You hinted at wanting to deny the thief the use of the stolen netbook - so far I've not seen many practical suggestions that won't land you in jail (hand grenades, explosives, etc). Here's a relatively simple way that's airplane-friendly.
Find the pins that feed power to your hard drive.
Connect a small but manly switch from the output side of the battery fuse to +3.3V or one of the other low voltage pins (not ground, naturally).
After you shut down, flip the switch so that +Vbatt is shorted to +3.3V.
Don't forget to flip it before starting up!
When Mr. Thief tries to start it up it'll either not start at all or will smoke some of the laptop's internal workings.
I agree; my point was that I can't prove that it's the heater's or the pipe's fault since I don't know the diameter of the hot water pipe in the new house.
...because they have a high trust-to-mass ratio...
My trust-to-mass ratio is pretty close to unity - I'm very trustful, but also rather massive. Some would say Rush Limbaugh has a very low trust-to-mass ratio. 8-(
Couldn't that be a result of the inlet temp being lower? I don't see the pink line on the left side of the graph, but I bet the absolute temperature drop across the AC unit, (once at equilibrium with the ductwork, etc), is essentially constant plus or minus differences in the humidity of the incoming air.
Theoretically, yes. I went from a 50 gallon electric water heater in my old house to a propane-fired instant-on in my new house, and the heated water takes _forever_ to get to the taps. I can't say for sure that it's the fault of the heater, as I don't know for sure the diameter of the pipes used to distribute the hot water. A 3/4" pipe will take a lot longer to deliver hot water than a 1/2" one (2.25 times as long, AAMOF).
Your refrigerator could apply a colder temperature before peak usage period...
Freezer yes, 'fridge no, up to a point. I hate frozen milk/veggies/fruit/yogurt/etc.
Maybe someone will invent a fridge that uber-cools the freezer section and uses it as a cold sink to keep the fridge section within parameters while under power limits.
Actually, I'm quite familiar with electrical premises wiring and electrical distribution. I differentiated between DISTRIBUTION (the part from the substation to your home) on purpose - the ground you see running down poles is not to carry operating current, it is for lightning protection. The ground conductor in your home is designed to carry current only if there's a short between a hot conductor and the chassis of an appliance, not operating current. The reason the neutral and ground are bonded in the box is so that the ground works as intended - it has to carry the current that would've traveled back on the neutral in the case of a short from hot to case.
Perhaps my terminology confused you. In AC systems, there are hot(s), a neutral, and a ground. In DC systems, I'm used to seeing plus and minus (sometimes called ground). However most power systems do not use the earth as a conductor for return currents - the loss is far too high. Note that with some 3 phase configurations, a neutral is not needed at all. As the article on the Pacific Intertie states,
"The wires have a capacity of 2 gigawatts in bipolar mode and 1.55 gigawatts with earth (ground) return."
They have the ability to use the earth as a conductor, but it costs 22.5% of their maximum bipolar capacity.
In electrial distribution systems, the ground/earth connection is only typically used to prevent electric shock by making sure that the external surfaces of electrical equipment is at the same potential as the earth (and by extension, you), and to help bleed off lightning-induced surges.
The pacific intertie uses 3 poles; plus, minus, and ground (earth). You can transfer twice as much power while the voltage from a conductor to ground (and thereby the tower structure) is only half as much as a mono-polar system.
Three phase power is very popular in that it is used to turn very large AC motors. DC has no phase as such, so you'd have to use 2 larger wires (plus and ground) to carry the same amount of power. The line from The Dalles Dam in Oregon to SoCal actually uses plus, ground and minus, so that the voltage from a conductor to ground is only 1/2 the total voltage across plus and minus. Clever - insulators only have to withstand half as much voltage.
... which cooked the contactors that switched between grid power and their own DC room.
I read that as contractors. I apparently saw 'contractor' in the next sentence and did the switcheroo. I was going to call you callous for using the term 'cooked'.
FYI, arc flash is not something to be taken lightly (no pun intended). It's dangerous as all get-out in high voltage panels that have a lot of available fault current. A typical 480V, 20kA fault can release the same amount of energy as 1.5 lbs of TNT.
