Easiest path to ground in that situation would be directly accross the ground pin of the plug.
The short would have tripped your breaker far before the rather spactacular equipment failure you describe would occour.
Additionally positive, neutral and ground screws are on opposite sides of the recepticle (although it might be possible to short between positive and box that holds the outlet.)
Part of the problem is that the majority of our people will not stand up for their rights. Even as they are robbed of their freedom they will not take a stand for fear of losing what little they have left. Until people believe that they, or those they love are going to die, I personally doubt most will fight back.:\ That goes for the Jews in pre WW2 germany as well.
I was thinking about power, a while ago. Power comes in different forms, the main two (IMO) being strength and dependency.
Strength is simple... If I break the law, the police step up. If they can't stop me a SWAT team gets involved. If the SWAT team fails, the military comes into play. If the military can't stop me then I have control, because I am the strongest.
Dependency is interesting, and is more powerful than strength in my opinion. I depend on the government for protection and services. The government depends on me for taxes. The government cannot therefore, attempt to alienate the majority of it's citizens: it needs to have popular support in order to exist. If americans decided to rebel it would probably not be the majority... The majority would either be against the rebels, or unwilling to help.
WW2 Germany did an excellent job of creating consent, by convincing it's citizens that it had their best interests in mind, that it was protecting them, and that the Jews were the cause of Germany's problems.
Armed revolt tends to work when the rebels have outside support. I sincerely hope that if Americans ever have to revolt against our government that we would have the help of other nations.
Regarding licenses... I don't believe that licenses should be necessary for each gun owned. I would opt more for a general class license, say: "Shotguns" "Rifles" "Automatics" and "Handguns." Owning a handgun license would permit a person to own anything from a.22 to a.50 Desert Eagle. A license would simply mean that you demonstrated the responsibility and knowledge to handle a weapon. It would not give the government specific information on what weapons you own, or that you own any at all.
Such a system would be vague enough to make reclaiming powerful weapons from license owners about as difficult as doing a general arms search and recovery, IMO.
Regarding your story about the man from the store... I don't think a few hours of reading and practice is too much to ask. It doesn't need to be expensive either.
Knowledge is important, both for self defense and the safety of others. A little bit of time on a firing range as well as a basic understanding of his weapon would be very useful. How far does the shot spread? How far will it penatrate? How do I maintain this weapon?
Time can always be made. I'm sure he has some free time he normally spends relaxing, watching TV, or with his kids. Or perhaps his wife could take responsibility for the firearm?
It sounded like he was interested in learning. Perhaps he just needed a good reason to learn... Regardless, I think better educating gun owners is in everyone's best interests.
Re:Caps Lock? Who cares about Caps Lock?
on
Is Caps Lock Dead?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Because some of us use it on a regular basis.
My Belkin KVM switch uses syslog to change systems. Linux uses it to pause fast moving console output. BSD uses it to view the console history.
I really enjoyed reading what you have to say, thanks!
One of my primary concerns is fear. IMO, fear + firearms can be extremely dangerous. Fear tends to cloud judgment. It makes me worry about someone firing before they know the identity and nature of their target. Is that really a robber, or your kid getting a drink of water?
Part of that concern is because I've been mistaken for a potential rapist before (Crazy old bat...):\
The problem with making guns available to everyone is that 'everyone' includes those who those who don't know better than to abuse a gun. I would probably support some form of mandatory training for gun owners, much like the way we require a license to drive.
On another point, I don't think it's possible to protect freedom using force, in this day and age. Our military has training and weapons that a private citizen couldn't compete with (or afford.:)
Look to Iraq for a perfect example. The rebels are far better armed than most Americans, yet we occupy their cities. If they have a "victory," it will be because we decide to withdraw. Had we still been using 1700s weapons, things would probably be different in Iraq.
I believe that protecting are freedom begins now, while we still have some control of our government. Once our only option is to fight, it's probably too late to change anything.
