Dan's Data letters #173
Publication date: October 2006.Last modified 06-Oct-2012.
No sound but the squeal of tyres
I was wondering if you'd have time for a battery question.
These guys have been getting a ton of press lately:
Short summary: Tesla Motors are the makers of the Not Quite Yet Available Tesla Roadster, basically an electric conversion of a Lotus Elise. Their performance claims are aggressive - the thing allegedly rivals a similarly-priced Porsche 911 - but the car still hasn't seen any meaningful testing. Lots of room for skepticism, but mine is focused on one point: The battery.
The Tesla is using a fancy lithium ion battery pack, complete with fancy computer-controlled charge/discharge and fancy liquid cooling. You have rather famously ranted on the lifespan issues of Li-ion packs, and as an iPod owner I have little reason to doubt you. But does the same issue apply here? Will Tesla owners, already having coughed up roughly $US100,000 for the car, find themselves needing new batteries within 2-3 years, even for "garage queen" models?
I e-mailed Tesla about this, but no reply was forthcoming. Here's the most relevant FAQ entry from their site:
"Li-Ion batteries are good for 500 charge/discharge cycles. With 250 miles of range this works out to 125,000 miles, but our estimate is a conservative 100,000 miles. However we believe that we will get better life from our batteries due to temperature control of the batteries and intelligent charge/discharge cycling."
My dad is a retired engineer and a real car geek, and he's shown interest in this thing. He's retired well enough that there's a chance he'd consider one of these when it's time to replace his current toy. But if the short answer is "heck yes," then this really undermines my confidence in these guys, already on unstable ground given the hype-to-real-data ratio they're currently sporting.
Rusty
Answer:
I posted about the Tesla a while ago
on Metafilter.
It looks as if a significant number of Teslas will actually end up in the hands of those rich and adventurous enough to buy one. And, who knows, the company may actually make a significant contribution to the field of combustion-less motoring. Various previous e-car companies have said they'll make a supercar to get themselves known, then move downmarket into cars normal humans can afford; perhaps Tesla is actually going to do it.
But, yes, the batteries are gonna die.
LiI design is improving, and quality varies, and you can get more life out of a battery pack by never completely filling or emptying it - Prius NiMH packs are expected to last the life of the car, because they're never filled or emptied. And sure, keeping the packs cool can only help. But all LiI packs slowly die whether you use them or not. Nobody's solved that problem yet.
There's no way that anyone who owns a Tesla for five years won't have to replace the battery pack, and there's also no way that that pack will be replaceable for less than $US10,000. Probably more, even four years from now.
Apart from that, the Tesla's failings are likely to be the same failings that other small-production-run supercars have. Namely, ergonomics, reliability, parts availability, and sufficient weirdness that mortal mechanics can't work on it properly.
This is all part of the fun for real car enthusiasts, of course, but not really when it extends into waiting four months for a part to arrive, discovering after 623 metres of motoring that your new defrabulator is one of the ones from the bad batch, waiting again...
You need a pretty thick skin to tolerate all that laughter from Toyota owners who pass your hypercar on its all-up tow truck.
The competition is pretty darn stiff, too. We now live in a magical world of rainbows and unicorns in which it is actually possible to purchase a reliable Ferrari - though not quite for the (probable) price of the Tesla (I think the Tesla's final retail price still hasn't been nailed down). You can get a pretty darn respectable 911 around the Tesla's price, though.
Listen, Sonny...
I was wondering if you'd be interested in partnering with CA (formerly Computer Associates) to promote our award-winning Desktop DNA Migrator product which lets users transfer all their old files, settings and preferences to their new PC. To make this a no-risk proposition, you'd get 100% of revenues generated through your site for the first 2 weeks. So, if in that time, you sell 50 copies, you would receive $3,000 (based on current MSRP). After the 2 week period, if you'd like to continue, I'd be willing to offer you 50% rev share as long as sales remain at or near previous levels. Also, I can throw in our award-winning Anti-spam and Firewall products into the mix to help you maximize revenue. I think this is a tremendous opportunity, and DNA would be a real valuable tool and certainly appreciated by many of your readers since most PC users don't even know that this solution exists. Thanks so much for your time and consideration. I look forward to your reply.
