These guys have successfully translated an urban myth about audio and oxygen free copper and gold and silver and conductor capacitance and and and

Made a pretty decent profit from it they have!

https://consumerist.com/2008/03/03/do-coat-hangers-sound-as-good-monster-cables/

The test was conducted. After 5 tests, none could determine which was the Monster 1000 cable or the coat hanger wire. Further, when music was played through the coat hanger wire, we were asked if what we heard sounded good to us. All agreed that what was heard sounded excellent, however, when A-B tests occurred, it was impossible to determine which sounded best the majority of the time and which wire was in use. Needless to say, after the blind folds came off and we saw what my brother did, we learned he was right…most of what manufactures have to say about their products is pure hype. It seems the more they charge, the more hyped it is.

 

Those are all great examples of pricing to exceed the actual value created, which approaches zero. There must be a retail market for such things or they'd go away.

Can anyone offer an example of a B2B product like these?

 

So it's a 4 V battery, not rechargeable, high internal resistance?

That's about it. I finally actually watched the whole video at the link and was disappointed. It wasn't a demonstration of ... anything. There are so many ways to produce the results seen in the video and very few of them are of any interest.

If he has truly created a new battery chemistry, which I doubt, that's mildly interesting but the first question anyone would ask is, "what is the energy density?". He already dismissed it as far less than today's commercial products, and his demonstration shows the battery would be severely limited to low-current applications like clocks and calculators. Forget about flashlights or just about anything else. Why would anyone want a battery that is far lower energy than one you can buy for less than $1?

 

My dad passed away back in 1999. He was an acomplished Electrical Engineer and I remember his voice from 57 or so years ago when I was about 10. Ronald, you can't get something for nothing! I couldn't understand why I couldn't take a 6 volt automobile generator and run it as a motor to in turn run another generator. My own little perpetual motion loop. Entire career of engineering later and dad was right!

Ron

 

Probably stacked button cell batteries with magnets between them. Generator my button.

kv

 

Generator:

I put natural gas in and electricity comes out. Free energy till my gas bill comes in.

Ron

 

My dad passed away back in 1999. He was an acomplished Electrical Engineer and I remember his voice from 57 or so years ago when I was about 10. Ronald, you can't get something for nothing! I couldn't understand why I couldn't take a 6 volt automobile generator and run it as a motor to in turn run another generator. My own little perpetual motion loop. Entire career of engineering later and dad was right!

Ron

I wish my dad had a single bit of engineering "intuition".

When I was 6 or 7 years old, I was trying to hack a lamp for a fort. I was going to use a 6V lantern battery to light up a 60W 120V lamp in a fort that we built.

When my dad came home, he sat down on the garage floor and helped me. Then he drove me to the hardware store to buy a new 6V lantern battery because the first one must be burnt out. I asked him about it when I got older - I was wondering if he was just humoring me and he STILL thought that project should have worked. Well, he was an artist - a good artist because he was able to support a family of six (but a really bad engineer) .

 

My dad passed away back in 1999. He was an acomplished Electrical Engineer and I remember his voice from 57 or so years ago when I was about 10. Ronald, you can't get something for nothing! I couldn't understand why I couldn't take a 6 volt automobile generator and run it as a motor to in turn run another generator. My own little perpetual motion loop. Entire career of engineering later and dad was right!

Ron

I remember, at about that same age, perhaps a bit earlier, my dad (who was a high school grad and a purchasing agent for a small company) telling me about perpetual motion machines and how they were impossible. This was in the context of him explaining to me how an electric motor worked. I've long since forgotten the details of the discussion or how it got around to perpetual motion machines, but I do remember him remarking about how if anyone ever did build one, that they would be wildly rich and famous overnight. In hindsight it's obvious that remark was intended to underscore how it would have already been done if it were possible, but I tended to take things literally and so I, of course, set about to build one since riches and fame sounded fine to me. My thoughts were to use magnets on the edges of a rotating disk passing by magnets fixed nearby set at an angle so as to push the magnets on the disk in one direction. This seemed perfectly reasonable to me at the time. My dad encouraged my efforts, even knowing that they were destined to utter failure. It didn't take me long to give up the effort, though I don't think it was because I had become a believer that it was impossible. I just lost interest when it didn't work after a few days of trying down in the basement.

