Had they been able to get it to work then the $89M would be peanuts and well worth paying to keep Rossi on board.
Not if they developed their own "improved" version that they know works. And as I've pointed out before, the evidence tends to indicate this.
QuoteBut I've learned that there are two sides to every story. All we can do is wait and see how he responds.
While waiting will provide further information, the general homily about two sides to every story does not always prevent judgement. Rossi, no doubt, will indeed have a different story. I'm sure many people on ECW will read that and agree with it. Personally, 5 years or more of Rossi's technical incompetence and claimed demos that prove nothing is enough for me. What IH say seems very strongly likely and to keep on the table as a strong possibility that IH are fraudulent, as Rossi claims, does them a severe injustice.
This is an end game. HIstorically, at something like this point, the inventor disappears.
Historically, inventors like Farnsworth, Tesla, the Wright Brothers found themselves slowly squeezed by litigious usurpers with deep pockets and endless greed. This could be the case with Cherokee thinking they had a fresh rube inventor in their anaconda grip.
Appears they got an agreement to pay $89 mil at such time as they damn well felt like it, namely never. Appears they set up a shell corp at the last minute to assure easy bankruptcy if ever faced with the prospect of actually paying.
At this point my bet is that Rossi's customer will be proven a sham and there will be no trial. But still viable at this point is the prospect that Rossi has the goods: rather hope the latter scenario is correct.
While waiting will provide further information, the general homily about two sides to every story does not always prevent judgement. Rossi, no doubt will indeed have a different story. I'm sure many people on ECW will read that and agree with it. Personally, 5 years or more of Rossi's technical incompetence and claimed demos that prove nothing is enough for me. What IH say seems very strongly likely and to keep on the table as a strong possibility that they are fraudulent, as Rossi claims, does them a severe injustice.
No one seems to allow any room whatsoever for middle ground.
I'm reminded of a quote from a fictitious television character named Gregory House. The character was a brilliant doctor who often saved lives by figuring out what patents were hiding, what the family members of patients were not telling him, or what patents themselves were not aware of. In one episode, for example, Dr. House and his doctors worked for days to diagnose a patient without results. They ran every single test imaginable and ruled out a wide range of possibilities. For some reason Dr. House decided to question the patient again, and the patient repeated that he had NEVER been to the tropics -- but revealed that he'd been to Florida.
"You IDIOT!" Dr. House replied.
By revealing he went to Florida, Dr. House could test for a parasite they had previously ruled out.
On other episodes patients were made aware of horrible things they didn't even realize. For example, like two lovers who grew up next to each other were actually half-siblings.
I don't know if Dr. House's statement, "everybody lies" applies directly to this case. But the idea lingers in my mind.
No one seems to allow any room whatsoever for middle ground.
I love the middle ground. It's where everything usually is.
But the middle is always defined by the edges. And I like pushing those, too. To push the middle to somewhere else.
None of the He experiments, individually, demonstrate a direct He causal link with excess heat.
I agree. There is a weak correlation. In some cases that correlation is also correlated in time. This is why I think it such a waste to pursue such inconclusive speculation. Even if there existed some deuterium reaction which created helium, it is unlikely to be significant in light hydrogen systems. And in the event you believe in some form of fusion, then surely the proton, with its reduced mass is going to dominate ALL possible fusion reactions! If 23.8 MeV is expected, it is expected only by non scientists! 
Appears they got an agreement to pay $89 mil at such time as they damn well felt like it, namely never. Appears they set up a shell corp at the last minute to assure easy bankruptcy if ever faced with the prospect of actually paying.
Nobody,
Cherokee may have set up IH (shell company) at the last minute to protect themselves after some suspicious behavior beforehand on Rossi's part. The VT (validation test) was to take place Apr 30 2013. In IH's counterclaim they say:
Later in April 2013, Rossi confirmed that the Validation test could be performed with 30 E-Cat reactors. But just before the Validation test was commenced, Rossi claimed that even testing 30 E-Cat reactors was undoable due to restraints under Italian law, and explained that the test needed to be conducted with only 18 E-Cat reactors. This claim by Rossi was false
Rossi further manipulated the Validation process by ensuring that his friend and colleague, Penon, served as the ERV for the Validation testing. Industrial Heat requested that “one of the big testing companies” work alongside Penon in the measurement and validation of the test. Rossi vehemently objected, insisting that having one of the big testing companies involved would “create big problems” for him.
