Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/20/2009 12:22 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 10:56 PM 12/19/2009, you wrote: A Ponzi scheme is specifically a scheme for allowing *investors* to make money even though the company has no source of income. It's the lure of assured high return on the money which pulls in the investors. In particular, investors who pull out before a Ponzi scheme collapses make a profit. The (very plausible) scheme you describe doesn't earn anything at all for investors which pull out; they just break even. The *only* winners are salaried employees. That's just business as usual in the startup world -- save that in an honest startup, when things start to go sour, the officers often stop drawing salaries, in an effort to bolster cash flow... I wrote that it's a Ponzi scheme as an analogy, not as a literal Ponzi scheme. I've also called Wikipedia a Ponzi or pyramid scheme. In conversation with other parties who are not intimately familiar with your particular use of language, it's good to stick to standard definitions. Using Ponzi scheme to describe Wikipedia is a solecism, to put it politely. Words have meaning only to the extent that the members of the culture in which they're used agree to that meaning. The way you're using these words is not correct according to that agreed meaning. This leads directly to confusion and misunderstanding, and eventually to the suspicion that you are using Ponzi scheme as a synonym for bad. Both Ponzi scheme and pyramid scheme have standard definitions, and they should be used in accordance with those definitions in public discussions, unless you are intentionally trying to cloud the issues. Neither Steorn nor Wikipedia is either a Ponzi or pyramid scheme. ... There are a lot of details, if you read between the lines. For example, very low-friction bearings are crucial to the technology; they are offering them and they make this statement about them. Now, what does that imply? It implies that if there is any excess energy here There isn't.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/19/2009 06:25 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Further, we know that they can produce something more interesting. I don't think Hoyt is lying. Do you? No, Hoyt's not lying. But Hoyt has been lied to and has apparently been taken in by them (sorry, Hoyt, that's what I see). I see no evidence in anything Hoyt has said that they Steorn can do anything more interesting than what they've done. He says they SAY they can do better but he hasn't quite seen the good stuff actually working. From Steorn, it's just lies, lies, lies, and that's all.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 10:03 AM 12/20/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: On 12/20/2009 12:22 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 10:56 PM 12/19/2009, you wrote: A Ponzi scheme is specifically a scheme for allowing *investors* to make money even though the company has no source of income. It's the lure of assured high return on the money which pulls in the investors. In particular, investors who pull out before a Ponzi scheme collapses make a profit. The (very plausible) scheme you describe doesn't earn anything at all for investors which pull out; they just break even. The *only* winners are salaried employees. That's just business as usual in the startup world -- save that in an honest startup, when things start to go sour, the officers often stop drawing salaries, in an effort to bolster cash flow... I wrote that it's a Ponzi scheme as an analogy, not as a literal Ponzi scheme. I've also called Wikipedia a Ponzi or pyramid scheme. In conversation with other parties who are not intimately familiar with your particular use of language, it's good to stick to standard definitions. Using Ponzi scheme to describe Wikipedia is a solecism, to put it politely. Language is used for communication, and that's a process which involves more than one party. If the sender of the message takes total responsibility, it can take a long time. If it's a cooperative effort, it can be much more efficient. Please consider that I have extensive experience with Wikipedia. As Wikipedian's go, it's no great shakes, about 14,000 edits, as I recall. I mean something by calling Wikipedia a Ponzi scheme. What could that possibly be? Words have meaning only to the extent that the members of the culture in which they're used agree to that meaning. Words have meaning as used and as heard. I'm communicating interculturally, in any sense. Hey, what's your culture? Care to specify it? But does it matter. Was I writing for you? I was responding, but I use language for my reader, not necessarily for my subject. If you insist on fixed meanings, you deny poetry and a host of other efficient communications, which involve the interplay of meanings. The way you're using these words is not correct according to that agreed meaning. The way you are thinking is not correct according to a deeper understanding of language. You can take Ponzi or leave it. Seems you would prefer to leave it. I'm fine with that. This leads directly to confusion and misunderstanding, and eventually to the suspicion that you are using Ponzi scheme as a synonym for bad. Well, you may suspect that, but it's not true. I stated it was an analogy. That means that it need only match the application in one sense, it could be incorrect in many others. Were I writing an academic article, I'd be very careful. I'm not. Both Ponzi scheme and pyramid scheme have standard definitions, and they should be used in accordance with those definitions in public discussions, unless you are intentionally trying to cloud the issues. Neither Steorn nor Wikipedia is either a Ponzi or pyramid scheme. According to the authority. Pyramid scheme is definitely applicable to Wikipedia. How, I'll leave as an exercise for anyone who understands Wikipedia, how it works, and how it is breaking down. Note, applicable means that there is an analogy, that the comparison is useful. Not that Wikipedia is collecting money, the scheme isn't much about money, it's about investments of editor labor and what happens to them. ... There are a lot of details, if you read between the lines. For example, very low-friction bearings are crucial to the technology; they are offering them and they make this statement about them. Now, what does that imply? It implies that if there is any excess energy here There isn't. Why do I feel like I'm swimming in molasses?
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 10:10 AM 12/20/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: On 12/19/2009 06:25 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Further, we know that they can produce something more interesting. I don't think Hoyt is lying. Do you? No, Hoyt's not lying. But Hoyt has been lied to and has apparently been taken in by them (sorry, Hoyt, that's what I see). That's irrelevant. Hoyt is proof that they can produce something interesting. I didn't say that it was real. I would guess that if what he saw under the NDA was the same as what we have all seen, those who have nosed around the site and associated web pages, etc., then he would quite likely not feel as he apparently does. I see no evidence in anything Hoyt has said that they Steorn can do anything more interesting than what they've done. He says they SAY they can do better but he hasn't quite seen the good stuff actually working. Hoyt is as valid a judge of interesting as any of us. Don't confuse interesting with valid. Interesting isn't strictly a product of a thing or condition, it is a relationship between such and an observer. From Steorn, it's just lies, lies, lies, and that's all. Ah, but such interesting lies, and that's quite obvious. Are they paying all of us to talk about them? They paid the jury, not us.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 03:42 PM 12/18/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: However, bilked may not be it. Rather, he set up a speculative investment opportunity for people, under this particular theory: now that you know we don't actually have anything yet -- we might find the magic wand waving technique! but, you know, those stupid physicists say it's impossible -- you have the option of leaving your money in, and as long as our research program can stay open, you'll get payments from the new people buying in. So you can make some money, if it lasts long enough. That would be a Ponzi scheme. That's against the law, at least in the U.S. If the authorities found out about it they would shut down the company immediately. This would depend on certain details, and, as well, on local law. My sense is that it could be managed so as to not be illegal. Is it legal for them to charge for revealing the reality of the situation? That reality could include investigation of the devices. The leave your investment in option could actually be a reinvestment, i.e., the conversion of a payment for disclosure to an explicit investment in the company, perhaps with preferred stock, which then is paid based on the profits of the company, or perhaps profits within a certain area, such as sales of disclosures. To determine if this would be illegal in the U.S., I'd need to look more carefully at our law. Multilevel marketing, though, runs on a very similar process, and is legal if structured properly.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
how do we find this On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 5:42 PM, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson svj.orionwo...@gmail.com wrote: According to one of my latest Google news alerts Steorn just made CNN news. However, I can't seem to find the link anywhere on cnn's web site. Does anyone know anything about this? Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 04:46 PM 12/18/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: -- I think it's unlikely that they're cash positive right now, if we leave cash flow from stock sales off the balance sheet. But, that doesn't really matter much; with repeated rounds of financing, companies can go for years in a cash-negative, money-losing state. With the officers collecting salaries all along the way. There are two basic ways to survive in this situation: loans and investment. Loans are tricky, if a corporation has negative cash flow and failed product launches, my guess is that loans can get difficult to find. But investment can still be managed, if you have something you are doing that is or might be making money. Many of these here assume that this product is Orbo. It might not be, not exactly. It might be peeks at Orbo. And if you don't do anything to seriously upset those who have signed the NDA, the cat doesn't get to jump out of the bag. Thanks for your signing the agreement and for your confidence in us as represented by your $400 payment. As soon as that payment clears, you will get an access code to look at our full disclosure of everything. Let us know what you think when you have looked at it. I'm sorry that you were disappointed in our disclosure. Is there anything there that was contrary to your reasonable expectations? However, we don't want anyone to be disappointed. We require developers to take 30 days to fully review and do not accept termination requests during that period. However, if, after that, you wish to withdraw from being a developer, please let us know within the following 30 days and we will provide to you the termination agreement; upon your signature on that, we will refund your payment in full. As you have provided your signature on the document, your refund will be issued within 60 days as provided in the termination agreement. Thank you for your interest in Orbo. We remind you that all details that were disclosed to you remain completely confidential, and we vigorously enforce the non-disclosure agreement, because confidentiality is the core of necessity at this point. So, they take up to 90 days to return the $400. Meanwhile the mark is highly motivated to remain silent, for sure, knowing that if he breaks the confidentiality agreement, as provided in the original NDA and the termination agreement, the refund will not be issued and, in fact, he may owe more money as liquidated damages, or face a lawsuit. Meanwhile the money is drawing interest if it is put into interest-bearing securities or deposits. Steorn doesn't have to do that, and if Steorn goes backrupt, anyone owed money may be screwed. But if they play it very conservatively, they get three month's interest on $400, or, say, $4.00, enough to pay the costs of running this shell game. But as part of the termination process, they offer an opportunity to become an investor with the money, and they give incentives. The language is such that it appears they are offering investment in the technology, but they make sure that it's pointed out to the mark that even if the technology doesn't work out, because of the basic laws of physics or other nonsense, the now-investor may still make money, and good money. Yes, absolutely, it's a Ponzi scheme, in reality, but probably not, because of the investment-in-technology aspect, not an illegal one. With this device, they have attracted people who might be inclined to believe that over-unity is possible, otherwise they wouldn't bother (other than sheer curiosity, which may trap a few cats as well). If the Orbo investigation is sophisicated enough, the physics of it might be fun. Some people might keep their money in just for that. It's been said that I'm making assumptions. Sure, but probably reasonable ones. However, don't mistake my speculations as to what might be under the NDA covers with assumptions that this is what they are doing. I'm merely pointing out that, from what we see, a very clever and sophisticated and legal scam might be under way. The advertising on al-Jazeera was brilliant. They are taking the most negative material and turning it into a hook. For their target audience, I'd expect it to be very effective. Remember, the ad could fail with 99.99% of the people who see it, who might indeed leave with the impression that Orbo is just plain weird. But they pull the rug out from under critics who respond, in a knee-jerk way, as I've seen on YouTube many times: Obviously you idiots don't realize that what you are doing is completely contrary to the laws of physics. Because obviously they realize that *this will be the opinion of nearly everyone who knows the laws of physics.* By incorporating that into their ad, they create a certain level of rapport with these people, it is a classic trick employed by hypnotists and marketers. Incorporate the possible rejection, then reframe it. -- In the United States, the
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
tl;dr On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 12:53 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.comwrote: At 04:46 PM 12/18/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
Esa Ruoho wrote: tl;dr My thoughts exactly. Speculation has indeed run rampant! - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
so, is there anything any of you would like me to do at the waterways thingo? i'll be there around tuesday. i've been asked by a friend to take a close-up photo of the battery, and just generally wave my iphone around the motor (since the current cameras arent really closeup enough).. and uhh yeah. On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 12:59 AM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: Esa Ruoho wrote: tl;dr My thoughts exactly. Speculation has indeed run rampant! - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 05:43 PM 12/18/2009, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote: Mongo want to see a light bulb real soon. No light bulb soon, Mongo send candygram to Sean. Light bulb! Light bulb! Light bulb! Steorn response simple: light bulb. Lights up. What does that mean? Or not. Whatever they think will have the maximum effect on delay. They can create whatever appearance they want. It's not illegal to put on a show and pretend that something is what it is not, unless you collect investment without disclosing that there were deceptive statements made in public to fool competitors or for whatever reason. You don't defraud someone specific, there is no fraud. There is, in most places anyway, no law against fooling the public with deceptive evidence. Or else a lot of politicians would be going to jail. Happens all the time. Not just politicians. Companies advertise products with deceptive advertising as to quality. In some places they can outright lie, in others, they have to be more subtle. Puffery, exaggeration without specifics, is legal almost everywhere. Our product is better than theirs isn't specific, it's not a provable statement either way unless far better specified. Perhaps their product makes a better doorstop. They didn't say what it was better at.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 05:27 PM 12/18/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: On 12/18/2009 02:31 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 11:02 PM 12/17/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: Sounds good. But magicians don't usually start by working to convince everyone that they are incompetent liars. That's a label nobody wants to start with. I have experienced the exact opposite. They are very good at starting with that label, they amplify it and play with it. Eh, hold on -- they do it for a few seconds, a few minutes, perhaps more than a few minutes. They patter away, with an ace of hearts glued to the back of their jacket where all can see it, or whatever. But very soon, far sooner than the timeout after which the audience leaves in disgust, they do something which reveals they are monumentally clever after all. These magicians are playing a longer game, to a far wider audience, with a longer attention span. Imagine, instead, a magic show where the magicians did nothing but show tricks that didn't work, or do slight of hand where all could see the hidden card on the back of the hand, or attempted to juggle but dropped the balls -- imagine that they did this for the ENTIRE FIRST HALF of the show. Then there's the intermission. Then, only after the intermission, they show that they can really pull off some fine stunts. Only problem -- the hall's kind of empty at that point, because an awful lot of folks didn't come back after the break. Timing. When is the intermission for Steorn? Is it scheduled? Scheduling one is part of what they might do. We have decided to close all public activites for X months to give us time to focus on blah, blah. We will open a new public demo, which will reveal far more about our technology than has been previously revealed, on [six months away]. That would be a show where the magician started by CONVINCING the audience that he was an incompetent liar. It's been more than seconds, minutes, days -- it's been years -- Steorn has yet to show the clever part. All they've shown is the boobery. What they've shown is that they can continue to attract attention, and that's exactly what they need. ,.. Sure, sure, sure. The bit about magicians is all true. But what makes you think that Steorn fills the bill of a skilled magician? What EVIDENCE is there that anyone at Steorn is competent to pull off any kind of convincing demo of anything? The level of competence required for the convincing demo -- if we allow actual fraud -- is low. I'm sure I could build it, just give me a little money. Hah! Indeed, I'm absolutely sure you could. But, you're not an average Joe off the street. What makes you think anybody at Steorn is as competent as you? Your definition of a low level of competence probably doesn't match most folks'. There are countless people who could build it. You hire one. They have the money to do it, should it be that nobody already involved could do it. There is a hint, by the way, as to what they intend to do, and are doing: they have a product that is pre-announced or something like that. Very low friction bearings. Now, why would you need very-low friction bearings? Only if you have some perpetual motion imitation that needs to run for a long time on inertia or with extremely low power input. Or, alternatively, you have found, or believe you have found, some tiny effect, an energy anomaly. So to demonstrate it, you need a system with extremely low losses. However, if that is all you have, you are nowhere near having found something that can be exploited for power production, for you aren't producing enough power to overcome losses in ordinary bearings. That isn't much power! And suppose their real product is very-low-friction bearings? They would have, with their best demonstration -- which hasn't been rolled out, I suspect -- demonstrated these bearings. They would, when ready, pull off the wraps, disclose the trick, and show what a very low power input was necessary to keep the beastie running. All I'm saying is that thinking of them as just plain stupid and incompetent could be quite premature. There other other explanations, for sure, and it seems to me that some of those explanations are more likely than the incompetent boobs theory. I'm serious here. I have seen no evidence of such competence at Steorn. In the absence of such evidence, I see no reason to believe it's present. Elsewhere you contradict yourself. Here you are using competence as the skill to build a convincing demonstration of nothing, a fraud. But you can hire that competence, at a price that they could clearly afford. Assuming incompetence is all staged, and that more apparent incompetence just proves it's staged better -- well, it's an assumption, and I can't really see any reason for retaining it. It's not an assumption, it's an organizing hypothesis. It explains the behavior so far. Got a better one? But this argument of ours
RE: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
Abd sez: Mongo want to see a light bulb real soon. No light bulb soon, Mongo send candygram to Sean. Light bulb! Light bulb! Light bulb! Steorn response simple: light bulb. Lights up. What does that mean? Mongo sez: Abd not serious! Even Mongo KNOWS what Light bulb means! [And then, during another rare pensive moment, Mongo adds:] Mongo not sure Abd knows what light bulb means. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/19/2009 05:53 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 04:46 PM 12/18/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: -- I think it's unlikely that they're cash positive right now, if we leave cash flow from stock sales off the balance sheet. But, that doesn't really matter much; with repeated rounds of financing, companies can go for years in a cash-negative, money-losing state. With the officers collecting salaries all along the way. There are two basic ways to survive in this situation: loans and investment. Loans are tricky, if a corporation has negative cash flow and failed product launches, my guess is that loans can get difficult to find. Sure can! This is when honest entrepreneurs who are having problems often sign personal notes. It gets the cash flowing again, and with luck it may keep it flowing long enough to get the product out the door, to get the next job to the state where we can bill for it, to clean up the mess left from our mistakes last year, whatever I've known a couple guys, my father included, who, long after the corporation had done a chapter 7, were still paying off loans they'd signed for back when they thought they just needed to chase the wolf away from the door for a little longer and things would be OK. But investment can still be managed, if you have something you are doing that is or might be making money. Many of these here assume that this product is Orbo. It might not be, not exactly. It might be peeks at Orbo. And if you don't do anything to seriously upset those who have signed the NDA, the cat doesn't get to jump out of the bag. Thanks for your signing the agreement and for your confidence in us as represented by your $400 payment. As soon as that payment clears, you will get an access code to look at our full disclosure of everything. Let us know what you think when you have looked at it. I'm sorry that you were disappointed in our disclosure. Is there anything there that was contrary to your reasonable expectations? However, we don't want anyone to be disappointed. We require developers to take 30 days to fully review and do not accept termination requests during that period. However, if, after that, you wish to withdraw from being a developer, please let us know within the following 30 days and we will provide to you the termination agreement; upon your signature on that, we will refund your payment in full. As you have provided your signature on the document, your refund will be issued within 60 days as provided in the termination agreement. Thank you for your interest in Orbo. We remind you that all details that were disclosed to you remain completely confidential, and we vigorously enforce the non-disclosure agreement, because confidentiality is the core of necessity at this point. :-) I wouldn't be surprised if you're right. OTOH I wouldn't be surprised if most investors decide to stay in the pot rather than pulling out. But as part of the termination process, they offer an opportunity to become an investor with the money, and they give incentives. The language is such that it appears they are offering investment in the technology, but they make sure that it's pointed out to the mark that even if the technology doesn't work out, because of the basic laws of physics or other nonsense, the now-investor may still make money, and good money. Yes, absolutely, it's a Ponzi scheme I don't think so; not as you described it. Only if investors get out more than they put in is it a Ponzi scheme. Otherwise it's just scrambling for new investor dollars to replace the old ones who got cold feet, the same way all companies without income must do. A Ponzi scheme is specifically a scheme for allowing *investors* to make money even though the company has no source of income. It's the lure of assured high return on the money which pulls in the investors. In particular, investors who pull out before a Ponzi scheme collapses make a profit. The (very plausible) scheme you describe doesn't earn anything at all for investors which pull out; they just break even. The *only* winners are salaried employees. That's just business as usual in the startup world -- save that in an honest startup, when things start to go sour, the officers often stop drawing salaries, in an effort to bolster cash flow... With this device, they have attracted people who might be inclined to believe that over-unity is possible, otherwise they wouldn't bother (other than sheer curiosity, which may trap a few cats as well). If the Orbo investigation is sophisicated enough, the physics of it might be fun. Some people might keep their money in just for that. It's been said that I'm making assumptions. Sure, but probably reasonable ones. However, don't mistake my speculations as to what might be under the NDA covers with assumptions that this is what they are doing. I'm merely pointing out that, from what we see, a very clever and sophisticated and legal scam
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
