One more time... i didn't claim that the military didn't use brick wall technology, i said i doubted they did. the bellow is full of the type of exaggeration made by brick wall supporters. also, you'll see that they have an active voltage clamp- that's a very important part of the system and similar in function to a MOV, except that due to it's active tracking nature it must be slower. also the system uses "surge inverters" to subtract surge voltage/energy, this means that the system must have as much energy stored at any given time as any surge that arrives or it will not be able to neutralize it by adding it's opposite. this means repeated surges will cause problems. it also means that power is consumed to actively neutralize surges. this active surge countering technology will also dissipate 2X the surge energy, since it is dissipating the surge energy + an equal amount of energy with the opposite polarity. this will produce more "noise" from dealing with the surge energy rather than less compared to a move system. it is infact this active surge inversion technology which does most of the work, and it is only minimally superior to mov's at best and is inherently slower, meaning that a surge will be present for a longer time before being dissipated. the inverse surge energy must also be of the same though opposite voltage as the spike, which would require the ability to generate very high voltages. i would suggest that the parallel portion of their system simplifies to a shunt switch, making it nothing more than a more complex implementation of the same technique which makes mov's work.
there's also the claim that "Series Mode technology has been in use for 15 years with NO history of power > supply failures due to surges, since the surge suppression is so > comprehensive", this is a meaningless statement since it's highly unlikely that any > of thier customers has examined a failed power supply to determine why it failed, and it is extremely difficult to know why a power supply has failed even if someone spent the time to examine it rather than simply replacing it. even engineers rarely try to figure out why a specific part of a system has failed unless it fails often. more hyperbole and statements that are unsubstantiated and meaningless. yes, people have u.l. and equivalent labs test for safety and surge capability, but they are tested according to established procedures, they are not creatively or specifically tested to determine if the underlying technology is sound. in the case of the zero surge it is being tested EXACTLY the same way a mov based device is, however since it operates by a different method that test is not valid, even though it performs essentially the same function. finally the fact that they have sold units to some of the top scientific labs is not validation either. they may or may not have been sold to technical people at those institutions, such facilities have many, many more non scientist than they do scientist. who knows who bought the zerosurge equipment or what they wanted to protect. they may in fact have purchased 1 simply to test it and see if it really was any better which is what i'd expect a large technical firm to do if they were looking for better surge suppression given the technically sloppy claims made on the zerosurge site and by it's owner/inventor. also, they say that mov technology does not reduce surge current or duration, well neither does theirs! in fact using active negation, i.e. providing an equal but opposite energy surge actually increases the surge current, and hence any rf generated. it is inferior to mov technology in this respect. they've also made other silly claims. their rebuttals become more and more silly, and exaggerated including exaggerating what i've said before. these are hallmarks of a scam, i.e. misrepresenting what nay sayers have said. finally, i am not a competitor of theirs. seriously, you'll get better surge protection for less money with a mov type unit than you will with their "series" technology, which is not just series but also parallel, and to avoid major operating problems the series portion must be relatively small, to the point that it won't help much. i do not see the customer list that they claimed to attach. further, the fact that a company has purchased their units does not tell you how much the equipment it's protecting is worth, it could very well be used by one employee on their computer, and they may have been the ones who bought it having convinced their boss to let them buy what they wanted to buy. zero surge is consistantly short on proof, long on illogic, long on gross exagerations, and long on illogical conclusions, this does not make me tend to trust a company. again they mention there patent, implying that having a patent tells you something about the usefullness of an idea, it does not, it only establishes that it is unique. they also imply that the fact it took 2 years to get the patent means the examiners looked at it for 2 years, which of course is not true. it simply takes a couple of years to get even the most trivial patent granted and the examiners are only concerned with the uniqueness of an idea, not it's practicality or superiority to existing ideas. again, this type of transparent (to someone who understands the patent system a little bit and has used the patent library) misdirection and exageration smacks of falsehood. the need to keep making these unsuportable claims suggest that a more credible argument is not possible, i.e. that the idea isn't so great after all. they make repeated illogical or misleading "statements" as if they were facts when they are not. for instance saying that mov's only do "one third of the job" is just silly and an abuse of math. besides, mov's limit the current and voltage of a surge, or rather the voltage and current from a surge that makes it to equipment. no device can effectively limit the voltage or current or duration of a surge, since the surge is generated outside the equipment. to suggest that any technology reduces the voltage, current, or duration of a surge is absurd, they mearly dissipate that energy as heat and clamp the voltage which has the effect of increasing the current or reflecting some of the surge energy. they also mention things like a 3000 amp surge through the power and ground wires, well yes if that much energy is available that will be the magnitude of the surge current, but most surges are much more mild. in any case thier "dynamic clamp" does exactly the same job as a mov, and allows the same current through the wires, it simply does it in a slower, more complex, and therefore less reliable method. again, at best the zero surge is similiar in how it functions to a simple mov system, except that it cost more, is more complex, slower, and less reliable. that doesn't mean it doesn't provide some protection, i'm sure it does provide considerable protection, what i'm saying is that it is not superior to mov based systems and does in fact have inferior performance at a higher cost. really, i don't want to waste more time on this thread. i did not offer David Dudine wrote: > > Philip Stortz claimed that the series mode surge suppressors (Brick Wall, > Zero Surge, SurgeX) are not used by the military, and offered this claim as > "proof" that they are a scam. > > You will find numerous military clients on the Zero Surge customer list, > under the Government listing. > http://www.zerosurge.com/HTML/custlistres.html > > You will find listed the Fermi National Acclerator Laboratory and the > Goddard Space Flight Center. Perhaps Philip can contact them to either > educate them on their serious lack of technical knowledge, or possibly to > get some information which will make him re-evaluate his position. > > Also offered as "proof" of the scam was Philip's assertion that the > technology is not being used by commercial clients who are protecting vast > amounts of expensive equipment. I offer the Zero Surge customer list for > your consideration. -- Philip Stortz, mad scientist at large -- "It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence." -- Charles A. Beard -- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... 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