Sonny Yoon
eCommerce Marketing Manager
CA Consumer Division
Answer:
100% of the first two weeks of sales of a product that's got a 30-day free trial version,
eh? Sweet!
Despite this, I checked Desktop DNA out, because hey, it might actually be cool.
First up - CA needs to make Desktop DNA's "Supported Applications List" available online. The FAQ (PDF) mentions it, but you can't see it anywhere. Even after downloading and installing the trial version of the program, I still can't find the list.
Without that list, there's no way to see what makes Desktop DNA any better, for most users, than the free WinXP FAST utility (whose list of supported applications is similarly obscure).
There could be a reason for this, I suppose. When I ran Desktop DNA, it listed precisely three apps that it could migrate, and which I actually use. One of them was Eudora, which you can "migrate" by just copying the directory to a new computer. Oh, and there was Winamp as well, but Desktop DNA thought it was Winamp version 2. I think there might have been enough changes to Winamp over the last eight years that something might have gone amiss if I'd tried to transplant it using software that thought it was still version 2.
More importantly: No Photoshop CS2, no music software, and certainly not various "lesser" apps like my text editor, client-side spam filter, P2P software...
And, of course, Desktop DNA doesn't do a full "migration" anyway, because otherwise it'd be The Pirate's Friend, able to duplicate a whole computer full of registered-and-paid-for software onto a fresh box. So you still have to install apps on the destination computer before you can use Desktop DNA to migrate data to them.
In a corporate environment that's probably no big deal, with installers on a central server and/or disk imaging, but home and small office users - like most of this site's readers - don't have that luxury. Reinstalling all the apps is what takes most of the time when you're setting up a new computer, not moving the often-trivial settings from the old machine to the new one.
Oh, and you know what a lot of my readers would like help migrating?
Games.
Saved games, control and video settings, et cetera.
Control settings for action games can take longer to set up than most productivity software, and saved games can be months in the making.
But, again, there's no help to be had from Desktop DNA here. It's a business-only program.
Still, I did indeed not even know that Desktop DNA existed before Sonny mentioned it to me. It looks like a handy sort of thing for many people, and seems quite obviously superior to FAST for corporate users.
But all that most of this site's readers are likely to actually need is the free trial version of DNA.
Install, migrate, uninstall. The next computer you need to migrate will probably either be completely unconnected with the old one (so you won't even need to sanitise the Desktop DNA entries in the registry to get it to install again), or it'll be far enough in the future that there'll be a new free Desktop DNA trial version that probably won't care that you used to have an older one installed.
In case you're wondering, gentle readers, Sonny did not reply to the above. That's a shame, because I would have liked to have heard his justification for the "50% rev share as long as sales remain at or near previous levels" loophole.
Could it be that he's more interested in getting people to buy as many CA products as humanly possible than in providing them with "valuable tools" that they actually need?
Say it ain't so, Sonny!
It gets better
I'm Dennis Thompson, the owner of ATXPowerSupplies.com. Our website has been around since 2004, and we've grown into quite a powerhouse on our corner of the web. Our website is simple. We deal with power supplies, computer cases, and computer case accessories.
I am writing you to request a review for our latest power supply cross reference engine. This engine is the first of its kind and allows the user to replace OEM power supplies in a few seconds rather than spending hours scouring the web for compatible replacements. Here's the press release.
In the review I request that three links find their way into your article:
1. a link to http://www.atxpowersupplies.com/power-supply-cross-reference.php , containing the anchor text, "cross reference power supplies"
2. a link to http://www.atxpowersupplies.com , containing the anchor text, "power supplies"
3. a link to http://www.atxpowersupplies.com/computer-cases.htm , containing the anchor text, "computer cases"
Since this review doesn't involve receiving tangible merchandise we'd like to pay you $100 for your time.