Mongo is right. harry - Original Message From: OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson orionwo...@charter.net To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Sat, December 19, 2009 7:10:47 PM Subject: RE: [Vo]:Steorn Demo Abd sez: Mongo want to see a light bulb real soon. No light bulb soon, Mongo send candygram to Sean. Light bulb! Light bulb! Light bulb! Steorn response simple: light bulb. Lights up. What does that mean? Mongo sez: Abd not serious! Even Mongo KNOWS what Light bulb means! [And then, during another rare pensive moment, Mongo adds:] Mongo not sure Abd knows what light bulb means. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks __ Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the new Internet Explorer® 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 10:56 PM 12/19/2009, you wrote: A Ponzi scheme is specifically a scheme for allowing *investors* to make money even though the company has no source of income. It's the lure of assured high return on the money which pulls in the investors. In particular, investors who pull out before a Ponzi scheme collapses make a profit. The (very plausible) scheme you describe doesn't earn anything at all for investors which pull out; they just break even. The *only* winners are salaried employees. That's just business as usual in the startup world -- save that in an honest startup, when things start to go sour, the officers often stop drawing salaries, in an effort to bolster cash flow... I wrote that it's a Ponzi scheme as an analogy, not as a literal Ponzi scheme. I've also called Wikipedia a Ponzi or pyramid scheme. Steorn has a source of income: those who pay for access to the technology. That, in fact, is their core business plan, and they have disclaimed any interest in making Orbo products. They also have products: stuff used to test Orbo (or maybe other magnetic devices). I've been reading over the history. Remarkable. There are a lot of details, if you read between the lines. For example, very low-friction bearings are crucial to the technology; they are offering them and they make this statement about them. Now, what does that imply? It implies that if there is any excess energy here, it is very low, and that ordinary bearings aren't good enough. The 2007 demonstration allegedly failed because the special low-friction bearings got fried. Now, if they believe that they have found some anomaly, they may also know that the anomaly is clearly small. Any attempt to extract energy from the rotor, of course, will act to slow down the rotor more than an ordinary bearing would, so what this implies is that they haven't succeeded in scaling up the effect they see or imagine. And that, then, explains their business plan. They aren't going to market practical devices. They are only selling licenses. So if they can convince someone that the anomaly is worth researching, they make their money selling the technology to produce the anomaly, as well as bearings, hall sensors, and torque measurement equipment. Never mind if it's totally impossible to scale it up, whether because it is actually non-existent, is some kind of artifact, or even if it exists. Scaling up cold fusion, as an example, even though the reactions are clearly real, is an entirely different problem, and solving it is really where the money will be, if that happens. Steorn may well know that scaling up is extremely difficult, that is, they do know the effect is very small, or they would not be stating how important ultra low friction bearings are to Orbo. And then that means that when they talk enthusiastically about applications, powering cars with Orbo, etc., they are truly blowing smoke, pure speculation. And if you read the licensing info that they have, you'll discover that a whole series of applications aren't available for commercial licensing, including automotive applications. If you become a developer, the cheapest license, apparently, you gain no rights at all, you can't market what you develop. Interesting model, if I've read it right. So: they ask for a scientific jury, they get, they claim, a thousand applications, they send out contracts to a few and end up with over twenty scientist for the jury. There is some rumor I came across that Michael McKubre was on the jury And then, after something like three years, the jury announces that it is quitting, that Steorn had not shown any evidence of energy production. And Steorn doesn't exactly announce that. They announce that they understand why the members of the jury were frustrated, but now Steorn has solved the problems and will be going ahead. And then they use this jury that they picked in their ad, lumping it in with knee-jerk rejection. It's highly deceptive. Today there was a talk by Sean on the technology and the demonstration. He showed an oscilloscope display of the coil voltage and current, and claimed that the traces showed the absence of back EMF, and that therefore all the battery power was going into Joule heating, and that therefore the rotation was entirely free energy. There is an immediate YouTube rebuttal up that shows another motor, similar concept, with a hall sensor that pulses the coil voltage, and he showed that the lack of variation of voltage and current with rotor velocity was totally normal for a pulse motor. In other words, the demonstration, even with some instrumentation, was pure smoke.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/18/2009 01:34 AM, Esa Ruoho wrote: Rick always writes what he means and means what he says. He's the guy who sells the Bedini kits, there's a 10 coil monopole kit that they have released, for instance. http://rpmgt.org/order.html The Bedini Monopole Energizer kit was built by a friend and he came to the conclusion that it's only for learning-purposes, and can be taken further (it's possible that mr. Friedrich has upped his ante and knows and understands more about the Bedini monopole tech - and that the 10-pole energizer would be quite worth looking into. But at that price? Not sure how much machining something like that would cost, but they mention it'd be in the tens of thousands of usd? on the page..) Rick also features on the Energy From The Vacuum series as a spectator of Bedini showing his stuff, I think in EFTV12 perchance. The detail here that (I guess) matters, is that Bedini chose Friedrich to make the kits available via, and Friedrich also sells the Renaissance charger devices, The Renaissance gadgets are more or less legit, I think, BTW, but they depend pretty heavily on the odd properties of lead-acid batteries to get their effect. For that matter, the Bedini kits are legit, too, if I can judge by what I've read about them -- you pay some money, build a little motor, and have a lot of fun with it. What more can you ask? Connect it to a battery, and it goes around. Lots of people sell kits of that sort, and lots of people buy them and have a blast fiddling with them. What's even better, his motors are weird, which means you get to spend hours playing with it, trying to figure out what it's really doing, and how it does it; that's a lot more money's worth than you get out of a conventional wind-your-own motor kit from an educational supply house. It won't get you off the Grid but then neither will a bag o' motors from Edmund Scientific. and has relations to Bedini's EnergenX -company. It's not a random guy shooting the breeze on a mailinglist, if I'm not completely mistaken, Friedrich maintains some of the monopole lists and is in general a guy who would know what Bedini is up to, and what's next. Looking at what Friedrich wrote about 1/3 of the amps going into the secondary - he is quite probably talking about the secondary batteries that get charged while the primary batteries provide the juice for the transformation process. That doesn't make sense either, though. If he's pulling A amps from the primaries on a continuous basis, and putting A/3 amps into the secondaries, the system's got to run down rather quickly. Unless, of course, there's something very special about the batteries, or about the charging method -- but that would be quite independent of any interesting properties of the motor itself. Or is he using three batteries at each end, with the primaries wired in parallel and the secondaries wired in series, and 3x voltage multiplication in the middle? On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 7:45 PM, Stephen A. Lawrencesa...@pobox.com wrote: On 12/16/2009 12:07 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 11:00 AM 12/16/2009, Esa Ruoho wrote: No he didn't. Esa Ruoho quoted rickfriedrich from the bedini_monopole_3 forum. It was Rick who was experimenting with the Bedini motor described here, not Esa, and AFAIK Rick isn't on Vortex. Rick's batteries are apparently magic, if I understood this quote; he says a good number of amps were constantly being drawn [from the batteries?] but the batteries remained charged; I don't understand that. He must have meant something other than how I interpreted his words. I was running the system on smaller used batteries for days and they remained charged even though a good number of amps were constantly being drawn and the meter was showing 1/3rd of the amps going back into the secondary. Take a hint. Fine to set it up and start it with batteries, but batteries are tricky to monitor, they don't easily show the exact state of the charge. Put together a capacitor bank with enough depth (farads) to cover the draw phase, and charge it up to the battery voltage. Then once you are running, take the battery out of the circuit. You can then directly monitor the power storage by monitoring the capacitor voltage. No guessing. You will know right away if you are over unity, and how much, or, if you are under unity, exactly how much you are under unity. The larger the capacitance, the more even the available voltage will be. I'd think of making it really large, so you would not want to directly connect the battery to the capacitor, that can melt wires! You'd charge through a resistor. You could make all this part of one circuit, with a switch on the battery, or you could eliminate the battery and use a power supply which you then, once the thing is running, disconnect. Unless, of course, you want a demonstration that looks reasonably good through the idea that a battery couldn't possible last this long. As another
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
According to one of my latest Google news alerts Steorn just made CNN news. However, I can't seem to find the link anywhere on cnn's web site. Does anyone know anything about this? Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 12:11 AM 12/17/2009, William Beaty wrote: 7. It's NOT the company's number one goal to prove that the invention is real. The scam company seems to have no goal besides creating an aura of attractive secrets: secrets which will only be revealed to an in-group of superior blue-blooded investors, while we rabble on the outside are obviously inferior since we haven't invested and don't know the secrets. (It's the old treasure map trick, playing to your victim's self- importance.) Scamsters have all sorts of other tricks to appeal to snobbery or play up to the egos of investors. They also have many really sensible excuses for not proving that their discovery is real. But honest companies just sit down and prove their claims beyond any doubt BEFORE gathering investors. After all, its unethical to take investors' money for extremely questionable and totally unproven devices as if they were normal inventions developed by reliable companies. I wrote that, when? Late 2005? Was that before Steorn's stuff? I don't know and don't really care. It's right on. It can happen that a legitimate new invention or discovery can look like a scam operation. In fact, scammers certainly take full advantage of that, and will remind us of it over and over, they use it as part of the smokescreen. With Steorn, though, the string of coincidences involved has come to the point where there really isn't any other reasonable hypothesis except scam. Probably half or more of those writing here thought of using a capacitor. So, okay, supposed they need to get this thing going with some stored energy. That's completely reasonable. Now, if this is to be a demonstration of an over-unity device, as distinct from a teaser that really shows nothing at all except some alleged elements of the technology, they would know completely that the battery has to go. Fine. Start with a battery, but parallel a supercapacitor, and then pull the battery. The supercapacitor will behave as a very efficient battery, right? But with no complicated internal chemistry where complications lurk. And then there would be a simple device added: a voltmeter across the battery. The webcam would show the voltage. No demonstration alone would prove this wasn't a scam, it's obvious that there are more ways to fake a demonstration than to discover the fakes just by simple, hands-off observation. A real demonstration must be repeatable to be most convincing, repeatable simply by the transmission of detailed plans. Again, there are possible complications. What if the inventor has unconsciously done something that doesn't get documented? That makes it work? This happens, out of sheer luck or out of intuition. But Beaty has put his finger on the critical difference between an inventor working with a difficult technology and a scammer: transparency, honesty, open disclosure, and there are ways of obtaining independent confirmation without risking loss of what might, indeed, prudently remain secret for a time. Steorn isn't doing that. Instead, they are putting their energy into a scheme that would raise money for them whether the technology works or not. They are charging for a peek at the technology. This, then, depends on their ability to manipulate media to generate publicity. And the fact that so many mails here are discussing this ersatz demonstration shows that they are succeeding. The NDAs are really the proof. The NDAs are radically over-restrictive, requiring secrecy on far more than necessary. Why would the text of the NDA be, itself, a secret? Obviously, people see that text before signing the NDA, though possibly they sign a pre-NDA requiring them to keep the NDA text secret. That pre-NDA text would still not be covered by the NDA, because it has to be revealed to people who haven't signed yet. Okay, Hoyt, what can you tell us? How did the NDA work? What was revealed to you before you signed? What a legitimate inventor would tell us, as soon as possible, why the inventor believes that the thing works, or will work when better engineered. Steorn is talking about an effect, and, indeed, they disclaim interest in selling practical devices. That takes a away a lot of burden! However, it means that, in order to make a profit, they will need to sell the idea itself; what is the basis for believing that there is a particular way to wave the magnetic magic wand to get some energy to pop out of a hat of coils? A simple demonstration of even the smallest -- but measurable -- effect? And if they don't have that, they have *nothing* but a wild idea, the kind of thing that is easily based on an error in their analysis. And they've been at this for years. How many people have signed NDAs? How many of those are convinced? Why would such data be inaccessible? Keeping information like that secret can certainly be justified by the raw self-interest of Steorn. But all this secrecy simply
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
From Stephen Lawrence ... ... But he's [MADOFF] **NOT** held up as an example of a successful con artist, because he (a) had no exit strategy, ... Ok, then then what's Steorn's exit strategy? The whole Storn group (at the correct strategic moment) buys themselves one-way tickets to the Camen islands? Nigeria??? ;-) Sean, the 3rd: And what did you do gramps? Sean: Well, grandson, I bilked a lot of gullible people out of millions by staging a sophisticated hoax in at attempt to prove to a bunch of idiots that it's possible to extract blood from a turnip. Enough of these dimwits fell for it that I was able to accumulate a tidy little nest egg for my retirement years, and, oh by the way, fund your college education. So, my grandson, what do you plan on studying when you go to college? Sean, the 3rd: Why, marketing, of course! Sean: Good boy!, now go get me a mint julep, please. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
RE: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 10:10 PM 12/17/2009, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson wrote: Abd remarks, [...] What I do claim is that the Steorn situation bears very strong marks of being a con, a fairly sophisticated one, where they are deliberately setting up demonstrations with obvious flaws, which they can then remedy, setting up the rebound effect. You may recall that I also recently voiced similar speculation. I also speculated that STEORN is deliberately attempting to lead all the skeptics and debunkers down to the slaughter house where at the right moment they will all get wacked on the head. Very calculated... Very dramatic. Yes. Noted. However, in my scenario, I seem to have come to a different conclusion. It seems more plausible for me to speculate that Steorn actually believes that their ORBO device is for real. IOW, I don't yet buy the premise that it's a con job. I don't think you are considering the implications of that apparent set-up sufficiently. The premise isn't an assumption, it's a conclusion, from the consistency of the smoke-screen. Instead of looking for the fire, look for smoke! Why is so much smoke being generated? Demonstrations that don't demonstrate? That don't even attempt to demonstrate, at least at first. It's a show, not a demonstration. OF course, under my scenario it's quite possible that the Steorn engineers have deluded themselves. Sure. Or some of them are deluded and some are not, some are in. But I have another hypothesis. Please understand, I remain highly skeptical of Steorn's claims. Like everyone here, I demand definitive evidence and am disappointed that Steorn has not yet delivered on that point. Nevertheless I'm having a difficult time perceiving how this con game you have described could possibly benefit Steorn. If this is all nothing more than a deliberate (albeit sophisticated) con game then it's all a house of cards and they will eventually get caught. There's no way around the fact that they would eventually get caught. The village will rise up in arms with pitchforks they and torches in hand and run them all out of town, that is after they are tarred and feathered and sent to the slammer. Granted, I could be wrong but I really, REALLY have a difficult time believing they could be that stupid as to believe they could pull off such a con job on the public, not with the amount of constant scrutiny they are receiving. Yet it appears to be working, Steven. You are making assumptions about how they will proceed, and, also, assumptions about what is involved in the NDAs. When do they get to eat their cake? More to the point, how can they get to the cake without getting the heads cut off? They are already eating the cake, for some years now, and the cake continues to be baked and served to them as long as there is positive cash flow, which there may be. And when the cash flow goes negative, the corporation goes bust, and those who collected salaries keep the money. And the directors may be on the hook if there are burned creditors, but they could easily arrange that the corporation closes down without doing that. They pay their bills, it's that simple, the directors make sure that this happens, but they are not required legally to ensure success, and, I'm quite sure that the investors, who will be the real losers, are themselves involved in agreements that protect the personal property of Steorn officers and employees. The Developer agreement is quite well-laced with clauses that disclaim any claims of functionality. You imagine that they would be tarred and feathered and jailed. Okay, jailed. What would be the charge? Deceiving the public? But that is not generally a crime, and magicians do it all the time. Deceiving people who purchase the right to see the technology? Without knowing the NDA contents, it's difficult to know that there has been any deception of these people at all. As one extreme, what you get when you sign the NDA is a disclosure that there is this idea that might result in over unity power, but that they haven't proven it yet, they are working on it. Or perhaps there is a disclosure that it's all for show, and if you reveal that, well, you will be sued. They gave you what you paid for, the secret. Perhaps they offer your money back. Why wouldn't you go for that? Well, there is a kicker: if you don't ask for your money back, you will get a cut of all the new sales of disclosure agreements. They can refund the money, they can keep it for long enough that the interest on it will cover their expenses of refund. The agreement the person signed allows them delay in refund. And they perform on the agreement until they can't. When they can't, the thing will collapse, and so their game is to see how long they can keep it going. When it collapses, sorry, you have an agreement with a defunct corporation, and you are last in line. Employees get paid first, you know. As I mentioned, the board may act to
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
From Abd: ... Yet it appears to be working, Steven. You are making assumptions about how they will proceed, and, also, assumptions about what is involved in the NDAs. Of course I'm making lots of assumptions. Some of them may even stretch the sensibilities of Occam's Razor. Guilty as charged. And you haven't any assumptions? I lost count. It often seems to me that many of your explanations tend to be extremely long, verbose, and exquisitely complex in their machinations. Quite ingenious, most of them, actually. (PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS NOT A CRITICISM OF YOUR DEDUCTIVE PROCESS!) Nevertheless, it's been my experience that being gifted with an IQ of +140 as well as the gift of good grammar (a talent that has taken me decades to cultivate to the barest limited degree of acceptability) does not necessarily mean the fruits of a stratospheric IQ is anymore capable of generating realistic assumptions that are any more in-tune than those of Mongo's, who learns a valuable lesson after opening a special delivery box of candy. Let me respond to only one small portion of a few assumptions you have made... that appear to be based on one of my assumptions: You imagine that they would be tarred and feathered and jailed. Okay, jailed. What would be the charge? Deceiving the public? But that is not generally a crime, and magicians do it all the time. Deceiving people who purchase the right to see the technology? Without knowing the NDA contents, it's difficult to know that there has been any deception of these people at all. As one extreme, what you get when you sign the NDA is a disclosure that there is this idea that might result in over unity power, but that they haven't proven it yet, they are working on it. Or perhaps there is a disclosure that it's all for show, and if you reveal that, well, you will be sued. They gave you what you paid for, the secret. Yes, Mongo still find way to jail them. Mongo see lots of other Mongos out there too. We all unhappy too. We all find way to jail them all. Lose key, too! Hee hee. Mongo then go to candy store and buy OWN box of candy. But I don't see any evidence that they actually have something. Strange as it might seem for me to say this at the moment: Mongo agrees. Mongo looking for special delivery boxes. Mongo curious to see who gets them. Mongo want to watch, from a distance. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 11:20 AM 12/18/2009, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote: From Stephen Lawrence ... But he's [MADOFF] **NOT** held up as an example of a successful con artist, because he (a) had no exit strategy, ... Ok, then then what's Steorn's exit strategy? I certainly don't know for sure. Depends on how greedy they are. Get too greedy, they end up in jail or fugitives. But if they stay short of that, the exit strategy is that Steorn shuts down. The creditors are paid. Those who invested early on have made more than their money back. Those who invested toward the end may lose their investment. Standard, think of it as being similar to those who buy stock in a company that is about to go under. If there were refund provisions in the purchase agreement, they may get their investment back, but if they waived the refund in order to gain participation and payments as long as it lasts, well, they lose. And their money is where the earlier investor profits came from, it we look at it passed down the line. The payments out would depend on income from payments. So if the income collapsed, so do any payment obligations. As long as they keep reserves for any debts and contractual payments that are fixed, they'll be okay legally. That's an exit strategy. It's possible that they will never admit that it was a shell game. Eventually, someone will break an NDA. But it might be a long time before we find out what happened with certainty. The whole Storn group (at the correct strategic moment) buys themselves one-way tickets to the Camen islands? Nigeria??? ;-) Nah. That's a naive exit strategy. The people running Steorn can walk away with less money, but also greatly reduced risk. They merely need confine the sheep to a carefully selected group that they shear, and one that is informed about the risk, but simply neglects that as unlikely to fall down, or just wants to gamble.Sean, the 3rd: And what did you do gramps? Sean: Well, grandson, I bilked a lot of gullible people out of millions by staging a sophisticated hoax in at attempt to prove to a bunch of idiots that it's possible to extract blood from a turnip. Enough of these dimwits fell for it that I was able to accumulate a tidy little nest egg for my retirement years, and, oh by the way, fund your college education. So, my grandson, what do you plan on studying when you go to college? Sean, the 3rd: Why, marketing, of course! You got it, actually. However, bilked may not be it. Rather, he set up a speculative investment opportunity for people, under this particular theory: now that you know we don't actually have anything yet -- we might find the magic wand waving technique! but, you know, those stupid physicists say it's impossible -- you have the option of leaving your money in, and as long as our research program can stay open, you'll get payments from the new people buying in. So you can make some money, if it lasts long enough. If it doesn't, well, there is always risk in investment. We hope you will continue to study the information we sent you, and perhaps work on modifications that might find the necessary improvements, but, if not, you can still make a profit. Our early investors have made 150% profit over a few years. If you'd like out, now, you may request your refund, it will be processed and refunded within a month. By the way, your nondisclosure agreement continues to apply according to its terms. What has been revealed to you must be kept in strictest confidence, I'm sure you can understand why. I'd call it clever, in fact. But I don't know that this is the actual plan. It is merely a possible one that includes an exit strategy and which explains just about everything except precisely how this got started, which isn't that important. It may have begun with some sincere investigation of an idea. But it didn't stay that way, they found an opportunity and took it and ran with it.