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USB Swiss Army Knife
finno writes "The Register has a heads-up on a new Swiss Army knife by Victorinox. As the article says, 'Given that you can buy a Victorinox Swiss Army Knive with just about
every gadget known to man, from horse-hoof awl to Hubble Space
Telescope lens polisher, it's no real surprise that the company - in
association with flash memory outfit Swissbit
- is now offering cutting tools plus USB flash memory stick.' In my
home state of New South Wales, it is illegal
to be carrying a knife without a reasonable excuse such as 'the
lawful pursuit of the
person's occupation'. I got me a reasonable excuse now!"
Well, this silly rule doesn't apply in my jurisdiction, but in my network rounds I always carry my trusty CyberTool. Bought mind at an airport in Belguim. Haven't met a machine this knife couldn't take.
Boy Scouts always taught me to carry a pocket knife, either in your car or pocket, you never know how useful it will be.
...the blade mades it impossble to take on a plane. As someone that's about to travel with only 128MB of flash RAM (no laptop, no iPod), I'd think it would be handier if it looked to the Cybertool for a whole bunch of blunt(ish) stuff like the screwdrivers, pen or pliers.
maybe if you have a look around, you would realize that new south wales is in australia, not in europe... now you know why europeans keep calling americans ignorant...
Europe? New South Wales is in Australia. Knife carrying is also illegal in Britain unless you have a good reason to have one. I'm not sure what the law is in other European states, but AFAIK Britain is one of the toughest.
Ah, dude, NSW is kind-of not in Europe. It's on the other side of the other pond - across the Pacific, not across the Atlantic.
Though here in sunny Glasvegas, Scotland, carrying knives is a pretty big no-no. Carrying alcohol in public is vorboten, too.
This is where the serious fun begins.
[...] and MP3/OGG player.
I know this is both nitpicking and off topic, but "Ogg" isn't an acronym; thus shouldn't be spelled in capital letters.
see this page for more information on Xiph.org's projects' names and logos.
Apparently you've got enough exceptions to keep yourself out of trouble:
Hopefully wood carving and popping bottle caps aren't illegal yet.
Some time ago the gov't passed a law requiring all lighters to be at least somewhat child proof. At first the cheep bick lighter had a little catch on the fule valve so you had to press the red button in before it would go down. Not sure if that is still the case but I am certain there is something done to make the lighter harder to opperate to keep small children from burning down the house.
What's a roach clip?
you are obviously not a bowler.
a roach clip is something used to hold your marijuana cigarette when it gets down to the end and you don't want to burn your fingers.
the resin builds up on the weed and paper, so it would be a shame to throw away the little nub.
I'm still holding out for a leatherman with a small claw hammer. Perfect for inserting and removing dificult cards and cables. but I do admit that the pliers on a leatherman come in handy for twisting connections on your motherboard and hard drive together when you can't find a little plastic jumper. :)
It's a "hoof pick".
Ignore it when it's needed, and you'll find out that tech is cheap compared to large-animal vets bills.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Victorinox already make their own multi-tool. Basically, they looked at a Leatherman then made it better.
Trust me, try one of these, you'll never go back to Leatherman.
|>
Here be Dragons
You should be able to use either the tweezers or the toothpick. Both of those devices are detachable and are included on all standard Swiss Army Knives.
It would seem you've never used a Leatherman before.
Unfortunately, they don't come with Knoppix CDs yet. But I have a Wave and have never been dissapointed.
>>Nothing helps take the pain of remembering that you destroyed your brain through drug-abuse than a little more self-medication.
On a serious note: Sadly, this is a big reason why many substance abusers don't have the willpower to get up and quit. They're too busy feeling sorry for how they've hurt themselves and others.
It's easier to quit tomorrow than to quit today.
wbs.
Huh?
Dude, get a Leatherman. It is probably the single most useful tool a geek could ever own. Seriously, they have like every kind of knife/screwdriver you're gonna want, and they're very rugged and durable, and even look nice. They can be a bit pricey, but every bit worth it!
However, before anyone gets overly paranoid, in all these cases there was good reason to believe the carrier was carrying the item for use as an actual weapon. That is, the hairspray can was carried by someone who intended to use it to spray into someone's face and admitted the fact. Likewise if you were to carry a pen around with you and say to a policeman "I see someone doing X, and I'll stab them with this pen", you can expect to get arrested.
If you carry a folded up swiss army knife, you're not likely to get done for it unless you actually claim you intend to use it to attack someone, because in its folded form it's not obviously a weapon (well, I guess you could bash someone over the head with it.)
BTW I'm a Brit living in the US at the moment. My 23 year old neighbour came over the other day and rather impressed us with:
- "You're English? I thought you were British?" (cue two minutes of explaining this, even my "You're Floridian and American" comment seemed to pass him by)
- "So is Russia in Britain too? My girlfriend is from Russia."
- (My other neighbour made a mention of the war of independence and pointed out that Britain was involved in that in some way...) "Oh, I never took much notice of history. It was Britain we were at war with?"
