Remember how Steorn, the company who built, hyped, then failed to demonstrate the Orb free energy machine, convened a hand-selected "jury" to evaluate the technology? No? Well, anyway, they've disbanded, unanimously unconvinced.

First, a little recap: In 2006, a little-known IT company announced that it had, in effect, circumvented the law of conservation of energy with its "Orb" generator, which produces "Clean, Free and Constant" power. To mitigate the inevitable response from rational people horrible skeptics, they issued a challenge to the world's scientists in The Economist, claiming they would assemble a qualified, unbiased jury to evaluate their technology. And so they did.

The next—and many assumed, final—chapter of the Steorn saga was a botched demonstration in 2007. Steorn blamed heat from the camera lights for the failure, but by then, people weren't really listening.

Today, we get this terse announcement from the jury, who has been silently plugging away all the while:

Twenty-two independent scientists and engineers were selected by Steorn to form this jury. It has for the past two years examined evidence presented by the company. The unanimous verdict of the Jury is that Steorn's attempts to demonstrate the claim have not shown the production of energy. The jury is therefore ceasing work.

But guess what! They didn't see the new stuff, apparently. Cue Steorn's (familiar) response:

[D]uring 2009 the company had resolved the key technical problems related to the implementation of Orbo and is now focused on commercial launch towards the end of this year, at which time academic and engineering validation would be released concurrent with public demonstrations

In other words, Steorn has discovered an unlimited source of energy, and they're using it to power their PR department, forever.