Mary Yugo <maryyu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Can you think of a recent spectacular innovation that has been marketed by > deliberately acting in a way that suggests it can't and doesn't work? Toyota's plug in Prius. Toyota kept saying existing model is not designed for plug-in mode; they do not recommend it; it will take a complete redesign. They were trying to stall off the add-on market. They succeeded. Then they introduced their own plug-in hybrid which it turns out is not such a major redesign. They developed it in what you might call semi-stealth mode. Periodically they would show prototypes on the seven o'clock news. They leased out a few cars the government offices, the same way Rossi is selling a few reactors. Enough to keep their names in the public eye, but not enough to cannibalize present sales, frighten the competition, or ramp up expectations too soon. They kept saying this upcoming model is a complete redesign, it will be years before is available, and the present model is not suitable for this technology . . . until, boom, there it was. IBM did that often in the old days when they owned 80% of the market. The ploy was: "You can't do that; it is technically impossible; is beyond state-of-the-art; stop talking about it . . . here it is folks." When Rossi gets intellectual property protection, sufficient funding, and he is ready to ramp up production I expect he will market the thing openly, and stop trying to sow doubt. Until then he will be in stealth mode. This strategy taken to this extreme is unusual, but everything about cold fusion is unusual. The situation is unparalleled. Trying to sell something without a patent is close to impossible. No one has ever tried to sell a small nuclear reactor in the face of opposition from the fossil fuel industry (the richest, most powerful, and most ruthless industry on earth), the DoE, the academic scientific establishment, and thousands of nitwit bloggers. > By acting in a way that suggests investor fraud? > Rossi is not acting in a way that suggests investor fraud. This is your imagination. All of the indications you have pointed to either indicate nothing, or they are common to both legitimate businesses and frauds. As I said before: You said that having a web site and an order form is suspicious. All companies have web sites and order forms. You said there is nothing in the order form that indicates other people have ordered the product before. Order forms never indicate that. - Jed
