"Its a success when more Money comes out than goes in."
That depends on whose perspective you are looking at it from. For the scammer you are right since what is coming would likely be going out to him. The investor would probably prefer the opposite. I suspect they'd prefer there be more money coming in than going out.
history of fraud? The closest thing to fraud I heard was tax fraud and even though the word 'fraud' is in there I doubt you'll find too many people who look down on tax evaders (mostly because you won't find any who aren't cheating any way they think they get away with themselves).
Gravity could just as well be the magical side effect of god being annoyed or liking spheres. Perhaps it is the method his magic wand is using to clean up the spill of matter we interpret as the big bang. Sort of like a cosmic rainx.
Labeling something and predicting its behavior IS knowing something about it. Arguably, it is the most important thing to know about it. But it ISN'T the same as knowing what it is. Knowing what something is might not even make it easier to predict its behavior. Certainly hasn't helped predict my wife's behavior.
"He was also smart enough to realize that Tesla was a crackpot who had one good idea, three-phase alternate current."
And radio waves, and the transformer, and the capacitor, and wireless power transmission. Of course those were just a few of Teslas good ideas which came to fruition. His really good ideas are (officially) untested but theoretically sound.
Tesla wasn't a crackpot and he didn't have any ideas for 'free energy' in the classic sense. The energy was to be produced by normal natural means using generators that Tesla invented, built, and had successfully implemented in massive installations. http://www.teslasociety.com/exhibition.htm
Using a massive stream of energy his (simplified) plan was to send a stream of electricity up to the ionosphere (big lightning). This would ionize the air between creating a highly conductive path of ionized air. Tesla could then send ac current at a particular frequency into the ionosphere and that energy would propagate through the ionosphere and could be picked up by a coil at any point in the world tuned to that frequency.
Essentially, Tesla wanted to use EMF to transfer energy (and therefore information) with almost no loss from wherever it was generated to any point in the world where you needed it. The problem is that to a non-technical listener radio sounds like the same thing, in fact an understanding of radio is implicit to the scheme indicating Tesla is the one who discovered radio first and simply had a different idea of how it should be used.
But there was no 'free energy' in the scheme or even anything involved that isn't sound in theory. Free distribution, and no obvious way to meter usage, but there is no reason it couldn't have been commercialized and eventually provided a medium for global communication that computers would likely be using today. It just wouldn't make Morgan as much money and would cost him more money. Even that assumes that he understood the difference between Teslas idea and radio.
Actually, to some degree the idea has been reinvented in the form of the HARRP project.
There isn't much chance these claims are valid and there isn't much chance of a crackpot ever making it work but that has nothing to do with whether cold fusion is viable or not. Look at the resources dedicated to hot fusion and the lack of results. Some people will tell you even hot fusion can't be viable while shielding their eyes from the sun.
I'm not saying cold fusion is viable. But from what I've read there haven't really been serious efforts or resources dedicated to determining if it is viable. The lack of results isn't particularly telling when the only people trying to get them are crackpots and when there are no resources for anyone who might have the education and inclination.
None of that depends on the crackpot conspiracy theory that says if you mention wanting to work on cold fusion it is tantamount to career suicide.
No kidding. There are people so well respected they could wipe their arse and get the result published in most any journal in their field who might not be able to get a paper on cold fusion published. You could make a recording of the paper and submit on a cold fusion powered mp3 player and still get rejected.
"0.99999 it's a scam. Call back when they have independently reproduced results *or* they've revolutionized the energy sector."
Your odds might be right. But all the reproducing they need is a production line and people who are paying them instead of the other way around with homes and/or vehicles powered the units they are selling. If those people are getting the claimed results (or as close to the claims as any commercial product ever gets) and if the company can show that the revenue from those customers is more than that fuel will cost at a scale they can reasonably achieve in the near future then that is all that is needed. They don't need to go through peer review, they don't need to publish, they don't even need to be profitable yet.
"Other researchers could verify the phenomenon (if there is one) and they would still hold the patent."
True but said other researchers might understand from their description the mechanism which they do not. As such those researchers would be able to see potential advances both in the implementation and uses not understood by those who originally published the discovery. A patent only covers what the filer could think of. Uses of this technology they didn't think of and the use of this technology combined with specific improvements even used for the purposes they did think of can be patented by third parties.