Also, on a separate note, we sponsor websites like yours. We'd be interested in knowing what your price is to fly our banner on your website in 6 month blocks.
Thank You,
Dennis Thompson
Two Point Enterprise
www.ATXPowerSupplies.com
Answer:
That's not really gonna happen, because
1: There's no way for me to tell if the results of a search are correct. This is a biggie - it's impossible for me to determine whether your product actually works. The fact that the cross-reference pages themselves contain disclaimers that say you don't promise that the results will be correct is not encouraging. I've got no problem with linking to the thing; it looks as if it could be useful. But there's no way for me to tell.
2: It seems to me that you're trying to bribe me.
Not that I put myself out there as some kind of paradigm of rectitude, or anything (I've mused about the corruptibility of Web reviewers before, here and here), but c'mon, man. This looks sleazy to me.
Feel free to tell people about your site, and if it's useful they'll use it. People may even link to it, just as they link to other relevant resources. Hurrah for the Internet.
If you want to get an unfair advantage by paying for publicity, though, I suggest you do it the usual way, by retaining the services of an ad agency.
Actually, I'm laundering money for the Mob
I was wondering if a lot of people actually send you money for no very good reason. Is this lucrative? How is it working out for you? I'm considering asking the world for some cold hard cash, and I can think of very good reasons to send it my way. Perhaps posting a diary with my problems and picture would help touch the heart of some rich man's wallet. How long have fools been sending you money? You are a very creative and brilliant man and I would love to hear back from you. Have a great day:)
Kelli
Answer:
Well, I don't know what "lucrative" means to you, but my donation income is
enough to pay for a decent amount of crap on eBay.
I, however, have an eight-year-old site (archive.org first noticed me in early '99) with a current Google PageRank of 5 or 6 (depending on the phase of the moon), which contains more than 950 pages and shifts around a hundred gigabytes of data per month. People give me money because they find the stuff on my site entertaining or educational, not because they feel sorry for me.
(Although if someone said they felt sorry for me when they donated some money, I wouldn't give it back.)
I mention this because, every now and then, I get an e-mail from someone who's clearly under the impression that all I do is beg for money. I don't bother replying to most of those people, because they're obviously about as sharp as ten pounds of wet leather. You can string a sentence together, though, so I reckon you're actually able to understand a reply.
Go ahead and start a free blog somewhere and ask for donations (check the terms of service of the hosting site, though - many prohibit all kinds of stuff that smells like a scam, and starting a blog and immediately asking for handouts may well get you banned). But don't expect people to give you more than a buck or two a week, if that, unless you give them something in return.
There are so many "e-begging" sites these days that there are directories of them, so don't expect a mere sob story to work, unless you manage to come up with some particularly newsworthy hook and score your 15 minutes of Internet fame.
Original writing, photography, videos of your many hungry pets, pictures of yourself dressed as Spider-Man and popping balloons with your bottom; all of those may catch people's attention enough that you may be able to make some significant amount of money right off the bat.
Or they may not.
I'm firmly in favour of Internet panhandling, as long as you're not aggressive about it (which it's pretty much impossible to be, on the Web). Nobody has to give you money, lots of people really can spare a buck or three, and there are plenty of people in the world who seem to be desperate to give their money to someone. Those people usually don't have a great deal to spare, but they're immune to education and will keep themselves poor, no matter how hard well-meaning people try to stop them.
Congratulations - you're almost certainly much more deserving than the grifters, quacks and preachers who usually suck money out of the gullible.
So good luck to you. But don't think you won't need it.
UPDATE: As of 2012, this site is now 14 years old and has more than 1200 pages. And, more interestingly, online panhandling has also progressed; now you can just send people PayPal money requests, and see if they pay them!
This is a bit like the classic fraudulent-invoice (or "services-not-rendered") scam, where the scammer sends out bills for products and services the recipients never actually bought. That's clearly illegal in every country that has, you know, laws; its usually-barely-legal cousin is the equally antiquitous "real, but worthless, business directory".
