Slashdot Mirror
Batterylife Activator Reviewed
Daniel Rutter writes "Slashdot chewed over the BatMax Battery Life Booster - a nanotechnomagical sticker that's meant to rejuvenate lithium ion batteries - a while ago. Now I've reviewed the strikingly similar Batterylife Activator, and subjected it to actual empirical testing, with automated datalogging and everything. The results confirmed my original suspicion -- that the local Batterylife branch made a serious error of judgement when they decided to send me their product."
If I put it on me will it help me get up in the morning?
There is no sig
Why even waste time verifying if it's true? What's next, a test of whether penis enlargement pills work?
not on slashdot, they are just fraudsters and your local trading standards should be stopping these types of scam companies from operating in the first place and protect the consumer/citizen
truth in advertising should be all they need to shut them down, all of the products are false and provably so
Yeesh. Can't we find something a bit more plausible to test than this? Something that any rational person might think would actually work?
Three Squirrels
Does it function well as a sticker?
Kids these days. They don't know the difference between classic, and just plain old.
Are these like those magic stickers you put on your car to double your fuel efficency?
There's a sucker born every minute.
...they actually did some testing instead of just assuming various things. I'd have to say that it's a step in the right direction, even if the outcome was largely going to be known beforehand.
DBA? Software Engineer? My company is hiring! Click
A thousand monkeys working on a thousand typewriters. At least they get their energy back unlike robotic monkeys running on batteries with those stickers.
It's worth it just for all the amusing links alone. The author liberally sprinkles links throughout his text, and it's not ads, it's some links to some odd, and often amusing websites. It's worth the read, even if you aren't interested in the actual test.
There are four different kinds of force that we know of in the world: gravity, electromagnetic, strong, and weak. Obviously, this device is not working by means of gravity, strong or weak force, so the only question is, is it working by means of the electromagnetic force? A quick look at it and a little bit of thought about how that could possibly work shows that no, it isn't working by the electromagnetic force. So therefore either it is working by some unknown force (a fifth force) or it doesn't work. It shouldn't take anyone very much time to answer a question like that.
Some years ago I used to hear a lot about putting used batteries (non-rechargeable, non-alcaline) on the fridge in order to do what varied between recharging it, extending its charge, etc.
I guess this should work at least as good as the sticker thingy
I guess in the age of high tech toys where batteries are the real limitations, every body's trying to get a one up on the battery front. I mean, can you have a super PDA that acts as a cell phone, GPS, mp3 player, movie player, connects to the internet etc etc? Sure, they can make it but the battery that powers it will only last for about 5 minutes.
There's a big market for batteries and anything that can make them better but pretty much, I think their maxed out technology wise. Fuel cells are the next big hope for tech toys.
Here in the US they just recently started looking into the "Enzyte" (penis growth stuff) people, I knew it was a scam 4 years ago when I saw the first commercial. I read the enzyte people have made 50 million dollars so far (and that was sometime last year). Would you goto jail for a couple years for 50 million dollars? I would.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Does it boost my cell phone's reception?
This is, of course, giving the company the benefit of the doubt.
It may have been a packaging problem. (not that I'm suggesting anything to their lawyers (ahem!)).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Actual tests of batteries always show that the cheapest batteries are the best value for money, in terms of watt hours per dollar.
Oh well, what the hell...
Praying to the he-God Nemod on the 3rd day after a new moon, and dancing for him the great triumphant nerd dance of Praytor which involves spinning around in a circle and yelling "hemannamannamanna" at the top of your lungs works much better to bring batteries back to life. Everyone knows that!!!!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Quote "The Activator is supposed to offer "up to 30% longer talk time, up to 30% longer standby time, up to 40% shorter recharging time, and up to 30% longer battery lifetime". As long as all of those "up to" parts aren't taking advantage of the old retailer's "up to 90% off!" dodge ("up to 50%" includes "0%"), the price is not excessive". it is above figure is true then it will be worthed
Free Posting on thousands and hundreds cities in World Cities Community
It's damn funny too! http://www.zug.com/pranks/penis/
Well, he says that big institutions like Osaka University, NTT DoCoMo have certified this sticker. How could the BatteryLife people have managed to get this certification. Isnt someone smelling foul play or something? Cant they be sued over this?