I wouldn't publish anything until I felt I had a solid understanding of how and why this was working and had patent applications in covering anything I, a patent attorney, and a pack of hired experts under NDA could think of in terms of potential applications and theoretical improvements on the technology. Then and only then would I publish. There is still a risk but at least third party patents aren't likely to be something obvious. It's one thing to pay someone for discovering something that genuinely improves your product in a way you didn't see. It's quite another to have someone snipe an obvious application and strong arm you into paying for it.
That is true in theory but the practice is another thing altogether.
Given the claim is successful cold fusion, I doubt there are more than a handful of people in the world who could get a paper published by a credible journal regardless of the content.
That said, the massive commercial potential of the finding could make most anyone reluctant to reveal too much. In science you want others to build on your discovery so that you can gain the advantage of their input. In commercial practice giving someone else everything you know is just asking for them to understand what you don't and patent it. Unfortunately, having a patent doesn't stop people from patenting advancements to your discovery and leveraging those patents against you.
"Personally, I expect they included something that reacts with water in the device (or some argolic fuel, termite, etc), heating it up for long enough to handle this demo. Longer demos require more fuel. Add something to produce intermittent gamma rays and you're done."
As I understand it they claim to have built and installed a prototype for production use in heating a factory and it has been operating for 2yrs.
If that can be proven it would defeat your theory of how the hoax works but I don't know if they can actually back up that claim. It would almost seem that the party running the factory is going to be associated with them in some fashion or they wouldn't have given them the opportunity even if the claim is true.
"I find it highly unlikely that anyone could master sustained fusion of heavy metals which requires far more input energy to ignite than hydrogen or helium fusion"
This process DOES utilize hydrogen fusion. The fuel is BOTH nickel and hydrogen.
As for the benefits of hydrogen-hydrogen process outputs vs this. Like you said, call me when it works and we can talk about why its better. In the meantime, someone is claiming this is already working and that they were able to scale it up to a production prototype actually being used to heat a factory.
Besides, copper is desirable waste. We aren't running out yet but we are certainly going to. As a plus, most of the things that will use the energy this produces make use of copper interconnects. As we grow our infrastructure, we output more of the copper we need to utilize it.
And you think that means something? Holy shit, I've contacted someone from the internet back in the early 90's where suffixes were supposed to indicate something about the content...
I think I'll submit this evidence of internet time travel to their journal. If its still around... you saw the journal so it must be pretty old.
"Call me when they scale it up by a factor of five, so it can actually warm my house"
Their prototype generates 12KW of energy in the form of heat. You must have one hell of a house to need five times that!
"Call me crazy, but consuming metals for energy seems just a little foolish in the long run."
You could be right. Of course how long a run depends on how much nickel we are talking about and how much we have. I mean, it seems foolish to me in the long run for the sun to do its thing using up the hydrogen its composed of and I'm right... if we are talking about a suitably long run.
1. The panels 2. The batteries 3. The panel efficiency is lower than that of combustion engines, 30% is actually pretty high for these kind of processes. 4. Charging and draining batteries is not a perfectly efficient process nor anywhere near fast enough to be viable. 5. Producing, maintaining, and disposing of panels and batteries doesn't even register on the environmentally friendly meter compared to this process.
We don't need a one size fits all solution. Converting solar energy directly into carbon neutral fuel with no harmful bi-products in an affordable way that can be used with every vehicle on the road is a perfect solution. We can have our cake and eat it too.
The people who don't like this are the same people who would be upset if they invented a pill that allowed you to eat anything you want while automatically giving you all the benefits of enjoyed by a strict healthy diet, exercise, and an active lifestyle.
Why do some people feel the need for everyone to sacrifice? Everyone sacrificing is a lousy solution compared with an answer that allows us all to consume as much as we please without consequence.
"Some guys below were working out energy acre, and solar gave much more energy per year than these bacteria."
Solar what? These bacteria are using solar power and sequestering carbon to produce the fuel. If you mean solar panels they are used to produce electricity at or near a point of wired usage. That is a completely different thing than portable energy like this. I doubt you could convert electricity to a portable energy source and get a result that is more efficient than producing it this way in the first place.
Quite possible. Increased focus, more conscious effort, or a combination of the two.
You neither slow down nor focus more when reading a perfectly legible font with slightly less smooth edges.
As someone else pointed out books aren't generally published with difficult to read fonts so being able to change to a difficult font is actually a point in favor of digital readers vs print.