Oops, the rest should not be in Italics (what is it about those Italics )
Mat's Lewan commented on ECW recently that there is in fact such an Italian law, so Rossi may have been right in that regards. But to "vehemently object" about Cherokee's request that "one of the big testing companies work alongside Penon" would make most investors walk. Rossi should be happy they did not do so, and that 2 months later he did get his $10 million.
And really, the contract conditions were very simple, and favorable for Rossi when it came to his collecting the $89 million. IH did not make it so that "they could pay any damn well time they felt". Actually, it was Rossi who complicated things it seems. All IH wanted was a simple test in their facility done right after the 1MW plant was delivered to NC.
Accounts differ as to why the GPT was not commenced then, with Rossi pointing the finger at IH for not getting a suitable facility, and failing to get the regulatory approval, while IH claims Rossi farted around doing everything but express an interest in starting the GPT. I will leave it at that, and let each decide who is telling the truth.
But in Cherokees shoes, would any here (even you Rossi believers) in their shoes expose their main company, or personal wealth, to someone like Rossi, after his actions leading up to the VT?
QuoteYou can't argue with self sustain -- infinite COP.
Of course you can't but you can argue vociferously about CLAIMS of self sustain. So who has self sustain and how do we know they have it *other* than that they say so? I have pink invisible flying unicorns in my garage. If you don't believe me, prove I don't.
QuoteIndustrial Heat requested that “one of the big testing companies” work alongside Penon in the measurement and validation of the test. Rossi vehemently objected, insisting that having one of the big testing companies involved would “create big problems” for him.
People who know how to test correctly cause problems for Rossi? How could that be?
QuoteBut to "vehemently object" about Cherokee's request that "one of the big testing companies work alongside Penon" would make most investors walk. Rossi should be happy they did not do so, and that 2 months later he did get his $10 million... But in Cherokees shoes, would any here (even you Rossi believers) in their shoes expose their main company, or personal wealth, to someone like Rossi, after his actions leading up to the VT?
As I said many times before, what Rossi knows best is how to pick his victims-- his marks for his scam. Cherokee, really Darden and Vaughn who made the decisions, are indeed, with respect to gullibility, dummies.
QuoteBut still viable at this point is the prospect that Rossi has the goods...
WHY? and in what universe?
And @Abd: Truzzi was a nice man but he was a woowoo whackjob when it came to things paranormal. BTW, "paranormal" is a dumb word. Either some claimed phenomenon exists or it doesn't. Paranormal and supernatural are meaningless concepts. Truzzi believed in things for which the evidence is only vapor-- like telepathy, telekinesis, remote viewing and all that crappola. Talk about areas filled with bad methods, bad studies, and erroneous conclusions! If any of it were real, people who can do it would become billionaires in Vegas.
My sense is that LENR scientists of the kind whose papers are available on lenr-canr.org and in JCMNS are generally quite pessimistic about Rossi and his demos at this point, Parkhomov and Songsheng Jiang notwithstanding.
Pessimistic in their ability to replicate?
Well I agree - but that only because Rossi's stuff did not work. Had they been able to get it to work then the $89M would be peanuts and well worth paying to keep Rossi on board. To process this you also need to realise that IH could not know whether Rossi's stuff worked, or not, initially. They could hope. And as time continued they became increasingly sure that it did not work. Even now, they cannot be certain it does not work - that is the nature of proof - but they can be pretty sure given their 100% lack of ability to get anything to work and the now known flakiness of all Rossi's recent tests.
What does "did not work" mean. The licence agreement does not require the test of a deployable product. It just requires a reactor that produces steam at COP = 4 for 350 days. Rossi used a 4 by 52 reactor system with lots of redundancy. And no power requirement was specced in the LA.