Your original response was a canned argument, and wasn't really worth discussing.
It's a response I've seen a thousand times, and it totally ignored the questions I was asking. You needed to take a deeper look at what I had to say. In doing so, you might realize that:
I don't think that gun control will make everyone a lot safer.
I don't think that mandatory armament will make us safer.
I don't think guns are as dangerous as people believe
Nor do I think that they are the end-all be-all of self defense.
They say that the difference between a liberal and a conservative is that a liberal has never been mugged. Perhaps that's the case... I don't worry that I will be held at gunpoint. I am however, concerned about irrisponsible gun ownership.
For what it's worth, I personally have an interest in firearms. I'd love to own a M82A1 and a FN P90 (it's a shame that the latter is so heavily controlled.)
I have a problem with the logic that making criminals feel threatened makes us safer.
Crime does not disapear, no mater how many armed citizens are walking the streets. We can agree on that, right?
Imagine life from the perspective of a criminal in such an area. You know you are robbing someone who is likely armed. How would that make you react?
In my case, it would probably make me more jumpy. If I were mugging someone, I would be far more likely to shoot them... After all, my life would be on the line.
Sure, you would be much safer in public places, or working at a conveince store. I don't think it would help with muggings, however.
It's also worth pointing out that silencers are illgeal in the United States. Certainly, a silencer would give a criminal a big edge... So, why don't we see more silencers in the hands of robbers?
IMO, if guns were illegal, the vast majority of criminals would move on to other weapons.
FWIW, I'd rather face a criminal armed with a gun, than one armed with a sword of knife.
Agreed, that's a dumb way of doing things. It's also a rather old example.
Most current MIME Defang installs will simply strip the.vcf file from the email, and notify you (the recipient) that it was removed while delivering the rest of the email. Stripping files is used mostly as a safety measure to catch potential viruses that virus scanners did not (or could not) identify.
As a side note, IMO some filenames (such as.pif and.scr) are worth silently dropping. I've never seen them used as a ligitimate attachment.
"So when this happens, there's no right thing to do. But I say the more wrong thing would be to drop the email, since you can never be certain it's malware."
The proper thing to do is to run a quarantine, however that's not an option in many situations.
"Thus, if you are sending a 5XX internally and bouncing from there, I still consider that broken."
I have no doubt that you would consider a situation that always generated bounces broken. I thought it was a situation worth pointing out, because it's not at all obvious to some administrators.
"Bah. I have people who I communicate with only through email. How am I supposed to check if something arrived?"
They can still send you an email that asks if their important document arrived. So long as that email doesn't contain the original virus payload, they will get through.
My final word: people far more qualified than you or myself have argued about this subject. The man who developed MIME Defang (David F. Skoll) says drop. In my personal experience, it has been the best solution.
Greylisting forces a delay between when a spam is originally sent, and when it's finally accepted. Using existing systems such as Razor, DCC, you can use that small window of time to block a lot of crap.
The best spam defense is in layers. SpamAssassin and Mimedefang can bring a huge number of simple spam and virus filtering techniques together in a way that is very, very hard to defeat.
Oh please, don't give me crap about my ability to do my job.
You are horribly mistaken about how common both SMTP virus scanning is, and how often the situation I described occurs. Email is relayed for anyone who has a forwarding address, many people who have changed ISPs, lots of people using custom email hosting, and a sizable percentage of the people who own custom domains.
Virus scanning is becoming common, but is not at all universal. Many email servers scan for viruses only during local delivery, and not when relaying.
Additionally, some systems use a form of relaying to deliver all email. This is the case for AMaViS in Postfix and "Sendmail Relay" configurations. Someone spitting out 5xx error codes with such a setup will guarantee "MAIL DELIVERY FAILURE" for all. : )
Old fashion viruses are becoming rare, and someone sending them is likely to find out one way or another. If what they sent is important, they will probably check to see if it arrived.