Sure, they can make it but the battery that powers it will only last for about 5 minutes.
... And make up 3/4 the weight of the device. Take the battery out of almost any hi-tech device and you can feel a significant difference in weight.
Sure we can power your device for 10 hours per charge. Just attach a car battery to it.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
http://www.bit-tech.net/review/395
i think coming out with a 'review' posting definitly improves slashdot credibility (hell i started to have doubts about slashdot when i saw that posting in here).
this also work as a warning note to quakes for trying to using slashdot for publicity.
We are always correct.. even when we realize we were wrong.
I hate to say it, but he has flawed results that do not demonstrate that the sticker is a placebo.
He used only one battery to do his test. He should have used two; one with the sticker and one without. By only using one battery, running 3 tests, then putting the sticker on and running a 4th test, he's introduced an additional variable into the equation. It could thereofre be argued that his graph (http://www.dansdata.com/images/batterylife/activ
Dont worry, I have invented a Homeopathic version of this device - thats right - based on the principle that the more dilute it is the stronger it is, you can place a single-atom sticker on your battery which will yeild UP TO 2000% improved battery life!!! It will extend the working life of your mobile phone by UP TO 1000 years!!!! Not only this, but your erectile function during intercourse will be improved by UP TO 700%!!!!
Yes, just click on the Nigerian PayPal link below, and I will send you that miracle homeopathic atom!
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
"The real question is why aren't the governments in places where these are sold stomping these people to bits?"
Ya know, while I'm not one to worship at the altar of free market and deregulation and all that crap, I really have to wonder at this statement. If people are stupid enough to pay money for something like this, maybe they deserve to loose their money. It isn't like there's a big potential for collateral damage here. Stupid people get punished, smarter people make some money, and maybe with time people will start learning to think for themselves for a change.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I recall seeing something similiar in a Popular Science mag, back in the classifieds for a miracle efficiency improver that uses magnets to clean up the ethane and octane chains in your gas.
Heh.
When you have oceanfront property in Missouri to sell me, let me know.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
I wrote to the FAA district office that covers Waco, Texas, asking if that endorsement was legitimate.
A few weeks later, I received a call from an anti-terrorism investigator at the Defense Criminal Investigation Agency. Apparently, someone had looked at the claim of FAA approval and the claim of U.S. Army approval, and decided that this might be a case of selling unapproved aircraft lubricants to the Department of Defense. So the case was referred to the sabotage/anti-terrorism investigators.
I'm not sure what happened then. But the spam has stopped, and XLPI is down from $0.50 to $0.04.
False advertising is false advertising. If you bought a camera that claims to hold 100 pictures with batteries lasting for 200 shots (with flash) and it would turn out that it holds 50 and the batteries last for 80 shots would you still hold your free market position?
Reminds me of when i was in college -- the flunk courses were graded on a curve. And there were these fuckers who were always cheating and I could never score half as well as they did. So i worked hard for C's and D's, while people who were cheating were getting easy A's and B's. Then I realized -- the people who were cheating were *SETTING* the curve which I was being judged by. So I became a cheater to.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the Activator doesn't work, how come so many people say that it does?
It's very simple, really. Placebo effect and confirmation bias. These things drive all manner of quackery (naturopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, etc.) and other pseudoscience. Confirmation bias is particularly powerful here as people don't want to admit they're stupid enough to have been duped into buying an overpriced sticker, even though they are.
A great piece of writing, but there are a massive number of variables that he failed to control:
1. Charging/Discharge period between inital tests and activator test were completely random.
2. Only one battery was used.
3. The setup was not similar to the conditions under which the activator would be used.
4. The battery type was not similar to a cellphone.
5. The device handling the charge and discharge of the battery was not a cellphone.
I certainly don't think this product is any good but a more controlled test would have been better.
