Be Excellent To Each Other

I've just been down to Comet to pick up a laptop and of course the sales guy was trying to sell me everything he possibly could rather than just the laptop but came up with the following gem whilst showing me a Monster multi socket unit (£99);

"This power unit is like they use on TV's but you can use them with laptops and what they do is clean the electricity which can give you an extra 2 or 3 years out of an appliance."

I was really really tempted to get him to put that in writing so I could use it as a stick to beat him with just for laughs but he was so odious I just wanted to get away from him.

I am now going to take an old appliance back to Comet and claim that it has broken because of "dirty" electricity and can they "de-fur" the wires or somesuch.

haha, brilliant! He'd clearly heard someone say something and just taken it ver-bateumumeum. I think he's reffering to the fact that current and voltage spikes can slowly wear out a lot of the components in the same way that hot-cold-hot transitions can. But quite frankly that's all a load of bollocks and I don't think I've ever actually heard of any electrical component breaking due to to many cold-hot transitions. [But I'd like to be proved wrong here, folks!]

You should write and complain to Comet - he sounds like some dodgy conman who tried to sell £9,000 vacuum cleaners to old women with tales of space allergens. I always make sure to remember the names displayed on the nametags of such creeps for later complaining...

PCR machine sensors.

Off to Watchdog and trading standards methinks. Utter utter bollocks. You can protect against spikes, but prolong the life of the equipment? I wager I'd like to see that.

You can save hundreds by simply washing your power sockets before connecting valuable AV equipment.

Oooh, can you remember what the device was called exactly? Monster is well known for spouting bullshit about their priced up products. And one quick email to ASA can get their knuckles wrapped quite nicely.

He may well have been lead on a little by Monster themselves. Though probably not to the full Brass Eye levels of idiocy he exhibited.

I was telling student about one of the robots we have here. I was describing the protocol and pointing out the various bits and pieces that do stuff.

"And the water comes through the dispensing head, here, at 100ml per minute but we can change that if we want to"

"Does the water always come out?"

"No, once, lager came out and we all got pissed"

No, sorry - he should have known that he was talking crap - I HATE people that wrk in places like that and have bugger all clue about what they are selling, and so ending up mis-informing you. the guy was actively trying to push a product on Trousers with made-up information, which is really bloody annoying.

Oooh from Monsters web site



Hmm, I smell something here...

Given that you can run your network through the ring main this almost sounds feasible to me.

Though that equally indicates that massive signals sent through your power network are safe enough to be exploited as they do nothing to your power supply.

This.

About 12 years ago I worked in PC World for a day. Aside from being run by a complete bunch of chumps, stuff like this was going on all around me. The final straw was watching my nasty fat boss, who spent most of the day talking about his sex life with his Thai bride, flogging a totally overspecced PC to a couple who didn't need or afford it and them having to buy it on HP.

Scum scum scum scum.

I never returned after that day, and never bothered to chase them for my pay.

Fact: Today I nearly pooped myself when a full pint of water cascaded all over a the 4-way containing my monitor and computer's plugs. ERRrrrk. Thankfully nothing shorted out.


also: re: Lave's post. Guess what the PSU in your PC is intended to do? It's a big old isolation device.

The PSU helps the magic smoke in the PC not escape, thus ensuring smooth running to make the naked women appear on the glowing box.

Sometimes mind, customers are annoying like that.

Bear in mind I work in a self-service cash and carry, we aren't trained on any products and whatever I know is becuase I happen to know myself.

Customer : Hi, who do I speak to about TVs?

Sheepeh : Well, nooone here is trained on them but I probably know enough to answer most queries, how can I help?

Customer : Does this TV have Freeview?

Sheepeh : Yes. You can tell because it has this logo. *points*. Pretty much everything here has it.

Customer : *Looks at piece of paper given to them by little Johnny* Does it have...er...two thousand megajobbies and an electricity cleaner?

