Friday, August 3, 2007

Nodding Donkey Video

The Nodding Donkey has made its way to YouTube. There seems to be some debate about the nature of the video. We've heard exaggerated claims from cynics that Sean McCarthy, CEO of Steorn, waited 20 days before explaining that the video does not demonstrate perpetual motion, and we've heard back from others saying that Sean presented the video as a joke, and he only waited a few minutes before explaining that the nodding donkey is not perpetual motion. While we all wait for something of substance, enjoy the video:

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is a helluva nifty conversation piece, especially if orbo-powered.

Is there any way I can buy one from Steorn, even to put the money down now and receive it after validation day?

Any idea of the cost?

Anonymous said...

It was less than 20 days and more than a few minutes.

Why doesn't someone in the Spud post the relevant threads and then everyone can judge the situation for themselves.

I guess they wont do this because it does show Shaun up as a dissimulator.

If an acrimonious dispute had not arisen between spudders as to whether the Donkey had Orbo inside or not, I have every reason to believe, based on McCarthy's behaviour over the 550bhp engine, that he would not have corrected their natural, though incorrect, assumption that the Donkey ran on Orbo.

Thicket said...

Cool toy. It's a 'to scale' nodding donkey used extensively to pump oil from reservoirs that have insufficient pressure to flow by themselves. The base is a cut-away oil barrel. I presume that the power-source is located in the base.

It looks like the type of souvenir an oil company would give a retiring executive. This toy is a compliment to oil companies, not a slight. I've seen similar functioning scale models at an oil museum in Oil City, Ontario, Canada.

It's also huge. Compare the size relative to the phone in the background.

There is no way that Steorn could casually get 100,000 of these. Replicating the prototype would easily cost hundreds of Euros per unit.

If they were ever for sale, and you want one, make sure that you are getting a model of the same size and material. You wouldn't want to pay a pile of money for a plastic model, one tenth the size of this prototype.

As Steorn has confirmed, this prototype is not over-unity, free-energy.

As for breaking the NDA for releasing this video, don't make me laugh. There is nothing proprietary shown. Nodding donkeys have been around for about a century. A good craftsman could easily construct one of these toys.

Anonymous said...

The comments are pissing me off!!!

Actually Sean did not mention ORBO was not powering the Donkey for 5 days. And he did not post it as a joke.

A lot of us KNEW it was powered by ORBO and insulted the ones who doubted it. I have since changed my attitude. The skeptics are right on this one!

Folks, let me make this clear as possible. Steorn has NO working ORBO device at this point and will not even answer questions about it.

The whole thing is in their heads.

Anonymous said...

>The whole thing is in their heads.

Actually being in their heads is fairly benign. It is being in their investor's pockets that is not.

Anonymous said...

A lot of us KNEW it was powered by ORBO and insulted the ones who doubted it.

Why did you insult them? Why didn't you respectfully disagree with them and let it go at that?

Anonymous said...

to the poster who claimed in the previous blog entry that Sean revealed the lack of orbo within "5 minutes":

would you mind posting the date when Sean revealed this?

Anonymous said...

An mpeg version of this video is available here. This was created by converting the .flv download from YouTube.

This was posted in the wrong thread, re-posting it here.

Anonymous said...

Interesting Forum Extension:


Unstealth Sin(k)s

:o)

Anonymous said...

Steorn looks like a "long con". Everything about them reeks of fraud. The “long con artist” usually builds elaborate setups to support their venture. They gather the money from the “marks”. In most cases, they try to choose marks that have lots of money. They don’t want to take a marks last penny because the mark will then have no choice but to go to the police. No, the long con artist wants a wealthy mark so that the mark will be so embarrassed that they won’t go to the police. Steorn looks like they’ve taken the added step of providing themselves a failsafe. Their failsafe is the elaborate public attention. I’m sure all the marks, sorry investors, signed disclosure agreements that said in some form or fashion that nothing is guaranteed, and that Steorn’s principals will be held harmless in the event of failure. Those kinds of disclosures wouldn’t work if it could be proven that Steorn had intentionally defrauded the investors. If the marks do take Steorn to court they’ll be able to say “Hey, look at all we did, and all we where trying to do!” “It’s not our fault the damn thing didn’t work, we thought it did!”

It sure looks like a con to me.

Anonymous said...

If I was Sean, and I had a working Orbo, I would get a big kick out of the toying with everyone who took all of this a little bit too seriously. Optimists and skeptics alike.

I could sit tight until I had 100% proof, or I could mess with everyone in the meantime. I think I'd pick the latter. Not because I'm a dissimulator, but just cause I'm an ass. Doesn't change the fact I have an OU machine in my office.

Or do I?

Anonymous said...

Steorn looks like a "long con". Everything about them reeks of fraud.

Nah, that's last year's forum speculation.

The latest is that Steorn really have found an anomaly, real OU, except that they cannot scale it up and it remains putting out a miniscule amount of OU.

The rest of it is Sean being a salesman/bullshitter and exaggerating and misdirecting so that people think Steorn really have multi-horsepower motors.

The only thing those of us working on this theory haven't figure out is what Steorn thinks they will do with such piddling power.