Also, according to his test the activator gave a 3% boost to the battery. What is interesting is that it is 13 discharge cycles away from Run 1. The first three charge/discharge cycles clearly showed a dependency between # of cycles and battery life. To help clarify, it would have been nice if he kept the data from the intermediate 10 runs.
Maybe it did do something? I find it hard to believe though.
But what if it was something that was fraudulent but not so obvious? Should there be a difference in how they are handled? Obvious or not, fraud is fraud. These guys shouldn't be cut any slack just becasue their fraud is a little more obvious.
That's a truly frightening story. Fortunatly, I haven't encountered that yet in school.
As for the gov intervention thing, don't we have false advertising laws that would cover this?
I went and took a look at their website again and it's as though nothing has changed. And, the info that is there is complete crap. This comment in the previous article about them points off some pretty glaring problems with them that just screams SCAM!
Still, it's fun to see this stuff posted tearing this kind of BS apart.
I like to tell electrical engineers that Ferrites on the data cable do jack squat. Always good for a laugh.
A Japanese consumer watchdog type news program did this in either December or August. They sent the stickers to testing labs and tried it on many different cell models. They even went and talked to the marketing guy at the sticker company, and the odd thing was he kept talking to the tv station instead of the usual no comment.
The test by no means disproves this device. The tester chops the sticker up so he can use it with his smaller digital camera battery. Something that the manual apparently claims should work, but this is clearly not its intended use, and thus quite possibly not its optimum use either.
He also fails to repeat the experiment at all or do a control experiment, and even the one test run he does isn't exactly thorough. Also, he does appear find some improvement when using the sticker, just not as much as the company claims, so I don't see how he thinks he has shown that it doesn't work at all (except through his scientific arguments with which he apparently convinced himself even before he did the test of the impossibility the thing could work).
Most importantly - according to the company's website the device has been tested by TÜV and found to work! I'm MUCH more likely to believe the results of TÜV certification than some hobbyist's tests (TÜV is a government body which tests + approves almost everything in Germany - cars, buildings etc. People trust it to tell them if their car is fit to drive, so it is presumably capable of sufficiently thoroughly testing in determining whether some battery enhancer works as claimed.
Of course, given the incredibility of the claims regarding the device, I'm still not neccessarily convinced. I'm just saying lets not discard the possibility that it might actually work to some degree so quickly.
Instead of doing some quick hack-up test of the device, it would be much more useful if someone could start by looking at the TÜV and A-U-F tests (A-U-F is another independent body which allegedly found it to give a 31% increase in battery life to an old Nokia phone) and seeing whether they are for real, or whether there were any flaws in their method etc etc.
I actually first heard about the slashdot story about the magic sticker when I was reading one of Randi's weekly commentaries where one of the readers comments about certain Slashdotter's inability to seperate reality from fantasy. BTW, the sticker qualifies for the Million Dollar prize along with evidence of psychics, homeopathic medicine, or other bullshit.
--
Want a free iPod?
Or try a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox. (you only need 4 referrals)
Wired article as proof
It is called MDQ55 (another dealer call it "Fuel Shock"), it is a magnetic tube you put in a specific place on the engine and you will save gas. It "works" by aligning particles before entering in the combustion chamber. You should save up to 30% of fuel. Here is a report (in Spanish) about this fraudulent stuff:
mdq55 (PDF). I wonder if it is only an Argentiean scam or it is worldwide.
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
When will you review it?
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
Well, the stock price may be down, but at least the employees got nice new digs at that swanky new 'Guantanamo' resort ...
I know, even calling this thing "pathological science" is elevating it over its true status (plain old fraud). I think that a) it is time for Slashdot to create a new category called "pathological science" where people who care about such things can discuss them and laugh at them and b) everyone should read this classic paper about pathological science. Pathological science has quite a few recurring themes and hallmarks which would should all be aware of, and when we see them, we should be extra-skeptical. Note that this paper I linked to is a classic, meaning it was published in the days before the concept of nanotech. I think that talking about nanotech in marketing materials should add an extra helping skepticism to any analysis.