In fact, since your print books don't normally come in difficult to read fonts the ability to change to a font that will increase your comprehension is a point in favor of digital readers, not against.
The conclusion the blogger made isn't really supported by the study. The study found that fonts that were difficult to read required increased concentration and that resulted in higher retention.
Smoother edges might make fonts clearer but they don't increase legibility or affect the level of concentration actually required to read the text. No increased concentration means no increased retention.
The study found that people are better at retaining information written in a difficult to read font, not one that is merely less smooth. The reasoning isn't that your brain finds the information more important either, it is that you have to concentrate more to read the text (something you don't have to do with a slightly less smooth but perfectly legible font) and the increased concentration tells your brain the information is more important.
This is consistent with previous research that showed harder to read fonts improved reading comprehension and retention. Because it was more difficult to read you concentrate more.
Not that I think it matters much for leisure reading anyway and there nothing to indicate that the difference in quality between print fonts and kindle fonts is going to be substantial enough to trigger this effect.
This is the critical step that is missing. Twitter never went to Germany, never set up offices there, and never subjected itself to german laws. A german accessing a US service from Germany does not make the US company offering the service subject to German law, only the German user accessing the service is subject to German law... This remains true, EVEN if German law says otherwise!
"In civilized countries you can not "give up" rights granted to you by law when you sign a contract."
Really? And here I almost bought goods from the EU. Shew, good thing you saved me from the false belief that the seller could enter into a contract that gave up their legal right to ownership of goods in exchange for money!
"does not mean Twitter, Inc. is not subject to the laws of the country in which the user is accessing their service"
Of course not. International law and common sense already dictates that. Twitter is subject to the laws of the locale where they have their servers. That is where they are acting by hosting data. They aren't subject to the laws every country where a user decides to access that data.
The user is operating in their own locale by importing the data from the country where it is hosted.
Each party is subject to their local laws, client and server, but not to one anothers laws (at least not as a result of hosting or accessing the data).
Twitter is a US based company with US based servers. The most the EU could do is implement an EU firewall or make it illegal to do business with Twitter from the EU... and it would be on the EU and not the US or Twitter to enforce it.
Slashdot Mirror
"Its a success when more Money comes out than goes in."
That depends on whose perspective you are looking at it from. For the scammer you are right since what is coming would likely be going out to him. The investor would probably prefer the opposite. I suspect they'd prefer there be more money coming in than going out.
history of fraud? The closest thing to fraud I heard was tax fraud and even though the word 'fraud' is in there I doubt you'll find too many people who look down on tax evaders (mostly because you won't find any who aren't cheating any way they think they get away with themselves).
Gravity could just as well be the magical side effect of god being annoyed or liking spheres. Perhaps it is the method his magic wand is using to clean up the spill of matter we interpret as the big bang. Sort of like a cosmic rainx.
Labeling something and predicting its behavior IS knowing something about it. Arguably, it is the most important thing to know about it. But it ISN'T the same as knowing what it is. Knowing what something is might not even make it easier to predict its behavior. Certainly hasn't helped predict my wife's behavior.
"He was also smart enough to realize that Tesla was a crackpot who had one good idea, three-phase alternate current."
And radio waves, and the transformer, and the capacitor, and wireless power transmission. Of course those were just a few of Teslas good ideas which came to fruition. His really good ideas are (officially) untested but theoretically sound.
Tesla wasn't a crackpot and he didn't have any ideas for 'free energy' in the classic sense. The energy was to be produced by normal natural means using generators that Tesla invented, built, and had successfully implemented in massive installations. http://www.teslasociety.com/exhibition.htm
Using a massive stream of energy his (simplified) plan was to send a stream of electricity up to the ionosphere (big lightning). This would ionize the air between creating a highly conductive path of ionized air. Tesla could then send ac current at a particular frequency into the ionosphere and that energy would propagate through the ionosphere and could be picked up by a coil at any point in the world tuned to that frequency.
Essentially, Tesla wanted to use EMF to transfer energy (and therefore information) with almost no loss from wherever it was generated to any point in the world where you needed it. The problem is that to a non-technical listener radio sounds like the same thing, in fact an understanding of radio is implicit to the scheme indicating Tesla is the one who discovered radio first and simply had a different idea of how it should be used.
But there was no 'free energy' in the scheme or even anything involved that isn't sound in theory. Free distribution, and no obvious way to meter usage, but there is no reason it couldn't have been commercialized and eventually provided a medium for global communication that computers would likely be using today. It just wouldn't make Morgan as much money and would cost him more money. Even that assumes that he understood the difference between Teslas idea and radio.