But years later I realized that, as I grew up, my dad seldom just told me how something would turn out and expect me to accept it based solely on his proclamation. Nor did he ever say something like, "See, I told you it wouldn't work," when, pretty much invariably, it didn't. He also didn't give me much in the way of suggestions when I was working on something (whether it was a perpetual motion machine or trying to rebuild a lawnmower engine -- which he could definitely have helped with because he had been an automobile and air compressor mechanic for a couple of decades before moving to the front office). Instead, he left me to my own devices (at the time I had simply assumed it was because he didn't have the time -- which with an invalid wife, was the case and which I understood even then). If I asked a very specific question, he would usually answer it (if he knew the answer -- if he didn't he would say so), but it was up to me to figure out, for the most part, what questions to ask. I have since pondered how many of my failed projects might have succeeded had he just taken the time to offer just a bit of unsolicited advice -- and I will be eternally grateful to his memory that he didn't and simply let the project succeed or fail as a result of my efforts.

That's possibly the hardest thing that I face in interacting with my daughter. It's very hard for me to not overload her with information based on my knowledge and experience and, instead, just play dumb and encourage her to explore on her own. At the very least, I want to guide her exploration. I know from discussions with my dad before he passed away that he must have gone through very similar struggled. I'm getting better at restraining myself. Instead, I try to get her involved in something I'm doing so that she can see the process that I'm using to solve problems and accomplish tasks. If she learns something, great. If she doesn't, that's fine, too. I also try to give her little practical problems to do as the opportunity arises and just let her figure it out -- or not.

 

I wish my dad had a single bit of engineering "intuition".

When I was 6 or 7 years old, I was trying to hack a lamp for a fort. I was going to use a 6V lantern battery to light up a 60W 120V lamp in a fort that we built.

When my dad came home, he sat down on the garage floor and helped me. Then he drove me to the hardware store to buy a new 6V lantern battery because the first one must be burnt out. I asked him about it when I got older - I was wondering if he was just humoring me and he STILL thought that project should have worked. Well, he was an artist - a good artist because he was able to support a family of six (but a really bad engineer) .

Go figure, my mom was an artist. My sisters and one brother all took after mom. I was my father's child.

There was the light in the underground fort behind the garage. That adventure got ugly.

Ron

 

I remember, at about that same age, perhaps a bit earlier, my dad (who was a high school grad and a purchasing agent for a small company) telling me about perpetual motion machines and how they were impossible. This was in the context of him explaining to me how an electric motor worked. I've long since forgotten the details of the discussion or how it got around to perpetual motion machines, but I do remember him remarking about how if anyone ever did build one, that they would be wildly rich and famous overnight. In hindsight it's obvious that remark was intended to underscore how it would have already been done if it were possible, but I tended to take things literally and so I, of course, set about to build one since riches and fame sounded fine to me. My thoughts were to use magnets on the edges of a rotating disk passing by magnets fixed nearby set at an angle so as to push the magnets on the disk in one direction. This seemed perfectly reasonable to me at the time. My dad encouraged my efforts, even knowing that they were destined to utter failure. It didn't take me long to give up the effort, though I don't think it was because I had become a believer that it was impossible. I just lost interest when it didn't work after a few days of trying down in the basement.

But years later I realized that, as I grew up, my dad seldom just told me how something would turn out and expect me to accept it based solely on his proclamation. Nor did he ever say something like, "See, I told you it wouldn't work," when, pretty much invariably, it didn't. He also didn't give me much in the way of suggestions when I was working on something (whether it was a perpetual motion machine or trying to rebuild a lawnmower engine -- which he could definitely have helped with because he had been an automobile and air compressor mechanic for a couple of decades before moving to the front office). Instead, he left me to my own devices (at the time I had simply assumed it was because he didn't have the time -- which with an invalid wife, was the case and which I understood even then). If I asked a very specific question, he would usually answer it (if he knew the answer -- if he didn't he would say so), but it was up to me to figure out, for the most part, what questions to ask. I have since pondered how many of my failed projects might have succeeded had he just taken the time to offer just a bit of unsolicited advice -- and I will be eternally grateful to his memory that he didn't and simply let the project succeed or fail as a result of my efforts.