Sheepeh : Er...to be perfectly honest with you I have no idea what that means. (Bear in mind it's illegal for me to advertise a product having
something it doesn't, so I'm happy to say when I have no idea. Saves me getting busted.

Customer : Well, who does know?

Sheepeh : Noone here. The manufactuer, I guess.

Customer : Well can you find out?

Sheepeh : Um...I can look through the manual?

Customer : Yes please.

Sheepeh : *Looks through manual* It doesn't mention anything about megajobbies. I've never even heard of megajobbies. Are you sure
that's what you want?

Customer : Yes. Now go get someone who knows about these things.

So, rather than be treated like some dumbass for trying to help above and beyond what I need to, and being honest about not knowing everything under the sun about TVs, it's easier to either say "I have no idea, and this is a self service cash and carry so find out yourself and bugger off" which won't go down well with my management or "Yes, it has two thousand megajobbies. Just buy it. It's awesome."

Aha, So it would be problem if you didn't have a PSU?

I'm no qualified electrician but I doubt it. How often has your 5v phone blown up whilst on charge? :/

On charge via the transformer, you mean?

YOU WIN THE PRIZE.
ps: Transformers are still prone to creating noise. Infact a lot of them a "floating" type things where the voltages they output are always the same, but the max/min at one point in time is different from another point in time.

That sounds stupid, but basically, they always give out +5v, but at 12:00 it's because it;s between 2v and 7v and at 2:01 it's -1 and 4v. Obviously the period of such things is much shorter - This is one way they can generate "noise". But everything usually goes through a transformer anyway. All-in-all I would say this dirty electricity thing is a load of shit. If I'd have read this an hour ago I would have popped into the office behind me and spoken to one of the analouge technicians we have here, as it's quite interesting to know wtf all this "dirty electricty" is!

So they are just reselling you protection you already have?

(Against the 'dirty' bit - not the surge protection stuff)

This is true.



But this is FUD and LIES.

Due to the efforts of the European Union, there is a little thing called "CE". You may have noticed this symbol on, ooh, all the products you own. To claim CE for an electrical product, you have to demonstrate (yes, actually test) whether it will be affected by "dirty electricity" and also whether it generates such interference. Doesn't reach the market until it passes.

So it's a non-problem.

kalmar, so that would make this:



Lies because your computer is CE certified yes?

Which would make them fall foul of the ASA (along with your second quote).

Although a transformer provides isolation, what you often find with switch-mode supplies is a bad output response to a sudden transient on the supply, enough to damage or disrupt logic circuits.

As I say though, all this is well known about and well regulated, so such problems rarely if ever occur in the wild (and if they do, you take it up with the manufacturer of the equipment rather than buying over-priced witchery which probably wouldn't have helped anyway).

At that point I hope you told them that you would, and that they should wait right there, before walking to another area of the store to do some work for the rest of the day.

\
Yes. Yes we are.

Megatron, maybe, and the evil robot in Terminator 2.

Essentially, yes. What they might validly argue is that this device protects against noise and transients that are over and above the EMC requirements (which themselves tend to be over and above what you might experience from a rogue product).

For example, a direct lightning strike might take out your modem even though it meets all regulatory criteria, and you might want to buy an extra level of protection if that's a high risk in your area..

But that blurb is certainly very misleading, along snake-oil lines. Those affects that they list just don't happen in the EU electrical environment, not due to EMI anyway.

Cheers.

Probably worth a ten minute email to ASA then at least.

Yeah, I would challenge the "are often caused" bit. That's just not factually accurate.

Mind bogglingly I've just discovered that Advertisements on the Internet, include banner ads and pop-up ads count but not claims on companies own website.

So you can spout whatever shit you like on your products on your own website.

Astonishing.

Yup. This was always a useful loophole for the multi-national cosmetics company I used to be an in-house lawyer for (as well as doing their contracts work, we used to have to check all of their advertising and packaging in conjunction with some scientists).