Actually, to some degree the idea has been reinvented in the form of the HARRP project.
There isn't much chance these claims are valid and there isn't much chance of a crackpot ever making it work but that has nothing to do with whether cold fusion is viable or not. Look at the resources dedicated to hot fusion and the lack of results. Some people will tell you even hot fusion can't be viable while shielding their eyes from the sun.
I'm not saying cold fusion is viable. But from what I've read there haven't really been serious efforts or resources dedicated to determining if it is viable. The lack of results isn't particularly telling when the only people trying to get them are crackpots and when there are no resources for anyone who might have the education and inclination.
None of that depends on the crackpot conspiracy theory that says if you mention wanting to work on cold fusion it is tantamount to career suicide.
No kidding. There are people so well respected they could wipe their arse and get the result published in most any journal in their field who might not be able to get a paper on cold fusion published. You could make a recording of the paper and submit on a cold fusion powered mp3 player and still get rejected.
"0.99999 it's a scam. Call back when they have independently reproduced results *or* they've revolutionized the energy sector."
Your odds might be right. But all the reproducing they need is a production line and people who are paying them instead of the other way around with homes and/or vehicles powered the units they are selling. If those people are getting the claimed results (or as close to the claims as any commercial product ever gets) and if the company can show that the revenue from those customers is more than that fuel will cost at a scale they can reasonably achieve in the near future then that is all that is needed. They don't need to go through peer review, they don't need to publish, they don't even need to be profitable yet.
"Other researchers could verify the phenomenon (if there is one) and they would still hold the patent."
True but said other researchers might understand from their description the mechanism which they do not. As such those researchers would be able to see potential advances both in the implementation and uses not understood by those who originally published the discovery. A patent only covers what the filer could think of. Uses of this technology they didn't think of and the use of this technology combined with specific improvements even used for the purposes they did think of can be patented by third parties.
I wouldn't publish anything until I felt I had a solid understanding of how and why this was working and had patent applications in covering anything I, a patent attorney, and a pack of hired experts under NDA could think of in terms of potential applications and theoretical improvements on the technology. Then and only then would I publish. There is still a risk but at least third party patents aren't likely to be something obvious. It's one thing to pay someone for discovering something that genuinely improves your product in a way you didn't see. It's quite another to have someone snipe an obvious application and strong arm you into paying for it.
That is true in theory but the practice is another thing altogether.
Given the claim is successful cold fusion, I doubt there are more than a handful of people in the world who could get a paper published by a credible journal regardless of the content.
That said, the massive commercial potential of the finding could make most anyone reluctant to reveal too much. In science you want others to build on your discovery so that you can gain the advantage of their input. In commercial practice giving someone else everything you know is just asking for them to understand what you don't and patent it. Unfortunately, having a patent doesn't stop people from patenting advancements to your discovery and leveraging those patents against you.
"Personally, I expect they included something that reacts with water in the device (or some argolic fuel, termite, etc), heating it up for long enough to handle this demo. Longer demos require more fuel. Add something to produce intermittent gamma rays and you're done."
As I understand it they claim to have built and installed a prototype for production use in heating a factory and it has been operating for 2yrs.
If that can be proven it would defeat your theory of how the hoax works but I don't know if they can actually back up that claim. It would almost seem that the party running the factory is going to be associated with them in some fashion or they wouldn't have given them the opportunity even if the claim is true.
"I find it highly unlikely that anyone could master sustained fusion of heavy metals which requires far more input energy to ignite than hydrogen or helium fusion"
This process DOES utilize hydrogen fusion. The fuel is BOTH nickel and hydrogen.
As for the benefits of hydrogen-hydrogen process outputs vs this. Like you said, call me when it works and we can talk about why its better. In the meantime, someone is claiming this is already working and that they were able to scale it up to a production prototype actually being used to heat a factory.
Besides, copper is desirable waste. We aren't running out yet but we are certainly going to. As a plus, most of the things that will use the energy this produces make use of copper interconnects. As we grow our infrastructure, we output more of the copper we need to utilize it.
"2) it is a .com website"
And you think that means something? Holy shit, I've contacted someone from the internet back in the early 90's where suffixes were supposed to indicate something about the content...