That's possibly the hardest thing that I face in interacting with my daughter. It's very hard for me to not overload her with information based on my knowledge and experience and, instead, just play dumb and encourage her to explore on her own. At the very least, I want to guide her exploration. I know from discussions with my dad before he passed away that he must have gone through very similar struggled. I'm getting better at restraining myself. Instead, I try to get her involved in something I'm doing so that she can see the process that I'm using to solve problems and accomplish tasks. If she learns something, great. If she doesn't, that's fine, too. I also try to give her little practical problems to do as the opportunity arises and just let her figure it out -- or not.

You had a very, very good father... it's clear that you were (and are) very much blessed... plenty of things to be thankful for.

 

You had a very, very good father... it's clear that you were (and are) very much blessed... plenty of things to be thankful for.

Thanks. I realized that at a fairly young age. My dad and I had a very good relationship as I grew up. Even my friends noticed it quickly and remarked on it. I think the worst thing that either of us could imagine was doing something that would make the other ashamed of us. At his funeral I was trying to think of something to say and it dawned on me that I couldn't recall a single time (though I'm sure there must have been some) in which my dad told me what it meant to be a good man -- instead he simply showed me what it meant to be a good man by consistently being a good man, especially at times when it would have been easy not be. I've often wondered how many times that was truly, genuinely how he was and how many times it was because he simply couldn't bear the thought of me seeing him not being a man of integrity. For instance, I was in my mid-teens before I ever learned that my dad even knew any cuss words. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that he swore like a sailor's wife at work! But even though I know my dad watched his actions around me to set a good example, I have ample evidence that he truly was the man of high integrity that he appeared to be.

I get those opportunities with my daughter from time to time. Just last week we were at a restaurant and when they ran the credit card they charged it for $32 less than the bill was for. I have no doubt that I could have simply signed it and no one would have been the wiser (including my wife and daughter since they didn't see the bill or the charge slip). But I pointed it out to the waitress and she reran the card -- and it was STILL for more than $8 too low! So I pointed out to her again. I didn't say anything to either my wife or my daughter or even remark on it in passing. If my daughter took note, great. I just learned a few weeks ago that my daughter actually does make efforts to emulate me. One morning when we were running late I told her that I really needed to take a quick shower and afterward she said she was surprised I could take one so fast. I told her about how, when I was in Basic Training, we had five minutes under the showerhead and another five minutes at the sink in the morning. I figured that was the end of that. But a few days later my wife was a bit annoyed with me because our daughter was trying hard (too hard) to get in and out of the bathroom in under ten minutes in the morning because she wanted to "be like her Dad." I had no idea -- but it drove home how kids will pattern their behaviors after what you say and, especially, do. So it is SO important to ALWAYS set a good example. I did make a point of telling her that the female trainees got an extra ten minutes because they had this thing called "hair", which none of the male recruits had after the second day.

 

I couldn't recall a single time (though I'm sure there must have been some) in which my dad told me what it meant to be a good man -- instead he simply showed me what it meant to be a good man by consistently being a good man

I once had a fat doctor give me advice on how to eat healthy, and when I hinted (I'm a polite kind of fellow that way) that he could use his own advice, his annoyed answer was "do as I say, not as I do!" ... I honestly hope that that philosophy didn't translate into his personal life as well.

I could have simply signed it and no one would have been the wiser

Man... I just hate it when temptation insistently knocks on your door... most people would excuse themselves simply saying that it's the waiter's responsibility (and not yours) to have their count clear... that is... it's ok unless it happens to you, of course... then you expect everyone else to be honest and straightforward...

My dad was a pediatrician, and he taught me the value of never telling a lie... I once tried to fake I was too sick to go to school... and I never tried it again.

 

But years later I realized that, as I grew up, my dad seldom just told me how something would turn out and expect me to accept it based solely on his proclamation.

Unfortunately for me in my dads earlier years and mine where at the polar opposite. He couldn't be wrong if the world depended on it.

Growing up I couldn't begin to count the time I was flat out told exactly how something was, how it would be, what things were, and how they will turn out despite every bit of it being so far from the truth that the village idiot could have seen though it and the town liar been left red faced embarrassed by how far off from reality many of those proclamations were.

I do have to admit it's likely why I am such a stickler for finding the truth and factual reality behind any information anyone claims to be real and a justification for doing something questionable or worse.

 

Unfortunately for me in my dads earlier years and mine where at the polar opposite. He couldn't be wrong if the world depended on it.

The only time I can remember my father speaking to me was right after he punched me out for not being able to make a pot of coffee in less than 6 minutes.

