More snake oil or the real deal? 7

[jmw]

Blacklight claim a breakthrough with a new primary energy source.

http://www.blacklightpower.com/index.shtml

Well, it has the slick website with pretty animations we expect of the snake oil purveyors, but it will take some time to understand exactly what is on offer.

In the meanwhile, as I read it, I will continually remind myself of the two essential mantras (They may have kept me from buying London Bridge but I wonder if they have also kept me from some genuine deals?):
[ul][li] There is no such thing as a free lunch[/li]
[li]If it seems to good to be true, it is.[/li][/ul]




JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[SomptingGuy]

I sympathize.

It resembles so well the concept of covering small lies with bigger ones and it all getting out of hand.

- Steve

 

[0707]

More on Blacklight process

http://www.millsian.com/flash/KHLattice.shtml

http://pesn.com/2008/05/29/9500481_Blacklight_commercially_ready/

lm

 

[Unotec]

The idea might be correct, but it looks to me like they missed a few things regarding the second law. Now, I am no expert but it seems hard to me that a catalyst can do what they claim.
I have tried to generate more heat out of a system than the one I was putting in (I was a student, naive and the teacher was a jerk!!) then I learned.
There might be new breakthroughs in science, I will not say otherwise. But I think the second law, given the technological development we have reached, it is a pretty safe bet.

<<A good friend will bail you out of jail, but a true friend
will be sitting beside you saying ” Damn that was fun!” - Unknown>>

 

[rb1957]

"in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics ... all of them"

that sage of the modern era, Homer Simpson

 

[nickelkid]

http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/01/smallbusiness/blacklight.fsb/index.htm

 

[ivymike]

oh man, greenpeace says it works. maybe I shouldn't have made fun of it. I might get eaten by a whale.

 

[SomptingGuy]

Greenpeace would do a swift U-turn if the word "nuclear" were used.

- Steve

 

[jmw]

Or they discover that it produces a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 i.e. dihydrous-oxide (which has featured in another ) - a serious pollutant and causes many many deaths every year - the death toll from a single di-hydrous oxide event in coastal communities can run into the tens of thousands, especially when containing high levels of a range of chloride compounds.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[b2theory]

Mills is a douche bag of the highest order. I love this little piece FTA:

Mills' theory, which he expounds upon in his self-published 2,000 page book, The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics, rests on what he describes as his discovery of the hydrino - an altered version of hydrogen that has an energy level lower than its ground state, or the baseline energy level. These modified atoms, he argues, are the stuff that comprises dark matter, the invisible material that many scientists believe composes more than 90% of the universe.

So let me get this straight... a medical doctor claims to have found the grand unified theory, solved the make up of dark matter, and invented a device that will turn one of our most abundant resources by volume into clean energy without replicating or extending any previous experiments.

This guy has to be wondering how long he can keep the game up until he is busted as an incredibly successful scam artist. If he was for real this would have been resolved very very quickly. He has patents on everything. So send your gadget to Los Alamos and when they validate it you can claim the fame and virtually unlimited fortune that would follow.

It never ceases to amaze me that if you sound sciency you can basically get your press released parroted in top tier media outlets. What makes him so much worse is that he doesn't appear to be a "true believer" like the Intelligent Design crowd, climate change deniers, holocaust deniers, and homeopathic medicine nut jobs. It takes a special kind of jerk to knowingly scam your business partners out of tens of millions for almost two decades.

 

[Tomfh]

Mills sounds quite clever to me. It takes some smarts to sell people a free energy device that works as a result of the fact that relativity and QM are wrong!

 

[jmw]

Er, actually, I think he has already claimed his fortune... he has allegedly raised $50-60million.

The pot of gold is never the revenue from manufacturing but the investment money they attract.

The next question is, what happens to the investment money and that is where we can come up with a "Scam Index".

This would work on the principle that there are two types of inventors out there:
[ul][li]Type A: The eccentric who believes he has discovered the philosohpers stone[/li]
[li]Type B: The Scam Artist proving the PT Barnum law time and again.[/li][/ul]

The Scam Index is simply a function of the proportion of investment money spent on tools and machinery to the amount spent on directors salaries.

The Scam artist will want to hang onto as much of the loot as possible while the honest eccentric will probably go without food for self and family if he needs just one more machine tools or a couple of tones of rare earth elements for some reason or other. He may actually be pretty inept at gathering in money as his focus is on his work.

Probably we should also include a further parameter which is based on website analysis; the more "scammy" the proposal, the more animations, flash players, cross linking etc. and the fewer actual drawings, photos and truly independent evaluations.

One of the links provided above gave some nice updates on Steorn which seems to have a very high Scam index based on the ratio of directors salaries to investments received.

Of course, sorting the scam artists from the honest eccentrics is one thing, sorting out which of the hair-brained schemes is actually genuine is something else again.

I guess between us we ought to be able to work out a pretty useful scam index.

So, what factors to assess and how to weight them?






JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[mauricestoker]

Only two things produce more energy than what you put into it: a porn movie and a divorce. Sometimes they have a synergistic relationship.

 

[owg]

There was so much dihydrous oxide in the air this morning, our windows fogged up.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca