at the "Shannon Limit" of a crowded room if it could not be heard above the noise of other conversations in the room). Present day modems, such as the one I am using to send this message, exceed what IAS mistakenly believes to be the Shannon Limit already (taken from the various pages which have come and gond from their web site), but present designs do it by compressing and encoding the data, not by exceeding the Shannon Limit of the channel. If DWM is a method of encoding or compressing data, who knows, it may work. But that is not what IAS is claiming, they are claiming they can exceed the Shannon Limit of the channel, so I assume that DWM's success depends upon disproving the work of many talented (and in some cases, not so well educated) predecessors, with Shannon/Hartley being the first to fall. (By the way, Hartley was the first to formally show that a channel has a limit, while Shannon extended Hartley's work in his book and put it to numbers; most texts now correctly refer to this combined effort as the Shannon/Hartley Limit).
I've spent too much time writing this; I do that. I don't want to become entangled in a running argument about DWM, and whether it ought to be judged on faith or scientific analysis. (Been there, done that.) I especially don't want any of my comments to be taken personally or mistaken for anger; I don't know you (I guess nobody does, eh?), I don't know the people at IAS, I wish them no ill luck, and I hope they can get things worked out as well as you've suggested. I believe that Paul has done a masterful job of presenting FACTS here, many of which come directly from IAS public documents; another "spokesman" isn't needed; I doubt I could do as well as he has done anyway. I doubt I will comment further on IAS here, regardless of the poetry of any rebuttal of my position. You probably won't agree with me, nor I with you, so we will go our different directions and see where that takes us.......
Larry |
