Thursday, March 29, 2007

BREAKING NEWS: Potential Juror Discovered

I'm a believer in getting any possible news out early and often. I just received this information from an anonymous reader who did a good job digging around on the Internet. It may just be a joke, or it may be our first public Juror:

From the Minutes of Physical Sciences Task Force:

Jeff Bechtold announced that he had answered the “Steorn Challenge” which was advertised in the "Economist" magazine for a jury of scientists and engineers to evaluate an "over-unity" device. He then informed every that he was accepted and will probably be traveling to Ireland in January.

Dr. Jeff Bechtold is a professor of physics at Austin Community College. Here is a query of potential papers that he's published over at Google Scholar.

Let the fun begin.

29 comments:

Rhaomi said...

Interesting find. Here's his web page if anyone's interested.

Anonymous said...

Publishing this information was extremely ill-advised.

Why do you feel the need to possibly hinder Steorn's activities in this way?

Anonymous said...

Nice one. And congrats with all this up to date news. Yours is afaik the only dedicated Steorn blog on the internet (after steornwatch.com closed down).

Even is there's only a 0.1% chance, we may just have our forever ipods, free electricity, and floating cities yet!

Wish I could post to the Steorn forum.

Dan

Rhaomi said...

To be fair, the information was effectively published by Bechtold himself when he revealed his juror status to this "Task Force", which he must have known published their minutes online. Any blame for a leak lies with him.

Also, more information: I found Bechtold's profile at RateMyProfessor.com. There were two reviews available:

"He's a very nice professor, but his lectures show how scatterbrained he is. He tends to flip-flop on the subject at hand and just sort of ramble on and confuse valuable information with chit-chat. His tests are fairly straightforeward and easy, so if you do your homework you'll do fine in the class. He's always available to answer questions."

"Absolutly agree: his lectures show how scatterbrained he is. He tends to flip-flop on the subject at hand and just sort of ramble on and confuse valuable information with chit-chat. His tests are ok. He's always available to answer questions, but his answers not always make sence. If you new to a subject I would not recomended him."

The similar wording could indicate the same person reviewing twice, although the scores were different. View the original page here.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps anonymous has got a point. You could still get the gist of the news across whilst pointing out his numerous papers and high position without mentioning his name...

Whaddya think? At the least, we wouldn't want him to get into trouble.

Anonymous said...

You didn't have to put further attention on this, and the "someone else if not me" excuse is really lame.

If a juror ends up getting harassed as a result of your activity...

Rhaomi said...

I disagree, Dan. For what little damage it might cause, I think it greatly enhances Steorn's credibility. As far as I know, this is the first piece of hard info that was not obtained directly through Steorn, and that was reported by an independent source. Steorn may not like its lack of control over the info, but the mere fact that it does not control said info only confirms that the info is legit.

Rhaomi said...

I made a post summarizing the info found by SteornTracker and myself in the Steorn forums... which was promptly deleted. :/

I hope neither of us is banned because of this... "don't kill the messenger" and all that...

Anonymous said...

"If you should go skating,
On the thin ice of modern life,
Dragging behind you the silent reproach,
Of a million tear-stained eyes,
Dont be surprised when a crack in the ice,
Appears under your feet.
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind,
With your fear flowing out from behind,
You as you claw the ice."

Ping1400 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Will Gorman said...

We're getting a sense of how Steorn feels about this potential leak. In addition to all the threads mentioning leak details being deleted from their forum, my account has also been banned.

Rhaomi said...

*solidarity*

Anonymous said...

Nice one. Thanks for making this news public. Keep up the good work!

Anonymous said...

To be fair, it was Crank who banned you, not a Steorn employee. I don't know who's hiding/deleting the threads.

Anonymous said...

:-(

Why have you told everyone about what you have found online? Don´t you want the jury-member (nobody except himself and Steorn knows if he really is a current jury-member) to work without disturbances? Do you think that Steorn can risk their technology being examined by someone in his lab with the whole world knowing about it?
Don´t you think that you are endangering the (possible) jury-member and Steorn´s intellectual property (people could already be planning to steal the technology in case the person is a jury-member and in case he has a working device in his lab) ?

What you did was not fair towards Steorn and towards the person mentioned.

Anonymous said...