My father was a handyman, and a very good one. He could have taught me a thousand things but he acted like I didn't exist. I couldn't touch his tools, follow him around, watch him work, or ask questions. I saw lots of lumber go by, a few bags of cement mix, and a table saw. I saw him spend all day trying to get a $2 toaster to act like a $20 toaster. (He spent more money on bread than anybody ever spent on a toaster, and failed.) The only two things he couldn't do were electronics and refrigeration. That is probably why they are my best assets. I'm a good handyman too, but I made it a point to do what he couldn't do.

Last night, my Lazy-Boy recliner disassembled itself. I need to go buy the right length of pan head screws to fix a glue joint that failed.
See ya' on the flip side.

 

The only time I can remember my father speaking to me was right after he punched me out for not being able to make a pot of coffee in less than 6 minutes.

Mine was a newby public school teacher who drank the koolaid that makes teachers think that since they teach they obviously know everyting about everything and are never wrong about it plus that every school is a good school too. Then as I got older and became a problem kid in school he felt that since he was a good teacher and had worked in good school that by default that made all teachers good teacher and the school we came back to was a good one as well.

HA! The first few years after he moved up onto the administrative ranks of the public school system pretty much destroyed those belief systems and then some!
To bad it didn't happen until I was already in my Junior year of highschool at that point.

From aobut 3rd grade until the end of high school I caught a lot of hell for things I had no say or control over plus being smarter than the average kid my age by a wide margin.

In my parents views a kid who tests at genius level IQ at age 13 should be an aA++ honor role student, not a pain in the ass slacker sliding by on D- grades who didn't give a shyte about what the rest of the world wants or would do with my equivalent brain power.

The concept I was bored to death plus in a crappy school with the crappiest of crappy teachers running things never occurred to them back then. It had to be all me that was the problem.

 

My dad was a pediatrician, and he taught me the value of never telling a lie... I once tried to fake I was too sick to go to school... and I never tried it again.

My dad similarly had zero tolerance for lying -- the punishment for lying about something was always horribly worse than the punishment for what was being lied about. That's a lesson that I haven't had the opportunity to teach my daughter because she doesn't lie. She told a few fairly tame fibs when she was younger and it took very little to make her feel so ashamed of herself that she hasn't repeated it since (to be best of my knowledge). She's also figured out that if she tells us when she's done something bad (whether by accident or not) that we are much more understanding -- and any punishment much more tempered. We've only gotten a chance to demonstrate that to her a few times because she just doesn't get in trouble -- and it reduces her to tears if she thinks she's done something wrong. She also doesn't play the game of playing me against her mom. She did that exactly twice, if memory serves. She immediately discovered two things: (1) her mom and I talk to each other; and (2) there is absolutely no percentage in it. Even the first time she tried it she didn't lie. She was four, I think, and she asked me if she could have something (some candy, I think). I asked her if she had asked her mom (I had actually overheard her asking her mom earlier) and she got this real sheepish look on her face, looked down at the ground, and said, "Yes. She said no." I didn't even have to pry out of her what her mom had said. So I told her that she couldn't get it today, because her mom said no, and that she couldn't get it for the next week because she tried to get me to say yes even after her mom had said no. But then I told her that, because she was honest, I was going to make it so that she just had to go without for three days instead. The second time she had done something (I think it was whining about something) and so I told her that she couldn't watch any TV the rest of the day. When I got home that night she was watching TV -- I hadn't informed my wife about the restriction. As soon as I walked in the door she quickly shut off the TV. At first I thought she was hoping I hadn't noticed, but bless her little soul, she then went to her mom and confessed her sins. We asked her what she thought her punishment should be. It took a while to get something specific out of her, but I think she finally offered up a week without TV. We accepted that and reduced it to five days because she'd confessed and told her that it would have been two weeks if she hadn't.

I have guarded hope that her teen years aren't going to be TOO bad.

 

My son is our first born. And a typical one at that. In his teen years, there were a couple minor incidents.

I live in Massachusetts, where there are very specific junior operator (drivers license classification) laws. Both incidents involve the law that states a junior operator cannot drive with anyone else in the car, except his/her immediate family.

Many parents ignored this law, allowing their children to drive whomever they pleased. But, I told my son that in our house, that law was to be observed. And if it were broke, his mother and I would know immediately (we were very active in the community).

Well, the first week my wife received a phone call. When I got home, I went up to his room to "chat". After some small talk, I asked "Do you have anything to tell me?"

