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Technology Stocks : Silkroad -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (347)	4/14/1999 10:13:00 PM
From: GrokSoup	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 626

Jeff Kagan is a nice fellow, but he self-admittedly is not a photonics guy. Given the complexity of the SilkRoad technology -- and it (and SilkRoad's baffling explanations) are very complex -- his opinion is worth darn close to zero. Instead, what he is saying what everyone else is saying: If it works, it will be great. That's true, but it's also entirely unhelpful. A while back I was doing some research on SilkRoad and I got a photonics expert at a top university involved. While what he wrote me was private, I don't think he'd mind me sharing some general comments on one the company's central research papers: - the problem is not well defined; it appears to be something to do with the design of an optical modulator that accepts light from a polarization maintaining (PM) input fiber - the problem outlined above is straightforward. It does not throw into doubt the fundamental equations of physics, as the author implies, nor does it require some re-interpretation of dearly held physical concepts. - the paper is full of mistakes, conceptual difficulties, etc. For example, the modulation of an optical beam is through the electro-optic effect, and is proportional to the electric field, not the magnetic field, as he states - the paper would have zero chance of being accepted in any of the reputable optics journals, for example the Journal of the Optical Society of America. P.