I think just sending people unqualified PayPal money requests is probably legal in most countries, though. If you just ask for money and don't pretend it's for anything in particular, your target may file a complaint about the transaction after he sobers up and realises what he did, but at least he probably won't call the cops.
(For this reason, this above-linked PayPal request I received is probably legally safe. This one appeared to promise more money in return if I paid it, though, which makes it shakier.)
Here we go again
I know you're probably sick of debunking fuel scams by now, but I'm hoping to get your opinion on the products of a company called Firepower, as my father is investing with them, against my judgment.
They make liquid fuel conditioners that have many amazing properties that will apparently improve fuel combustion (scam alert going off already), improve fuel lubricity, provide water control and sludge reduction in diesel, and neutralize sulphuric acid in diesel. Their basic rap is that their additive will get rid of impurities, caused by a number of things, that will degrade or clog fuel system components.
This page advertises the product my dad mentioned he was impressed with. It's your basic bunch of claims with zero statistical evidence and mentions "independent laboratory testing", but not what the name of that facility was or where the test results can be found. The only PDFs at the bottom of the page are a laughable "Product Technical Specifications" which has a copy and paste of the page it's sitting on, plus a few hazardous chemical warnings, and a Material Safety Data Sheet, which basically replicates the hazardous chemical warnings from the first PDF.
Now, I'm not an expert in diesel mechanics or physics, so I can't tell whether the claims are likely to be bulldust or not, but this company seems to be making many claims for just one product and also does not offer much in the way of proof, two hallmarks of a scam. This page advertises a fuel "Pill" which, again, is marketed as a combustion improver, and actually has some independent test reports named and detailed that basically say it gave petrol a higher Research Octane Number, but then it also has testimonials on it like this one:
"The claims made on the Firepower Pill can be backed up by trying the products - it works" - Alan, Woodlands WA
In other words, you don't need empirical evidence when you can just pay them to try the stuff and GUESS if it's having an effect (and of course your favourability towards the product will be in direct proportion to the amount of money you just blew on it).
The product features of their Heavy Fuel Oil Conditioner are identical to their Diesel conditioner, and they've pasted some of the paragraphs into their Petrol Conditioner page as well (obviously leaving out the ones that refer to properties unique to diesel).
This is a West Australian company and my dad has been told that the Federal government is apparently interested in using their products (which I told him, even if true, does not prove their products work). The fact that they are not selling some hokey fuel magnet or fuel/air swirling device, but something you are physically adding to the fuel, gives me a little hope, but it still reads like a scam to me.
What do you think? Also, if it IS a scam, is my father likely to lose money investing in the company, or do these types of outfits still turn over a good buck preying on gullible consumers anyway?
Guy
Answer:
Yep, this looks like straightforward fuel-additive scammery to me.
The excellent Tony's Guide to Fuel Saving site has pages that deal directly with many of Firepower's claims.
"More complete combustion" is a common, but badly flawed, claim. Even slightly recent petrol and diesel engines are very efficient combustors. If your engine is modern and in good tune and repair, there's close to nothing to be gained there. If it's old and in bad shape, no fuel additive will help.
Tony's got things to say about the notion that you need to add detergents to your fuel, too.
(Also note that it's normal for the major fuel formulators to add detergents and lubricity correctors to diesel fuel.)
And, of course, Tony's main debunking page also applies.
On this page, Firepower favour us with some plain nonsense: "When 91ULP, 95PULP and 98 PULP base fuels are treated with the Firepower Pill, the resulting fuel would comply with the Australian Standard."
Apart from the fact that it's ungrammatical, that sentence does not seem to contain any actual information, other than that their additive does not appear to ruin the fuel. Moving on:
"An increase in RON (Research Octane Number) resulted with the addition of the Firepower Pill. Intertek Testing Services (test report AU190-31230/4311000-November 2005)"
Uh, OK, but octane rating does not tell you how "good" the fuel is, only how resistant to detonation it is. If you've got higher-octane fuel, you can compress the fuel more without causing engine knock, where the fuel/air mixture is heated so much by compression that it detonates before it's meant to be lit by the spark plug. Higher-compression-ratio engines, all things being equal, can make more power, but require higher-octane fuel. That's all octane rating means, though. If your engine doesn't need high octane fuel, then it will derive no benefit from it.