The proper response of course, is for venders to start identifying viruses differently than worms. If that were the case, we could send those "You've got virus" emails only in situations where the "From" address is correct. Some vendors do this.
With all that said, you sir, are hurting reliability of email. I delete several hundred mail delivery status notifications a day, because I no longer have the time or energy to see if they are genuine.
The sad fact is, email stopped being reliable the moment people began accidentally deleting valid email with their spam. People expect a little unreliability, and can handle it.
Permanant Failure (5xx SMTP) codes are not safe either.
There are many cases where email is relayed before being sent to a system that does virus scanning. (Consider what happens when you use sendmail aliases and virtual domain entries that contain somthing on the order of "user: user@someotherhost.com".)
Your SMTP 5xx error will cause the relaying server to generate a bounce. The bounce will go to the person listed by the forged "To" headers, and will even include a copy of the Virus.
The proper way to deal with email worms is to quietly delete them.
I'm affiraid that you're not entirely correct either...
Generally, a person becomes a professional at an activity when they support their lifestyle through an activity.
To continue the metaphore:
A beginning dancer is an amature.
A dancer with 10 years of experience is still an amature.
A dance performer with 10 years of experience who works in a coffee shop is a professional waitor or waitress (but still an amature dancer.)
A dance performer or instructor who pays their rent through performing or instructing is a professional dancer.
Speaking as someone who has installed a lot of linux systems for other people: "Oooh! Shiny thing" syndrom is a major problem.
Lots of people will see services such as FTP, MAIL, NFS, SSH, WEB and think "That might be useful," or "That might be fun." They enable a small shitload of services, then never bother to update or use them.
By forcing a person to pay special attention before making a service available to the world (For instance, sendmail will only listen on 127.0.0.1 by default on RedHat) you force them to learn a little somthing about that service. You also make it undesireable for them to enable a lot of things that they have no hope of using.
IMO, "Install Everything" is far too tempting for many people, and far too insecure. The number of linux breakins would go down considerably if distributers would simply force people to enable a service after they install it.
I personally think that the Linux distrobutions avoid it to make things easier, and to improve people's linux experience. "Hey! I have a webserver running after 5 minutes! Neat! This linux stuff is easy." (I sure was that way when I got into Linux.) : \
Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, including the world champions.
Arnold once had unusually small calves for a bodybuilder -- bad enough that he would hide them when he posed. Rather than giving up or getting calf implants, he spent thousands of hours building them. He compensated for his weakness.
If someone is incapable of becoming a bodybuilder, they might be a capable sprinter.
If someone is incapable of being a professional athlete, perhaps they are capable of being an a chess master.
In my humble opinion, too many people limit their ability to succeed by artificially narrowing their options. I believe a person is more likely to achieve success by trying new things figuring out what they enjoy and what they are good at, and then doing those things.
I also believe that gene therapy won't level the playing field... It will simply replace the winners who have good genes with those who can afford the best gene treatment (or get the best results.)
And for what it's worth, success always has an element of luck... Ask some of the talented (and unknown) bands.
Because athletics (especially bodybuilding) is as much about how you got there as it is about what you can do. Gene therapy is considered a form of cheating.
However, I don't think that they could prosocute sites for blocking Habeas messages using copyright laws. Nor would doing so violate the DMCA (which Habeas doesn't seem to support, regardless.)
We clearly have the right to block a Habeas mark, just as we have the right to block spam. However, I don't think it is in our best interests to block Habeas emails. While doing so may prevent some spam from getting through the filters, it would also increase the rate of false positives.
As a network administrator for a small ISP, I easily see 1000 spam emails a day. Of those, 20 are marked with the Habeas Haiku. Those Habeas spams are written in such a way as to be easily caught by other filters.
In my opinion, risking false positives for 20 emails would be a bad idea. Until Habeas deals with this, I will reduce their bonus to a very neutral 0.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks. Your response was an interesting read and I stand corrected.