It all sounds, when written down, like he was being sarcastic. Thing is, he wasn't. I think it's the last of these I find the most baffling though. The others just show a really bad appreciation of geography. So I guess our modded down friend isn't the only one without an appreciation for the world outside the 50.You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Victorinox makes several models of knives with LEDs. I have that first model. The LED is red (as to not ruin night vision), so it's not the brightest, but it worked well enough last night to find a hub's power cable in a rat nest of wires. The pen is a real life-saver - although it's not small enough to reset PDAs/hubs/etc. Even when old Swiss Army knives had the pen you took all the way out (this one is on a sliding track), they were still to big to use as a handy reset tool. But the battery and the ink are both replacable, which is nice.
I bought a Leatherman Wave a few years ago and still carry it with me daily. I don't know about their other models, but this one opens exactly as you describe, and has rounded edges so you can actually apply pressure without it digging into your hand. Basically, none of the complaints you mentioned are true for it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
instead, I carry a "screw stick" (one of those screwdrivers with four difference phillips and flat heads)
If you're ever looking for a good multi-bit screwdriver, buy a Klein 10-in-1 screwdriver/nut driver. They're only $10, very well made, and really do include pretty much every bit you need on a regular basis, either for around the house use or on a computer. Includes 5/16" and 1/4" Nut Drivers, #1 and #2 Phillips, 1/4" and 3/16" Slotted, #10 and #15 Torx(R), #1 and #2 Square (aka Robertson).
About the only downside is that the shaft is thicker than normal screwdrivers (but that's true for all multi-drivers), which can make it difficult to use in some situations.
coming out this spring or summer. You can see a picture of it here. Nothing about it at victorinox.com which is pretty lame for info on their own products. Nothing on swissarmy.com even though they have the the SwissTool Spirit in a printed brochure. The nice thing about SwissTool is the bit tool. The attached tools in a multi-tool are pretty much useless as far as I am concerned due to the awkwardness of using them. The bit tool, which uses standard 6mm or 1/4" bits, pretty much solves that. The redesigned bit tool for the Spirit not only looks like it could take more torque on the right angle socket but you could use a short bit of hex stock to make it a T handled socket tool. Sweet.
Click here for more info on the USB Swiss Army Knife.
My Dad's a Victorinox dealer, and he called them for me about the Swissflame. They're not for sale in the US yet because of some kind of lighter regulation. I guess you have to have some kind of 2-stage button on them, and the Swissflame is the kind that snaps the piezo as soon as the slide is pulled back all the way.
You're absolutely right -- multitools are a compromise solution trying to optimize a whole bunch of conflicting goals. If I'm at home, I'll never reach for one of my multitools first -- I'll go for one of the real tools.
But the goal of a multitool is *NOT* to be a best-of-breed solution. It's to present an adequate compromise that you'll be able to carry relatively easily on you and that will present the best chances that you have the OK tool for the job when you need it. Multitools are smaller than their toolchest equivalents, more portable, and binary -- you either have a multitool or you don't -- you can't bring your multitool and forget your pliers, for example.
Swiss army knives, unfortunately, are not really multitools. Their metal is incredibly soft and they're not constructed in a way that makes it easy to open them (at least, not as easy as most actual Multitools). For ease of use, check out how easy it is to open one of the main blades on a Wave, or deploy the pliers on a Gerber.
Wenger does offer one with a laser pointer built in. For a comparison of the two companies, see http://outside.away.com/magazine/200007/200007disp 3.html.
Perhaps the controls you get in Windows will let you do such a thing, but I do know that in Linux, it's as easy as removing access to the USB Mass Storage modules. In the simplest case, don't let them be auto-loaded via hotplug, and don't give the user's access to load them manually.
You can order one from Germany and have it shipped. I did this 6 months ago and love it. Light candles, start up the fireplace, always a good tool to have!
From section 139 of the UK Criminal Justice Act:
139.--(1)Subject to subsections (4) and (5) below, any person who has an article to which this section applies with him in a public place shall be guilty of an offence.
(2)Subject to subsection (3) below, this section applies to any article which has a blade or is sharply pointed except a folding pocketknife.
(3)This section applies to a folding pocketknife if the cutting edge of its blade exceeds 3 inches.
Swiss Army knives (at least the ones I have seen) have a locking mechanism, therefore they are not "folding pocketknives". This has been tested in the appeal courts.
Knoppix
Disable booting from anything but the hard drive and password-protect the BIOS settings. You'd have to open the case to get around that, and if you're really paranoid you can prevent that.
Don't know about this particular model, but frankly their "cybertool" I picked up about 3-4 years ago is the best tool I've ever bought.
:)
I've lost count of the number of times some tech at work has been looking for a Torx screwdriver and I've simply pulled out my knife - with 3 sizes of Torx bits
Not to mention the handiness of always have a bottle cap opener with you.
The only feature that would be useful would be magnetic bits, but I guess that's not so useful if you're trying to work on a hard drive.
actually, if you read the pdf data sheet, you will see that the usb drive portion of the unit is removable, so you can replace it with a higher capacity version later on.
so, yes, the device is detachable.
Argh. I meant New South Wales of course. I realize we're talking about Australia here :-)
Just for those who are a little confused, New South Wales is a state in the Commonwealth of Australia. Wales is a small country sitting right next door to England.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; en-us;823732
R.