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/18/2009 01:53 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 10:10 PM 12/17/2009, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson wrote: When do they get to eat their cake? More to the point, how can they get to the cake without getting the heads cut off? They are already eating the cake, for some years now, and the cake continues to be baked and served to them as long as there is positive cash flow, which there may be. And when the cash flow goes negative, the corporation goes bust, and those who collected salaries keep the money. And the directors may be on the hook if there are burned creditors, but they could easily arrange that the corporation closes down without doing that. They pay their bills, it's that simple, the directors make sure that this happens, but they are not required legally to ensure success, and, I'm quite sure that the investors, who will be the real losers, are themselves involved in agreements that protect the personal property of Steorn officers and employees. The Developer agreement is quite well-laced with clauses that disclaim any claims of functionality. Absolutely. I agree completely. The officers are golden, unless they've done something foolish like lie to their investors with regard to something material, like how much money the company has in the bank. BTW, anybody know where Steorn is incorporated? I don't suppose it's Delaware, USA? (Don't guffaw too much, just because they're an Irish company -- for years I worked for a tiny Danish company, with corporate headquarters in California, which was incorporated in Delaware; but all the real work was done in Massachusetts. And they weren't even trying to do anything sleazy. It's a weird world out there.) Just a couple nits: -- I think it's unlikely that they're cash positive right now, if we leave cash flow from stock sales off the balance sheet. But, that doesn't really matter much; with repeated rounds of financing, companies can go for years in a cash-negative, money-losing state. -- In the United States, the directors won't generally be on the hook whether or not they leave a trail of burned creditors. If the creditors are stupid enough to let a free-energy company go for months without paying a bill, they get what they deserve, and what they deserve from an incorporated entity that goes bust is a few cents on the dollar. The only funds in the pot which can be touched are funds owned by the corporate entity. -- Also in the United States, there is one creditor which *does* matter: The U.S. government. A quick way to boost cash flow is to forget to pony up the company's share of social security payments. This occasionally results in company officers going to jail shortly after the roof finally falls in.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/18/2009 02:31 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 11:02 PM 12/17/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: Sounds good. But magicians don't usually start by working to convince everyone that they are incompetent liars. That's a label nobody wants to start with. I have experienced the exact opposite. They are very good at starting with that label, they amplify it and play with it. Eh, hold on -- they do it for a few seconds, a few minutes, perhaps more than a few minutes. They patter away, with an ace of hearts glued to the back of their jacket where all can see it, or whatever. But very soon, far sooner than the timeout after which the audience leaves in disgust, they do something which reveals they are monumentally clever after all. Imagine, instead, a magic show where the magicians did nothing but show tricks that didn't work, or do slight of hand where all could see the hidden card on the back of the hand, or attempted to juggle but dropped the balls -- imagine that they did this for the ENTIRE FIRST HALF of the show. Then there's the intermission. Then, only after the intermission, they show that they can really pull off some fine stunts. Only problem -- the hall's kind of empty at that point, because an awful lot of folks didn't come back after the break. That would be a show where the magician started by CONVINCING the audience that he was an incompetent liar. It's been more than seconds, minutes, days -- it's been years -- Steorn has yet to show the clever part. All they've shown is the boobery. ... Sure, sure, sure. The bit about magicians is all true. But what makes you think that Steorn fills the bill of a skilled magician? What EVIDENCE is there that anyone at Steorn is competent to pull off any kind of convincing demo of anything? The level of competence required for the convincing demo -- if we allow actual fraud -- is low. I'm sure I could build it, just give me a little money. Hah! Indeed, I'm absolutely sure you could. But, you're not an average Joe off the street. What makes you think anybody at Steorn is as competent as you? Your definition of a low level of competence probably doesn't match most folks'. I'm serious here. I have seen no evidence of such competence at Steorn. In the absence of such evidence, I see no reason to believe it's present. Assuming incompetence is all staged, and that more apparent incompetence just proves it's staged better -- well, it's an assumption, and I can't really see any reason for retaining it. ... But this argument of ours will be entirely moot in short order, when we see how this absurd non-demo plays out in its final weeks. I don't think so: so there must be our bet. I bet it won't be resolved in a few weeks. I don't see that they are anywhere near the necessity of closing down and cashing out. So my bet would be on continued murkiness and mystery, that's what my theory predicts. Oh, I agree that Steorn's fate won't be resolved. They are extremely competent at explaining away problems, at drawing things out, and at staying in business, and I'm sure they will continue to do such things. What I think *will* be resolved is the question of whether they're just teasing us with this wretchedly awful demonstration, in preparation for rolling out something far better some time in the very near future. The bet I would make is this: The current demo will continue to be of horribly low quality, and there will be no deus ex machina which suddenly makes their machines run better. Not now, and not any time in the next few months. If I've understood what you have said previously, you think the opposite; you expect them to pull a better rabbit from the hat, and suddenly upgrade their machines to something which will stymie their critics. * * * In other words, I will go on record as stating that the current wretched demo, as it currently exists, is the *best* *they* *can* *do*, or very close to it. Consequently, we will not see anything better before the scheduled end of this demonstration, and we will not see anything substantially better in the coming, say, six months, either -- let us say, before June. And *that* assertion -- that nothing better will be forthcoming -- is what will be either proved to be true, or disproved, in relatively short order. I really believe that if they had anything better they would already have rolled it out (but of course, what they have but aren't showing is something we won't know for a long time, if ever).
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
From Stephen Lawrence: ... ... Oh, I agree that Steorn's fate won't be resolved. Mongo [in a rare moment of pensive self-reflection] tends to disagree. Mongo want to see a light bulb real soon. No light bulb soon, Mongo send candygram to Sean. Light bulb! Light bulb! Light bulb! Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 4:46 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com wrote: BTW, anybody know where Steorn is incorporated? From: http://www.steorn.com/about/disclaimer/ Steorn Limited, Unit 18, Docklands Innovation Park, East Wall Rd, Dublin 3, Ireland, a limited liability company incorporated in Ireland with registered number 330508. Terry
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 12:11 AM, William Beaty bi...@eskimo.com wrote: I wrote that, when? Late 2005? Was that before Steorn's stuff? Yes, their claim surfaced in late 2006. Terry
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
William Beaty wrote: Was flying machine plagued constantly by con artists taking money from enormous numbers of people? Well, not enormous numbers, but there were quite a few. Enough to cause the Wright brothers many problems because, for example, U.S. Army officials assumed they were con artists. In France up until the moment of the demonstration they were called con artists and bluffers. I have accounts from as late as 1912 that in U.S. cities and towns, aviators would sometimes show up on the train to do a flight exhibition (with the airplane in crates), and they would be met by angry crowds and the sheriff ready to arrest them because everyone knows people can't fly. This was after the Wrights had become world famous. Many people did not believe the newspapers, and they emphatically did not believe scientists and engineers. The same is true today. Many politicians make hay claiming the evolution, global warming, Hubbert's peak and other technical issues are a left-wing conspiracy, or something like that. I.e. was it akin to lead-into-gold alchemist research, or known-shady used car dealerships? Did wise investors have to assume a scam was in progress until innocence was proven? Yes, they did. The company that finally invested in the airplane, the Charles Flint company, sent experts to confirm the claims. They would have been foolish not to. With the spread of the technology, the con artists began to fade away, by they were replaced by many people who tried to steal the technology and claim they invented the airplane first. The Smithsonian, the Scientific American and others played fast and loose with the truth for political reasons. The Sci. Am. continues to do that today, denigrating the Wrights and lying about history as recently as 2003. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
I wrote: Well, not enormous numbers, but there were quite a few. Enough to cause the Wright brothers many problems because, for example, U.S. Army officials assumed they were con artists. An even bigger problem was incompetent wannabee aviators, especially Langley (Smithsonian) and Ferber (French Army). Langley spent $50,000 of Federal money and crashed into the Potomac twice, in 1903, a few weeks before the Wrights flew. The mass media derided this and ridiculed other attempts to fly. The Army was reluctant to deal with the Wrights years later because of the Langley fiasco. Langley died in 1906. In 1909 they gave out the first Langley medal, to the Wrights, and later they named an airport after him. Langley was a pioneer and he had some redeeming features, but all in all, I think he was a vindictive jerk who made serious technical errors, held back progress in aviation, and nearly killed his pilot, Manley, twice. Needless to say, incompetent and dishonest people have caused much harm in over-unity energy research, cold fusion and related fields. It is not fair to hold Prof. A at fault because Prof. B makes a dumb mistake, but people tend to tar them with the same brush. The attitude is that a mistake by cold fusion researcher is a mistake by all. They don't often say this about plasma fusion researchers or doctors. On the other hand, I guess that is what they are saying about climate research, in this so-called Climate-gate scandal. There is another interesting parallel to cold fusion. Langley's failure, and ones similar to it, were widely taken as proof that man cannot fly and anyone who tries is an impractical ivory tower scientist. There were many popular culture poems and ditties about foolish people trying to fly (Darius Green and His Flying Machine), and expressions like you can no more do that than you can fly! They did just mean flap your arms; this was a popular culture reference to building an airplane. Bear in mind that people had been doing that since the late 1700s, often killing themselves. Flying was the cliche (or watchword) for an impossible or ridiculous venture. Most Americans regarded the flying machine as little more than a chimera pursued by foolish dreamers (T. Crouch, A Dream of Wings.) Nowadays, of course, people use cold fusion to mean the same thing. The thing is, people back in 1903 took that cliche literately. They did not realize that Pilcher, Lilienthal, Chanute and others had actually glided with considerable success. That was odd because Lilienthal was famous worldwide and there were many photos of him in newspapers. He flew hundreds of times before crashing and killing himself in 1896. I wonder if newspaper readers imagined that he was killed in the first attempt, and never succeeded at all. Technically knowledgeable people understood that flight was difficult, but because of the cliche, some of them overestimated the difficulties, and did not bother to look for a solution. This attitude even infected the Wrights. On the way home from Kitty Hawk after a discouraging season of flight tests in 1901, Orville said man will not fly for 50 years. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On Thu, 17 Dec 2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: Needless to say, incompetent and dishonest people have caused much harm in over-unity energy research, cold fusion and related fields. It is not fair to hold Prof. A at fault because Prof. B makes a dumb mistake, but people tend to tar them with the same brush. The attitude is that a mistake by cold fusion researcher is a mistake by all. They don't often say this about plasma fusion researchers or doctors. On the other hand, I guess that is what they are saying about climate research, in this so-called Climate-gate scandal. I once saw reference to the Curies being terrified of attracting the perpetual motion label, and being relieved when it didn't occur. But this was in some online article, and I've not seen such a thing mentioned in the two biographies I've read. If things went a bit differently, the Curies could have faced the same barriers as the Wrights. Americans regarded the flying machine as little more than a chimera pursued by foolish dreamers (T. Crouch, A Dream of Wings.) Nowadays, of course, people use cold fusion to mean the same thing. And today if you mention that flying machines were long ridiculed, people get angry and insist that no such thing could have happened. I expect that if CF starts being sold as products, 'Skeptics' will conveniently forget the history of ridicule. Perhaps we should congratulate Park and crew for actually publishing books. Imagine if CF supporters could point to a crop of specifically anti-Wright bros books, anti-spaceflight books, etc. All we have is embarrassing quotes from famous astronomers. (( ( ( ( ((O)) ) ) ) ))) William J. BeatySCIENCE HOBBYIST website billb at amasci com http://amasci.com EE/programmer/sci-exhibits amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair Seattle, WA 206-762-3818unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 02:25 PM 12/16/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: Let me repeat, I am playing devil's advocate here. I do not seriously believe these claims. On the other hand, there have been several magic magnetic motor claims over the years and I am not quite ready to dismiss them all. I'm not making a general claim about magic motors. Though I have high skepticism that someone is going to find the magic combination of magnetic fields and timing and all that in order to change the very seriously verified understanding of conservation of energy, i.e. that you don't get gains by playing a shell game with fields and configurations, you only get greater or lesser losses. This is entirely different from low energy nuclear reactions, which don't involve such contradictions with fundamental and extremely-well known theory (because there is no violation involved in unknown catalysis, for example, that allows bypass of the coulomb barrier -- such as muons, supposing that hadn't been observed before). It's entirely different from some device that taps zero point energy, there is no hint of ZPE effects on magnetic fields and forces at the levels involved, etc. It's an energy shell game, almost certainly, and that game can fool the players, so I don't reject the sincerity of people who claim magic motors, I merely note that when they get serious and manage to get some funding, they are sometimes forced into a situation where fraud does arise. What I do claim is that the Steorn situation bears very strong marks of being a con, a fairly sophisticated one, where they are deliberately setting up demonstrations with obvious flaws, which they can then remedy, setting up the rebound effect. I.e., people will make charges against Steorn, such as charges that the batteries are running the thing, etc. And so then they remove the batteries, and it still runs, and then their explanation that the batteries were just for blah, blah, previously seen as preposterous, suddenly looks good, and that shift can wipe away skepticism that would otherwise remain. Just doing the thing without batteries in the first place, the other sources of deception or error would be more obvious and wouldn't get so easily dismissed. And it looks to me like they have surrounded this thing with layers of such tricks. Imagine this dialog, a little down the way: Steorn: They claimed that we were running this on batteries. Well, we removed the batteries and it still runs. They claimed that we were replacing the batteries when the webcams were off, and trading out units. Well, we ran a continuous webcam for X time with no interruptions. They claimed that the translucent panels were obscuring the real mechanism. We replaced them with transparent panels. So what objections remain? Critic: It's fraud, there is a hidden battery within one or more of the components, or some other transmission of power into the system. Steorn: See what scoundrels these critics are? We answered every objection, and so then they resort to claims of fraud. It's obvious that they are simply out to deny whatever we demonstrate. And remember, it doesn't have to convince everyone. Just a few. They could keep this up for a long time! Here is what I'd say: anyone considering investing in Steorn should get together with others considering the same. If the possible investors were to cooperate with each other, they could be protected. Steorn may try to defend against this, but the very defense would be visible. And then I'd say this: want to keep it secret, want to make the big killing by being the only investor with the guts and perspicacity to see beyond the foggy notions of modern physics, you will deserve what you get. Hint: it won't be profit, it will be loss. You won't ever see that investment again. If I'm wrong, a consortium of investors could find out, and possible losses would be minimized. If Steorn doesn't allow investment by corporations or partnerships, that would be a hint. A corporation could be formed to be this kind of consortium, easily, or it could be a partnership, and the partners would certainly be allowed to share the information internally among each other. An NDA which prohibited this would probably be unenforceable, and I'd fully support subterfuge in attacking unreasonable interpretations of an NDA. There is a legitimate purpose to NDAs, and it would not be to prevent people from helping each other to avoid disclosure that the thing was a scam and not reproducible, *to each other, not necessarily to the public. If the consortium found evidence of actual fraud -- and this whole thing looks like, certainly, it's at or over that edge -- then no contract could prevent disclosure, it would be completely unenforceable. A consortium, of course, could afford lawyers. It could have resources much greater than Steorn. And it could even present itself to Steorn as an individual. All it would have to do
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 02:44 PM 12/16/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: On 12/16/2009 02:23 PM, Terry Blanton wrote: So, not only are the batteries running down (obvious from the slowing of the motors discussed in another thread) but the units seem to be failing. The cameras also go off line at convenient times. What in heck are they up to? Too much Irish whiskey? Conclusions: 1) They're not slick, after all. (I was certainly wrong about that.) I guess we should have guessed that from the earlier fiasco. 2) They're not all that bright, it appears. This isn't going to convince anyone of anything good, and they should have at least had a good idea of how long their batteries would last. Did they even test this design before they set up the demo? 3) There's no hidden power source. 4) Their demo is obviously totally phony. 5) This is too blatant to be self-deception. Nobody capable of building a motor of any sort could be so totally retarded as these guys would need to be to continue believing their own nonsense with stuff like this going on. 6) When I said things would still be murky come the end of January, I was wrong. Didn't someone have a theory that they were doing all this just to show how good they are at running a PR campaign? If Steorn really does have investors, they may get into rather deep trouble over this -- they are surely in violation of a number of securities laws. Madoff's team had no exit strategy, which I found nearly inexplicable. Perhaps these folks have the same disease (whatever it is). A perpmo machine built from existing novelty toys would work better than their demo. Well, Stephen, my comment is that you are effing naive. You are correct about the visible facts, but are making exactly the kind of assumptions that a skilled magician would want you to make. There are people who know how to do this stuff, you know! I have some serious problems with the Amazing Randi, but he is good at smelling out some of this stuff, because he's been good at it himself. It's called Magic. The art of deception, and a major device is misdirection. You create an impression in the audience of what the trick is, building that, allowing them to believe it, then you turn it upside down and show that their theory is totally false. You have done something entirely different, and, having put so much energy into the hypothesis you led them into, with all your skill, they are flat footed and their jaws drop and they have no ideas at all. That's the effect of that contrast between expectation and reality. For a moment, it creates the impression that they don't know Bleep. That's actually a good thing, by the way. We don't, more often than we like to admit. But that doesn't mean that you should give all your money to a someone who can turn a $1 bill into a $20 with his little box, so that he can multiply it for you. Even if he lets you look at the box all you want. There are other ways to run that trick that don't involve anything odd about the box! More than one. Really, if you are up against a skilled magician, you are dealing with someone with a thousand times as much experience in the situation as you. This person knows all the responses you might have, can observe and see exactly what you are thinking, etc., and knows how to lead that thinking exactly where he wants it to go. It's skill, born of study and practice, and isn't really a mystery -- except inasmuch as human consciousness and skill are mysteries
RE: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 03:37 PM 12/16/2009, Hoyt A. Stearns Jr. wrote: I'm on thin ice with that question, so all I can say is it is connected, but not in the normal way. All the battery energy is dissipated as heat, not KE. Well, Hoyt, you can get off the thin ice, I will ask you some generic questions that should not involve the violation of any enforceable NDA. 1. Do you understand how the device works, sufficiently that if Steorn were to disappear, you could reproduce it? Do you have documentation this, adequate to reproduce? 2. Do you know that it works, that there is excess energy in the system? 3. How do you know this? I'm not asking for specific, just a general comment that can later be compared with what becomes known. To put this question a different way, how much are you relying on your own experience and how much on what they have told you? 4. Is there a time limit on the NDA? 5. If you found what you believed to be fraud, would you be prohibited by the NDA from revealing this to the authorities? (If so, the NDA is itself illegal and unenforceable.) 6. Can you discuss what you have found with anyone, such as your own employees or counselors? 7. How the eff do you explain the really dumb demonstration, laden with hosts of obvious flaws? I have a theory, as you may have noticed. Other than that theory, the default idea seems to be that they are just plain dumb and incompetent. How would you explain that a bunch of incompetent people have ended up in control of this discovery with huge consequences? 8. Can you understand why we are Skeptical as Hell? Would it be rational for us to believe at this point that there was any significant possibility that there really is an over unity device here? Out of what is publicly known, can you give us a reason to think otherwise? 9. Suppose a possible investor were to consult with you. Before putting any money in and getting the information you have, could that investor purchase an indemnity from you, such that you would have to cover the investor's losses if there were fraud involved on the part of Steorn? After all, if the information is solid and has been confirmed by you, the indemnity would be easy money.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 04:00 PM 12/16/2009, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote: What's the payoff? ...That Steorn is really good at manipulating PR? ...That they they can pull a fast one on everyone? There seems to be an equally unproven assumption that if Steorn can pull it off that future prospective clients will know that they, too, will be able to cash in on Steorn's PR skills and make tons of money by hiring them to manipulate PR to their own advantage. Such convoluted reasoning stretches my own internal BS scale. However, I also have to confess that having such a conclusion prominently displayed over at Wikipedia as the preferred explanation probably didn't help my predisposition in taking it seriously. ;-) Okay, being the resident expert on Wikipedia (there are certainly people who know it better than I, but they aren't reading this list, I think), I'll look at the article. All right. The account above is inaccurate. While individual articles often violate guidelines on neutrality and sourcing, due to the way that Wikipedia process operates, and there are also groups of editors who might be highly inclined to put in skeptical material outside of what the guidelines allow, the article doesn't state that advertising PR skills is the preferred explanation. Rather, the article simply reports that this explanation has been offered by some published commentators, and it also notes others. It's possible that the standards for published have been pushed a little, but the article presents this neutrally, as far as I've noticed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steorn About the 2007 demonstration. They blamed it on a failed bearing due to the greenhouse effect in the plastic housing. Okay, so it took them two years to fix the bearing and pop some cooling holes in the plastic housing? No, it's obvious, I'd say. They are creating delay. If the article is accurate, they have already, at least once, released misleading information, by their own account. In May 2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sunday_Business_PostThe Sunday Business Post reported that Steorn was a former http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot.comdot.com business which was developing a microgenerator product based on the same principle as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energykinetic energy generators in watches, as well as creating http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-commercee-commerce websites for customers. The company had also recently raised about 2.5 million from investors and was three years into a four year development plan for its microgenerator technology.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steorn#cite_note-post-ie-9[10] Steorn has since stated that the account given in this interview was intended to prevent a leak regarding their http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_energyfree energy technology.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steorn#cite_note-steorn-crisis-management-interview-10[11] In other words, when it suits them, they will lie. At least that's how it looks to me! Lies are sometimes not reprehensible. But ... the lies that aren't reprehensible are lies to enemies who will do harm with information, but the Sunday Business Post? The public? Gratuitous misinformation? Does that explanation make any sense at all, on the face of it?
