Diamond Age Coming Soon 404
Roland Piquepaille writes "In 'The many facets of man-made diamonds,' Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) writes that synthetic diamonds are getting bigger and cheaper. An example: for Valentine's Day, you can buy a yellow colored man-made diamond, visibly indistinguishable from a natural one, for $4,000 per carat. This is a 30% discount when compared with a natural diamond. This very long article also says that if synthetic diamond makers are targeting the jewelry market first, these new products will have an impact on many other industries. Not only is it now possible to grow bigger diamonds, you also can choose their color. 'Colored diamonds, which are valuable and very rare, can be created by introducing carefully controlled elemental impurities into the stone,' says C&EN. For instance, nitrogen produces a yellow stone. Infusing boron into the growing diamond produces a blue gem. This overview contains some details, references and photos of men-made diamonds, but read the original article for even more technical explanations if you have the time."
If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Interesting)
and you are so right. A few wars might stop as well if the price wasn't so artificially inflated.
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:3, Funny)
The rest of us, who actually want a wife and kids..
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Funny)
Gold mining is not a cartel, and I don't think artificial gold will be made in large quantities any time soon.
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Informative)
Blue diamonds are not that rare. Pale yellow diamonds as well as brownish colored diamonds in the K-M range are lower in value. However Fancy Yellow diamonds in the S and higher range are quite expensive.
Blue diamonds are expensive, but are not as rare as pink or red diamonds. Pinks and reds are orders of magnitude higher in price compared to yellows and blues. As well, do not buy from a vendor who claims they sell "blue/white" diamonds because this has been called a deceptive practice when diamond vendors would sell white diamonds that had blue flourescence that made them appear slightly bluish in hue when in sunlight. Many diamonds exhibit flourescence in many colors. They usually lower the asking price as well. Blue flourescence can be a good thing if it is moderate and does not cause a milky appearance because it can offset a light yellow tone and make it appear a whiter stone.
DeBeers (Score:5, Funny)
Scientists to DeBeers: FUCK YOU!!!
Re:DeBeers (Score:5, Informative)
They had synthetic diamonds for years (i mean the top quality ones too). Scientific purposes required them and have been using them. Its like Linux, we cant afford yours so well roll our own.
DeBeers is essentially trying to get the governments to forceibly label them as synthetic because otherwise no one can tell the difference.
Diamonds are a racket. I will never buy *another* one. What can I say? This logic stuff don't work to well on women
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Funny)
Dumping into the ocean, you say? Got some GPS numbers for me?
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
Send a picture of your sweetheart off with $4,000 and in a month or so you'll get back a 3/4 carat diamond the exact same color of her eyes. I have a hard time believing that the fact that it wasn't "natural' would really set somebody off because after all it is still a diamond and not only that, but it is her diamond.
These people could make a fortune.
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Funny)
Considering that most people have brown eyes....
Human rights benefits. (Score:5, Insightful)
I, for one, would pay a premium for a diamond's profits went to high-tech inventors instead of to slave owners.
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Interesting)
Debeers is one of the most cruel and devious corporations in the world. Their tactics are desicable, yet oh-so-creative. They've successfully stopped Australian and Russian diamonds from being so much as marketed in the United States with these tactics, and I'm sure it'll only take their executives a small amount of time to figure out how to keep these artificial diamonds out of the market.
You know their slogan, "a diamond is forever"? Yes, forever. Meaning you keep it forever. Meaning you don't sell it. Meaning there is no second-hand market. They really are good at eliminating markets, no?
Some musings on Diamond as a metastable material (Score:5, Informative)
The term for what the diamond structure is at room temperature is "metastable", which means it isn't stable, but may as well be since you don't care what is going to happen to the diamond in a few thousand years at room temperature.
As for the chemical vapour deposition machines, the technique is simple and the machines are relatively cheap (I used to work in the same room as one in a fairly poorly funded university), and there are quite a few now being used in industry to put diamond and other coatings on things. The trick is always getting the reaction to occur at the surface, and getting things to stick.