Part of the problem is that the majority of our people will not stand up for their rights. Even as they are robbed of their freedom they will not take a stand for fear of losing what little they have left. Until people believe that they, or those they love are going to die, I personally doubt most will fight back. :\ That goes for the Jews in pre WW2 germany as well.
.22 to a .50 Desert Eagle. A license would simply mean that you demonstrated the responsibility and knowledge to handle a weapon. It would not give the government specific information on what weapons you own, or that you own any at all.
I was thinking about power, a while ago. Power comes in different forms, the main two (IMO) being strength and dependency.
Strength is simple... If I break the law, the police step up. If they can't stop me a SWAT team gets involved. If the SWAT team fails, the military comes into play. If the military can't stop me then I have control, because I am the strongest.
Dependency is interesting, and is more powerful than strength in my opinion. I depend on the government for protection and services. The government depends on me for taxes. The government cannot therefore, attempt to alienate the majority of it's citizens: it needs to have popular support in order to exist. If americans decided to rebel it would probably not be the majority... The majority would either be against the rebels, or unwilling to help.
WW2 Germany did an excellent job of creating consent, by convincing it's citizens that it had their best interests in mind, that it was protecting them, and that the Jews were the cause of Germany's problems.
Armed revolt tends to work when the rebels have outside support. I sincerely hope that if Americans ever have to revolt against our government that we would have the help of other nations.
Regarding licenses... I don't believe that licenses should be necessary for each gun owned. I would opt more for a general class license, say: "Shotguns" "Rifles" "Automatics" and "Handguns." Owning a handgun license would permit a person to own anything from a
Such a system would be vague enough to make reclaiming powerful weapons from license owners about as difficult as doing a general arms search and recovery, IMO.
Regarding your story about the man from the store... I don't think a few hours of reading and practice is too much to ask. It doesn't need to be expensive either.
Knowledge is important, both for self defense and the safety of others. A little bit of time on a firing range as well as a basic understanding of his weapon would be very useful. How far does the shot spread? How far will it penatrate? How do I maintain this weapon?
Time can always be made. I'm sure he has some free time he normally spends relaxing, watching TV, or with his kids. Or perhaps his wife could take responsibility for the firearm?
It sounded like he was interested in learning. Perhaps he just needed a good reason to learn... Regardless, I think better educating gun owners is in everyone's best interests.
Because some of us use it on a regular basis.
My Belkin KVM switch uses syslog to change systems. Linux uses it to pause fast moving console output. BSD uses it to view the console history.
Sorry for splitting this into two posts. I had to run earlier.
Regarding the M82A1: It was actually designed to destroy tanks and light armored vehicles. : )
Unfortunatly, $7500 is a bit expensive for me as well. The Model 99 might be a better choice at $3200 or so.
I really enjoyed reading what you have to say, thanks!
:\
:)
One of my primary concerns is fear. IMO, fear + firearms can be extremely dangerous. Fear tends to cloud judgment. It makes me worry about someone firing before they know the identity and nature of their target. Is that really a robber, or your kid getting a drink of water?
Part of that concern is because I've been mistaken for a potential rapist before (Crazy old bat...)
The problem with making guns available to everyone is that 'everyone' includes those who those who don't know better than to abuse a gun. I would probably support some form of mandatory training for gun owners, much like the way we require a license to drive.
On another point, I don't think it's possible to protect freedom using force, in this day and age. Our military has training and weapons that a private citizen couldn't compete with (or afford.
Look to Iraq for a perfect example. The rebels are far better armed than most Americans, yet we occupy their cities. If they have a "victory," it will be because we decide to withdraw. Had we still been using 1700s weapons, things would probably be different in Iraq.
I believe that protecting are freedom begins now, while we still have some control of our government. Once our only option is to fight, it's probably too late to change anything.
It's a response I've seen a thousand times, and it totally ignored the questions I was asking. You needed to take a deeper look at what I had to say. In doing so, you might realize that:
- I don't think that gun control will make everyone a lot safer.