Instead of seeing a review, I get a Norton Firewall popup saying that the resulting page is invected with a javascript virus.
It seems more then just the product is snake-oil.
My UID is prime and so is this number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
I am still waiting for a call back from NASA's purchasing department.
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Inventor of the term 'pardon my French'.
While DansDate isnt a good source for product purchases (it simply doesnt test enough stuff), there are doutzends of links that found the way into my favourites over the years.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
As I've documented before, I tested one of those cellphone antenna booster stickers. I found that it did indeed boost my signal enough to keep calls connected at nearly-zero signal strength, while its removal immediately left the phone unable to connect - nearly every time, for months. I don't believe the sticker boosts the battery - and will not believe it, until credible double-blind tests are performed. But I wonder: if this sticker also "boosts signal" (reduces noise, I expect), won't that drain the battery less? Which would look like battery boost. Maybe they've taken their flimsy product advantage (actually worth $10 for tipping me over to useable calls in my RF noisy apartment) to the wall, with more and more unsupportable claims, with a grain of salt. If it keeps phonesex calls "up" longer, can they also claim "penis enlargement"?
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make install -not war
Bit of revisionism going on here isn't there?
Slashdot didn't "chew over" the original story. Slashdot simply re-posted the company's bullshit press release in it's entirity.
Was the story posted in the funny section? No.
Was there any comment from the editor regarding the product's obvious scam factor? No.
Was there an update to the story to say, "Whoops! We got suckered! Sorry." No.
So you see Slashdot didn't chew it over - Slashdot swallowed it whole.
On a similar note - can anyone explain why the key to my car will lock and unlock the car at significantly greater distances if I hold it up to the side of my head (the key, not the car)?
The car is a Smart City Cabriolet (not that I suppose that makes any difference) and the key is just a normal sort of radio key.
John
It's a damn lumpy sticker!
But also consider total lifecycle analysis. I'd say using less of anything is likely to be ecologically better for all of us. 100 million people using batteries regularly? billion perhaps? throwing away billion x few grams every month of industrial byproducts is a lot of possible poisons pouring into the sea/ landfill. We're at the end of the foodchain, it will all come back eventually.
Unless those "stupid people" are your parents and you suddenly find yourself having to house them because they "stupidly" invested their life savings in what turned out to be a scam. The world is a big place, you can't know everything and sometimes you too will make mistakes. Be careful what you wish for.
Here in the US they just recently started looking into the "Enzyte"
:( Could this have the potential to be a coveted national DO NOT DATE list?
Heh. Honestly, anyone should be able to see through such outrageous claims, but people assume since it's on TV it must have been through some sort of testing.
TV is not GOD, nor is any other form of advertisement (read: Internet). Trust your senses.
On the light side, Enzyte has a list of the countries least well-endowed men.
Something to ponder.
Inject.
There are liars,
there are damn liars,
and then there are battery chemists.
Of course the sticker works, when used as directed. Then again, if you power cycle a lithium ion battery 5 times it will work the same as if you power cycle it 5 times with the sticker.
You see, the instructions quoted in the article tell you to fully charge and discharge the battery like 4 times.
Here is why:
If you discharge a lithium ion battery completely to 0 it could explode when you charge it. So there is a meter in the battery (usually) or on the logic board of the phone (not usually) that prevents total discharge. That is, at a pre-defined level of discharge, it turns the phone off. Now, the meter can get out of callibration. When you fully discharge and recharge the phone it can put the battery meter back into calibration, and doing it repeatedly will fix it better.
So you see, you might get up to about 30% more battery life, because the meter is out of whack and is cutting off your phone when there is still plenty of charge.
Basically they are selling you the instructions to fix your battery, plus a sticker that does nothing.
Computer batteries are the same way.
Disclaimer: Fully discharging Lithium batteries is bad for them. They do not develop memory like other battery types. However, when the meter is out of calibration it pays to do this a few times, just don't over do it, since you only get between 500 and 1000 full use cycles out of the batteries regardless of what you do.