Industrial diamond coatings that just have to be hard is one thing, but things that have to be low in flaws or have carefully placed impurities (doped semicondutor junctions) are a bit trickier, or things with large thicknesses (a dirty great big rock to put on someones finger instead of a ten micron thick layer) are also tricky. The old way of producing artificial diamonds, used by DuPont, is to wrap explosives around some graphite and set it off. This produces lots of nice little diamonds, which are great if you don't care about optical properties (they look black) or size (average around 0.1 mm). This is of course completely useless for electronics or jewelry, and it's not that easy to stick little diamonds together to make a large solid object (you need to hit it really hard and really fast, and you can't hit it fast enough in a normal atmosphere).
Re:Some musings on Diamond as a metastable materia (Score:5, Informative)
"At a few hundred degrees the transformation [of diamond] would occur in seconds instead of thousands of years, and you would end up with very expensive bits of graphite."
In air (which is about 20% oxygen) diamonds will withstand heat to around 1560 degrees Fahrenheit. It is not necessary for jewelers to remove diamonds from jewelry prior to soldering it with a blowtorch. If you coat a diamond with boric acid, you can heat it to higher temperatures then that.
Diamonds Lasting Forever [bwsimon.com]
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Interesting)
The diamond industry is scared. It's interesting.
(Check out the cover [wired.com] from this issue...Damn!)
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
He got the machines from Russia.
I'll be damned that now, at least according to the initial listing on
They are all greedy pigs.
Folks, next time you need to buy diamonds, buy from each other. I don't believe for a second that the "new" diamonds you buy in stores are often used ones anyway. We all have realatives who are passing on who's diamonds can be sold to one another.
There is room for a business that independantly verifies quality and clarity when you are buying it not in person...
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:3, Informative)
They are all greedy pigs.
Right, because researching and developing the technology was free, so they shouldn't have to add anything to the cost because of it.
By the same logic, all microprocessors should cost pennies, because silicon is cheap and plentiful.
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Informative)
"But the greatest potential for CVD diamond lies in computing. If diamond is ever to be a practical material for semiconducting, it will need to be affordably grown in large wafers. (The silicon wafers Intel uses, for example, are 1 foot in diameter.) CVD growth is limited only by the size of the seed placed in the Apollo machine. Starting with a square, waferlike fragment, the Linares process will grow the diamond into a prismatic shape, with the top slightly wider than the base. For the past seven years - since Robert Linares first discovered the sweet spot - Apollo has been growing increasingly larger seeds by chopping off the top layer of growth and using that as the starting point for the next batch. At the moment, the company is producing 10-millimeter wafers but predicts it will reach an inch square by year's end and 4 inches in five years. The price per carat: about $5."
It sounds like ultimately it will only cost $5 per carat to produce these diamonds. However, this is a price on CVD diamonds, which is still a very new process, so it likely would take time to drive the cost down. Furthermore, the price quoted above may only be achievable if diamonds are used in semiconductors, thus driving demands up and prices down. Presently, diamonds are used mainly in jewelry (ignoring industrial usages, which cares less about carats), which supports higher prices. Besides, if a man-made diamond used in jewelry is priced too low, it may even drive potential buyers away. It's the monetary value that drive up demand in jewelry, so if the price is set too low, the demand might actually diminish... Strange, I know.
-B
Diamonds are no longer a GIRLS best friend (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Funny)
Hey! Those are fake! (diamonds)
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
Old article [theatlantic.com], from 1982, but quite revealing (I think there was a posting on this to Slashdot a few years back).
The diamond trade is not only a carefuly controlled monopoly, but the whole idea of diamonds being "rare" and "valuable" is a carefuly crafted (over almost 100 years) con on (mainly) Americans.
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Informative)
Diamonds-Value- Ha! (Score:5, Funny)
Here's something: Literally give your significant other the sun . . . A white dwarf diamond that is!
Scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the University of Cambridge, and UFSC Brazil have identified in the constellation Centaurus what is likely to be the fate of our own sun. With a rhythmically harmonious core and a 'suface' of hydrogen and helium this carbon-predominant cellestial body is known as BPM 37093. It is the largest diamond ever indentified [harvard.edu] in the wild at Twenty-five hundred miles across and weighing 5 million trillion trillion pounds!". Artistic Representainions and Videos are available here [harvard.edu].
The Catto Diamond
A businessman boarded a plane to find, sitting next to him, an elegant woman wearing the largest, most stunning diamond ring he had ever seen.
He asked her about it.
"This is the Catto diamond," she said. "It is beautiful, but there is a terrible curse that goes with it."
"Oh - what's the curse?" the man asked.
"Mr. Catto."
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:4, Funny)
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:3, Interesting)
If you were to talk to your grandparents parents or grandparents, they would have no concept of giving a diamond to someone. For a very long time saphires were the wedding stone of choice, but DeBeers has crafted quite an amazing artificial scarcity, monopoly and hugely successful marketing campaign that just proves that people are f***ing stupid, period.
Re:If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.angloamerican.co.uk/ [angloamerican.co.uk]
Perhaps... (Score:4, Funny)
Thanks for reminding me... (Score:5, Funny)
huh? (Score:5, Funny)
"Look...I got you this overpriced diamond...and its all nice and yellow"
Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)
-B
Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, in the current standard of grading, D is the clearest. This originally came about because of "grade inflation" of diamonds, when it became common practice to label stones as AAA, A+++, and the like. (Similar to eBay auction feedback.)
So, the new standard began with D to avoid any confusion. In practice, no visible difference in color is apparent until you get into H, I, J color diamonds, at least in my limited experience.
Re:huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Please rate this post as: ./ er
Super wonderful AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA++++
no dice (Score:5, Funny)
The next girl who fakes an orgasm with me will get one of these. Then we'll see who's a fat jobless loser.
Re:no dice (Score:4, Funny)
So, are you telling us that you are a fat, jobless, loser that can't satisfy women, and afterwards buys the unsatisfied woman an impure diamond.
Am I missing something here?
Possible regulation? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Possible regulation? (Score:3, Insightful)
I find that it will be hard for a bunch of people who's primary interest in diamonds as bobbles being able to influence governments to regulate the industry. Especially since they have been getting occasional bad press due to associations with instabilities in Africa, for example.
There is alot of money at stake, but it is not for alot of people. Diamonds are a relatively small industry and they might be able to market them based on differentiation and authenticity, but I doubt that would really keep peo
Re:Possible regulation? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can bet that DeBeers will fight until the bitter end to preserve their diamond monopoly.
Let's hope they lose.
Date of bitter end (Score:5, Insightful)
The bitter end will come in 2023, when Apollo Diamond's U.S. patents on chemical vapor deposition are scheduled to expire.
The real money isn't in jewelry (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Coke and Pepsi (Score:3, Interesting)
DeBeers will still sell their own "natural" rocks based purely on marketing.
Likewise, Coca-Cola had a monopoly on cola soft drinks until Pepsi and RC came around. Some people will always prefer De Beers's conflict diamonds, but others will prefer Apollo brand cultured products, and competition will drive prices down until the bottom falls out of the market in 2023 when Apollo's patents run out.
Re:Diamond branding (Score:3, Interesting)
And unless things have changed since I've been diamond shopping, they're just an Identification number. But given the IP/Trademark lawsuits I've seen on the net, I wouldn't be surprised if DeBeers had a "method for imprinting an identification code on a diamond" patent!
Re:Possible regulation? (Score:3, Insightful)
So every other country actually benefits financially by participating in the synthetics market.
Check into the history of porcelain. Same deal.
KFG
Re:Possible regulation? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Possible regulation? (Score:3, Insightful)
The synthetic diamond manufacturers have already agreed in principle to mark their diamonds. The one firm will engrave some acronym (what, I've forgotten), and the other is in discussions as to what to engrave.
But this idea you have that an industry would lobby government to prevent what's essent
Re:Possible regulation? (Score:3)
Re:Spotting a natural diamond is possible (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Spotting a natural diamond is possible (Score:4, Informative)
Plasma-deposited diamonds (Apollo) are typicaly flawless, and they do not grow from a seed. So far, these tend to be small and very flat. If anything, they tend to appear "too perfect" upon inspection.
dupe? (Score:3, Funny)
Machine shop changes (Score:5, Interesting)
He said that diamond tooling has made a big change in his workplace, allowing heat treated steel to be machined rather than ground.