Great job, Steorntracker.
Steorn are making a big claim and I appreciate you doing your due diligence. Blogs like yours are journalism.

-CF

Anonymous said...

If any jury members or their families are hassled or worse as a direct result of this then it will be on your conscience.

I hope that anyone who recieves unwanted publicity goes after ALL of you in the courts.

You're now stepping into dangerous ground and are putting yourselves at risk of swift and severe legal action.

Anonymous said...

Uh, no one can be put in legal jeopardy for merely linking to a publicly available website.

-CF

Anonymous said...

Pure pwnage.

Anonymous said...

"Don´t you think that you are endangering the (possible) jury-member and Steorn´s intellectual property (people could already be planning to steal the technology in case the person is a jury-member and in case he has a working device in his lab)"

Steorn's main claim they have found a hole in COE, and have a device that makes more energy than it consumes. That is a scientific discovery and that cannot be patented.

Which makes this whole jury charade just that. Either this does not break COE, (in which case a patent is understandable) or it does, no patent.

Their insistence on this patent BS is equivalent to admitting they have not broken COE and are not over unity.

But it will make a fun film.

Anonymous said...

He may be able to argue a good civil case against this blog in particular If it led to loss of earnings, or endagerment.

PS. You do not know for sure that this person IS a juror, if they are not then I'm sure he'll come after you for spreading lies and gossip.

Anonymous said...

"Great job, Steorntracker.
Steorn are making a big claim and I appreciate you doing your due diligence. Blogs like yours are journalism.
-CF "

I agree 100 %.

Anonymous said...

This is great news, further proof Steorn is not playing games. If you want to discuss more about Steorn/Orbo I just launched a new forum http://www.orbochat.com Launched it today. Not trying to spam, just would like to see a discussion area get off the ground. I haven't had this much fun since IT/Ginger!

Anonymous said...

The point is that SteornTracker has not leaked any information, he only found a link. Not guilty, instead great job !

I'd like to know, how come this scientist could declare in public about his juror status. May be the NDA doesn't forbid that.

I used to post on Steorn forum, but the situation there is sad really, the two moderators there are stupid beyond belief and have caused more harm to steorn as a scientific/research co. than the whole army of critics. Needless to say I left it and now it is dying a slow death.

Anonymous said...

If you check the date of that meeting and minutes, it was clearly prior to being accepted as a juror. Talking about maybe going to Ireland in January...?

Anonymous said...

"Steorn's main claim they have found a hole in COE, and have a device that makes more energy than it consumes. That is a scientific discovery and that cannot be patented.

Which makes this whole jury charade just that. Either this does not break COE, (in which case a patent is understandable) or it does, no patent.

Their insistence on this patent BS is equivalent to admitting they have not broken COE and are not over unity."



Actually, they can patent the device they created to exploit the new discovery. They won't be able to use that patent stop others from using the discovery to create their own devices, however. That's what the "no patents on mere scientific discoveries thing" means.

That's all assuming they actually have something, of course.

Senthil Kumar said...

I am now inclined to think that he is part of the jury (given the silence from Steorn and the good Dr. himself)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for exposing this to the public.

With regard to the imaginary harrassment some people claim this man will recieve, well it will be pretty insignificant compared to the harrassment all of the jurors will recieve when this hoax is finally exposed. (and no doubt a certain CEO will be out of the country with his big bag of swindled cash by that point).

Steorns con is really quite entertaining, you put up an add, then cherry pick 20 scientists who are least capable of spotting the man behind the curtain, and announce you have found free energy. Pretty much the same selection process a hypnotherapist uses to get the most suggestable volunteers for their tricks.

Anonymous said...

Yeah I'm prepared to laugh mightily hard when the hoax is revealed.

Now here's the thing: supposedly it has been undergoing testing since January. Nobody from the jury has said boo. Is there even a jury at all? Did Steorn ever pick anybody or did they just tell everybody "thanks anyway..." and leave us all hanging. OR: suppose there really is a Jury, and the thing is utterly fake. WHY does not a single person break their contract term and say "hey this is a bunch of BS", because Steorn by all accounts has no money and therefore will have no means of recourse. You know what I mean?

So to me the silence means one of two things: a) there actually is NOBODY on the jury, or b) the jury is busy like beavers working on something that looks real enough they can't quite call it phoney baloney just yet.

2 cents worth. Grunchy.