RE: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
Abd remarks, ... What I do claim is that the Steorn situation bears very strong marks of being a con, a fairly sophisticated one, where they are deliberately setting up demonstrations with obvious flaws, which they can then remedy, setting up the rebound effect. ... You may recall that I also recently voiced similar speculation. I also speculated that STEORN is deliberately attempting to lead all the skeptics and debunkers down to the slaughter house where at the right moment they will all get wacked on the head. Very calculated... Very dramatic. However, in my scenario, I seem to have come to a different conclusion. It seems more plausible for me to speculate that Steorn actually believes that their ORBO device is for real. IOW, I don't yet buy the premise that it's a con job. OF course, under my scenario it's quite possible that the Steorn engineers have deluded themselves. Please understand, I remain highly skeptical of Steorn's claims. Like everyone here, I demand definitive evidence and am disappointed that Steorn has not yet delivered on that point. Nevertheless I'm having a difficult time perceiving how this con game you have described could possibly benefit Steorn. If this is all nothing more than a deliberate (albeit sophisticated) con game then it's all a house of cards and they will eventually get caught. There's no way around the fact that they would eventually get caught. The village will rise up in arms with pitchforks they and torches in hand and run them all out of town, that is after they are tarred and feathered and sent to the slammer. Granted, I could be wrong but I really, REALLY have a difficult time believing they could be that stupid as to believe they could pull off such a con job on the public, not with the amount of constant scrutiny they are receiving. When do they get to eat their cake? More to the point, how can they get to the cake without getting the heads cut off? And remember, it doesn't have to convince everyone. Just a few. They could keep this up for a long time! I disagree. I think Steorn would have to convince a LOT of people in order to pull it off, but in the end it would still fail - they will still be tarred and feathered. It's my understanding that most con jobs are done with as little publicity as possible since con artists typically go after the ignorant and uneducated, and the best way to accomplish that is to operate as discretely as possible - preferably from Nigeria! ;-) I realize some might point to Madoff as an example of a high profile successful con job. But again I disagree. I realize many people got bilked out of billions of dollars, but eventually, Madoff didn't succeed, and where is he now. Here is what I'd say: anyone considering investing in Steorn should get together with others considering the same. If the possible investors were to cooperate with each other, they could be protected. Steorn may try to defend against this, but the very defense would be visible Sounds sensible. I personally would demand that before I would be willing to open up my check book that I be personally shown the device running. The contraption had better be powering a light bulb with NO batteries in sight! I would also demand that I be allowed to bring in anyone of my choosing whom I knew to be competent in engineering principals, preferably electrical engineering who could advise me. It will be fun to watch, I'm enjoying this tremendously. Stay tuned for the next Episode of Steorn Watch. Will all the devices run down? Will one of them mysteriously keep running? Will the demonstration be interrupted by a mysterious fire that burns the building down, destroying all the very valuable demonstration models, constructed at tremendous expense according to detailed plans that were also destroyed? Or will Steorn remove all the veils, pulling those translucent covers away like a magician turning the hat over? Yes, it is fun to watch, especially when one has no financial involvement! I'm still waiting for them to screw in the light bulb and get rid of the battery. That might pique my interest. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/17/2009 08:38 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 02:44 PM 12/16/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: On 12/16/2009 02:23 PM, Terry Blanton wrote: So, not only are the batteries running down (obvious from the slowing of the motors discussed in another thread) but the units seem to be failing. The cameras also go off line at convenient times. What in heck are they up to? Too much Irish whiskey? Conclusions: 1) They're not slick, after all. (I was certainly theowrong about that.) I guess we should have guessed that from the earlier fiasco. 2) They're not all that bright, it appears. This isn't going to convince anyone of anything good, and they should have at least had a good idea of how long their batteries would last. Did they even test this design before they set up the demo? 3) There's no hidden power source. 4) Their demo is obviously totally phony. 5) This is too blatant to be self-deception. Nobody capable of building a motor of any sort could be so totally retarded as these guys would need to be to continue believing their own nonsense with stuff like this going on. 6) When I said things would still be murky come the end of January, I was wrong. Didn't someone have a theory that they were doing all this just to show how good they are at running a PR campaign? If Steorn really does have investors, they may get into rather deep trouble over this -- they are surely in violation of a number of securities laws. Madoff's team had no exit strategy, which I found nearly inexplicable. Perhaps these folks have the same disease (whatever it is). A perpmo machine built from existing novelty toys would work better than their demo. Well, Stephen, my comment is that you are effing naive. Indeed. Ça, c'est un peu fort, n'est-ce pas? None the less, I'm flabbergasted at the appallingly low level of this demo. It is light years worse than anything I expected. The fact that the machines are *slowing* *down* as the batteries drain, right on camera (according to Terry, I haven't double checked it but I trust his comments), is really startling, because it contradicts assertions made by Steorn to the effect that the batteries aren't driving the motors. It shows them lying. Explaining away a lie is not something anyone wants to need to do. The fact that they are having the cameras shut down frequently, that they are blatantly swapping out machines as they slow down or stop (which makes their claim that the demo would show a really long run into another lie), just leaves me feeling amazed. The issue of changing the batteries just isn't coming up: They're changing out whole units! This goes so far beyond leaving an obvious objection around for critics to pounce on that it smells really strongly of plain, simple, old, technical incompetence. In short, they're painting themselves as liars in loud, garish colors. Your theory that they're doing all this so they can come up from the rear in a Garrison finish and charm the world is interesting but, at this stage, difficult to believe. As yet, I see no evidence whatsoever to support your assertion that they are really very slick showmen. More and more, I'm liking the alternate theory, which is that Sean McCarthy is surrounded by yes-men and is out of touch with how far off his company is from being able to pull off a decent demo. You are correct about the visible facts, but are making exactly the kind of assumptions that a skilled magician would want you to make. There are people who know how to do this stuff, you know! Yes, but at this point I'm not convinced any of those people are in charge at Steorn. (If they are, they are staying very far out of sight.) You are apparently _assuming_ that there are skilled magicians involved here. I haven't seen any evidence to support that, any hint of such a person being behind the scenes, any fingerprint of a talented slight of hand artist. All I *see* so far is garbage put together by boobs, and blizzards of words to explain away the problems. I have some serious problems with the Amazing Randi, but he is good at smelling out some of this stuff, because he's been good at it himself. It's called Magic. The art of deception, and a major device is misdirection. You create an impression in the audience of what the trick is, building that, allowing them to believe it, then you turn it upside down and show that their theory is totally false. You have done something entirely different, and, having put so much energy into the hypothesis you led them into, with all your skill, they are flat footed and their jaws drop and they have no ideas at all. Sounds good. But magicians don't usually start by working to convince everyone that they are incompetent liars. That's a label nobody wants to start with. Consider, once again, the bit with the machines slowing down, apparently as a result of the batteries draining. If that's not for real, then it's done solely to
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/17/2009 10:10 PM, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson wrote: I disagree. I think Steorn would have to convince a LOT of people in order to pull it off, but in the end it would still fail - they will still be tarred and feathered. It's my understanding that most con jobs are done with as little publicity as possible since con artists typically go after the ignorant and uneducated, and the best way to accomplish that is to operate as discretely as possible - preferably from Nigeria! ;-) I realize some might point to Madoff as an example of a high profile successful con job. But again I disagree. I realize many people got bilked out of billions of dollars, but eventually, Madoff didn't succeed, and where is he now. Wait -- Madoff is held up as an example of a high profile con job that shows the sort of things a con artist will attempt. He's held up as an example of how you can get staff members to go along and do the heavy lifting to make the con work. But he's **NOT** held up as an example of a successful con artist, because he (a) had no exit strategy, (b) was running a con for which no conceivable exit strategy existed which could have covered all the people involved in it, and (c) was running a con which was absolutely guaranteed to collapse, as a result of which it absolutely required an exit strategy (but see (a) and (b)). In other words, far from being successful, his was a con whose failure was absolutely assured. And as such it provides an existence proof for people who are intelligent, dishonest, and yet are also fools, all at the same time. Any reasoning which goes, Joe can't be conning us, because if he is, he's sure to get in trouble eventually, and he knows it, so he wouldn't do that... is proven to be false by the existence of the Madoff gang. By the standards of normal humans, who are by and large honest most of the time and more or less law abiding, professional criminals are insane. When trying to understand con artists, this is a good thing to keep in mind.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
Rick always writes what he means and means what he says. He's the guy who sells the Bedini kits, there's a 10 coil monopole kit that they have released, for instance. http://rpmgt.org/order.html The Bedini Monopole Energizer kit was built by a friend and he came to the conclusion that it's only for learning-purposes, and can be taken further (it's possible that mr. Friedrich has upped his ante and knows and understands more about the Bedini monopole tech - and that the 10-pole energizer would be quite worth looking into. But at that price? Not sure how much machining something like that would cost, but they mention it'd be in the tens of thousands of usd? on the page..) Rick also features on the Energy From The Vacuum series as a spectator of Bedini showing his stuff, I think in EFTV12 perchance. The detail here that (I guess) matters, is that Bedini chose Friedrich to make the kits available via, and Friedrich also sells the Renaissance charger devices, and has relations to Bedini's EnergenX -company. It's not a random guy shooting the breeze on a mailinglist, if I'm not completely mistaken, Friedrich maintains some of the monopole lists and is in general a guy who would know what Bedini is up to, and what's next. Looking at what Friedrich wrote about 1/3 of the amps going into the secondary - he is quite probably talking about the secondary batteries that get charged while the primary batteries provide the juice for the transformation process. On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 7:45 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com wrote: On 12/16/2009 12:07 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 11:00 AM 12/16/2009, Esa Ruoho wrote: No he didn't. Esa Ruoho quoted rickfriedrich from the bedini_monopole_3 forum. It was Rick who was experimenting with the Bedini motor described here, not Esa, and AFAIK Rick isn't on Vortex. Rick's batteries are apparently magic, if I understood this quote; he says a good number of amps were constantly being drawn [from the batteries?] but the batteries remained charged; I don't understand that. He must have meant something other than how I interpreted his words. I was running the system on smaller used batteries for days and they remained charged even though a good number of amps were constantly being drawn and the meter was showing 1/3rd of the amps going back into the secondary. Take a hint. Fine to set it up and start it with batteries, but batteries are tricky to monitor, they don't easily show the exact state of the charge. Put together a capacitor bank with enough depth (farads) to cover the draw phase, and charge it up to the battery voltage. Then once you are running, take the battery out of the circuit. You can then directly monitor the power storage by monitoring the capacitor voltage. No guessing. You will know right away if you are over unity, and how much, or, if you are under unity, exactly how much you are under unity. The larger the capacitance, the more even the available voltage will be. I'd think of making it really large, so you would not want to directly connect the battery to the capacitor, that can melt wires! You'd charge through a resistor. You could make all this part of one circuit, with a switch on the battery, or you could eliminate the battery and use a power supply which you then, once the thing is running, disconnect. Unless, of course, you want a demonstration that looks reasonably good through the idea that a battery couldn't possible last this long. As another pointed out, pulse charging can make batteries last much longer than we might expect. But a capacitor won't lie.
RE: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On Tue, 15 Dec 2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: The battery is puzzling, but they do not hide it, so I do not see how it could be part of a scam. Buy lots of Magniwork kits. After all, they promise a refund, and that proves it cannot be a scam! :) But seriously, if scammers can find a way to make their scam appear less scammy, they will do so. I imagine them thinking Aha, I know. I'll just feature the battery prominently. Then the marks will leap to the conclusion that it can't be part of the scam. Mark Iverson wrote: so it should be easy to demonstrate that this thing could be kept running for weeks, months when it should draw down the battery in a matter of days... Minutes, not days ...if supercaps were used instead of a battery. (( ( ( ( ((O)) ) ) ) ))) William J. BeatySCIENCE HOBBYIST website billb at amasci com http://amasci.com EE/programmer/sci-exhibits amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair Seattle, WA 206-762-3818unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/15/2009 09:26 PM, Hoyt A. Stearns Jr. wrote: As a Steorn Non Disclosure Agreement signatory and knowledgeable insider, I have a few comments: The energy in the battery does not go to the kinetic energy of the rotor, it is used as an easy way to modify some parameters of the device. Steorn does have all permanent magnet motors ( so they claim ), But you, as a knowledgeable insider, have never seen their all-permanent-magnet motors?
RE: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
William Beaty wrote: On Tue, 15 Dec 2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: The battery is puzzling, but they do not hide it, so I do not see how it could be part of a scam. Buy lots of Magniwork kits. After all, they promise a refund, and that proves it cannot be a scam! :) But seriously, if scammers can find a way to make their scam appear less scammy, they will do so. I imagine them thinking Aha, I know. I'll just feature the battery prominently. Then the marks will leap to the conclusion that it can't be part of the scam. Mark Iverson wrote: so it should be easy to demonstrate that this thing could be kept running for weeks, months when it should draw down the battery in a matter of days... Minutes, not days ...if supercaps were used instead of a battery. If it can be shown conclusively that the battery is connected only to the control electronics, and it does not power the motor, then it might as well be a D cell battery. For that matter, it might as well be a DC power supply. Strictly from an engineering point of view, it would not make the thing more convincing to have the motor generate electricity which recharges the D cell battery. That would only complicate the design. I suppose it would feel more authentic to have the thing running entirely without a battery, and it would be somewhat more convincing. But the claim will not be really convincing until the devices are independently replicated and examined by 5 or 10 groups other than Steorn, or at least until several groups get a chance to examine copies of the machine and measure input and output energy more rigorously than Steorn has done. I am not holding my breath expecting that to happen. For now, I think a D cell is not a big issue. There are so many ways to fake it, and they have done such a poor job of presenting the device, the battery hardly affects their credibility. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
I wrote: . . . [T]his is a variation of the non-falsifiable claim that the more credible a claim appears to be, the more likely it is a scam. In that case, as a real claim and a scam approach perfection, it becomes impossible to tell them apart. That can't be! What I mean is, strictly according to this standard, on the day Steorn ships its millionth magnet motor powered automobile and declares a trillion-dollar net worth, they will have achieved the perfect scam. At some point, the scam and the real thing diverge. There have to be criteria that make an dependable distinction between the two. I believe there is: independent replication and verification. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/16/2009 09:33 AM, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: On 12/15/2009 09:26 PM, Hoyt A. Stearns Jr. wrote: As a Steorn Non Disclosure Agreement signatory and knowledgeable insider, I have a few comments: The energy in the battery does not go to the kinetic energy of the rotor, it is used as an easy way to modify some parameters of the device. Steorn does have all permanent magnet motors ( so they claim ), But you, as a knowledgeable insider, have never seen their all-permanent-magnet motors? By the way, this statement by Hoyt Stearns answers one question. The folks at Steorn are not simply confused about things, and they are not simply fooling themselves. If they are claiming to have working all-permanent-magnet motors, then either they're lying, or it's the Dawn of a New Era. You can't be confused about whether you have something or not, and a motor with *no* internal power source is not something you can sort of have, subject to interpretation -- you've either got it or you don't. In fact they claimed this back before their earlier demo, which was supposed to show just such a motor, if I recall correctly; however, it didn't.