Time to sell! (Score:5, Funny)
I understand it is time to sell my bag of diamonds before they still have some value :)
M.
--
Could Diamond Age come a little bit faster,please? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Could Diamond Age come a little bit faster,plea (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, this is Slashdot.
Our imaginary girlfriends would be more than happy with a cubic zirconia. ;)
Re:Could Diamond Age come a little bit faster,plea (Score:3, Informative)
One of my favorites was a girl (who I worked with at the time) who said that if *her* (hypothetical) boyfriend asked her to marry him, he'
Re:Could Diamond Age come a little bit faster,plea (Score:3, Funny)
I mean, hell, may as well go for broke.
Talk about timing!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps last week or before would have served us a bit better, eh?
Poster doesn't have a girlfriend! (Score:5, Funny)
Then inform your girlfriend that her 'real' ones (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Then inform your girlfriend that her 'real' one (Score:4, Insightful)
Kimberly Process. [kimberleyprocess.com] It is being taken very seriously in the trade, and for very selfish reasons, as well as ethical ones. The idea of children with their legs cut off does not sell diamonds. The diamond industry has made every effort to sort it out. Compare our attitude to that of the clothing industry while they continue to use third world slave labour.
Re:Then inform your girlfriend that her 'real' one (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, Krups made gas chambers for the third reich, but they still make a badass espresso machine; GE's weaponry has killed more men than measles. Most sizable corporations which have been aro
Re:Poster doesn't have a girlfriend! (Score:3, Insightful)
Obligatory Beautiful Girls quote (Score:4, Funny)
Kev: It's a diamond
Tommy: The fuckin' thing's brown.
Paul: It's called champagne; it's a trend
Tommy: Oh right, they were calling it "piss", but they weren't moving any units
a morbid turn (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:a morbid turn (Score:3, Informative)
-cp-
colored diamonds (Score:5, Funny)
That's nothing... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's nothing... (Score:5, Funny)
*YAWN* (Score:5, Informative)
Man made emeralds and rubies have been made for decades, and in many cases are superior. Chatham offers a life time warranty on their emeralds for example. It hasn't destroyed the price of emeralds, as there are enough people who want the real thing, much like many people can paint a repica of the Mona Lisa, down to the brush strokes, but the real thing is still more expensive.
The real problem as far as the jewellery industry is concerned is that unscrupulous people try and sell these as real, and less knowledgeable jewellers pass them on to consumers. I have no problems selling man made stones as man made stones, but disclosure is the important part. I expect that this might even drive the price of diamonds that are certified as natural up, due to the difficulty but not impossibility of identification.
p.s. To those people who think that diamonds are overpriced due to DeBeers, why is it that now that DeBeers no longer controls the industry (less than half of worldwide production now goes through DeBeers), why have prices stayed stable? Could it be that the price of mining and cutting is reflected in the price of diamonds, and that the pricing actually is correct?
Won't last (Score:5, Interesting)
The resorting of finding ways to distinguish crystalline properties, is just a stalling tactic on the part of the diamond industry. I doubt the public cares about minute differences in the crystalline structure if all other properties are identical (which is not the case for say cubic-zirconium).
Should the public care, then eventually technology will find a way to make the diamonds the same on even this level. More likely synthetic diamonds will exceed natural diamonds in purity and regularity of structure. The diamond cartel will try to convince the public (unsuccessfully) that they want inferior natural diamonds, and the whole thing will collapse.
For a while the two may exist side by side, much like the cultured pearl industry and natural pearls, but it will have a depressive effect on the price of natural diamonds.
The writing is on the wall my friend.
Re:Won't last (Score:4, Informative)
Well there is the most famous one of them all, the cap to the Washington Monument. [tms.org] That aluminum was produced from the mineral corundum [main.nc.us] - a form of aluminum oxide. Corundum is the base mineral that rubies and sapphires are formed out of, chemical impurities in the aluminum oxide form the characteristic red and blue coloration.
