Never Needs Sharpening: Difference between revisions

== Live-Action TV ==

* Played with in [[Monty Python]]'s [http://www.ibras.dk/montypython/finalripoff.htm#String string] sketch, in which the product is string, precut into 3-inch-long segments: ""THE NOW STRING! READY CUT, EASY TO HANDLE, SIMPSON'S INDIVIDUAL EMPEROR STRINGETTES - JUST THE RIGHT LENGTH!"

== Newspaper Comics ==

* After the Internet and news media exploded over a bad case of [[Did Not Do the Research]] on FOX's quiz show ''Million Dollar Money Drop'', FOX promoted the show saying "the airwaves and Internet were on fire" and that it was "the most talked-about show of the season." They intentionally neglected to point out that most of that talk was either "How did your writers come up with the wrong answer to a question when it takes 60 seconds to look up the answer online?" or "Why are you stalling with 5 minutes of [[Padding]] to drag out [[The Reveal]] to a question when it takes 60 seconds to look up the answer online?"

* The characteristic vibration of a Harley-Davidson engine. Harley claims that it's due to the power of the engine, and specifically calls for you to "feel the power" in their advertising. In reality, it's due to the fact that any v-twin with a v-angle less than 90° will vibrate a lot, with the effect increasing the narrower the angle.

* Numerous el-cheapo consumer products (designed to sell to non-technical people who don't ''understand'' them enough to know better) are engineered to be ''superficially'' good value (by maximizing various saleable ‘magic numbers’ at the lowest achievable manufacturing cost and a low-ish price, without regard for if they usefully ''deliver'' on them in any meaningful way beyond evading the bare-minimal laws), but on the inside they're still throwaway junk.<br>Here are some examples of such (from the relatively tame and benign, to the nastiest and most cynical):

** Department-store PCs typically include an unnecessarily fast (or high-clocked anyway) CPU relative to the other parts; a hard-disk drive with large capacity but low ''performance''; and gigabytes of pre-installed bloatware (spun as “features”, and often [[Idiot Programming|shoddily-coded]] to boot) to add ''assault'' to insult.<br>Basically, if it's not slow ''enough'' that the average buyer (who doesn't realize ''how'' much work a properly-configured computer is capable of doing) publicly complains or returns the PC, then it's good enough for the consumer retail brands.<br>Their internal components are selected as necessary to outlast the (generally 1-year) warranty with few enough returns (to satisfy the brand's accountants), but not a cent extra spent to extend their lifespan ''past'' that (anything longer you get from those machines shall be taken as a fortunate bonus); and even where a component ''itself'' is decent, the manufacturer may provide as little care as they can get away with (e.g. running HDDs '''barely''' within their temperature rating). 'Business-class' notebooks (e.g. Dell Latitude, IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad, Toshiba Tecra) and quality custom-built desktops may cost a ''little'' more for their basic specifications (compared to their consumer-junk counterparts), but at least they ''can'' handle serious work while lasting a reasonable time (and not malfunctioning too often).<br>As for Apple, they come at a ''hefty'' premium with a user-friendly (for n00bs anyway) operating system and “luxurious” external appearances; but the ''hardware'' on their consumer-oriented models isn't much above par (they used Seagate's '''U Series 6''' HDDs which were the world's slowest by ''quite'' a margin, even back when they were made during 2001 and 2002; Seagate's 7200RPM Barracuda ATA IV at the same time was much faster<ref>not just because of the RPM itself, but also since the Barracudas had a '''much''' swifter seek mechanism</ref>, quieter<ref>given its then-modern (as of late 2001) FDB spindle motor; since 2005 the norm industry-wide</ref> ''and'' more durable<ref>some are known to [[Determinator|surpass a full '''decade''' of continuous operation and ''still'' work fine]]</ref> for just a few dollars more), and even their “professional” devices suffer from more than their fair share of engineering problems. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8 “Think Different” indeed.]