RE: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 09:26 PM 12/15/2009, Hoyt A. Stearns Jr. wrote: As a Steorn Non Disclosure Agreement signatory and knowledgeable insider, I have a few comments: The energy in the battery does not go to the kinetic energy of the rotor, it is used as an easy way to modify some parameters of the device. Steorn does have all permanent magnet motors ( so they claim ), but it's much easier to adjust parameters with some electric currents than mechanically moving parts around or changing magnetic alloys. Look, this is an impossible situation. Because of your nondisclosure agreement, any reasonable answers you could give to the essential questions will violate the agreement. Basically, your comments here are a red herring, all they can do is to place your personal reputation, whatever that is, on the line. It's a variation on Trust me! How are we to know that you have not, yourself, been duped? Can the contents of the NDA be disclosed? Before people sign the NDA, have they signed an agreement not to disclose the contents of the NDA? Can you even answer these questions? Adjusting parameters apparently takes energy. Adjustment of parameters can dump some of that energy into a device. Now, if the thing really charges batteries, why don't they start with an empty battery? Give the thing a swing with the hand, and off it would go! Use capacitors. You know the drill, I'm sure. The demonstration is designed to fail to demonstrate, that's clear. You know perfectly well that they could have arranged a better demonstration, if they wanted to succeed in that. Hence, even if they have a real technology, they are imitating the behavior of a long line of fools and con men. So, my interesting question: why? You do speculate on this to some degree. But the sum of all of it for me: I assume it is bogus, because of this kind of behavior, until some real evidence appears otherwise. I understand the principle of the demo units, and it makes sense to me, and I've done several experiments to demonstrate the effect. Cool. But the NDA and associate agreements make it completely impractical for you to do the deeper work necessary to fully characterize the effect, and you can't tell us the content of your experiments. So, once again, your comment boils down to trust me. That's fine, but doesn't get us very far. The engineers at Steorn are not stupid, in fact they show extraordinary skills and understanding of physics and electrical engineering. I don't have a problem with this. But very smart people can get caught in a net of collusion and deception. Happens all the time, actually. I think they have other much more effective embodyments that haven't been revealed yet. Apparently you trust them. Their strategy is rather bizarre, but in a way I think it is ingenious for many reasons (speculative): They must prove that their techniques are not obvious to anyone skilled in the art for patentability, even though they are extremely simple. Look, if this works, it is satisfies that condition of patentability, intrinsically. There is no obvious technique for over-unity devices, and, indeed, they are often considered unpatentable. However, ways of operating such a device, minus the over-unity claim, can be and have been patented, that's the Bedini motor. They have released many clues over the years, and still no one has conclusively made a self runner ( except one person who was unable to repeat his experiment after trying to optimize it ). That's not exactly encouraging. They must avoid serious attention of the Men In Black. This is a delicate balancing act. If they are trying to avoid attention, they are not doing a very good job of it. It seems that they are attempting to attract attention. My tentative conclusion is that attention is exactly what they want. They are charging for getting a look at the technology, and, I'm sure, this comes with heavy NDAs, so they may be able to make money simply by generating enough buzz and raising enough curiosity. How could I distinguish between this hypothesis and what appears to be yours: the technology works and they are merely running a delicate balancing act. They would like parties to sign contracts before they understand that the principles are simple and they could've used them anyway. Contracts cannot be enforced if they are contrary to public policy. Sean McCarthy wants the skeptics to shoot their load and get that stuff over with at the beginning. He's having fun thumbing his nose at them (as am I). Sure, he's having fun, and so are you. But don't blame the rest of us if we make the obvious conclusions. Have your fun. Enjoy your isolation, and the fallout, if it's what pulls your chain. There is no load to my skepticism. There is, in fact, simply a show me. That show me cannot be exhausted until I'm shown! So he's playing with knee-jerk skepticism, and, indeed, using it to amplify the publicity. Showmanship,
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/16/2009 10:09 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote: I wrote: . . . [T]his is a variation of the non-falsifiable claim that the more credible a claim appears to be, the more likely it is a scam. In that case, as a real claim and a scam approach perfection, it becomes impossible to tell them apart. That can't be! What I mean is, strictly according to this standard, on the day Steorn ships its millionth magnet motor powered automobile and declares a trillion-dollar net worth, they will have achieved the perfect scam. At some point, the scam and the real thing diverge. There have to be criteria that make an dependable distinction between the two. I believe there is: independent replication and verification. Yes, yes, and yes -- I don't disagree with what you're saying here, but I would like to clarify what I said to start with just a little. I certainly wasn't trying to say that anything that doesn't look like a scam must therefore be a scam! I was merely trying to say that if a person doesn't behave the way you *EXPECT* a scammer to behave, that, by itself, doesn't prove anything, because any true scammer is going to be trying very hard *not* to look like a scammer. To put it in terms of a trite old metaphor, you can't judge a book by its cover. You must judge by the substance, not by the appearance. They *show* the battery -- a scammer, you say, wouldn't do that. Well, then, maybe they're honest, or maybe they're just trying to act that way. So, showing the battery does not actually prove anything about their honesty -- and that was my point. But as to the substance -- since there are no published, checkable numbers regarding this demonstration (we don't know the battery drain, we don't know the power required to spin the motor), there is no substance to this demonstration, and it consequently shows nothing. Quite aside from replications or lack thereof, there are NO QUANTITATIVE CLAIMS made about this demo! They're apparently not even *trying* to show anything with it! It looks cool, it goes around, maybe it's entertaining to watch, but that's all. Now -- back to appearances -- a scammer is not going to tell you what the battery drain is, and what the torque required to drive the motor is, because that would also require disclosing the technique used to measure same, which would open them up to being checked. And the check could show in short order that the numbers didn't match the claims. So, with this thought in mind, we can see that the Steorn folks are acting *exactly* like scammers: They are carefully avoiding making the numerical claims which would be necessary to provide any substance to their demonstration. Honest researchers publish numbers. Scammers wave their hands, or provide numbers which can't be checked. This bit of behavioral difference is *required* by the nature of scamming: The scammer hasn't got the numbers to back up the claims and so can't publish them (or, if he invents the numbers, he must assure that nobody can check the claimed values). Note well: CF researchers publish numbers. Many of them document everything they do, in painful detail. This is an important point to keep in mind: CF: lots of numbers. Steorn: No numbers. Hoyt Stearns tells us the battery merely modifies parameters and doesn't directly provide kinetic energy. But without knowing what parameters it modifies, that also tells us nothing, and we're left with no more information than we had before regarding inputs and outputs, and again, the demo shows nothing. According to pages on the Web describing the demo, the battery is powering an outer ring of coils, which sounds to me like it's doing something more than just modifying parameters -- but again, this is hearsay, based on vague statements to start with, without any numbers attached to anything. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 08:16 PM 12/15/2009, Terry Blanton wrote: We built a Bedini motor, specifically, the bicycle wheel type known as the school girl motor and measured the efficiency with a torque meter. We found the efficiency to be around 30%. The truth is that pulse charging of a battery removes the sulfides that accumulate on the plates. John knows this since he has a charger which he says rejuvenates golf cart batteries. Pulse motors fool a lot of people but not a torque meter. :-) In other words, the pulse charging of the battery in a Bedini motor operates the battery in a mode which extracts maximum energy from it. So the battery lasts much longer than expected. Is that correct? But the use of capacitors wouldn't be subject to this effect, and the decline in energy would be obvious, as voltage would continually decline until it was too low to operate the device. Hence such devices don't use capacitors in place of batteries. This is even without fraudulent intent. Add fraudulent intent, which sometimes appears later, when the inventor exhausts his approaches to perfect the device, but is under pressure to perform a demonstration or his funding gets yanked, etc., and all bets are off. There are countless ways to conceal an energy source. And that some parts of the device are not clearly visible simply amplifies suspicion that this is happening. Consider this from the point of view of a master con game: At this point, the obvious suspicion is that the power is being supplied by the battery. So, after they have run this demonstration for a while, then they start addressing the obvious objections. 1. The hours of observation. They remove the restriction. For a modest fee, enough to pay the security guard to sit there, you can watch as long as you want. They even make you pay the cost. Or maybe they even cover it, and just pay the guard themselves. Whatever is needed to overcome this obvious objection. 2. The battery. They have a capacitor battery replacement. They charge it up to the battery voltage and replace the battery with it. The device keeps running. They even show the capacitor voltage. Damn! The peak is staying constant or is even increasing slowly. 3. The translucent panels are replaced with clear ones. By this time the skeptics are flattened, all they can do is keep repeating Fraud! And they might be right, but because Steorn has addressed the obvious objections, ones which they set up in the first place by the way they arranged the demonstration, the skeptics are sufficiently beaten, in the eyes of possible investors, that more investment comes in. The real goal is this, not a demonstration. The demonstration has been arranged to set up this process. That's why such obvious objections are not addressed ab initio. It's quite skillful, politically. Set up your opponents to make false objections, then expose the objections as false. This creates inertia against your opponents, for if they made a series of false objections, they must be biased, right? Thus the argument that the objections have been answered gains legs. It looks to me like this is what they are doing, but there are more things in heaven and earth than I have dreamed of. Including incredibly sophisticated con games.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
rick friedrich likens steorn to bedini on bedini_monopole_3. (im fairly sure its steorn being talked about, since the whole thing was launched yesterday) : : : Subject: Every so often someone copies Bedini at the right time Posted by: rickfriedrich rickfriedr...@yahoo.com rickfriedrich Wed Dec 16, 2009 5:08 am (PST) Looks like yesterday another company copied a Bedini system and gave no credit. Just when the 10 coiler is about to go out someone else has to grab at the attention. I need not mention names, as a new name will appear doing the same thing in a few months. We are making progress on the latest monopole system. A few parts delays but nothing fundamental. A few last minute changes. The ten coiler will be capable of being a 30 coiler system on the frame provided by simply multiplying the rotor, coils, circuits and frame. Or it could be a 10 or 20 coiler with an extra rotor for the energizer coils just as this other company was attempting to show yesterday. The coils can feed back to the primary or power other loads. Again, John Bedini showed this back in 1984, and even published a book on doing it. He showed many ways to do this, and yet new companies spring up wishing to take avantage and not give credit. And they seem to do this always at a key time. I remember when I first started noticing this back in 2004 after the SG first got started. Suddenly people started pulling generators out of the closet which they didn't even know how to run. Got to cash in on the Bedini attention! Well I thought I would just make a little notice of this in the middle of the night when I don't have the time. The testing is coming along well. It is not an easy system to grasp. The trigger resistances are complex and require a lot of work to map out. I'm doing that work for everyone to save months of time. We are going to provide a lot of parts to vary the machine quite a bit. This gives maximum experimental benefit, as well as flexibility. I was running the system on smaller used batteries for days and they remained charged even though a good number of amps were constantly being drawn and the meter was showing 1/3rd of the amps going back into the secondary. If you like small 3 coiler then this is just much bigger. About 10,000 times the potential. It will do the same thing. Rick :: : : : so my question: is the steorn rig so similar to the bedini rig? both use batteries, both charge batteries, both capture with coils, and there's a rectification circuit. or at least in the case of steorn. what then?
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: If they are claiming to have working all-permanent-magnet motors, then either they're lying, or it's the Dawn of a New Era. You can't be confused about whether you have something or not, and a motor with *no* internal power source is not something you can sort of have, subject to interpretation -- you've either got it or you don't. Well . . . as the Devil's advocate I would say you might have it for a while and then not have it later on. The motor might break inexplicably, after someone tries to improve it. Things like that often happen in cold fusion. The best known example is Mizuno's heat after death experiment. Granted, that is a very different phenomenon. It seems likely that it is much harder to make Mizuno's even happen a second time than it would be to make a second magnetic motor. Mizuno's 100 g cathode was cut up and destructively tested years ago. People building revolutionary gadgets of this nature have a bad habit of destroying their prototypes, sometimes to re-use the parts, or sometimes just to make a bonfire to keep warm. (The Wright brothers used to burn their old gliders at Kitty Hawk, or give them to a women who used the cloth to make underwear. They almost burned the first powered airplane on December 17, 1903.) Hoyt Stearns reports here that the people at Steorn find it easier to work with a machine that combines permanent magnets with electromagnets, because this makes modifying the prototype a snap. I gather that is what he means. That sounds plausible. They don't want to bother making a fully self-sustaining one after you have established they can do that, because by making partially self-sustaining prototypes they make more rapid progress, and learn more about the phenomenon. I am not saying I believe that, but it is plausible. It reminds me a little of the situation with airplanes from 1905 to 1908. The standard set by most wannabe aviators was that you had to get off the ground unassisted. This was spelled out in detail by Wilbur Wright in a paper: the airplane had to leave the ground on its own power, fly under control, and land at a spot at the same level or higher than the place where it took off. That was a reasonable standard, but the fact is, after the summer 1904 the Wrights did not bother to meet it. They used a catapult to launch the airplanes. You might say that was cheating, but it was safer and more convenient. The airplanes were severely underpowered and took a long mono-rail runway to get airborne. They had already proved they did not need a catapult, so they stopped worrying about that standard. In August 1908, when Orville Wright got ready to fly in the first public demonstration in France, he and his assistants rolled out the airplane, and started to prepare the catapult to launch it. Some of the French aviators watching were angry and indignant, saying this is cheating. They kvetched and mocked him until he took off some minutes later. He leapt into the air and flew at high speed straight toward some trees. This would have killed any other aviator in the world, because no one else could control the aircraft. They could barely change course, by side-slipping in a dangerous and all-but-uncontrolled maneuver. They had no idea you have to change the shape of the wing and bank an airplane in order to turn. So the crowd gasped in horror, expecting to see Orville smash to smithereens at 40 mph in a moment. But Orville banked and flew neatly around the trees, came back to the starting point, and landed under perfect control. No aviator in Europe had ever done anything remotely like that. None even imagined it was possible. They instantly forgot about the catapult. The next day Orville was the most famous celebrity in Europe. Along the same lines, suppose several people independently test the Steorn gadgets. They measure input and output by rigorous methods, and find out it really is over unity, but it turns out the D cell is contributing slightly by varying the magnet configuration on fly. It turns out that method is a lot easier and more reliable than using only permanent magnets. People will quickly overlook that. It will be a trivial matter. It will be obvious that a more complicated version of the gadget can eliminate the D cell by adding a generator, just as it was obvious in 1908 that Orville Wright could have used a longer monorail to take off without the catapult. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/16/2009 10:45 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 08:16 PM 12/15/2009, Terry Blanton wrote: We built a Bedini motor, specifically, the bicycle wheel type known as the school girl motor and measured the efficiency with a torque meter. We found the efficiency to be around 30%. The truth is that pulse charging of a battery removes the sulfides that accumulate on the plates. John knows this since he has a charger which he says rejuvenates golf cart batteries. Pulse motors fool a lot of people but not a torque meter. :-) In other words, the pulse charging of the battery in a Bedini motor operates the battery in a mode which extracts maximum energy from it. So the battery lasts much longer than expected. Is that correct? But the use of capacitors wouldn't be subject to this effect, and the decline in energy would be obvious, as voltage would continually decline until it was too low to operate the device. Hence such devices don't use capacitors in place of batteries. This is even without fraudulent intent. Supposedly many free energy researchers have been fooled by the pulse-charge effect, which is, as I understand it, peculiar to lead-acid batteries. There was a guy with a self-charging electric car a while back, who eventually retracted his claims of OU; last I heard it sounded like he had been honest, and honestly sucked into believing his claims by the strange behavior of the batteries. Not so sure this applies to nicads or NiMH batteries, which Steorn is using. Add fraudulent intent, which sometimes appears later, when the inventor exhausts his approaches to perfect the device, but is under pressure to perform a demonstration or his funding gets yanked, etc., and all bets are off. There are countless ways to conceal an energy source. And that some parts of the device are not clearly visible simply amplifies suspicion that this is happening. Consider this from the point of view of a master con game: At this point, the obvious suspicion is that the power is being supplied by the battery. So, after they have run this demonstration for a while, then they start addressing the obvious objections. 1. The hours of observation. They remove the restriction. For a modest fee, enough to pay the security guard to sit there, you can watch as long as you want. They even make you pay the cost. Or maybe they even cover it, and just pay the guard themselves. Whatever is needed to overcome this obvious objection. This by itself wouldn't help much. The motor probably draws very, very little power. Rechargeables have a significant self-discharge rate, which may actually be comparable to the drain on the battery by the Steorn motor. Consequently the battery may very well run down in a few months, without showing anything at all about the truth or falsehood of their claims: A battery sitting in the display case with no external load at all would do the same thing. In other words, even if the battery eventually runs down, that doesn't mean their claims are false. Back to square 1: The demo shows nothing, positive or negative. 2. The battery. They have a capacitor battery replacement. They charge it up to the battery voltage and replace the battery with it. The device keeps running. They even show the capacitor voltage. Damn! The peak is staying constant or is even increasing slowly. You can stop right there. This step can not be part of a con. That's the end of the road; at that point we're done. The New Day has Dawned. No need for transparent panels, save to show there's no hidden battery anyplace. And, of course, it's the step we're never going to see.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 04:21 PM 12/15/2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: [Jed Rothwell wrote]: If Steorn is a scam, it is an inept one. Sez who? They've got investors. Ergo it's good enough for them, whether or not you think it's inept. What's more, by the very crude bumbling naivete of their public demonstrations, they have apparently more than half convinced you, Jed, that they're honest! I'd say that they're a pretty slick bunch. That's my conclusion as well. I've come to the conclusion that the weakness of the demo is part of their design. They will start taking the covers off, so to speak, having aroused a host of obvious objections. They will address these objections one at a time. It's designed to exhaust skepticism, not for the skeptics, but as the skeptics are perceived by potential investors. When you have raised a series of objections to the demo, and then all of them -- except the fundamental one based on theory -- have been shown to be spurious, an investor may well conclude that this is a case of knee-jerk rejection of new technology. And to find the real energy source (or to rule out that there is such) would require being able to take the thing apart and examine exhaustively every part, and the reassemble it and it still works. That's why independent replication based on specifications is so important. A step below that is a kit that operates and is sold as a toy. So you can do the taking apart and thorough examination, if you want. Supervised demonstrations with limitations on the observers are a classic setup for fraud. And given the circumstances and the depth of impact on theory and the way that Steorn is conducting itself, fraud must be the number one hypothesis, by this time. It wasn't necessarily the intention from the beginning, particularly if Hoyt is correct and there is some effect that appears to be over unity or somehow indicating it. Jed is incorrect. This could be a very sophisticated scam, from the point of view of design for psychological impact on investors. I can see no other explanation for the blatantly weak demonstration. It's to set up objections that can then be answered. They have arranged quite a few of these, set them up, without any obvious necessity. The hours of observation? No process could prevent a hidden energy source, which could be very well-designed and quite concealed, but it would be simple to set up a web cam that watches the thing. They might do that. And it would mean nothing. It's just that not allowing continuous observation sets up an objection, that they can then easily address. Same with the battery, same with the translucent panels, and my guess is that there are more such objections, it was there intention to set up as many of these as possible, then remove the veils. An old magician's trick, that distracts from the real sleight-of-hand. If I were them, trying to raise more capital, I'd have the power source be very carefully concealed within some component of the system, something that would be normally wired in. It could even be external, with power radiated into the device, picked up by coils. It could be something that I'd not even dream of. But monitoring all the voltages in the system would probably pick it up, or narrow down the possibilities, so, my guess, they won't allow that. And they can justify any nondisclosure as necessary for their protection. And investors who demand transparency before writing a check? Obviously you aren't ready to invest in this. We'll wait for investors who are willing to take risks in order to gain tremendous rewards. Go fly a kite. They don't need to attract many!