Pure aluminum is pretty much never found free in nature. This is because aluminum, like most metals, is reactive enough to have combined with oxygen. There are many forms of aluminum oxide, you can read more about it here. [uwaterloo.ca]
Re:*YAWN* (Score:3, Interesting)
Why are the cheaper?
could DeBeers and others be in collusion?
Re:*YAWN* (Score:5, Informative)
your skepticism is admirable however substantially missinformed.
let's start from the bottom of your post. quick trip to a google site will tell you that DeBeers controlls currently roughly 60% of the diamond market (it's not 85% as it used to be, but still substantial chunk) with Russia slowly gaining on them with 23% current share (btw. it took decades to Soviet Union and then Russa that mines their diamonds in Yakutia to get that much share of the trade) but still majority of Russain (Yakutian) diamonds are cut and sold by DeBeers. You quote about "less then half" actually belongs to the share of diamond trade in DeBeers profits. It is true diamond trade is not a major source of profits for DeBeers. Well, any "natural" monopolist if he/she is not complete moron will eventually try to diversify his/her business. Isn't it what Microsoft is trying to do since beginning of 90's?
Comparison to emeralds and rubies is not exactly fare. Several things separates diamond market from other gemstones. The main reason for that is that people (who bought into this marketing campain back in 1930's) are idiots. When you buy little 1.5 karat diamond you also buy a "marketing bubble" the size of Alaska. Compared to other gemstones substantial amount of diamonds do not end up in jewelry. Everyboy is so convinced that diamonds are such a good investment (mostly due to their ignorance) that in essence almost all diamonds go one way and almost never leave the extended family of the original buyer of the diamond. Secondary market as really tiny dwarf compared to the original one. Well, untill it's time to go to a pawn shop.
The fact that you need to have a small spectroscopy laboratory to distinguish natural diamond from artificial can actually decrease the price. Diamond dealers (both cut and uncut) follow the rules that were established (i'm not kidding you) over the centuries. These people do not want to change. Here are the rules (at least the way my friend who tried to do this in 90's told me). Rough uncut diamond is pretty cheap. The dealer who buys it from you has only a microscope at most to look at it. If he/she sees just as little a scratch or attemt to polish the stone (to look what's inside) he or she will tell you "good buy" and then will call to every dealer he or she knows to tell them not to have any business with you. You will be literally finished in diamond business. The reason? Originally when you bought rough diamond you would not really know how much of cut diamond you would get due to the impurities inside. As soon as dealer will get just a feeling that you try to inflate the price of uncut diamond buy trying to find out what and where it has impurities he/she will stop any relations with you.
Diamond cutting industry however made significant progress over the years. It can be probably compared with electronic industry. AFIK this was pionered buy Japanese. Before cutting the diamond every stone goes through all kinds of tests X-ray, ultrasound spectrography etc. And then a computer program optimizes the cut to get the highest value possible. This is being done probably since 70's. 80's for sure. This all is actually great. The problem I have with all this is that price of a cut diamond has not significantly changed. It's like buing a CPU from Intel or AMD and they charge you for every fucking transistor (how many of them now tens of millions?) they have there the price they used to ask for transistor back in 50s.
If you can make artificial diamond that will not be distinguishable from natural one visually it is great. (Thinking soon you might have to have a certificate of authenticity or God forbid actual spectroscopic data makes me laugh). That is why those guys are probably scared now. That is why they are going to demand that every artificial diamond should be sold on separate market. They are clever salesmen but they are essencially leeches.
Oh well this post is too long for me to check spelling.
Also covered in Wired Magazine (Score:4, Informative)
The Super X-Prize (Score:3, Funny)
De Beers monopoly (Score:5, Interesting)
There are several forms of producing synthetic diamonds, and the closer these synthetic diamonds are to real ones, the more likely the company will be bought and all its intellectual property dissolved.
One company is Apollo Diamond [apollodiamond.com], I recall. From what I understand, their research is conducted in the back of a pharamacy in an undisclosed mall somewhere in the USA.
