At 10:21 AM 10/25/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:
See:
<http://www.overunity.com/index.php>http://www.overunity.com/index.php
This site a mishmash of claims presented without differentiation or
editorial judgment (not unlike LENR-CANR.org I admit).
Anyway, the video that plays when you first enter the site is
clever. It looks like an antique silent-film movie. I like the
portrait of Tesla in the background. I suppose this is an animation
but it is so realistic it looks like a stop-action film.
Cool animation, but WTF? Google ad on the site attracted my eye, so I
clicked on it.
How to Make Electricity?
$200 kit has energy co's profits falling, exec's calling for its ban.
Okay, what kind of scam is this? So I went to the site and, damn if I
wasn't tempted to pay them the $49.95 for their on-line publication.
Slick as hell. They aren't selling some free-energy ripoff, they
aren't selling kits, actually, they are selling plans about how to
put together solar panels and a windmill. They make it sound very
attractive. It might or might not actually be a ripoff, but there are
signs of, shall we say, puffery. Anyway, Overunity.com made a few
cents off of my click. Multiply this by the readers of Vo, and it is
actual pocket change. However, this is my basic turnoff: the original
ad. "Execs calling for its ban." Definitely puffery, unless....
unless it really is a ripoff, i.e., if the plans are completely
impractical. Like, to make the solar cells, get some clean beach sand and ....
He doesn't say that it's easy to do the work! And, when it boils down
to it, that is mostly what we pay for when we buy stuff. Do it
yourself and it's free! Not. All we have to spend is our labor, in
the end. (Okay, so there is something else, this isn't a complete
economic analysis, but it's true for many or most of us, to a large extent.)
We need a cold fusion wiki, Jed. Wikis are actually truly excellent
methods of developing documentation, under some conditions. The
conditions could be created. The problem with Wikipedia is not the
wiki concept, nor is it the skeptics and pinheads, the problem is
that when the scale is beyond a certain scale and the participating
community doesn't have a clear and genuine unifying goal, the
adhocracy that was set up for Wikipedia is not only incredibly
inefficient, it is quirky and vulnerable to certain kinds of abuse.
And once this situation arises, it's very difficult to change. It's
quite predictable, actually, it's like clockwork.