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/16/2009 11:06 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: That's my conclusion as well. I've come to the conclusion that the weakness of the demo is part of their design. They will start taking the covers off, so to speak, having aroused a host of obvious objections. They will address these objections one at a time. It's designed to exhaust skepticism, not for the skeptics, but as the skeptics are perceived by potential investors. When you have raised a series of objections to the demo, and then all of them -- except the fundamental one based on theory -- have been shown to be spurious, an investor may well conclude that this is a case of knee-jerk rejection of new technology. And to find the real energy source (or to rule out that there is such) would require being able to take the thing apart and examine exhaustively every part, and the reassemble it and it still works. That's why independent replication based on specifications is so important. You have tacitly assumed the device on display is faked in some way. I don't think so. That would be extremely dangerous. Observers are allowed to come right up to it, from what I've seen in photos on the web. One fortuitous discovery by a suspicious observer, and their whole house of cards would be down around their ankles. If they're caught faking the power source, they're dead meat. That could not ever be explained away. Far smoother, far safer, is to exhibit a device which does exactly what it appears to do, and which gets its power exactly where it appears to get it, which is the battery. There is no way an observer can discover anything bad about the machine, because there isn't anything bad to discover. The ultimate weapon in a confidence game is not sophisticated gadgetry or dazzling special effects. It's words. Confidence, aka trust, is the coin of the realm here; the ultimate blunder in a confidence game is to do something which destroys the confidence of the marks. Getting caught with a phony gadget would be such a blunder. (Incidentally, if they had a hidden power source, they could publish battery drain and torque numbers, and show that the power out is conclusively higher than the power in.)
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
Hoyt, Can you help us (me) out here... without violating the principals of the NDA. Can it be conclusively proven (at least beyond a reasonable amount of doubt) that the battery is in no way connected to the actual running of the ORBO device? This HAS to be dealt with. This HAS to be clarified. No way around it. Because of the suspiciously close proximity of that damned D cell, I don’t know what to believe. What does Stoern expect other reasonable people to believe as well!!! For the moment I have no reasonable choice left but to remain skeptical. Heaven help Steorn. Help us out here. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 11:00 AM 12/16/2009, Esa Ruoho wrote: I was running the system on smaller used batteries for days and they remained charged even though a good number of amps were constantly being drawn and the meter was showing 1/3rd of the amps going back into the secondary. Take a hint. Fine to set it up and start it with batteries, but batteries are tricky to monitor, they don't easily show the exact state of the charge. Put together a capacitor bank with enough depth (farads) to cover the draw phase, and charge it up to the battery voltage. Then once you are running, take the battery out of the circuit. You can then directly monitor the power storage by monitoring the capacitor voltage. No guessing. You will know right away if you are over unity, and how much, or, if you are under unity, exactly how much you are under unity. The larger the capacitance, the more even the available voltage will be. I'd think of making it really large, so you would not want to directly connect the battery to the capacitor, that can melt wires! You'd charge through a resistor. You could make all this part of one circuit, with a switch on the battery, or you could eliminate the battery and use a power supply which you then, once the thing is running, disconnect. Unless, of course, you want a demonstration that looks reasonably good through the idea that a battery couldn't possible last this long. As another pointed out, pulse charging can make batteries last much longer than we might expect. But a capacitor won't lie.
RE: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
Hoyt (the Insider) Stearns wrote, :-) The energy in the battery does not go to the kinetic energy of the rotor, it is used as an easy way to modify some parameters of the device. In watching the Launch 2009 video where some closeups and animations are shown, they show what looks like a small electromagnet; a metallic cylinder with a coil of fine copper wire around its end that faces the rotor. WHAT IF that metallic cylinder is not an iron core, but is a permanent magnet? This is the all PM motor, and the coil is used to 'modify some parameters' as Hoyt states. In all PM motors, the problem that must be solved is the cogging effect. Pulse these coils at the right time and they cancel or reduce the cogging effect of the PM stator magnets... Yes, agree that this demo really does not prove anything, and could have easily been configured (monitoring V and I) to be more definitive... NO, these guys are not stupid, so whatever they've done is probably well thought out. Whether it's a good strategy or not won't take more than a couple of weeks/months. -Mark
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 11:08 AM 12/16/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: If they are claiming to have working all-permanent-magnet motors, then either they're lying, or it's the Dawn of a New Era. You can't be confused about whether you have something or not, and a motor with *no* internal power source is not something you can sort of have, subject to interpretation -- you've either got it or you don't. Well . . . as the Devil's advocate I would say you might have it for a while and then not have it later on. The motor might break inexplicably, after someone tries to improve it. Things like that often happen in cold fusion. The best known example is Mizuno's heat after death experiment. Granted, that is a very different phenomenon. It seems likely that it is much harder to make Mizuno's even happen a second time than it would be to make a second magnetic motor. Mizuno's 100 g cathode was cut up and destructively tested years ago. Look, the demonstration device seems pretty simple. If all that had existed wrt cold fusion in 1989 was something like you described (after, say, a year), almost all of us would have remained very, very skeptical. Sure, with fragile effects, trying to improve it can quench it. That's why I not trying to improve it, at least not at first. I want to set up a reliable replication, period. I can fiddle with the observational techniques, look for different stuff, but I'm being careful about what I vary in the experiment itself. If the original experiment worked, mine should work as well, but I'm aware that *any* variation, even something that seems harmless, could cause a problem, and that is where I'll look first if I don't see radiation evidence. People building revolutionary gadgets of this nature have a bad habit of destroying their prototypes, sometimes to re-use the parts, or sometimes just to make a bonfire to keep warm. (The Wright brothers used to burn their old gliders at Kitty Hawk, or give them to a women who used the cloth to make underwear. They almost burned the first powered airplane on December 17, 1903.) Hoyt Stearns reports here that the people at Steorn find it easier to work with a machine that combines permanent magnets with electromagnets, because this makes modifying the prototype a snap. I gather that is what he means. That sounds plausible. They don't want to bother making a fully self-sustaining one after you have established they can do that, because by making partially self-sustaining prototypes they make more rapid progress, and learn more about the phenomenon. Partially self-sustaining. Cool. But not over unity. Not what they are claiming to know how to do. This has happened again and again. They are *not* reporting their experimental results, the results that would lead them to think they have found an anomaly. Partially self-sustaining is not an anomaly, that is normal, if the feedback is set up so that some of the expended energy is fed back. The real question is the magnitudes, in this case. Look. Make a device that uses an electric motor to pull a weight up a pulley. Then run a generator from the weight falling back down. Presto: partially self-sustaining. Sure, if you can show that there is some excess energy in some part of the system, you'd have something that might be engineered into an over-unity device, especially if the effect is scalable. Unless, of course, you make some mistake in your measurements or your understanding of theory. But that capacitor bank would show it. Absolutely, feedback of energy would lengthen the time of operation of the device. But measurements of rotational velocity, combined with measurements of the capacitor voltage, both monitored at the same time, would show what's happening, unless fraud is involved. I am not saying I believe that, but it is plausible. Anything is possible, Jed, it's a consequence of quantum mechanics. However, that doesn't make it likely enough to even discuss What's highly likely here, by this time, is fraud. The demonstration characteristics can only be explained, at this point, by one of two alternate theories. You proposed one, that they are stupid. The other is that they are not stupid, they are quite clever, and they have designed the demonstration for maximum desired effect, measured not by voltage and power and such details, but by the amount of money extracted from investors. The deficiencies of the demonstration are entirely too obvious to allow the simple explanation of self-deceived stupidity, and are inconsistent with reports that real engineers are involved. They know exactly what they are doing, and they are doing it brilliantly. Really, you have to appreciate that. You know very well that I won't reject experimental results based on theory. But there are no experimental results here. Nothing. There is a motor running. No variables. No controls. No data at all. Some diagrams that are so
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/16/2009 12:07 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 11:00 AM 12/16/2009, Esa Ruoho wrote: No he didn't. Esa Ruoho quoted rickfriedrich from the bedini_monopole_3 forum. It was Rick who was experimenting with the Bedini motor described here, not Esa, and AFAIK Rick isn't on Vortex. Rick's batteries are apparently magic, if I understood this quote; he says a good number of amps were constantly being drawn [from the batteries?] but the batteries remained charged; I don't understand that. He must have meant something other than how I interpreted his words. I was running the system on smaller used batteries for days and they remained charged even though a good number of amps were constantly being drawn and the meter was showing 1/3rd of the amps going back into the secondary. Take a hint. Fine to set it up and start it with batteries, but batteries are tricky to monitor, they don't easily show the exact state of the charge. Put together a capacitor bank with enough depth (farads) to cover the draw phase, and charge it up to the battery voltage. Then once you are running, take the battery out of the circuit. You can then directly monitor the power storage by monitoring the capacitor voltage. No guessing. You will know right away if you are over unity, and how much, or, if you are under unity, exactly how much you are under unity. The larger the capacitance, the more even the available voltage will be. I'd think of making it really large, so you would not want to directly connect the battery to the capacitor, that can melt wires! You'd charge through a resistor. You could make all this part of one circuit, with a switch on the battery, or you could eliminate the battery and use a power supply which you then, once the thing is running, disconnect. Unless, of course, you want a demonstration that looks reasonably good through the idea that a battery couldn't possible last this long. As another pointed out, pulse charging can make batteries last much longer than we might expect. But a capacitor won't lie.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/16/2009 12:35 PM, Mark Iverson wrote: Hoyt (the Insider) Stearns wrote, :-) The energy in the battery does not go to the kinetic energy of the rotor, it is used as an easy way to modify some parameters of the device. In watching the Launch 2009 video where some closeups and animations are shown, they show what looks like a small electromagnet; a metallic cylinder with a coil of fine copper wire around its end that faces the rotor. WHAT IF that metallic cylinder is not an iron core, but is a permanent magnet? This is the all PM motor, and the coil is used to 'modify some parameters' as Hoyt states. In all PM motors, the problem that must be solved is the cogging effect. Pulse these coils at the right time and they cancel or reduce the cogging effect of the PM stator magnets... And as someone here observed many months ago (Terry, maybe?), if it takes less energy to get over a hump in the cog than you gain back when you slide down the other side of the hump, then you can just hook the thing up to a big flywheel and dispense with the electromagnet. If you *can't* do that, if a flywheel just doesn't do the job and the motor always slows down and stops when a flywheel is substituted for the electromagnets, then it's a very safe bet that it's under unity. Incidentally, the problem which must be solved in all PM motors is conservation of energy. Interactions of permanent magnets are conservative, which makes it ... shall we say ... *difficult* to build a motor out of them. (Trying to get energy out of interactions between permanent magnets by carefully choosing the approach and retreat paths is a lot like trying to milk energy out of the difference between two derivatives, where the two values are obtained by taking the partials in a different order ... trouble is, they commute, and there isn't any difference...) Unless someone comes up with evidence that EM fields don't superpose linearly, all PM motors are non-starters, because the fundamental interactions between moving charges and permanent dipoles are conservative, and summing a bunch of conservative forces leaves you with a conservative force. See, for instance: http://physicsinsights.org/magnetic_motors_1.html Yes, agree that this demo really does not prove anything, and could have easily been configured (monitoring V and I) to be more definitive... NO, these guys are not stupid, so whatever they've done is probably well thought out. Whether it's a good strategy or not won't take more than a couple of weeks/months. They'll draw it out a lot longer than that, I'm quite sure. I would bet a great deal that at the end of this demonstration, some time in January, things will be every bit as murky as they are today. Nothing will be revealed, nothing will be resolved.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
Regarding recent comments made by Hoyt Stearns: ... Their strategy is rather bizarre, but in a way I think it is ingenious for many reasons (speculative): They must prove that their techniques are not obvious to anyone skilled in the art for patentability, even though they are extremely simple. They have released many clues over the years, and still no one has conclusively made a self runner ( except one person who was unable to repeat his experiment after trying to optimize it ). They must avoid serious attention of the Men In Black. This is a delicate balancing act. I’m reminded of a great move “The Verdict” starring the late Paul Newman as a has-been down and out of his luck lawyer forced to feed off the bereaved at funeral homes. In the movie there was a classic comment uttered by another equally seedy lawyer. I gather the “advice” being dispensed is a cross examination tactic most defense/prosecution lawyers must know by heart: Never ask a question of a witness on the stand for which you don’t already know the answer. * * * So, what does STEORN know, and when did Steorn know it? ;-) Hoyt, please correct me if I’m wrong here but you seem to be implying that Steorn may be deliberately attempting to “herd” all the rabid skeptics and debunkers down a particular line of reasoning, and then at the right moment, go in “for the kill.” According to this “theory”, it seems to me that Steorn would have to have actively speculated that they knew using the D cell on the contraption would immediately draw significant criticism and yells of “fraud!” from all the card-carrying disbelievers. It also implies to me that, in order to execute an effective “kill” Steorn would have to ALREADY have the equivalent of another prototype in hiding, a prototype that they plan on rolling out at a pregnant moment of public scrutiny, a prototype that clearly does NOT have a “D” cell configuration, a new prototype that clearly is not getting any external electrical energy from such an obviously prosaic source. Such a planned tactic would have to attempt to control and funnel all the active debunking criticism down a very specific shoot of “reasoning”. Lead them all down to the ol’slaughter house, and then at the right moment, whack them over the head. Hopefully, they’ll never know what hit them! ;-) Ok... back to Earth, Steve! While this is obviously outlandish speculation on my part, in fact speculation that seems to break the basic sensibilities of Occam’s Razor, it is a potential tactic that is not entirely unheard of. I’m sure variations have been executed many times within certain international CIA operations. It COULD be extremely effective if everyone knows the role they must play and WHEN to speak their lines clearly. Maybe it will work. Or maybe not. I think it would be a very dangerous game to play, particularly for those inexperienced in playing the game of trying to control (funnel) all the major lines of skeptical reasoning to a very specific point where it can be destroyed, utterly. Based on Steorn’s past record, specifically the failed 2007 demonstration, their operations seemed to indicate they weren’t terribly skilled at the game of manipulating public opinion to their favor. I hope Steorn has done their homework when it comes to running covert operations. ;-) Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 2:01 PM, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson svj.orionwo...@gmail.com wrote: I hope Steorn has done their homework when it comes to running covert operations. ;-) Obviously not. They are swapping out units every few hours. The Village of the Banned are tracking the swap outs in this thread: begin Steorn: Orbo swap tracking Bottom of Page 1 to 10 of 12 1. * CommentAuthorblueletter * CommentTime2 hours ago edited quote# 1 Track the Orbo machine swaps here. Identified from From camera 2: Shelf 1 = 1 O'Clock machine Shelf 2 = 5 O'Clock machine (camera 1 shelf) Shelf 3 = 9 O'Clock machine Format Date: Date (y , m , d) Time: Time and TimeZone Shelf: 1, 2, or 3 Tech: Physical description of tech Notes: Any special notes 2. * CommentAuthorblueletter * CommentTime2 hours ago quote# 2 I know there were more through the night and this morning, but here's the first official one on this thread... Date: 2009-12-16 Time: ~16:35 UTC Shelf: 1 Tech: Skinny, bearded guy Notes: Swapped with a unit that was on the floor behind or under camera 1 3. * CommentAuthoralsetalokin * CommentTime1 hour ago quote# 3 Too bad there doesn't seem to be a way to fingerprint each individual machine. Do we even know how many there are? I take it that 4 is the lower limit. 4. * CommentAuthorStarterKit * CommentTime1 hour ago quote# 4 All webcams down Time: 18:02 UTC 5. * CommentAuthorblueletter * CommentTime1 hour ago quote# 5 Date: 2009-12-16 Time: ~18:00 UTC Shelf: ? Tech: ? Notes: All streams offline 6. * CommentAuthoralsetalokin * CommentTime1 hour ago quote# 6 Another one bites the dust. And another one's gone..another one's gone.. 7. * CommentAuthorblueletter * CommentTime1 hour ago edited quote# 7 Date: 2009-12-16 Time: ~18:10 UTC Shelf: ? Tech: ? Notes: Cameras 1 and 2 back up. Have the alligator clips in Camera 1 been adjusted? 8. * CommentAuthoralsetalokin * CommentTime58 minutes ago quote# 8 Or perhaps it's a different unit altogether? Since that seems to be the pattern. Orbo slows, tachoman gets worried, Orbo slows further, device is fiddled with or removed and swapped, cameras go dead and return to life, everything is spinning happily along. 9. * CommentAuthorspinner * CommentTime22 minutes ago quote# 9 They're just warming up all the Orbos... In the following day, they'll not just remove batteries completely, they'll also put all the orbos in parralel energy producing configuration. Output will be following the n^n principle, so expect to see the Waterways surroundings off grid by the Christmas Anyway, I've not been following this charade lately so I'd be grateful if someone provides me with a short brief of what has happened since the start... Thanks! 10. * CommentAuthormaryyugo * CommentTime15 minutes ago quote# 10 In brief, best guess as to what Steorn is has changed from self-delusion (as per Dr. Mike) to plain fraud. Back to Discussions Top of Page end So, not only are the batteries running down (obvious from the slowing of the motors discussed in another thread) but the units seem to be failing. The cameras also go off line at convenient times. What in heck are they up to? Too much Irish whiskey? And yes, that Alsetalokin is the same guy from the youtube vids a few months back. Terry
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Look, the demonstration device seems pretty simple. Many things seem simple but are not. They don't want to bother making a fully self-sustaining one after you have established they can do that, because by making partially self-sustaining prototypes they make more rapid progress, and learn more about the phenomenon. Partially self-sustaining. Cool. But not over unity. Not what they are claiming to know how to do. That is not what I meant. I meant that perhaps the thing is producing anomalous energy, even enough to keep it rotating, but they are augmenting the power slightly with the battery because that happens to be convenient. This would be like running a cold fusion cell with laser stimulation, where you know that the laser input adds slightly to the heat, but you don't bother trying to take it into account because the calorimeter is not sensitive enough to detect it accurately during calibration. (Depending on the instrument, it can be harder to measure heat close to zero; the difference between 0.00 and 0.010 can be harder to measure than 0.450 and 0.460.) That's not exactly cheating. Let me repeat, I am playing devil's advocate here. I do not seriously believe these claims. On the other hand, there have been several magic magnetic motor claims over the years and I am not quite ready to dismiss them all. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/16/2009 02:23 PM, Terry Blanton wrote: So, not only are the batteries running down (obvious from the slowing of the motors discussed in another thread) but the units seem to be failing. The cameras also go off line at convenient times. What in heck are they up to? Too much Irish whiskey? Conclusions: 1) They're not slick, after all. (I was certainly wrong about that.) I guess we should have guessed that from the earlier fiasco. 2) They're not all that bright, it appears. This isn't going to convince anyone of anything good, and they should have at least had a good idea of how long their batteries would last. Did they even test this design before they set up the demo? 3) There's no hidden power source. 4) Their demo is obviously totally phony. 5) This is too blatant to be self-deception. Nobody capable of building a motor of any sort could be so totally retarded as these guys would need to be to continue believing their own nonsense with stuff like this going on. 6) When I said things would still be murky come the end of January, I was wrong. Didn't someone have a theory that they were doing all this just to show how good they are at running a PR campaign? If Steorn really does have investors, they may get into rather deep trouble over this -- they are surely in violation of a number of securities laws. Madoff's team had no exit strategy, which I found nearly inexplicable. Perhaps these folks have the same disease (whatever it is). A perpmo machine built from existing novelty toys would work better than their demo.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/16/2009 02:23 PM, Terry Blanton wrote: What in heck are they up to? Too much Irish whiskey? Does anyone here have any idea what Sean McCarthy's management style is like? Is it possible that he's an autocrat who won't take no for an answer, and only listens to people who (pretend to) agree with him? Since he's not, himself, a technical hotshot IIRC, that could explain a lot of things. The emails from Madoff's programmers made it seem pretty clear that competent people will do totally dishonest things, and things which won't even work save in the very short run, if they're so ordered.