I think I'll submit this evidence of internet time travel to their journal. If its still around... you saw the journal so it must be pretty old.
"Call me when they scale it up by a factor of five, so it can actually warm my house"
Their prototype generates 12KW of energy in the form of heat. You must have one hell of a house to need five times that!
"Call me crazy, but consuming metals for energy seems just a little foolish in the long run."
You could be right. Of course how long a run depends on how much nickel we are talking about and how much we have. I mean, it seems foolish to me in the long run for the sun to do its thing using up the hydrogen its composed of and I'm right... if we are talking about a suitably long run.
Problems:
1. The panels
2. The batteries
3. The panel efficiency is lower than that of combustion engines, 30% is actually pretty high for these kind of processes.
4. Charging and draining batteries is not a perfectly efficient process nor anywhere near fast enough to be viable.
5. Producing, maintaining, and disposing of panels and batteries doesn't even register on the environmentally friendly meter compared to this process.
We don't need a one size fits all solution. Converting solar energy directly into carbon neutral fuel with no harmful bi-products in an affordable way that can be used with every vehicle on the road is a perfect solution. We can have our cake and eat it too.
The people who don't like this are the same people who would be upset if they invented a pill that allowed you to eat anything you want while automatically giving you all the benefits of enjoyed by a strict healthy diet, exercise, and an active lifestyle.
Why do some people feel the need for everyone to sacrifice? Everyone sacrificing is a lousy solution compared with an answer that allows us all to consume as much as we please without consequence.
"Some guys below were working out energy acre, and solar gave much more energy per year than these bacteria."
Solar what? These bacteria are using solar power and sequestering carbon to produce the fuel. If you mean solar panels they are used to produce electricity at or near a point of wired usage. That is a completely different thing than portable energy like this. I doubt you could convert electricity to a portable energy source and get a result that is more efficient than producing it this way in the first place.
Quite possible. Increased focus, more conscious effort, or a combination of the two.
You neither slow down nor focus more when reading a perfectly legible font with slightly less smooth edges.
As someone else pointed out books aren't generally published with difficult to read fonts so being able to change to a difficult font is actually a point in favor of digital readers vs print.
Yup.
In fact, since your print books don't normally come in difficult to read fonts the ability to change to a font that will increase your comprehension is a point in favor of digital readers, not against.
The conclusion the blogger made isn't really supported by the study. The study found that fonts that were difficult to read required increased concentration and that resulted in higher retention.
Smoother edges might make fonts clearer but they don't increase legibility or affect the level of concentration actually required to read the text. No increased concentration means no increased retention.
The study found that people are better at retaining information written in a difficult to read font, not one that is merely less smooth. The reasoning isn't that your brain finds the information more important either, it is that you have to concentrate more to read the text (something you don't have to do with a slightly less smooth but perfectly legible font) and the increased concentration tells your brain the information is more important.
This is consistent with previous research that showed harder to read fonts improved reading comprehension and retention. Because it was more difficult to read you concentrate more.
Not that I think it matters much for leisure reading anyway and there nothing to indicate that the difference in quality between print fonts and kindle fonts is going to be substantial enough to trigger this effect.
"If a US citizen comes to Germany"
This is the critical step that is missing. Twitter never went to Germany, never set up offices there, and never subjected itself to german laws. A german accessing a US service from Germany does not make the US company offering the service subject to German law, only the German user accessing the service is subject to German law... This remains true, EVEN if German law says otherwise!
They aren't operating in the EU. People in the EU are accessing their servers. Twitter operates in the jurisdiction where their servers are located.
"In civilized countries you can not "give up" rights granted to you by law when you sign a contract."
Really? And here I almost bought goods from the EU. Shew, good thing you saved me from the false belief that the seller could enter into a contract that gave up their legal right to ownership of goods in exchange for money!
"does not mean Twitter, Inc. is not subject to the laws of the country in which the user is accessing their service"
Of course not. International law and common sense already dictates that. Twitter is subject to the laws of the locale where they have their servers. That is where they are acting by hosting data. They aren't subject to the laws every country where a user decides to access that data.
The user is operating in their own locale by importing the data from the country where it is hosted.
Each party is subject to their local laws, client and server, but not to one anothers laws (at least not as a result of hosting or accessing the data).
Twitter is a US based company with US based servers. The most the EU could do is implement an EU firewall or make it illegal to do business with Twitter from the EU... and it would be on the EU and not the US or Twitter to enforce it.