(Some fancy engines these days can adjust their behaviour automatically to run better from high RON fuel, but they're not changing their compression, just spark and maybe valve timing.)
There are various flammables you can add to petrol to increase its octane number, without doing anything beneficial to its actual energy content or in any other way making the fuel "better". The RON of ethanol, for instance, is 129, but ethanol's not a particularly high energy fuel. You can just compress the heck out of it without making it detonate.
Different gasoline formulations have different mixes of hydrocarbons, which can have effects on various properties of the fuel besides the octane number. Density, burn speed, how fast your bank account empties when you start running your circuit racer on Elf racing fuel instead of pump gasoline. But you still shouldn't expect a special fuel formulation to make a standard engine perform better.
And then there's "The addition of the Firepower Pill to VK91 petrol achieved the requirements set out in DIN EN 228(N91). An addition in RON was also observed."
I don't know exactly what the difference between VK91 and N91 petrol are (if there are any, or if those are even types of fuel - the only fuel-related place on the Web where those two terms exist together is the Firepower page...), but it seems as if Firepower are again proudly quoting a test that said their pill did nothing in particular but boost octane, and letting the reader believe that that's something remarkable.
As you say, apart from those apparently irrelevant tests, all the evidence Firepower seem to have is testimonials. But the situation becomes even more bizarre when you notice the testimonials on the fuel-pill page about how it apparently made diesel vehicles run better.
Diesel fuel is meant to detonate. That's how diesel engines work.
Accordingly, increasing the "octane" rating of diesel fuel is undesirable. If anything, you want to increase the cetane rating, larger values of which indicate a greater propensity to detonate.
Don't worry, though - this magic pill lets you have it both ways!
Regarding the diesel additive - yes, increasing the lubricity of diesel can make the engine happier, and I suppose it's possible that the formulators of Australia's "low-sulfur" diesel don't add enough oily stuff to their products to entirely compensate for the lower lubricity caused by the low(ish) sulfur. Or, at least, that they don't add enough to bring it up to the lubricity needed for maximum engine, fuel pump, et cetera, life in old diesel vehicles.
There are many additives that can do this, though, including a bit of biodiesel or even (for most diesel engines) just some clean vegetable oil (fresh, or previously used for cooking; as long as you strain out the chunks and particles, you're OK) mixed in with the fuel. There's no need to spend big bucks.
I could take the time to look into Firepower's water/acid/microorganism-in-diesel claims, but the only people I can see talking about it, beside Firepower, are dealing with big stationary fuel tanks. Such tanks may, of course, sit there with the same fuel in them for months. Automotive fuel tanks are, in contrast, regularly flushed out with fresh fuel.
There's probably good reason to use some additives if you live in a genuinely cold climate and want your diesel vehicle to be able to sit with a quarter-full tank for a few days without something nasty (eventually) happening. Some diesel experts also recommend "fuel biocide" additives, to be dumped in the tank once or twice a year at most. So, who knows, perhaps the Firepower additive serves those functions. But you're wasting your money if you use it all the time, or in a climate (read: almost anywhere in Australia) where cold-weather additives of all kinds (fuel, radiator, whatever) are unnecessary.
Since Firepower's previous claims for their diesel additive are well-used falsehoods, I don't see a lot of need to look into the other ones in more detail.
The "smaller droplets" and "effective combustion catalyst" stuff is standard fuel-gadget balderdash. Yes, people usually say this stuff about physical devices rather than chemical additives, but that doesn't make it any more true. The claims are easy to test and worth a trillion dollars; just like everybody else making such claims, though, these clowns choose to sell their products to rubes for (relative) peanuts instead.