Anonymous said...

"The only thing those of us working on this theory haven't figure out is what Steorn thinks they will do with such piddling power."

I think you are seeing what Steorn will do with it: turn it into a marketing circus and milk it for as long as they can.

If anybody was so convinced they had really done what Steorn says validation by anyone would be irrelevant. If you can fly unassisted then you do not need approval, you just do it. If you cannot really fly but tell people you can then it is in your best interests to keep people guessing for as long as possible without ever showing them. That is why the marketing spin is so important.

Tim Holman said...

>The latest is that Steorn really have found an
>anomaly, real OU, except that they cannot
>scale it up and it remains putting out a
>miniscule amount of OU.

There's another phrase that exactly describes the above phenomenon: experimental error.

The claimed measurement of a "signal" that is just at the limit of the resolution of the measuring apparatus, and cannot be scaled up no matter how hard the experimenter tries, is a classic symptom of pseudoscience.

Unfortunately for their investors, Steorn left their "delusion" phase behind a year ago at the very least, and have since been actively operating in the "fraud" phase.

Anonymous said...

"The latest is that Steorn really have found an anomaly, real OU, except that they cannot scale it up and it remains putting out a miniscule amount of OU."

Any OU is _infinite_ power. It may take a while to blow up, but exponential increase is big if you wait long enough. As I said in the very beginning (somewhere on the Steorn forum) even if they had 1 part in 10^20, it would be a major shake up of physics.

I think it's pretty clear that Steorn has nothing but good PR. They should find somebody with real technology (and not in the energy business either!) and help them sell it.

All the OU hypothesies are wishful thinking at best. It's time to give it up.

Patience, persistence, truth,
Dr. mike

Anonymous said...

Steorn/Sean/Shorn has not contributed to the Steorn forum since July 11. There have been no public statements or interviews from Steorn for about that amount of time. That's interesting. Well... slightly interesting.

Anonymous said...

Gee, I coined the name "Shorn" and I am glad to see it catching on.

Shorn the Sheeple meets Mott the Hoople.*

*Not the band but the novel by Willard Manus about an eccentric who joins a circus freak show.

Anonymous said...

That's interesting. Well... slightly interesting.

Crank went to see him the other day so we know he's around.

The man is busy trying to make sure he doesn't screw up demo2. Why should he waste time on that dopey forum?

Anonymous said...

"The man is busy trying to make sure he doesn't screw up demo2. Why should he waste time on that dopey forum?"

Obviously Barnum was right. You can fool some of the fools ALL of the time.

Oh... and how could there be a demo2? There never was a demo1! Want to bet there will never be ANY demo of Steorn's "free energy technology"?

Anonymous said...

I like the computer set up in the background, dual wide-screen monitors. That's not a remarkably expensive system any more but demonstrates a pretty big desk. I notice the camera was wired into the computer (the output showed up on the computer display). Other than that this is worthless, in fact, the whole topic has pretty much played out. I actually hadn't been around here for a few weeks, I read that the video stream of Big Ben had restarted but where is it now?
Ho hum! :shrug: Maybe I'll look back in another few weeks. Or not.

Thicket said...

"The man is busy trying to make sure he doesn't screw up demo2. Why should he waste time on that dopey forum?"

Busy?? Just like he was so busy on demo1 that he forgot to do anything. You're right about Sean being a screw-up though. Probably also loose screws.

Anonymous said...

maryyugo said...

Want to bet there will never be ANY demo of Steorn's "free energy technology"?


If you were prepared to give me odds of 1000 to 1 I would put a quid on. 8-)

Anonymous said...

The fact that Sean did not due diligence with the preparations for the Kinetica demo but is now feverishly trying to do that for the second demo is very telling.

All along Sean has given the indications that what technology they had was robust, thoroughly tested and always worked every time. Sean spent considerable time with building a website, securing investors, and carrying out the jury selection process meticulously.

Sean spent considerable time on the forum which for a CEO is pretty unusual in itself. Sean spent a considerable time with creating the SPDC and contributing to that as well.

But odd that when the rubber finally meets the road he decides to wait until the last minute and just throws something together and then falls on his sword when it fails.

But now he is burning the midnight oil trying to make a come back????

I truly try to put myself in the place of these people imagining what I would do if I really had OU. No matter how I try though I cannot find myself doing any of the things Steorn has done in the ways that they have done them.

So how is that if I put a person like Mark Goldes in the same position as Seans all of a sudden it starts to make sense?

Anonymous said...

like I said...

Steorn is a long con. By the looks of it a pretty good long con. They've collected a shit pot of money.

Anonymous said...

It is not impossible for Steorn to delegate their fund raising to another company that they own. This way they can truthfully say that Steorn is not soliciting anymore investments but their subsidiary could be. Do they have a holding company?

Anonymous said...

It is not impossible for Steorn to delegate their fund raising to another company that they own. This way they can truthfully say that Steorn is not soliciting anymore investments but their subsidiary could be. Do they have a holding company?

---
Yes, Steorn Nominees.

Anonymous said...

Well, there you go. That is how they are getting additional investments.QED