I think Rossi decided to break with IH because IH would not invest in a R&D effort to produce a deployable product.
Display MoreWell - quantity does not make up for quality in this area. Just one claim well supported by a careful experiment would be highly interesting, and lead to replications. If real it would be headline news within 6 months.
Look at the MFMP signal. They thought that was real proof of nucelar activity: and had it been so they would have been able to replicate it and, again, headline news.
Well nothing in this world is certain, but IH say categorically that they cannot get it to work, and the other evidence all points the same direction (Rossi continually and egregiously having major errors in his test setups, even when $89M rest on them). So this is a fair working truth when posting here and speculating about this and that.
$89M is peanuts in comparison with the value of the technology. Therefore even though Rossi's involvement may be of limited use given his technical ineptitude, it would be well worth it to prevent legal issues. Indeed for them not to follow this license if Rossi's stuff did work would be negligent.
Regards, THH
I beleive that your basic assumptions about the IH/Rossi relationship is wrong. It was Rossi who dumped IH. Rossi forced IH into their current situation. We know he dumped Defkalion, hydro fusion, now IH. Even IH knows that Rossi played them.
QuoteIt was Rossi who dumped IH. Rossi forced IH into their current situation. We know he dumped Defkalion, hydro fusion, now IH. Even IH knows that Rossi played them.
The only reason Rossi would attempt that is that he knows very well that the ecat never worked. If it worked at all, even a little, he would negotiate -- not dump. Dumping customers and distributors sort of worked until now. But this time, with this much money at stake, Rossi is up against the Jones Day law firm and that spells his doom, one way or another. I suppose Rossi could be stark raving mad instead of fraudulent but it doesn't seem that way from his other activities. Or it could be a combination.
@THHuxley
IH say...
For reason explained "IH say" now is equivalent to "Rossi says". They are either "gullible" - as MY suggest - or not forthcoming. If credibillity is a concern to IH, they should file correspondence from 2013 or 2014 to Rossi that they were discontent with the technology because they could not make it work and request remedy. So far they have not.
Is 89 MUSD peanuts to IH?
No! No company is handing out 89 MUSD gifts. That is not how business is done.
While the technology for a working LENR device is worth much in a broad sense, that has not the same as 89 MUSD today on IH bank account is peanuts and could not be used in better way for shareholders.If you're reasoning does not acknowledge - which appearantly doesn't- the many different steps (and struggles) to move from the latter to the first you unable to come to a correct solution.
Disclaimer. This post doesn't promote the idea that the ecat works. The post promotes that IH:s current denial is weak evidence against.
QuoteDisclaimer. This post doesn't promote the idea that the ecat works. The post promotes that IH:s current denial is weak evidence against.
Without IH Rossi was about dead, with even beleievers losing patience. IH gave Rossi enormous credibility. Now however, we all agree that has gone. So we are left with Rossi, with no evidence and no credibility, against IH.
I agree the positive evidence against Rossi from IH is not bullet-proof. What believers here forget is that without positive evidence for Rossi in the form of IH support it would not be considered plausible that he had anything.
So are we now in an agreement that 89 MUSD is not peanuts for IH even if the ecats - strictly hypothetical of course - works?
Are we also in an agreement that the fact that IH NOW categorically denies that the ecat work is vacuous because they are either incompetent/gullible or have problemtic motives that makes it impossible to say if they are forthcoming or not?
"Boring/said before"
Seems people forget it and say all the same nonsense again about the ecat working, Rossi just being clever, etc. etc. So some things bear repeating because some people don't get it!
"Rossi had tons of success"
Name one successful project with lasting consequences from which Rossi is still making money. Just ONE. Even the one most people name, the generation of biofuels is just Rossi says. No sales records, no follow up, no independent confirmation, nada. nothing. Rossi is the guy with a diploma purchased from a diploma mill, who ran scams in Italy including Petroldragon, illegal gold trading, and various other frauds, and then the thermoelectric fiasco. That's his successes.
