[time-nuts] Anyone Know What The Models Were In This NIST Paper?

[Jim Lux]

On 10/30/13 3:46 PM, Magnus Danielson wrote:
> Hi,
>
> They have learned the hard way that they can't do that easily. They can,
> if they add the necessary "mentioning of vendor X and their product Y
> does in no way means an endorsement". I've seen presentations starting
> with a "non-endorsement statement" so that they can then say "Oh, this
> is the boxes we have chosen to use", which tends to just render spread
> of information and sharing of experience amongst the users.
>
> I expect them (NIST and other publicly funded institutions) to act like
> this. It is a bit annoying when you just want to know what they where
> using, but it's understandable. It is even more understandable as they
> start to list miss-features of device A, B and C, but not device D.
>

It works both ways, when you have a device that you're particularly 
proud of, and it performs well in the tests, you want them to say "Jim 
Lux's fabulous device performed orders of magnitude better than all 
other devices tested, particularly the unusually poor performance from 
the device from Magnus Danielson" <grin>.

But there are also other forces at work.

There are  cases where IEEE and authors were sued because of a paper 
that essentially said that a particular product not only didn't work, 
but that underlying physics guaranteed that it couldn't work.  (early 
streamer emission devices, and a paper by Mousa, in particular)

It would be an amusing story, if all the litigation hadn't happened. For 
instance, Mousa reports on one installation where the lightning 
eliminator was completely destroyed by a lightning stroke.
"The traffic controllers at Tampa saw a flash of light during a storm, 
heard thunder and observed a shower of sparks drop past the tower 
window. A later visit to the rooftop revealed that a part of the charge
dissipater array of Manufacturer “A” had disappeared."


that would tend to drive authors to such circumlocutions as Brand X, etc.