Apparently, threatening to undermine a multi-billion dollar industry is very risky. I seem to recall there have been numerous coincidental deaths related to diamonds, diamond mines, and synthetic diamonds. Like all things involving enormous economics, life, liberty, and security of person are hardly the most important.
Re:De Beers monopoly (Score:3, Informative)
No - Microsoft is the largest and most prolific monopoly in the world without a question. De Beers did not survive the US Anti-trust as its senior officers are forbidden to touch US soil for fear of being arrested.
GPTV (Score:3, Informative)
They don't even mention the prices because they go into private collections.
Actually Rubies and Saphires are a more rare gem.
conflict diamonds ... (Score:5, Informative)
for more, go to PBS (Score:5, Informative)
A rose by any other name... (Score:3, Funny)
I say enough of this. I'm tired of diamond being the best at everything. Let's all surround diamond after posting, and set it straight. Maybe we can go all Orwell on this holier-than-thou tetrahedral structure, and erase it from history. Now who's the hardest, huh?
Diamond thinks is so tough....
So what's the betting (Score:3, Insightful)
I would never buy a diamond (Score:5, Insightful)
thats just silly, (Score:5, Insightful)
Heck ADM and its competitors were in a global plot to keep lycean (spelling) prices high for years and they weren't killing people, so just think how far DeBeers would go. \
Assuming that the diamonds are not rare at all as most of us know, what then is the point of making them? They are only cheaper then the inflated price but would most likely be more expensive if people knew the truth about diamonds. IMHO anyways.
Other information about Diamonds (Score:5, Informative)
There is even a third type [cityu.edu.hk] of diamond that has been developed at City University in Hong Kong. It differs from the one found in nature (a cubic form) and the one found in meteorites (a hexagonal form) by the way the carbon atoms bond to each other: rhombohedral form.
The trouble with "flawless" as a goal (Score:5, Insightful)
Expect PR campaigns emphasizing "the natural flaws of diamonds".
Totally missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Rarity in fashion is a strange thing; the cost of the object becomes an inherent part of the value -- it's not that the object is worth some certain amount, it's that the acquisition of it was so horrifyingly expensive and difficult that only a very precious few could achieve it. To gift someone with the results of this effort -- that's a sign of significance.
This might seem difficult to comprehend, so let me jump domains for a moment. What's the value of a moon rock? I mean, it's just rock from the moon; we could probably synthesize something chemically identical trivially. Ah, lets say you got an award, and were given the moon rock as a prize. Tell me you wouldn't show it off to everyone.
Same sh*t -- only difference is, instead of the cost being that of a trip to the moon, the cost is an enormous amount of one's savings. The price of diamonds is set high enough to be interesting but low enough to be possible.
It has NOTHING AT ALL to do with the value of the rocks themselves.
--Dan
Thanks DeBeers (Score:4, Insightful)
$4000 for an artificial diamond?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:5, Informative)
Re: If diamonds weren't a monopoly (Score:4, Informative)
1. Release extra supply of the type(s) found by the competitor. Prices will naturally plummet.
2. ????
2a: Offer to buy out competitor at newly their reduced value.
2b: Wait for competitor to run out of supply and go away.
3. Profit!
Re:The point of buying a diamond... (Score:3, Insightful)
Chris
Re:The point of buying a diamond... (Score:3, Funny)
Until then it's cubic zirconia and $3980 worth of food and heating oil for you, my sweet.
KFG
Re:The point of buying a diamond... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of better ways to show that you're willing to spend money on someone (how exactly does this relate to love again?) that are actually useful, or that could be just as, if not more, romantic (Paris for two for a week?)
Re:The point of buying a diamond... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I heard an interview on NPR with one of the (Score:3, Insightful)
Granted, this is a flawed analogy.
Re:Fake diamond strength? (Score:5, Informative)
Somebody apparently didn't read the article. They aren't "phony" diamonds. They're _real_. Purer than the real thing in fact. On top of which, diamonds used in diamond tipped drill bits are _already_ industrial (read: artificially manufactured) diamonds. The only difference here is that traditional methods generate only diamond dust or a thin film.