"isotopes on the cheap"
Rossi claimed somewhere in JONP or interviews that a side effect of the ecat was that it could produce isotopes of nickel. He also once said that the ecat required rare and expensive isotopes of nickel as part of the fuel. He also said he could make those very cheaply himself but never said how. Clue: if he could, he'd be a multimillionaire without the ecat scam.
"customers and sales"
How about the mystery military customer, the mystery NATO colonel, the orders for 12 more megawatt plants, the current supposed 3 orders, notices on his site and JONP that megawatt plants were for sale with 4 months delivery? There were many others but I'd have to look it up.
"robotic factories"
Remember the robotic factory Rossi was building which was "a magnificence"? Where is that? What happened to it? When asked for a factory by the nuclear regulatory agency, IH staff took the inspectors to a building which was empty except for some old trash and junk. Rossi has been saying he *is* (not will be) building a robotic factory since early 2012. Where is it? Maybe the same place Defkalion's Hyperion factory (they also had a factory, ROTFWL!) is?
"tests judged anomalous by not-everyday-Joe sorts of people"
Originally, Rossi bamboozled and flummoxed a couple of well intentioned but aged past their prime scientists who simply did not hold Rossi's feet to the fire for proper methods. And even then they only said they *suspected* that something in the energy measured was anomalous-- and they called for better tests which of course Rossi never got. Later, Rossi razzled dazzled some unknown, undistinguished and sloppy Swedish scientists. And again, even they were not completely convinced. And their work has been roundly discredited, some of it right here by Thomas Clarke and others. Rossi has never had a single test done by a renown test organization, apparently even when IH requested it. Ever wonder why?
"no calibrations"
No *proper* calibrations ever. Until the hot cat, no calibrations at all ever. Doubt it? Link to some please. When the Swedish test society tried calibrations on behalf of Hydrofusion, the tests failed. When Quantum Australia and NASA offered to use their own instruments and methods to test the ecat, Rossi got angry and coincidentally, none of the dozen or so ecats he had was working while those people visited. As for the calibrations done for the hot cat by the Swedes, none extends over the full temperature range. Proper calibration is the first step to rule out fraud if it's conducted independent of the inventor. It has to cover all operating conditions. It never happened and the reasons given for not doing it were pure hogwash.
"reproductions and replications"
Name ONE, just one (with links) which was properly replicated, properly tested independent of the inventor by a credible testing organization. Surely you are not thinking of Parky? He photoshops his data for cripes sake.
"guilty"
Guilty of lying to get a multimillion dollar contract as per all the evidence in IH's responses and much much more on the internet -- where I come from, that is both civil and criminal fraud. Rossi has been reported by several people to the Florida state prosecutor's office (state attorney) and various regulatory agencies. It takes them time to collect data and evaluate the case but I bet they will.
QuoteSo are we now in an agreement that 89 MUSD is not peanuts for IH even if the ecats - strictly hypothetical of course - works?
It is peanuts relative to the value of the license in the case of working ecats, which was my original point. Not, as we can see from the refusal to pay, peanuts in the case of not working ecats.
QuoteAre we also in an agreement that the fact that IH NOW categorically denies that the ecat work is vacuous because they are either incompetent/gullible or have problemtic motives that makes it impossible to say if they are forthcoming or not?
Absolutely not. They are, clearly, idealists. No doubt they'd like to make money but they are funding blue skies research in a field that most believe is pseudo-science. It seems highly unlikely to me that if they had the shortcut to success that working ecats represent they would lie about this. They have no motive to do that and every motive to trumpet it and obtain massive funding for the LENR revolution.
Nor, given their premise that LENR exists but is difficult to make work properly, do I think they were gullible to look and see whether Rossi has anything. Abd has made the point that in the null case this costs them at most $10M, whereas the value is many $100Ms if it is real. That is a gamble they might properly take even if thinking (sensibly) that Rossi was very possibly a complete flake.
They believed the 6 Lugano testers. Scientifically, they had bad advice. But I guess they reckoned the Swedes constituted good scientific advice?