Fuel in petrol and diesel engines is already very thoroughly combusted (yes, in the cylinder, when you want it to be), so there's very little to be gained there even if the claims are true. And you don't want to increase the rate of combustion of fuel in a petrol or diesel engine. It's easy to make it all go off at once, and it's called "knock" when it happens. The faster your fuel combusts, the harder it is on the piston. So the very foundation of Firepower's claims for power and efficiency improvements is self-evidently incorrect.
I invite you (and your dad!) to compare and contrast Firepower's claims with those made for "Ethos FR". So many different potions, so much similarity. It's amazing.
Regarding the Firepower company itself, I note that a search for their company name finds nothing much but trademark applications that mention the fact that the company is based, for legal purposes, not so much in Western Australia as in... the Cayman Islands.
That's always the mark of a bunch of stand-up guys!
[This letter resulted in all sorts of fun when Firepower became a pretty major player in the Australian business world. And then collapsed, just like every other miraculous-fuel-additive company, leaving angry creditors in their wake. Along the way, I was threatened with lawsuits, Australian professional basketball was dealt a possibly fatal blow, Firepower executives were linked with Nicolae Ceausescu and kickbacks from Saddam Hussein... maybe you should just read my blog posts about it.]
And now, just in case the last one didn't get me sued...
I just saw your Nightstar flashlight review.
A few days ago I heard about a different one, the "Eco Dyno-Light", on ABC Radio National.
I bought one, and of course it is a rip-off. It appears to have two 20mm diameter flat (CR2032-type) batteries in the circuit, which I now imagine are rechargeables that are actually recharged by the shaking. I turned the unit on when I got it and it is running for a lot longer at undimmed brightness than "5 minutes from a thirty second shake", as claimed by other similar sites which I have since discovered. Now that I think about it, claims like "hours of pollution free light from a single 20 sec charge" are ridiculous.
I have asked the distributor what the batteries are for. His/her response was "The Dyno-Light does have the dry cell batteries as back up and, recharge as a back up for the capacitor". After this response, I asked for my money back. We'll see, but I am tempted to keep the light to take apart and work out the circuit.
Anyway, I was attracted to this light because it sounded such a great idea - "battery-free". But this particular one seems to be a con (among others, it would now appear).
Sebastian
Answer:
Yes, this looks like the same product I answered a letter about
the other day. It would appear that there's a
plague of the bloody things.
The two 2032s would appear to be what one Louis Ashton, of the Dyno-Light company, is talking about in this radio interview when he says "two computer batteries". Lithium coin cells are indeed the kinds of batteries that've been used to back up configuration memory in PCs, since they stopped using larger and lousier soldered-on batteries.
Ashton then goes on to say that the batteries don't need to be replaced, which is what us professionals refer to as a lie. The coin cells will last about as long as they would in a little key-ring flashlight - which is to say, quite a while. For most of their "life", though, they'll be close to dead and not lighting up the LED nearly as brightly as they did when they were persuading the hapless customer to buy the flashlight. But after that, young Skywalker, they will die.
(The Dyno-Light product page doesn't mention the batteries at all. It also has some funny ideas about how the circuit's meant to work - "Shaking the flashlight horizontally causes a high strength magnet to pass an electrical current between a copper wire-coil, through a capacitor powering an ultra bright LED" sounds like a lightly Markoved version of the actual means of operation of one of these lights.)
I strongly doubt the batteries are rechargeable. There's no rechargeable cell with a thin coin form factor, as far as I know - some of the little LiI rechargeables are very flat and could be made in that shape, but two of those in series would blow up the LED. In any case, even if they were NiCd or NiMH cells they'd still wear out, in time. And go flat while sitting on the shelf, too, and the Dyno-Light people are proud of the fact that their light doesn't do that.
And, now that I think about it, rechargeables would stop the flashlight from working if they were flat. Shaking it would start to charge the batteries, but you'd have to shake a lot to get enough charge into them that the thing would actually light up. Even a real charge control circuit wouldn't properly fix that problem, since nobody would ever shake the thing long enough to charge the batteries more than a few per cent. The proper shake-lights work quite well, but that's because a few minutes of 5mA-average 3.5V LED light requires very little energy, so it's OK that the shake arrangement is very inefficient.