- I don't think that mandatory armament will make us safer.
- I don't think guns are as dangerous as people believe
- Nor do I think that they are the end-all be-all of self defense.
They say that the difference between a liberal and a conservative is that a liberal has never been mugged. Perhaps that's the case... I don't worry that I will be held at gunpoint. I am however, concerned about irrisponsible gun ownership.For what it's worth, I personally have an interest in firearms. I'd love to own a M82A1 and a FN P90 (it's a shame that the latter is so heavily controlled.)
If you'd like to dialog, I'll be here.
Nope. You're too much fun to take seriously.
You know what I like about you? You actually think that what you have to say is meaningful.
I have a problem with the logic that making criminals feel threatened makes us safer.
Crime does not disapear, no mater how many armed citizens are walking the streets. We can agree on that, right?
Imagine life from the perspective of a criminal in such an area. You know you are robbing someone who is likely armed. How would that make you react?
In my case, it would probably make me more jumpy. If I were mugging someone, I would be far more likely to shoot them... After all, my life would be on the line.
Sure, you would be much safer in public places, or working at a conveince store. I don't think it would help with muggings, however.
It's also worth pointing out that silencers are illgeal in the United States. Certainly, a silencer would give a criminal a big edge... So, why don't we see more silencers in the hands of robbers?
IMO, if guns were illegal, the vast majority of criminals would move on to other weapons.
FWIW, I'd rather face a criminal armed with a gun, than one armed with a sword of knife.
Agreed, that's a dumb way of doing things. It's also a rather old example.
.vcf file from the email, and notify you (the recipient) that it was removed while delivering the rest of the email. Stripping files is used mostly as a safety measure to catch potential viruses that virus scanners did not (or could not) identify.
.pif and .scr) are worth silently dropping. I've never seen them used as a ligitimate attachment.
Most current MIME Defang installs will simply strip the
As a side note, IMO some filenames (such as
"So when this happens, there's no right thing to do. But I say the more wrong thing would be to drop the email, since you can never be certain it's malware."
The proper thing to do is to run a quarantine, however that's not an option in many situations.
"Thus, if you are sending a 5XX internally and bouncing from there, I still consider that broken."
I have no doubt that you would consider a situation that always generated bounces broken. I thought it was a situation worth pointing out, because it's not at all obvious to some administrators.
"Bah. I have people who I communicate with only through email. How am I supposed to check if something arrived?"
They can still send you an email that asks if their important document arrived. So long as that email doesn't contain the original virus payload, they will get through.
My final word: people far more qualified than you or myself have argued about this subject. The man who developed MIME Defang (David F. Skoll) says drop. In my personal experience, it has been the best solution.
Lots of people use different servers for incoming and outgoing email. The outgoing servers won't have a MX record.
...It's not that great alone.
Greylisting forces a delay between when a spam is originally sent, and when it's finally accepted. Using existing systems such as Razor, DCC, you can use that small window of time to block a lot of crap.
The best spam defense is in layers. SpamAssassin and Mimedefang can bring a huge number of simple spam and virus filtering techniques together in a way that is very, very hard to defeat.
Oh please, don't give me crap about my ability to do my job.
You are horribly mistaken about how common both SMTP virus scanning is, and how often the situation I described occurs. Email is relayed for anyone who has a forwarding address, many people who have changed ISPs, lots of people using custom email hosting, and a sizable percentage of the people who own custom domains.
Virus scanning is becoming common, but is not at all universal. Many email servers scan for viruses only during local delivery, and not when relaying.
Additionally, some systems use a form of relaying to deliver all email. This is the case for AMaViS in Postfix and "Sendmail Relay" configurations. Someone spitting out 5xx error codes with such a setup will guarantee "MAIL DELIVERY FAILURE" for all. : )
Old fashion viruses are becoming rare, and someone sending them is likely to find out one way or another. If what they sent is important, they will probably check to see if it arrived.
