[Discuss] Full disk encryption, why bother?

[bill at horne.net (Bill Horne)]

On 1/4/2012 1:39 PM, Ben Eisenbraun wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 04, 2012 at 09:24:47AM -0500, Bill Horne wrote:
>> Anyone buying this device would do well to have paid-up life insurance:
>> the company is selling a UPS, but they're also selling "cheater" cords
>> that allow their UPS to power a "live" outlet with a double-male
>> connection cord, and that's flat-out dangerous.
> It's not a UPS. You have to supply your own UPS to power their capture
> unit. And it doesn't appear to power the outlet until after the mains
> power is cut. That's the "Patent-pending technology" part I suppose.
>


It may not be a UPS, but AFAICT it's also not UL or ETL listed. That's a 
$10,000 fine if an employee gets injured, and a "you betcha" lawsuit 
that will probably end a career, and an accident might even result in 
jail time.

I'm sorry to be such a spoilsport, but this stuff is /not/ software, and 
it is /not/ for amateurs: you don't learn about power factors and Class 
Zero gloves by trial-and-error.

Please consider these facts, which the manufacturer does not mention on 
their website:

1. Cutting wires that are carrying power is dangerous and error-prone, 
but this manufacturer implies that it can be done safely by amateurs. 
The /best/ result one can hope for is to "burn a hole" in the cutting 
tools, thus ruining them. At worst, flash burns and pieces of molten 
metal flying in unpredictable directions. Men have been blinded by such 
events.

2. Without a UL or ETL listing, there is no guarantee that the actual 
switching circuitry inside this device is designed to interrupt the 
current being carried.

3. Plugging a power source into a "hot" outlet, conductor, or power 
strip is an invitation to disaster. If there's a power strip in use, it 
may not have the "hot" leads on the "right" side of the outlets - after 
all, they're made for use on home computers by shops that cut every 
corner they can - and /that/ means that a failure of the "hotplug" 
device could place a "dead short" across the power source. Men have been 
killed by such events.

4. No matter what you do, no matter what precautions you take, no matter 
how wiling you are to learn about electricity, the BEST you can hope for 
is that nothing happens. That's a setup for failure, and electrical 
failures caused by using unapproved equipement in non-standard ways are 
a lawyer's wet dream.

FWIW. YMMV. I'll send flowers to your funeral.

Bill

-- 
Bill Horne
339-364-8487