(One minute of 5mA-average 3.5V LED lighting requires only 1.05 watt-seconds of energy. A watt-second is a joule, and just sitting still, an adult human radiates about 100 joules of heat every second. 1.05 joules is not a lot of energy at all.)
And, of course, if the batteries were rechargeable, and backed by a charge control circuit that stopped them from preventing the light from working until they'd been charged a bit, there would be no reason to have a capacitor in there as well.
So: Definitely not rechargeable batteries.
I suppose supplementing non-rechargeable batteries with a shake-charge arrangement could work. But I bet, in this cheaply-made thing, the bloody batteries charge the cap themselves, since the batteries and cap are connected in parallel.
So if the batteries aren't flat, the cap's full all the time, and shaking the light will do nothing but give a brief voltage pulse that makes the LED glow brighter for that one moment. That's what my correspondent last time reported.
My considered opinion, therefore, is that the Eco Dyno-Light company are not telling the truth. Their planet-saving ecological product is actually a flashlight that you have to throw away when its tiny batteries go flat. They suckered the people who interviewed them on the radio. And Louis Ashton is a bit of a tit.
A cogent rebuttal
Dan,
In your commentary of [sic] the Belt audio products, whereby you condemn and dismiss everything you read on the site, nowhere at all did you mention the fact that you had actually tested them. Even "blind", even "double blind". So if you don't know what the fuck you're talking about you stupid ignorant loudmouthed asswipe, you are advised to **shut the fuck up**. That must be a novel idea for you. There are enough ignorant twats in the world, without you creating more of them.
From someone who signs himself (or conceivably herself) ". ." and is, astoundingly, a prolific Usenet poster.
(Peter Belt sells a label with "Sound Has Priority", as per . .'s e-mail address, printed on it. It costs one hundred and seventy five US dollars, and is alleged to be very good value.)
Answer:
When you say "whereby", I think you mean "in which".
Regarding my condemnation and dismissal of Peter Belt's extremely plausible products: I have also not tested standing on magnets to see if they make me live forever, or "sword salve", that substance which one can allegedly spread on an edged weapon to heal wounds which were previously caused by that weapon. Yet I am quite confident that these claims are also incorrect.
For similar reasons, I am quite confident that sticking "Morphic Message Foils" on and in various pieces of audio equipment, or indeed applying "Morphic Green Cream" to the outside of batteries used to power that equipment, will have precisely no effect on the behaviour of that equipment.
I would, actually, be quite happy to bet my life on this. When claims are this strongly opposed to everything that science has ever told us, and so magnificently devoid of supporting evidence, the only reason not to cheerfully wager any amount of anything on their incorrectness is that it's mean to make fun of crazy people.
But since, as you say, I am a miserable worm unworthy to lick dung from the soles of Peter Belt's shoes, perhaps my life is not very much to wager.
There are very many things in the world which are alleged by one or another person to have some remarkable quality or other. Life's too short to test all of these claims, and you're entirely correct when you say that people should shut up about things about which they know nothing.
If, however, one knows something about aeroplanes, and is confronted by a person who insists that he has made a supersonic airliner out of cotton wool, one need not actually go to his garage and inspect this airliner to make a judgement regarding the plausibility of the claim.
When someone alleges something which contradicts the vast bulk of what humanity has, in the course of centuries of exceedingly tedious effort, learned about the universe, I think it is fair to point out such inconsistencies without, personally, attempting to bounce on one's bottom for a few years to see if doing so allows one to fly, giving large amounts of money to Scientology to see whether they do in fact then teach one to control space and time, or paying good money for a piece of foil that is alleged to make CDs sound better, but only if you stick it over the place on the CD where the word "disc" is printed.
People are very welcome to believe that the
Tooth Fairy is real, if
they want to. I advise them, however, to avoid declaring holy war on all who do not
share their belief in magic beans foil, on account of the terrible
damage to one's self-esteem that can occur when such beliefs are widely publicised.