Real-time Scan
/. for testing my antivirus
Trend Micro PC-cillin Internet Security has detected a virus, spyware application, or other Internet threat, and performed the action specified.
Infected file: C:\Documents and Settings\----\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\BJLJ35CW\JS[1].htm
Virus name: JS_FORTNIGHT
User name: ----
Scan action result: Unable to clean infected file. The file was quarantined.
Thanks again
Dan always has great stuff, I check it regularly.
There is no mystery about the Casimir effect. It was predicted on the basis of electromagnetic theory and experimental results confirm it. Google will give you plenty of pages explaining it.
>Stupid people get punished, smarter people make some money, and maybe with time people will start learning to think for themselves for a change.
Yeah, because that approach has been proved to work in the past. Wow, I never get spam anymore.
First off, what is "obvious" to one person isnt obvious to another. We live in an age of technological miracles, so the idea that a magnet could affect your MPG or whatever isn't so crazy. Or that someone can create a cheap viagra substitute. Hell, I buy generic and OTC drugs all the time.
At the end of the day, this is fraud and allowing fraud to "punish people into smartness" is pretty ignorant. On top of it, the more profitable fraud becomes the more fraud there is and the better fraud gets. So fraud could reach a point where a smart person like you would get fooled. I seriously doubt you'd take your own advice and "think for yourself" if this happened. Whats that? You can't parse a 50 page EULA without a law degree. Funny how its always the other guy who is dumb.
"The government is supposed to provide a fair and safe playing field for companies to do business on."
Where the hell did you get this from?? I've never heard of this before; did you think this up yourself? Is this some sort of an american tenet? I've never talked to anyone to my knowledge who feels that the government should do this before.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
stick on cell phone range booster
other interesting products worth checking out
fractal antennas
XcrossH or 'crossfield' antennas
'tornado' throttle body restrictor
1000mpg carburetor
'skycar'
if you've seen the motor oil additive demo with the weight on the lever to stall the motor comparison please note that the regular oil is tested with a large surface area contact of a different material than the 'special' oil. the test jig uses a roller bearing, what they don't tell you is that only the surface is hardened...so when the 'worn' portion is demoed with the 'regular' oil you are actually comparing material with a greater coefficienct of friction than the hardened portion with the 'special' oil...
snake oil is snake oil is snake oil even in the 21st century
now baby, go get my 'blue pills' that are just as good as the viagra(tm)
Every single crook out there claims he is a honest man only collecting a tax on stupidity. That does not make him less of a crook, he's just a crook with a lame excuse.
But if we know of somebody being scammed and deliberately do not warn them that makes us crooks as well.
Reminds me of when i was in college -- the flunk courses were graded on a curve. And there were these fuckers who were always cheating and I could never score half as well as they did. So i worked hard for C's and D's, while people who were cheating were getting easy A's and B's. Then I realized -- the people who were cheating were *SETTING* the curve which I was being judged by. So I became a cheater to.
Why didn't you just rat them out? Or where they the football players and the school didn't care?
While I'm fully convinced that the Battery Life Activator is nonsense, the experiments trying to prove that it is are as poorly done as those trying to prove that it works. Grabbing a random battery out of a photo bag and cycling it a few times with and without the sticker isn't a good experimental test.
What does dick smell like? I always wonder that when mommy yells at you. Is that why you chose that nick name for the internet?
Maybe I can smell your dick sometime.
Bye-bye!
Now all you need are some racing stripes to go with that Type-R sticker, and your 3 year old prepaid cellphone will have all the features of a T-mobile sidekick! Excellent!
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Is this some sort of new fad? Magical stickers? They are marketed for cell phone range and lowering emissions (Only $299!?, no wonder they want you to think about THC, you have to be smoking it to buy this!) Aren't there laws against making false claims in advertisements?
http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina27.htmp ://www.shakti-innovations.com/audiovideo.htm
htt
Pseudo-science at its best.
It will not help you get up in the morning, but you will be able to consume 30% more food in 30% less time.
The term ABS is the same in english, and is an acronym of Antilock Braking System. Hope that helps.
