3 Independent Engineers: Eat That!

I have a soft squishy spot for Rupert Goodwins, to be fair.....actually it's more of an unreachable itch.

He's like your favourite old uncle who when you told him that you're computer had a virus he'd demolish your argument with the old "Computers can't have viruses, they're machines " line, that anyone born pre 1972 is so apt at delivering.

That stubborn refusal to accept technological progress (despite being a technology writer), especially when it chews up and violently spits out the laws of thermodynamics and about 30 or 40 other scientific "laws" and theorems. To be fair to Rupert though he doesn't have a spinny Orbo on his desk, so it can't possibly be true then....can it?

His recent ZDNet post regarding Steorn was agonisingly familiar. Uncle Buck was back, lecturing his column devotees with a few carefully selected hilarious potshots at Steorn. After that he calmed the readers down and reassuringly wiped their moist laden brows that the laws of thermodynamics were intact and that it was all a dream- Steorn would go away soon, honest.

So since Great Uncle Rupert cherry picked the Steorn facts and left out the good bits I thought I'd set the record straight.

The most glaringly obvious fact that was left out of his column was right there on the homepage of the Steorn site.

THREE INDEPENDENT QUALIFIED ENGINEERS TESTIFYING TO A GAIN OF ENERGY. This went completely unmentioned in his coulumn - not a single word on it. A 10 minute video showing these guys saying that there IS an effect but Rupert's column tells us precisely......NADA. He neglects to say that the it's not just Steorn saying there's a gain of energy now, but independent engineers. Unbelievable.

He went on:

Rupert: "Orbo is too fearsomely powerful for the knowledge to be given to people willy-nilly. You have to get it from the Learning and Knowledge Base. And that will be limited, at first, to 300 people - just in case... erm, well, just in case. Eventually, festooned with the carefully controlled knowledge and licensed to the hilt - one suspects that NDAs will feature heavily here"

Great uncle Rupert here neglects to tell us that AFTER stage one it's a free for all for ANYONE who fancies binning off the local power company and building an Orbo powered device. Steorn have the simplest fairest and most effective licensing program ever dreamed up, where someone who wants to build Orbo in their garage has the same access as SONY Corporation. A revoultionary approach to licensing, but yet AGAIN, not even mentioned.

As a welcome departure from the usual corporate license money printing cabals most companies have in place, Steorn's fairness and simplistic approach to licensing deserved a column on it's own.

Some 18 months ago Rupert promised to eat a marzipan hat if there was anything of substance to the Steorn claims. I hope the pastry chef who bakes it is from Texas and has a cranium the size of Houston.

3 Independent Engineers: Eat That!