RE: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
I'm on thin ice with that question, so all I can say is it is connected, but not in the normal way. All the battery energy is dissipated as heat, not KE. Hoyt -Original Message- From: OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson [mailto:svj.orionwo...@gmail.com] Can it be conclusively proven (at least beyond a reasonable amount of doubt) that the battery is in no way connected to the actual running of the ORBO device?
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 2:44 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com wrote: Didn't someone have a theory that they were doing all this just to show how good they are at running a PR campaign? Maybe that's it; otherwise, I can't figure them out. Why would they risk another failed demo after 2007? Terry
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
Terry sez: Didn't someone have a theory that they were doing all this just to show how good they are at running a PR campaign? Maybe that's it; otherwise, I can't figure them out. Why would they risk another failed demo after 2007? I don't admit to having an answer, but I do know this theory has been bandied about plenty of times over the years. It's also a favorite conclusion written up at Wikipedia, the ultimate source of accurate information! ;-) Personally, I've never been able to buy into it as a plausible explanation for Steorn's admittedly puzzling behavior. To my way of thinking one would have to throw out Occam's Razor and start assuming a lot of unproven assumptions. What's the payoff? ...That Steorn is really good at manipulating PR? ...That they they can pull a fast one on everyone? There seems to be an equally unproven assumption that if Steorn can pull it off that future prospective clients will know that they, too, will be able to cash in on Steorn's PR skills and make tons of money by hiring them to manipulate PR to their own advantage. Such convoluted reasoning stretches my own internal BS scale. However, I also have to confess that having such a conclusion prominently displayed over at Wikipedia as the preferred explanation probably didn't help my predisposition in taking it seriously. ;-) Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/16/2009 03:37 PM, Hoyt A. Stearns Jr. wrote: I'm on thin ice with that question, so all I can say is it is connected, but not in the normal way. All the battery energy is dissipated as heat, not KE. Two things, neither one a question (I realize you're standing on thin ice with an NDA). 1) I hope you haven't given them any money. If you have, I'd suggest that you hold off throwing any more in after it. Honest or not, where I'm sitting their future doesn't look bright. (I'm good at recognizing bad investments, by the way -- I loaded up on building stocks exactly at the peak of the market, I bought CanWest stock just before they filed for bankruptcy, I bought Silly Graphics stock just before they filed for bankruptcy ... like a moth with a lightbulb, I can spot a bad investment miles away ...) 2) It can be very difficult to determine exactly where the energy's going when looking at an electromagnet driven by either AC or pulsed DC. An assertion that it's all going into heat can be easy to believe but the devil is always in the details with EM fields, and it's easy to overlook an unexpected but vital coupling between components. So, beware -- any analysis of a complex system of this sort is automatically suspect, just because mistakes are so easy to make. Like the rotating lever paradox of SR, a small number of components does not necessarily prefigure an easy analysis. Hoyt -Original Message- From: OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson [mailto:svj.orionwo...@gmail.com] Can it be conclusively proven (at least beyond a reasonable amount of doubt) that the battery is in no way connected to the actual running of the ORBO device?
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
Steven V Johnson wrote: What's the payoff? ...That Steorn is really good at manipulating PR? No. On the contrary, they seem really, really bad at PR! ...That they they can pull a fast one on everyone? Heck, I would be surprised if they can pull a fast one on anyone, never mind everyone. These people appear to be incompetent. So are many others in the over-unity energy business. That would explain just about everything. Whether they are sincere or conducting a scam, either way, they are doing a terrible job. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
Only Steorn's people know what the plans are, but many of us think that their activities are carefully orchestrated and they're keeping to the plan, as bizarre as it seems ( but I sure wish it had been a whole helluva lot faster ). Steorn is definitely keeping a low, sometimes misleading profile. Speculation: Imagine that fortuitously (which it was) you discover that magnetic fields really aren't conservative in spite of what you learned in college ( or due to Noether's theorm ( conservation laws don't apply in time varying systems )), and Sv ( Magnetic viscosity ) ( Time delay between an applied H field to a ferromagnetic material, and the material's domain response to it ). I look at the anomalies as emergent properties of highly non-linear time varying systems that are effectively unanalyzeable. There would be an infinite number of embodyments that could make use of that knowledge. So how does a company make a profit with such a basic piece of knowledge? If it was just summarily proved, the Chinese et al. would immediately start producing products making use of the knowledge, and it would be the end of the game for Steorn ( Once something is shown to be possible, everyone and their relatives get involved e.g. nuclear devices ). In any case, I have seen numerous configurations of their permanent magnet motor designs, but Steorn has never actually shown one working to us except for the Knapen Kinetron video, but they have been hand holding ( hand waving ) us through the theory. The NDA does not permit revealing the contents of the NDA ( It's a meta-NDA :-) ), however I feel free to discuss anything I've already seen publicly revealed. They'll let you sign one too if you want, they'll let anyone have one ( unless you have a particularly unsavory past :-) ). I'll just be patient, as hard as it is to do that. -Original Message- From: OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson [mailto:svj.orionwo...@gmail.com]
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/16/2009 04:30 PM, Hoyt A. Stearns Jr. wrote: Only Steorn's people know what the plans are, but many of us think that their activities are carefully orchestrated and they're keeping to the plan, as bizarre as it seems ( but I sure wish it had been a whole helluva lot faster ). Steorn is definitely keeping a low, sometimes misleading profile. Speculation: Imagine that fortuitously (which it was) you discover that magnetic fields really aren't conservative in spite of what you learned in college But I didn't learn that in college. (The old you are a trained seal attack...) In college I learned that B fields do no work, which is rather different, and, what's more, patently false (but it's amazing how many physicists who ought to know better will stubbornly stick to that mantra). A long time later, I learned that the action of a B field is conservative when I worked through the equations and found that forces on a fixed dipole in a B field can be modeled as the gradient of a potential. Combined with the model of the action of B fields on electromagnets, which can also be shown to be conservative, we can arrive at the conclusion that any system of E and B fields will behave conservatively ... IF they superpose linearly. ( or due to Noether's theorm ( conservation laws don't apply in time varying systems )), and Sv ( Magnetic viscosity ) ( Time delay between an applied H field to a ferromagnetic material, and the material's domain response to it ). I look at the anomalies as emergent properties of highly non-linear time varying systems that are effectively unanalyzeable. The trouble with this notion is that, if the fields superpose linearly (as theory says, and as an awful lot of experiments show that they do), then all you need to know is that the individual entities interact conservatively, and you can conclude that the whole object will also behave conservatively, even if the interactions are so complicated that you can't analyze all the details. I.e., as long as the fields superpose linearly, there won't be any real anomalies. The system also isn't really time-varying. You have the same set of particles throughout the whole operation, and they're generating the same set of fields the whole time; they're just moving around relative to each other. You never turn on or turn off any of the fields involved. It's like the Solar System. It's far too complex to be fully analyzed, but using Newton's laws, we can still conclude that energy will be conserved in the interactions of the planets, because it's conserved pairwise and because the interactions add linearly. It's only if the fields superpose nonlinearly that the system will really behave in a nonlinear (and essentially unpredictable) manner. Gravitational interactions as modeled in GR, for instance, are astonishingly hard to figure out, because the GR model is indeed nonlinear -- unlike Newtonian gravity, or EM fields. There would be an infinite number of embodyments that could make use of that knowledge. So how does a company make a profit with such a basic piece of knowledge? If it was just summarily proved, the Chinese et al. would immediately start producing products making use of the knowledge, and it would be the end of the game for Steorn ( Once something is shown to be possible, everyone and their relatives get involved e.g. nuclear devices ). In any case, I have seen numerous configurations of their permanent magnet motor designs, but Steorn has never actually shown one working to us except for the Knapen Kinetron video, but they have been hand holding ( hand waving ) us through the theory. That would disturb me. (I mean, the bit about never actually showing a working model.) The NDA does not permit revealing the contents of the NDA ( It's a meta-NDA :-) ), however I feel free to discuss anything I've already seen publicly revealed. They'll let you sign one too if you want, they'll let anyone have one ( unless you have a particularly unsavory past :-) ). No thanks. I'll just be patient, as hard as it is to do that. -Original Message- From: OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson [mailto:svj.orionwo...@gmail.com]
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
The missing honesty phenomenon On Wed, 16 Dec 2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: I would like to caution readers that this argument by Stephen A. Lawrence is logically invalid: Looking like a scammer is not good when you're trying to lure investors. Really talented con men show you everything, and convince you it means something other than what it really means. That cannot be falsified. You're talking about science, not really about logic, which assumes honesty on the part of all players. If the presence of con men has significant probability, you're not doing science anymore. And logic becomes fairly useless, since every single input to equations is not to be trusted. If every part of claims, evidence, reasoning, rules, etc. very probably is composed of carefully-crafted lies, and the liars are smarter and more psychologically sophisticated than we are, then we can't trust evidence coming from that source. I say the same thing Stephen is apparently saying: WHERE F-E DEVICES ARE CONCERNED, DON'T TRUST THE INVENTORS' EVIDENCE. Assume that you're dealing with a very intelligent version of Dennis Lee or Joe Newman. They're guilty until proven innocent. Distrust everything they say. Distrust even that any statement is a guaranteed lie, since telling the truth at the right moment often pays. In that case, what are our options? Simple. Same as they ever were. Cut the evidence loose from the probable-contaminated source. Give us an operating Orbo. Or better yet, get it working, then leave the building and let us mess with it. Scammers can never do this. As long as Steorn refuses to do this, they are possible scammers, possibly innocent. They *avoid judgement*, they keep themselves in the fuzzy realm. They never stick one big toe out of the fuzz. They remain impossible-to-judge. Nothing ever happens that lets us settle the issue. Why? Obviously someone has to produce this situation. It's very probably not an accident. Suppose we can't find solid evidence of dishonesty. So instead search for evidence of honesty. If it's a scammer, we won't find it. Their statements could be true, or could be deceptive rhetoric and sophistry, but we're never sure. We give them the benefit of the doubt over and over and over. We can never catch them in a lie and reliably decide they're scammers, but we don't hear an obvious truth either. That's the sign. With honest people, this fuzz/smoke/impossible-to- judge-them stuff is missing. With honest companies, we don't have to give them the benefit of the doubt over and over continously without end. I've heard this effect described as living in Oz. When you're dealing with a profoundly dishonest person, you're now living in Oz, where nothing is normal anymore, nothing is what it seems. It's the opposite of the simple clarity of an honest situation. Or think this way: if the scam is finally revealed; if Steorn principals suddenly vanish with all the investment money, or if they suddenly admit that it was all a mistake from the beginning ...won't everyone insist that Steorn displayed in great detail every bit of the behavior that scam companies have displayed again and again and again? Or contrarywise, if the device is finally proved real, everyone will wonder why Steorn so carefully in great detail reproduced the actions of someone running a scam. Why do that? It's just bizarre. More likely they're just con artists. If you were Steorn, you'd work day and night to avoid both of the above. You can't announce success, but you can't announce any type of permanent failure. So just be like all the other FE scammers; just keep researching. Never stop the work. Keep the money flowing, but let the situation slowly change. The first group of 'marks' might complain ...but there never will be a large group of them who all suddenly complains at the same time. Most important: GIVE REFUNDS. Only a small group will demand their money back. Keep researching, that way nothing ever triggers a significant group of people to decide it's a con, and come after you. By that standard it is impossible to distinguish an honest inventor who is showing everything from a con-man who is only pretending to show everything. Easy: remove the source of possible dishonesty: wide replication. Or at the very least, independent 3rd party testing. Con artists won't do either of these. But con artists have to avoid being found out. Therefore they have to maintain sensible excuses for lack of outside testing and replication. We hear the excuses, and we once again give them the benefit of the doubt. Don't listen to those excuses. An honest company wouldn't pull this crap, and wouldn't need those excuses. Every step the inventor takes to bolster his bona fides also bolsters the likelihood he is a con-man. Not at all. By publishing full information allowing replication? By building working copies and sending them out to universities? By selling the device as a
RE: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On Wed, 16 Dec 2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: If it can be shown conclusively that the battery is connected only to the control electronics, Why mess with such complexity? Just put a stupid frikn supercap in there, and measure the voltage. Here, I have five different kinds in a box here. Two minutes work. End of story. and it does not power the motor, then it might as well be a D cell battery. For that matter, it might as well be a DC power supply. In an area were scams were rare, that would work fine. In FE business, Steorn is a guilty scammer until they prove their innocence through obvious and continuing honest behavior. For now, I think a D cell is not a big issue. There are so many ways to fake it, and they have done such a poor job of presenting the device, the battery hardly affects their credibility. That poor job... since we're dealing with a scammer-ridden topic area, we should consider whether it's really carefully-crafted to appear like a poor job. Frankly, if Steorn was a major user of vortex-L, I'd have thrown them off after seeing enough of the fuzzy smokescreen behavior. They're behaving very much like Doctor Stiffler: no very obvious dishonesty, but a huge glaring lack of honesty. (( ( ( ( ((O)) ) ) ) ))) William J. BeatySCIENCE HOBBYIST website billb at amasci com http://amasci.com EE/programmer/sci-exhibits amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair Seattle, WA 206-762-3818unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On Wed, 16 Dec 2009, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: In fact they claimed this back before their earlier demo, which was supposed to show just such a motor, if I recall correctly; however, it didn't. We expected them to finally at long last prove in a simple manner that the device is real. We wait for the announcement and videos. But then ...they don't?! What? IT CONTAINS A BATTERY? WTF ARE THOSE ASSHOLES TOTALTY FREEKING INSANE?!!! Oh, sorry I forgot. That's just scammer behavior #8 8. The company performs public demonstrations... but something always goes wrong. If it's a scam, then the failure was planned all along. When the inventor starts a demonstration, watch for the failure which excuses the inventor from having to actually prove the device. Or more rarely, the demonstration is simple fraud, such as a hidden power supply, or something similar to water-to-gasoline chemistry demonstrations where the stirring spoon has a wax plug which melts and releases the gasoline from a hidden pocket. So the failure was to inadvertently include a battery. A battery. In a FE demonstration. Oops. It was by accident. They have a good excuse. Really. After seeing that, some people might give Steorn... the benefit of the doubt. I bet that's the 30th time they gave it. (After all, if you or I were building that demo device, we'd think nothing of including a battery, right? NOoo!) Oh, here's another one. Scammers don't only take investors. They need to separate marks from their money, so they also do things to get thousands of people to send them smaller amounts of money. Sell expensive plans (which all the small disgusting normal people can't afford.) Let them join an insider club that gives out secret info that the unwashed rabble never sees. 7. It's NOT the company's number one goal to prove that the invention is real. The scam company seems to have no goal besides creating an aura of attractive secrets: secrets which will only be revealed to an in-group of superior blue-blooded investors, while we rabble on the outside are obviously inferior since we haven't invested and don't know the secrets. (It's the old treasure map trick, playing to your victim's self- importance.) Scamsters have all sorts of other tricks to appeal to snobbery or play up to the egos of investors. They also have many really sensible excuses for not proving that their discovery is real. But honest companies just sit down and prove their claims beyond any doubt BEFORE gathering investors. After all, its unethical to take investors' money for extremely questionable and totally unproven devices as if they were normal inventions developed by reliable companies. I wrote that, when? Late 2005? Was that before Steorn's stuff? (( ( ( ( ((O)) ) ) ) ))) William J. BeatySCIENCE HOBBYIST website billb at amasci com http://amasci.com EE/programmer/sci-exhibits amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair Seattle, WA 206-762-3818unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On Wed, 16 Dec 2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: It reminds me a little of the situation with airplanes from 1905 to 1908. Was flying machine plagued constantly by con artists taking money from enormous numbers of people? I.e. was it akin to lead-into-gold alchemist research, or known-shady used car dealerships? Did wise investors have to assume a scam was in progress until innocence was proven? Did flying machines have a large number of exposed con games in its history? If not, then the Wrights' situation was nothing at all like Steorns, and you're just giving them the benefit of the doubt (yet again, over and over repeatedly. Ask yourself why such a thing is necessary. It's certainly not normal business as usual.) (( ( ( ( ((O)) ) ) ) ))) William J. BeatySCIENCE HOBBYIST website billb at amasci com http://amasci.com EE/programmer/sci-exhibits amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair Seattle, WA 206-762-3818unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
The Steorn Demo RIG - jpeg and PDF format. check it. http://www.steorn.com/demo/rig/ also something: http://www.steorn.com/demo/ Visit Steorn's Orbo technology demonstration at the Waterways Ireland Visitor Centre in Dublin What we're doing We are delighted to announce the live demonstration of Orbo technology. As well as streaming live to the world via steorn.com http://www.steorn.com/, we are opening the demonstration to the public for free. Come down to the Waterways Ireland Visitor Centre to see our technology at work. During December there will be a series of talks about Orbo technology by Steorn CEO, Sean McCarthy. Then in January we will be streaming the validation and replication. Full schedule of events to follow. On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 10:33 PM, Esa Ruoho esaru...@gmail.com wrote: a friend gave that, its not mine, i've never seen anything. On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 10:32 PM, Esa Ruoho esaru...@gmail.com wrote: http://i844.photobucket.com/albums/ab6/mensor_2009/steorndemo.jpg
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
http://www.steorn.com/images/rig01.pdf
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
*Latest Steorn Press Release* Steorn is pleased to announce that public demonstrations of its controversial Orbo technology will begin today in Dublin and continue for the next six weeks. Orbo technology, which has been in development for six years, provides free, clean and constant energy at the point of use. It can be engineered to power anything from a phone to a fridge to a car. It is controversial because it is an over-unity technology, meaning that it produces more energy than it consumes without the degradation of its constituent parts. This is an apparent violation of the Law of Conservation of Energy, which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. The implications, not just for energy production but for society as a whole, are profound. The public demonstrations - which will include live test and replication sessions - will take place in the Waterways Visitor Centre, Grand Canal Basin, Dublin. They begin today, 15th December 2009 and will run until 31st January 2010 (with a break between December 24th and January 4th, inclusive). The demonstrations will also be streamed live at www.steorn.com/orbo. This is a pivotal moment for the company, said Sean McCarthy, Steorn CEO, and potentially, for us as a species. There exists now an opportunity to change everything. At the end of the six week demonstration period, developers will be able to access our technology and start the process of developing Orbo technology-powered products. The Waterways demonstration is the beginning of the Orbo revolution. On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 2:45 PM, Esa Ruoho esaru...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.steorn.com/images/rig01.pdf
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/15/2009 07:45 AM, Esa Ruoho wrote: http://www.steorn.com/images/rig01.pdf So there's a battery in it. So, it's not self-running; it runs from battery power. So, what is it supposed to be, exactly?
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
yeah, thats what all the dogjaws on twitter are harping on and on about. perpetual nonsense powered by a battery. there has got to be a reason why they just show it directly. i hope we'll figure out why eventually. i understand that the WITTS delay line generator, for instance, requires batteries to start the process - and then self-runs, but whats Steorn's reason? does it get disconnected after its running - is it a self-runner? what? i hope there's someone there who will answer these types of questions. On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 4:28 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.comwrote: On 12/15/2009 07:45 AM, Esa Ruoho wrote: http://www.steorn.com/images/rig01.pdf So there's a battery in it. So, it's not self-running; it runs from battery power. So, what is it supposed to be, exactly?