The proper response of course, is for venders to start identifying viruses differently than worms. If that were the case, we could send those "You've got virus" emails only in situations where the "From" address is correct. Some vendors do this.
With all that said, you sir, are hurting reliability of email. I delete several hundred mail delivery status notifications a day, because I no longer have the time or energy to see if they are genuine.
The sad fact is, email stopped being reliable the moment people began accidentally deleting valid email with their spam. People expect a little unreliability, and can handle it.
Permanant Failure (5xx SMTP) codes are not safe either.
There are many cases where email is relayed before being sent to a system that does virus scanning. (Consider what happens when you use sendmail aliases and virtual domain entries that contain somthing on the order of "user: user@someotherhost.com".)
Your SMTP 5xx error will cause the relaying server to generate a bounce. The bounce will go to the person listed by the forged "To" headers, and will even include a copy of the Virus.
The proper way to deal with email worms is to quietly delete them.
I was horribly tired when I wrote that. I'm sure that most people understood me.
Like, how many times have you accidentally deleted an email that you thought was spam but was really from a long-lost friend?
See http://www.sexylosers.com/159.html
: )
"Did you ever pull on a door when the sign says "push"? Ever done it more than once?"
The difference is: he probably tried pushing before asking someone else to "come unlock the door."
Speaking as someone who has installed a lot of linux systems for other people: "Oooh! Shiny thing" syndrom is a major problem.
Lots of people will see services such as FTP, MAIL, NFS, SSH, WEB and think "That might be useful," or "That might be fun." They enable a small shitload of services, then never bother to update or use them.
By forcing a person to pay special attention before making a service available to the world (For instance, sendmail will only listen on 127.0.0.1 by default on RedHat) you force them to learn a little somthing about that service. You also make it undesireable for them to enable a lot of things that they have no hope of using.
IMO, "Install Everything" is far too tempting for many people, and far too insecure. The number of linux breakins would go down considerably if distributers would simply force people to enable a service after they install it.
I personally think that the Linux distrobutions avoid it to make things easier, and to improve people's linux experience. "Hey! I have a webserver running after 5 minutes! Neat! This linux stuff is easy." (I sure was that way when I got into Linux.) : \
Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, including the world champions.
Arnold once had unusually small calves for a bodybuilder -- bad enough that he would hide them when he posed. Rather than giving up or getting calf implants, he spent thousands of hours building them. He compensated for his weakness.
If someone is incapable of becoming a bodybuilder, they might be a capable sprinter.
If someone is incapable of being a professional athlete, perhaps they are capable of being an a chess master.
In my humble opinion, too many people limit their ability to succeed by artificially narrowing their options. I believe a person is more likely to achieve success by trying new things figuring out what they enjoy and what they are good at, and then doing those things.
I also believe that gene therapy won't level the playing field... It will simply replace the winners who have good genes with those who can afford the best gene treatment (or get the best results.)
And for what it's worth, success always has an element of luck... Ask some of the talented (and unknown) bands.
Because athletics (especially bodybuilding) is as much about how you got there as it is about what you can do. Gene therapy is considered a form of cheating.
I would argue that IPv6 is not vaporware, but that this huge migration to IPv6 that everyone has been talking about may well be.
That's a very good point.
However, I don't think that they could prosocute sites for blocking Habeas messages using copyright laws. Nor would doing so violate the DMCA (which Habeas doesn't seem to support, regardless.)
We clearly have the right to block a Habeas mark, just as we have the right to block spam. However, I don't think it is in our best interests to block Habeas emails. While doing so may prevent some spam from getting through the filters, it would also increase the rate of false positives.
As a network administrator for a small ISP, I easily see 1000 spam emails a day. Of those, 20 are marked with the Habeas Haiku. Those Habeas spams are written in such a way as to be easily caught by other filters.
In my opinion, risking false positives for 20 emails would be a bad idea. Until Habeas deals with this, I will reduce their bonus to a very neutral 0.