I just spoke via phone with Dick Weir for about 5 minutes. It was a very typical conversation in the sense that he was at times jovial and others mildly irritated with me. I could tell he was determined not to let the conversation stray from simply commenting on the press release, to explain what's in there.
Blogger: some people are wondering if your use of the term "milestone" in the press release relates to investment payments or investment milestones.
RW: No. Milestones of production and chemical purity.
Blogger: Why would you issue a press release on something related to purity prior to permittivity?
RW: It all leads to that. Everything we got there is the holy grail of everything we've worked for here. Permittivity, it seems to me people overconcentrate on it. Permittivity is a subset of getting these. If you dont get these, you dont get the permittivity. If you
get these, you get the permittivity and you can set it up at very high levels. This allows us to meet present specifications but more importantly or equally, it's the pathway for future advancement. In 2007, we made a conscious corporate decision to put in our advanced technologies. Of course, thats going to take a little longer! But we did that with very good reasoning behind it. As it states there, there are some mission critical programs out there that we wanted make sure that we could meet. Now what we had (prior to our advanced technology) could certainly meet alot of the programs. Putting our advanced technologies in place...this is why we are so happy.....because this shows the success of our advanced technologies. "
Blogger: Does that mean from a production standpoint that....
(interrupting)
RW: We were [funded].....say this on the blog.....we were [funded] to put a production line in. So what we are putting in here is a
production line. (production said slowly and with emphasis)
(note: Weir said "invested in" but
probably reads better as "funded"?)
Blogger: Not a lab?
RW: No, we've already done all the R&D and preproduction on this a long time ago. Now our [funding is] to put a production line in. This press release was put out to tell the people of our production successes that we have had.
Blogger: I hate to bring this up because I feel like I'm pretty clear on the information that's out there in regards to what you're saying about production. But still, alot of people still think that you haven't even got a prototype.
RW: We've have made prototypes of this and those have....they were made with technologies that we had at the time. And what I'm telling the people today is in 2007 we made a corporate decision to put in more advanced technologies which we now and this data shows that we hit a home run on these technologies. Prototypes have been built and prototypes have been tested.
Blogger: tested by 3rd parties?
RW: I'm just going to say that. They've been tested and the data has been reviewed by a lot of people.
Blogger: are you following any of the discussions on the web?
RW: [scoffing] I dont follow any discussions. I get to work, get my ass to work and get things done around here. What people say has no meaning to me. What we put out there I thought was dynamite and go from there. Anyway, that's all I can say. Thank you very much.
Blogger: .....one last question, people want to know if Moore's Law.... [phone click]
Thoughts? What's my take? I think someone smarter than me should piece this together. On the one hand, we have all the skeptics beating the permittivity drum with Weir saying essentially that he's focused on production issues not lab or R&D issues. You be the judge.
With regard to EEStor's recent announcement of production and purity milestones, here's a little recap post for easy access to the various postings.