Right, for Germans, TÜV is God-like certification organization. However, it's hard to trust that there exists REAL TÜV certificate for this.
It's simple to claim that the battery renewer is certified anyhow, and I trust it as much as Nigerian cheaters, everyday $10000000000 lottery wins and woman periods canceller.
P.S. before the renewer will work, it has to be marinaded in snake oil for two months.
I would leave out "safe." The government only has a limited responsibility to provide safety, such as from invading forces. They do have some responsibility to keep things fair, such as by controlling monopolies.
Like the lottery? :)
It's true, and even people like Ayn Rand support it. A "fair and level playing field" simply means that you have laws and they are enforced evenly. Contract law, laws against unjust use of force, theft, etc, etc.
I think it probably sounded a bit socialist because of the word "Safe". Not safe in the sense of someone holding your hand and keeping you from hurting yourself - safe in the sense of police keeping muggers and rapists in check.
"The government is supposed to provide a fair and safe playing field for companies to do business on."
.
"safe in the sense of police keeping muggers and rapists in check."
And rapists and muggers have what to do with businesses now? We aren't talking about safety for people, we're talking about some sort of life-support for companies that cannot survive in the open market. Are we not?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Depends on the professor... some simply dont care, others care but arent willing to meet with the dean, ombudsman and academic dishonesty council. The ones that did care we generally did rat them out.
For instance: The final CS course was a project course, 10 weeks to write a compiler basically. It was *EXTREMELY* tough. Imagine not knowing how a compiler works, and having to write one as you learn how they work. Im a damn good programmer and I got a C, my compiler compiled only generated code to evaluation expressions - most peoples didnt even generate code at all. Anyways -- we knew a LOT of people were cheating, there was an email going around that had the source code, and some stupid people who were asking me questions about how to get started were asking me questions about how to finish a few days later (mine took me 100+ hours to finish). One girl called me up and asked "my program is throwing asserts and I don't know why?" (If she had written the assert she would have understood why it happened). So we went to the professor, and he was *LIVID*, and he said basically, "i'll take care of it."
So the day of the final, this professor gave the normal final, and an EXTRA final which was only for negative credit -- each question you got wrong basically took away a question on the real final. The second final had quesitons like, "how did you implement the ??? in your compiler?" and "what was the function name of your tokenizer?" Stuff that would be impossible for you not to know if you had done the project. Only one person who cheated passed the class that im aware of.
But thats the danger of cheating -- I was one of the best CS students, if I had turned in a barely working compiler and a bunch of bozo students turn in working compilers, it makes ME look bad, not them look good.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
No. That's the point. It's not about corporate welfare, it's about having a legal system you can use to get your goods back from someone who didn't pay.
If the government forbids ripping people off it's easier to be a legit businessman because you only have to worry about competing with other businesses. If you have to price-match the thugs in the parking lot selling stolen car stereos, you're not going to make a very good profit.
The thugs *are* the government, in your scenario, and capitalism *is* people ripping other people off. At it's core. businesses are not guaranteed a very good profit in the marketplace; they are only guaranteed profit at all if they act in a certain way, ie produce goods that are demanded during favourable market conditions. Some businesses will operate at a loss and eventually evaporate.
Any time the government intervenes in the form of propping up a business (in this case the thugs who sell the car stereos), competitor businesses will have as you have pointed out, less profit, so if anything making the market safe for businesses in fact makes market inefficiency through monopoly/oligopoly. Unless the whole point is to offset natural oligopoly/monopoly but in cases of natural oligopoly/monopoly usually the case can be made for economies of scale.
Then again if you consider the thugs or government to be part of the environment allready, a government propped up/thug shop will likely have its own version of the economies of scale, just not quite to the scale or nearing the scale of the business that dominates the market, and there's the entire 'thugs don't actually produce anything, they just steal' part that sort of suggests that the market will tend to go towards the non-thug business, or self-destruct. But either way you do have to compete with the thugs/government in the free market, don't you?
It is an interesting scenario, government and business.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
...meet Ass. Bird Ass.