RE: UPDATE FROM IR!! Lake Shore Gold and Xstrata probably do use the Amine software that Mr. George used, but the important question to ask is do they use it to calculate their mineral resources (it can be used for mine planning as well)? LSG's own disclosure would suggest the answer is NO. Refer to their May 14 technical report on SEDAR (actually, it makes for a good comparison to how a technical report SHOULD be completed). In particular, you might look at page 101 of that report which states quite clearly that they calculated their resources for Timmins West using Gemcom (GEMS). Amine is just an add-on to AutoCAD rather than a stand-alone software package. It is fine for designing drifts and stopes and generating a basic block model but it is NOT industry standard for doing complex mineral resource calculations. Most people nowadays would use GEMS, Minesight, Vulcan, Micromine or the like. These packages, while expensive, have very rigourous tools for running geostatistical checks on data (e.g. variography) and creating complex geological and resource block models, as well as incorporating mine designs. It wouldn't surprise me if those companies use Amine routinely in their day-to-day mine planning, but it WOULD surprise me if they used it to calculate their resources, at elast the resources that they disclose to the public. Incidentally, Xstrata's resource calculation for Collahuasi (March 29, 2012 on SEDAR) was done using Leapfrog and Vulcan (although it was calculated by Golder Associates). And I think it is a real stretch to say that MOST high grade vein type gold mines use AMine. I have never heard of ANY company that use it for resource calculation, which is the critical issue here. Show me some specific examples please from public disclosures of resources and I will won't argue the issue further.
Oh, and by the way, Lake Shore used grade capping as per the industry standard.
I would advise anyone to look at a range of different technical reports from several mining companies (i.e. ones that are actually producing gold), particularly ones that have been done by the bigger consulting firms such as AMEC, Wardrop or Snowden, and make your own decisions on the quality of Mr. George's report. I think you might find the differences to be substantial.
gm2