[superuser2]

No. That it contained under n ppm of impurities, that it did not leak more than 0.001%/year, maybe. Only a Sith (and consumer product marketing that is lying to you) deals in absolutes.

In the durable goods world, you don't pretend things are perfect. Failure modes are designed and disclosed, replacement of parts is expected and made reasonable, tolerances are marked, failure rate metrics like MTBF are known, and as a customer you choose the price-quality tradeoff that makes sense for you.

I just wish consumer products were also sold this way. Instead we pretend every product is awesome and act surprised when things break.

[ufmace]

That reminded me of phone plans, oddly enough. For a while, everybody was advertising their data plans as unlimited, and then the tech press would get all upset when they found the limit.

I always thought the whole thing was dumb - of course there's a limit. Or are we supposed to believe we can push megabytes/s nonstop all month? I'd rather have them just tell me what the limit is and what happens when you go over it than pretend it's unlimited. And stop having the tech press act like the sky is falling when they discover that the unlimited plan actually has a limit.

[na85]

You're okay with scummy advertising that probably breaks false advertising laws?

[tedunangst]

At least some consumer goods have similar limits, e.g. maximum amount of arsenic permitted in apple juice. Of course, whenever people find out about these limits, they lose their shit... "Why is any arsenic ok? OMG! The evil government is trying to poison us!"

[lambdaelite]

The person in charge of a mass spectrometer (Thermo Element 2) at a local college likes to toy with his students by running tests on their commercial bottled water during a lab demonstration. This particular instrument can pick up minute traces of uranium, lead, and the like (on the order of fg/L IIRC).

At the end of the demonstration, the trash can is full of discarded water bottles.