However, under the ASA's rather tortuous rules on viral marketing, if you include a link to your website in a DM email, it arguably brings your website under the ASA's purview... Time to check if this company does email marketing, perhaps?

It's been done before, but when I was due to go on a break so they can't find me upstairs. Makro customers do tend be a little bit more proactive in coming to hunt you down than most. If only they put that much energy in to researching their purchases before they came, eh?

I personally research using the Internet, ask people I trust their opinions, then research some more. If the guy in the shop says anything I just disregard it. I do most of my shopping online anyway

It's like invisible lead soup.

Hey, rather than the ASA, perhaps a letter to the Bad Science guy in the Guardian might be worth a try? Anything that would stop him going on about fish oil trials would be good, anyway.
It's kind of on a level with making up psychiatric diseases to sell medication for.

"Dirty Electricty" and "Graham Stetzer" seem to appear next to each other a lot on net searches.... is he just spreading FUD in the hope of selling some fancy power packs?

Me and him are like that man.

Well not at all. But he has a lovely website and forum here. I'm far, far too proud of the tiny link he gives my rubbish blog on his front page (way, way at the bottom, under posse).

I'll mention on his forum tomorrow, and see what they think.

http://www.dirtyelectricity.org/health-issues.shtml
http://www.electricalpollution.com/

Those two sites are the biggest load of horse shit I've ever read. It actually made me angry to read it. It's pure psuedo science bullshit. They quote completely out of context facts and then say complete toss right after doing so. To an impressionable audience I imagine it reads like the unadultered TRUTH. It's actually made me angry to read it.

Well I hope it's better than the viral marketing this company are doing. Someone on Popbitch just received this casting email:

"We are casting a 2 minute viral for Momentum Pictures to promote the upcoming movie 'Teeth' for which they are the distributors.

'Teeth' is a witty horror movie about a girl with a 'Vagina Dentata' or toothed vagina. This thankfully mythical condition appears in folk tales or cautionary tales about the dangers of sleeping with strange women!

The premise of the viral campaign is to claim that 'Vagina Dentata' is in fact a real condition! It will be viewed in the context of a fictitious health website offering practical advice to women and their partners on this rather sensitive issue. The viral will take the form of a short documentary, thus absolute realism and total sincerity is the key to the actors performances.'"

"Heavy Electricity"

That teeth thing has been going for a few months now, right?
Also; I'm actually really angry about this electricity thing. Thankfully this SA thread has saved me having to get even more worked up: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... id=2795040

God Bless the Goons.

I'm going out in a moment, so I'll look at these properly tomorrow. But they seem disgusting. The thing with this always is you have to work out how 'big' they are. But if the guy is selling stuff...

EDIT: Oooh the goon link looks great.

http://www.badscience.net/?p=425
http://www.badscience.net/?p=239

The guy you were on about seems to have already done something on EMF. Infact he puts down a product that's even more horse shit. (A microcontroller that uses a 'holograph' to defend your house from EMF. Excellent! I'll buy 10!!!)

Thing is, those kind of places have their sales people on commission, or on some kind of "sell X amount this month or you're fired" type employment, so I'm not surprised they con the fuck out of customers when they can. I would, if it meant the only thing keeping a roof over my head. (Not that it excuses it, mind. The whole system's rotten.)

Or if it meant Ting Tong not running back to Thailand I suppose. [shudders at the memory]

The saw the excellent new Transformers cartoon series today. Featured Soundwave. Saw it too?

You should have asked how these 'electricity cleaners' would affect a Homeplug LAN.

Can you all shut up about the science and tell me where I can get one of these cables?

Mrs Grim... has already installed them silly.

What cables? An electricity cleaning one? They don't really exist, see....

Interestingly, having 'switched' appliances (portable telephone charger docks etc) on the same 6-gang as my homeplugs fucks my LAN throughput.