@TTH
An ecat which worked for a year at a 50:1 COP would be worth BILLIONS *easily*.
Vaughn is clearly an idealist from his other activities and web site. Darden? Maybe not so much. I think he wants to make money first and foremost. That's why he took a large risk with investor money. And yes, they had bad advice and a brief foray into the internet would have revealed all the questions, issues and doubts about the competence of Levi, Lewan, Kullander, Essen and the three Swedish professors. They didn't even bother or if they did, they failed to give what they found adequate consideration.
As for risking $10M to make $100M being reasonable? Nonsense. How much would it have cost to sponsor a decent set of tests by a major testing organization? $100,000? $250,000 tops for the Rolls Royce version? That was all the would have needed to risk. Of course Rossi would never have allowed it which should have told them all they needed to know but clearly it didn't. I think their greed and the fact they were not risking their own funds (or very little of their own funds) made them incautious.
As for risking $10M to make $100M being reasonable? Nonsense. How much would it have cost to sponsor a decent set of tests by a major testing organization? $100,000? $250,000 tops for the Rolls Royce version? That was all the would have needed to risk. Of course Rossi would never have allowed it which should have told them all they needed to know but clearly it didn't.
Mary, you have a simplistic view of life which sees things as black and white. Your view of the Rossi affair was heavily colored by your general highly skeptical position on many topics, actually pseudoskeptical.
So you think only in very primitive terms. They could have save $11.5 million by insisting on quality tests. However, you also know that Rossi would not allow that. So insisting on those tests would have accomplished nothing. (They apparently pushed it as far as they could without blowing the deal, see the amended Answer, counterclaim paragraph 56.)
They were surely aware, by 2012, of the serious problems with Rossi. The experts, by that time -- the people who know LENR is real, the actual scientists, not merely bloggers and blow-hards -- knew that Rossi claims had never been independently verified. But they also knew that they were not impossible, and that Rossi could merely be a paranoid eccentric. Because of the attention that Rossi was successfully attracting, and desiring to support LENR development, they concluded that it was necessary to know, not guess, about the Rossi claims, and that $11.5 million was not too much to pay to find out. If they could make devices, they could test them themselves, breaking the logjam. So what did they assess the probability as, that Rossi was real?
If I guess 1%, what is the technology worth if real? I have said a trillion dollars per year. 1% of a trillion is $10 billion per year. These are venture capitalists accustomed to high risk. Because of various errors by various scientists, they might have put the odds higher than 1%.
You may think that they were stupid, they should have listened to you, but .. they already knew everything you were saying. The reality is that they are far smarter than you, and far more successful. Being "wrong," they were then able to raise another $50 million, and don't believe for a moment that they misled Woodford. This is all high risk investment, that may take a lot more money before it can pay off. What I know that they are funding basic science, actually addressing those fundamental questions.
QuoteI think their greed and the fact they were not risking their own funds (or very little of their own funds) made them incautious.
It is not greed to make a rational assessment of risks and benefits. And it was their own money, at first. My guess is that the $1.5 million payment to Rossi to secure the Agreement came out of Darden's pocket, traded for stock later. And essentially spent, but Darden now has a substantial piece of IH Holdings International, Ltd., which appears to be where the real money is now. How rapidly they are spending it I have no idea, but I strongly suspect they can raise more, much more, and they will be going for governmental funding or facilitating that. Within a few years I expect annual investment to reach $1 billion. This is all consistent with how Cherokee operates.
(The initial funding of IH was a small group, these people know each other well. This was not some public offer, no pension funds, etc., nobody heavily invested such that it would hurt to lose it all. "Spend," I should say.
They are not making money with LENR, not yet, not even close. That was not their short-term goal. The short-term goal was to break open the field, to break the logjams. Yes, if Rossi had worked out, they would have already been making money hand over fist. But they knew that was unlikely, I'm sure. And now they have a hedge. Surely, Mary, you understand hedges.
And what are the movie rights worth?
Mary, you have a simplistic view of life which sees things as black and white
I think you give Mary too much credit here.