He looked at me and whispered, "You know."

We then had a small discussion. I told him that this was the first and only offense and he admitted it, he'd get a mulligan.

The second time, he was a passenger in a car that was stopped by the police, for cutting off the police car in traffic. After citing the driver, the officer handed my son the keys and said "Drive your friends home" (my son was a big kid).

He turned to the officer, and refused the keys. "I'm a junior operator, sir." He called me from the police station and I picked them all up. He didn't get in trouble that time.

 

My dad similarly had zero tolerance for lying -- the punishment for lying about something was always horribly worse than the punishment for what was being lied about.

Opposite end here. I constantly caught my parents in lies plus may teachers too. That in itself made it pretty dang hard to ever want to tell the truth when it was clear the people I was supposed to respect and look up to clearly didn't. Hell, most of the time if I called any of them out on it the excuse or lie to weakly justify what they said or did was even worse than the one that started it.

However given those examples growing up to this day I do try and put forth an extra effort to not tell a deliberate lie to cover any mistake I have made just so I can at least feel like I am a better person than they were.

Many parents ignored this law, allowing their children to drive whomever they pleased. But, I told my son that in our house, that law was to be observed. And if it were broke, his mother and I would know immediately (we were very active in the community).

Well, the first week my wife received a phone call. When I got home, I went up to his room to "chat". After some small talk, I asked "Do you have anything to tell me?"

He looked at me and whispered, "You know."

We then had a small discussion. I told him that this was the first and only offense and he admitted it, he'd get a mulligan.

The second time, he was a passenger in a car that was stopped by the police, for cutting off the police car in traffic. After citing the driver, the officer handed my son the keys and said "Drive your friends home" (my son was a big kid).

Opposite issues for me when I got my licence. It didn't matter what happened I was assumed to be at fault for it even if I had every person in the world as a witness to clear my name and say I had nothing to do with it.

When I was in my senior year at school one day I was over at my Grandparents place helping Grandpa work on stuff when my dad came flying up the driveway. He jumped out and started chewing me a new hole because the mayor of the small town we live by had called him and chewed him out for me having been tearing up the town and blasting my loud music all over disturbing everyone.

My vehicle was going to be gone for the year and I was going no place ever because of it. That's when Grandpa asked about when all of this had taken place and dad said the idiot mayor had just called him. Grandpa pointed out that it obviously wasn't me being I had been over with him the whole day and had never went anywhere so obviously the dumbass mayor had the wrong kid. (happened a lot.)

The thing was everyone in the area knew that the town mayor was a lying ego driven womanizing dimwitted sack of crap that tended to drink too much when he really shouldn't have been yet in my family his word was of more value than mine 'because he was the mayor (of a bunch of other low lifes and nobodies in a crooked little town that time and self respect had long since left for dead.'

On the plus side about a week or two later he pulled the same crap on some other kids (good friends of mine with parents who really didn't like the turdhead) who's parents were good friends with the local law enforcement guys and he got ratted out and had a visit with them one evening at his own house over his actions and to what effect being the mayor of a some tiny craphole town gave him regarding harassing and threatening kids or whomever else he didn't like over what he did or did not think was right by his less than perfect standards. (none whatsoever!)

 

I live in Massachusetts, where there are very specific junior operator (drivers license classification) laws.

ROFL! In Kentucky, my grandmother was driving before Drivers Licenses were invented. She decided she didn't need one because she pre-dated them, and she never got one. She taught all us grand-kids how fast to drive the '56 Buick Roadmaster in order to "smooth out" the washboard roads by the time we were 12 years old.

All five of us combined have accumulated exactly zero at-fault collisions in 60 years. Maybe that level of skill is related to being allowed to get a feel for a car at a very young age. That might not be true, but it I've watched a 20 something back over the curb while whining that she doesn't already know how to drive, therefore she can't learn.

Teach them young and they never forget.

 

She taught all us grand-kids how fast to drive the '56 Buick Roadmaster in order to "smooth out" the washboard roads by the time we were 12 years old.

I used to wonder why driver's ed classes always focused on the easy stuff, the basics and obeying signs. To save your life, someday you'll need to be able to control your car in a doughnut on ice, or going into and back out of a ditch to avoid a head-on with a drunk in your lane, or myriad other emergency maneuvers. They spent exactly zero time on the important stuff.