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
to see the shit-storm: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23steorn On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 4:38 PM, Esa Ruoho esaru...@gmail.com wrote: yeah, thats what all the dogjaws on twitter are harping on and on about. perpetual nonsense powered by a battery. there has got to be a reason why they just show it directly. i hope we'll figure out why eventually. i understand that the WITTS delay line generator, for instance, requires batteries to start the process - and then self-runs, but whats Steorn's reason? does it get disconnected after its running - is it a self-runner? what? i hope there's someone there who will answer these types of questions. On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 4:28 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.comwrote: On 12/15/2009 07:45 AM, Esa Ruoho wrote: http://www.steorn.com/images/rig01.pdf So there's a battery in it. So, it's not self-running; it runs from battery power. So, what is it supposed to be, exactly?
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
So... if the generator recharges the battery, then why not just disconnect the battery and run the thing with the power from the generator? I think it's a crock... Craig (Houston)
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
This is the eternal argument, and the last one that people come up with. There appears to be an imbalance that the battery-fed circuit gets from the battery, that the circuit balances out and some of the balancing reaction is tapped for doing work. Most of these start as energysavings and increased efficiency. Until the tuning and re- modeling allows the tinkerer to go further. By the time they are further away in experimentation they dont take anyone seriously who insists on closing the loop. If Steorn are anywhere close to the other open-system contraptions such as what Bedini is instructing people to build, it just will never beclosed-loop until what's there is studied seriously and no crutches are grasped for, be they fancy names for statistical laws or anything else that allows for an argumentative argument. Let's see what their (Steorn's) reasons are for requiring a battery. If it really is transformation that they're tapping, they'll have to explain away the battery-requirement like a bunch of adults. Of course theyll be mocked for having a battery by anyone who believes they're doing nothing but fooling investors. iPoni sent dis message. Esa Ruoho wrote it. On 15.12.2009, at 16.46, Craig Haynie cchayniepub...@gmail.com wrote: So... if the generator recharges the battery, then why not just disconnect the battery and run the thing with the power from the generator? I think it's a crock... Craig (Houston)
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
... Let's see what their (Steorn's) reasons are for requiring a battery. If it really is transformation that they're tapping, they'll have to explain away the battery-requirement like a bunch of adults. Of course theyll be mocked for having a battery by anyone who believes they're doing nothing but fooling investors. We on this list, are indeed patient, but there are smoothing circuits and capacitors which could take the power from the generator and turn it into the equilibrium of a battery. Craig (Houston)
RE: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
Its explained in the YouTube video, Steorn Orbo Technology Launch 2009 The lower two rotors are a motor with PMs on the rotors and small coils (electromagnets?) on the stator. The EMs obviously require some DC electricity. The topmost rotor is a small generator which produces AC. To charge the battery they run the AC thru a very simple rectification circuit. So, yes, the motor part does require power, but apparently (much) less than they can generate, so it should be easy to demonstrate that this thing could be kept running for weeks, months when it should draw down the battery in a matter of days... -Mark -Original Message- From: Craig Haynie [mailto:cchayniepub...@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2009 7:53 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo ... Let's see what their (Steorn's) reasons are for requiring a battery. If it really is transformation that they're tapping, they'll have to explain away the battery-requirement like a bunch of adults. Of course theyll be mocked for having a battery by anyone who believes they're doing nothing but fooling investors. We on this list, are indeed patient, but there are smoothing circuits and capacitors which could take the power from the generator and turn it into the equilibrium of a battery. Craig (Houston) No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.716 / Virus Database: 270.14.108/2566 - Release Date: 12/14/09 23:52:00 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.716 / Virus Database: 270.14.108/2566 - Release Date: 12/14/09 23:52:00
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
Sterling D. Allan weighs in. (or something). http://pesn.com/2009/12/15/9501594_Steorn_demos_e-Orbo/ On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 7:35 PM, Mark Iverson zeropo...@charter.net wrote: Its explained in the YouTube video, Steorn Orbo Technology Launch 2009 The lower two rotors are a motor with PMs on the rotors and small coils (electromagnets?) on the stator. The EMs obviously require some DC electricity. The topmost rotor is a small generator which produces AC. To charge the battery they run the AC thru a very simple rectification circuit. So, yes, the motor part does require power, but apparently (much) less than they can generate, so it should be easy to demonstrate that this thing could be kept running for weeks, months when it should draw down the battery in a matter of days... -Mark -Original Message- From: Craig Haynie [mailto:cchayniepub...@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2009 7:53 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo ... Let's see what their (Steorn's) reasons are for requiring a battery. If it really is transformation that they're tapping, they'll have to explain away the battery-requirement like a bunch of adults. Of course theyll be mocked for having a battery by anyone who believes they're doing nothing but fooling investors. We on this list, are indeed patient, but there are smoothing circuits and capacitors which could take the power from the generator and turn it into the equilibrium of a battery. Craig (Houston) No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.716 / Virus Database: 270.14.108/2566 - Release Date: 12/14/09 23:52:00 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.716 / Virus Database: 270.14.108/2566 - Release Date: 12/14/09 23:52:00
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
Personally, I just wish the damned contraption was hooked up to a light bulb. Hell! If the thing was doing nothing more than powering a couple of energy efficient LEDs, for several weeks straight, now THAT would impress me more than the current battery recharging configuration. For me, personally, the issue of having to feed energy back into a recharging loop raises too many red flags. Granted, the current configuration may still be OU. If so, it seems to me that Steorn is taking a much more convoluted path towards ultimate vindication. If this is all they they got to show, at least for now... well then, I have a feeling they will have a VERY rocky road ahead for them. Needless to say, I continue to wish them well, as well as good HONEST fortunes. However at present, I think the jury is still out. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JikYfmEdF8 Steorn Orbo Technology Launch 2009 On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 8:31 PM, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson svj.orionwo...@gmail.com wrote: Personally, I just wish the damned contraption was hooked up to a light bulb.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/emergingtech/0,100183,39938307,00.htm
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 10:53 AM 12/15/2009, Craig Haynie wrote: We on this list, are indeed patient, but there are smoothing circuits and capacitors which could take the power from the generator and turn it into the equilibrium of a battery. Craig (Houston) That's what I thought of immediately. A nice big fat bank of capacitors should be able to take the place of any battery, and one could monitor the voltage as a direct measure of energy consumed -- or stored. If this think really runs over unity, enough to be usable for power (I doubt it does it at all, but just allowing Steorn the same independence from practical demands as is necessary for cold fusion at this time, i.e., excess heat is shown, but not enough and reliably enough and for long enough to be practical for a net gain in power. I wouldn't insist on a cup of tea, but I might insist on a clear demonstration of excess energy. Let it increase the voltage on a capacitor, steadily and repeatably, without slowing down or transfer of energy from some other process, and I'd be impressed. Of course, if the battery voltage increases, if you could use the thing as a battery charger, that would be a great demonstration, eh? My question, really is: what are they smuggling? If I haven't told the story of Nasrudin and the donkeys and the border guard he meets years later, perhaps I will.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
Personally, I just wish the damned contraption was hooked up to a light bulb. Hell! If the thing was doing nothing more than powering a couple of energy efficient LEDs, for several weeks straight, now THAT would impress me more than the current battery recharging configuration. The battery is also too easy to replace, without anyone knowing. Craig
RE: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 12:35 PM 12/15/2009, Mark Iverson wrote: Its explained in the YouTube video, Steorn Orbo Technology Launch 2009 The lower two rotors are a motor with PMs on the rotors and small coils (electromagnets?) on the stator. The EMs obviously require some DC electricity. The topmost rotor is a small generator which produces AC. To charge the battery they run the AC thru a very simple rectification circuit. So, yes, the motor part does require power, but apparently (much) less than they can generate, so it should be easy to demonstrate that this thing could be kept running for weeks, months when it should draw down the battery in a matter of days... That's not a demonstration of over-unity power. Suppose what the battery does is reduce friction in some way, reduce the heat losses, making it run longer. No, if they are claiming that they can generate energy, then we'd want to see the energy from the battery monitored and the generated energy monitored, and, frankly, I'd want to see the generated energy used to charge the battery Sure, it might take start-up power, but then what? From the Toy, I get the idea that they are moving magnets in and out of the path of a rotating magnet and if you time this just right you might be able to sustain rotary movement, but it does take energy to do that. That might allow a rotating magnet to rotate for longer, it seems to me. But it would still just be trading stored energy for rotational energy, unless they have discovered something truly new. And I just don't see room for that, based on all that has come down. I'm not going to reject Steorn just because it flies in the face of solidly established theory, and it certainly does that far more than cold fusion -- which really just contradicted a poverty of imagination, not actual conservation of mass/energy or momentum -- but that doesn't mean that I'll dump these theories because of the publicity-generating behavior of some seemingly slick characters. Steorn smells like donkey smuggling, not science. Nothing wrong with smuggling donkeys, in general, though they can be smelly, but someone who thinks there must be something valuable in the saddlbags is going to be disappointed. Okay, there can be something wrong with it, if one lies about what one is about.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
From Craig: Personally, I just wish the damned contraption was hooked up to a light bulb. Hell! If the thing was doing nothing more than powering a couple of energy efficient LEDs, for several weeks straight, now THAT would impress me more than the current battery recharging configuration. The battery is also too easy to replace, without anyone knowing. That might be true. I freely confess that my prior rant was mostly an emotional catharsis pertaining to my frustration of not being able to achieve sufficient clarification. It was NOT a rational assessment of the situation. ;-) BTW, I think Abd's recent suggestions concerning how one might create a more convincing demonstration are good. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
RE: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
The battery is puzzling, but they do not hide it, so I do not see how it could be part of a scam. Mark Iverson wrote: so it should be easy to demonstrate that this thing could be kept running for weeks, months when it should draw down the battery in a matter of days... Hours, not days. Toys that operate with D batteries run out in an hour or so. If it produces significant movement and noise I expect it is is consuming a watt or two. The best D battery has 21 watt-hours of energy. See: Energy storage in D batteries http://www.allaboutbatteries.com/Energy-tables.htmlhttp://www.allaboutbatteries.com/Energy-tables.html Steven V Johnson wrote: Personally, I just wish the damned contraption was hooked up to a light bulb. Hell! If the thing was doing nothing more than powering a couple of energy efficient LEDs, for several weeks straight, now THAT would impress me more than the current battery recharging configuration. You mean a white LED light, not the kind used in a computer indicator light. Those can be powered for weeks with tiny watch battery. If the machine is moving and making noise that is enough of an indication that it is consuming (producing?) energy. It would be nice to have some definite indication of how much, by putting a mechanical load on it. Something like a miniature de Prony brake. It would be an additional mechanical load since there already is one, and it is substantial by the standards of a D battery. On the other hand, an analog wall clock can run with an AA battery for a year, making a distinct ticking noise. Clockworks are extremely efficient. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/15/2009 01:53 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 10:53 AM 12/15/2009, Craig Haynie wrote: We on this list, are indeed patient, but there are smoothing circuits and capacitors which could take the power from the generator and turn it into the equilibrium of a battery. Craig (Houston) That's what I thought of immediately. A nice big fat bank of capacitors should be able to take the place of any battery, and one could monitor the voltage as a direct measure of energy consumed -- or stored. If this think really runs over unity, enough to be usable for power (I doubt it does it at all, but just allowing Steorn the same independence from practical demands as is necessary for cold fusion at this time, They are totally different situations. The CF field is packed with real scientists who are struggling along on shoestring budgets with little or no hope of every realizing any financial gain from their efforts. It seems clear that at least some of the CF researchers are in it purely for knowledge. Steorn, on the other hand, is a company founded by non-scientists, run by marketing people and lawyers (as I understand it), which is clearly out to make a profit, and which is currently getting their income from investors, whom they must continue to impress if they're to continue getting money from them. The Steorn situation smells very bad. That is absolutely *not* the case with cold fusion. i.e., excess heat is shown, but not enough and reliably enough and for long enough to be practical for a net gain in power. I wouldn't insist on a cup of tea, but I might insist on a clear demonstration of excess energy. Let it increase the voltage on a capacitor, steadily and repeatably, without slowing down or transfer of energy from some other process, and I'd be impressed. Of course, if the battery voltage increases, if you could use the thing as a battery charger, that would be a great demonstration, eh? My question, really is: what are they smuggling? If I haven't told the story of Nasrudin and the donkeys and the border guard he meets years later, perhaps I will.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/15/2009 02:09 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: The battery is puzzling, but they do not hide it, so I do not see how it could be part of a scam. Mark Iverson wrote: so it should be easy to demonstrate that this thing could be kept running for weeks, months when it should draw down the battery in a matter of days... Hours, not days. Toys that operate with D batteries run out in an hour or so. Wrong comparison. D-cell powered toys are typically doing significant work. On the other hand, small induction motors that do nothing but rotate do *not* run down a small battery in an hour or so. These things have been desktop novelties for a long time -- the ones I've seen typically had one moving part which just ran back and forth across a track. With very low friction, and almost no losses except air resistance, they can keep going for a very long time. See, for instance, this site (these aren't what I was thinking of; they're far fancier than the old metal-and-plastic spinning rotor desktop novelties; none the less they're the same idea): http://www.allwaze.com/woodcraft-hover.htm Quote from the blurb on the page: Batteries are used to overcome the air friction losses and simply give the moving arm a 'kick' each time it passes the base. Each Levitating Motion Sculpture takes four AA batteries, and will continue to rotate from several months to a year, Sounds about like the battery life Steorn is claiming -- and 1 D cell, ala Steorn, may be worth 3 or 4 AA cells, depending on the battery technology. If it produces significant movement and noise Who said anything about noise?
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
At 01:37 PM 12/15/2009, Esa Ruoho wrote: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/emergingtech/0,100183,39938307,00.htm From that page: The device is powered by a large 10,000 mAH 1.2v nickel metal hydride rechargeable battery. Steorn says that this is recharged by the device itself, but has not included any metering or other instrumentation that would show this. Without any information about the device's own power consumption, it is impossible to tell whether this is happening, nor whether the battery is sufficient to keep the device rotating for the duration of the demonstration without Steorn's claims. In other words, the demonstration demonstrates nothing. Nada. Zilch. Steorn is saying, essentially, Trust us! But they are providing no evidence to trust, only claims without specificity. Why? If they have evidence that this is over-unity, surely an examination of the circuitry and the exact operating parameters of the device, with measurements of rotational velocity, battery voltage with time, and all that, would show it. Absolutely, it's possible that there is excess energy -- if excess energy is possible -- but that the efficiency is still too low to maintain function, but what's the reason for believing that there is excess energy here? Because Steorn says so? But I mean for *Steorn* to believe it. We know that cold fusion researchers persisted because they saw events that convinced them, that they could not explain with ordinary chemistry. That wasn't enough to convince others, because of the lack of reproducibility, but it was enough to keep them going. Cold fusion remains a fragile effect, very difficult to reproduce except possibly under certain conditions (I'm hoping that codeposition does turn out to be relatively easy to reproduce; it seems to be that way from the reports of quite a few who have tried it, but I also get buzz of failed replications, so that's my work, to find out and to make reproduction reliable, very purely and simply.) So, the possibilities: They have an over-unity device, they believe, but they haven't proven it. They need more money, so they hope to bring in some suckers, er, investors to provide it. But why do they believe they have an over-unity device, if they haven't actually demonstrated it? What's the basis for the belief? Theory? Now, wouldn't that be ironic? It's over-unity because our theory is really cool, wait till you see it, it's intuitively obvious that it is correct. At least it is to any smart people like us. Scientists stuck in their outmoded theories may not be able to see it They have an over-unity device, and they have the evidence. If so, why not show it? The difficulty of obtaining patents for something like this? It would even be possible to show the evidence without revealing the Secret. You'd do it with a Black Box as part of the demonstration. People would be able to see the Black Box, and its contents. But not the actual arrangement of those contents when it was in working order. With the right design, this could be a convincing demonstration even if all details were not known, just that the unknown details were not ones that could conceivably produce the results unless existing theory is incorrect. For example, take that battery out, what's there? A pile of coils and stuff that couldn't produce sustained rotary motion that runs over unity (presumably it can accelerate without energy input, but we really don't care what happens in the black box as long as it doesn't contain a traditional power source. So you put all kinds of instrumentation on the battery and observe some parameter from the black box, like rotational velocity over time. Last possibility, they have no over-unity device and they know it. They are selling something else, like their ability to generate buzz. Or they are seeking money to abscond with. Or they simply like the publicity, seeing how long they can pull everyone's chain. Apparently, quite a long time *even if the device is real.* Because they haven't proven it publicly in all these years, yet they still gain attention. Rationally, they would have exhausted everyone's patience long ago. Note how thoroughly different this is from low-energy nuclear reactions. There were some secrets in the early days (look how effective that was!). But there has been demonstration after demonstration, many, from many different research groups and many approaches, including exact replications, or more general replications. Excess heat and helium have been reliably correlated. Radiation is detected; the autoradiographs of palladium cathodes from BARC are stunning in their implications. The neutron results from SPAWAR are extremely difficult to dismiss as artifact. Some of these results might indeed ultimately be red herrings, but the *scientific consensus* is, by now, that there is a real anomaly here, worthy of study, and that excess energy (not over unity energy,
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
It's a freakin' Bedini motor. Geeze.
RE: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
I wrote: It would be nice to have some definite indication of how much, by putting a mechanical load on it. Something like a miniature de Prony brake. I mean that since the machine produces mechanical motion, it makes sense to measure that directly, rather than -- say -- converting it to electricity which is then converted to light. The fewer steps, the better. You can also use it to run a pulley and lift a small weight, using fishing line. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
On 12/15/2009 02:04 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: I'm not going to reject Steorn just because it flies in the face of solidly established theory, and it certainly does that far more than cold fusion -- which really just contradicted a poverty of imagination, not actual conservation of mass/energy or momentum -- but that doesn't mean that I'll dump these theories because of the publicity-generating behavior of some seemingly slick characters. CF violates numerous RULES OF THUMB regarding circumstances in which fusion could be expected to occur; some people have confused those rules with laws of physics. CF claims violate no actual laws of physics. Steorn's claims, on the other hand, flatly violate physical law as currently understood in the context of electromagnetic theory. When a poorly supported claim, for which no clear evidence and no independent verification exists, seems to disprove conclusions which are based, quite literally, on centuries of experimental evidence, well... let's just say that, based on prior experience, the odds in favor of it being for real are not large. The correct comparison here might actually be to compare Steorn with one (hypothetical) researcher who claims that all of the positive CF results can be explained away by the results of one experiment he's done, and the theory he constructed based on it. Would you believe him, or would you continue to believe the results obtained by the other scientists? In the case of Steorn, one company is claiming that all physicists for the past century or so have been befuddled over the way magnets work; only the folks at Steorn really understand it, and we should believe them (and send money), even though they have no conclusive proof of their claims, and have in fact published no coherent theory explaining what their claims really are. Is this really a no-brainer? It looks like it to me.
Re: [Vo]:Steorn Demo
Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: Hours, not days. Toys that operate with D batteries run out in an hour or so. Wrong comparison. D-cell powered toys are typically doing significant work. On the other hand, small induction motors that do nothing but rotate do *not* run down a small battery in an hour or so. I cannot see YouTube from my office so I do not know how big the machine is or how much noise it makes. I was guessing based on the schematic (and the size of the D battery in it) and the photo shown at ZDnet. If the thing is as quiet and smoothly running as an analog clock then of course it can run for weeks or months on a D battery. I was kind of assuming that it was making a lot of noise, wind, and commotion, like a small toy. There was a link here to a very noisy toy magnet motor the other day. Again, I can't check it from the office but whether the gadget is over-unity or not, I must say, it is cute! - Jed