I read the book when I was a kid. I thought the patient's name, Benes, was pronounced "Beans" instead of "Ben-ess". I still have the phrase "But we'll kill Beans!" floating around in my head. They said it every time they were going to do something remotely dramatic, so it and phrases like it got used a lot.
You'd better sell that Au-194 fast - its half life is 1.64 days! You'd be better off letting the Au-194 decay into stable Platinum-194 and collect that. It's a lot more valuable than gold.
Other sources quote the half-life of Hg-194 at about 520 years. The transmutation to gold is accompanied by a 328 keV gamma ray and the transition to Pt has gammas between about 300 and 1500 keV according to one source, and a 2.5 MeV according to another - not something you want in your house, but not too terribly energetic.
Should the owner of a home PC be the PC's admin by default?
Not my father or sister. It would save me lots of headaches and desperate phone calls if I had that switch.
In fact, it might be worthwhile to offer this as a feature - software publishers could form a guild to guarantee software authenticity. Have an optional phone number you can call w/ the serial # of your keyswitch and the code of the sfw you're installing. They'd give you a code for the switch that only opened the areas of the disk and/or registry required by that program.
I'm fairly certain that they use black powder, which provides a large 'thump' without requiring containment. Smokeless powder does not detonate, it just burns rather vigorously. If it's not contained, you get a rather disappointing whoosh. Black powder, OTOH, goes boom with or without containment.
propose a physical switch to toggle between read/write and read only.
And have social engineers disguise malware as OS updates or dancing bunnies [msdn.com], prompting the home user who doesn't understand risks to flip the switch to see the dancing bunnies.
If I'm the admin of that system, I'd install a key switch and keep the key for myself.
Better yet, I would install a keypad that is synchronized to my RSA keyfob - that way I could give the user a one-time code over the phone if I needed the button pushed.
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You hinted at wanting to deny the thief the use of the stolen netbook - so far I've not seen many practical suggestions that won't land you in jail (hand grenades, explosives, etc). Here's a relatively simple way that's airplane-friendly.
When Mr. Thief tries to start it up it'll either not start at all or will smoke some of the laptop's internal workings.
I agree; my point was that I can't prove that it's the heater's or the pipe's fault since I don't know the diameter of the hot water pipe in the new house.
My trust-to-mass ratio is pretty close to unity - I'm very trustful, but also rather massive. Some would say Rush Limbaugh has a very low trust-to-mass ratio. 8-(
Couldn't that be a result of the inlet temp being lower? I don't see the pink line on the left side of the graph, but I bet the absolute temperature drop across the AC unit, (once at equilibrium with the ductwork, etc), is essentially constant plus or minus differences in the humidity of the incoming air.
Tankless waters heaters are instant.
Theoretically, yes. I went from a 50 gallon electric water heater in my old house to a propane-fired instant-on in my new house, and the heated water takes _forever_ to get to the taps. I can't say for sure that it's the fault of the heater, as I don't know for sure the diameter of the pipes used to distribute the hot water. A 3/4" pipe will take a lot longer to deliver hot water than a 1/2" one (2.25 times as long, AAMOF).
Your refrigerator could apply a colder temperature before peak usage period...
Freezer yes, 'fridge no, up to a point. I hate frozen milk/veggies/fruit/yogurt/etc.
Maybe someone will invent a fridge that uber-cools the freezer section and uses it as a cold sink to keep the fridge section within parameters while under power limits.
Actually, I'm quite familiar with electrical premises wiring and electrical distribution. I differentiated between DISTRIBUTION (the part from the substation to your home) on purpose - the ground you see running down poles is not to carry operating current, it is for lightning protection. The ground conductor in your home is designed to carry current only if there's a short between a hot conductor and the chassis of an appliance, not operating current. The reason the neutral and ground are bonded in the box is so that the ground works as intended - it has to carry the current that would've traveled back on the neutral in the case of a short from hot to case.
Perhaps my terminology confused you. In AC systems, there are hot(s), a neutral, and a ground. In DC systems, I'm used to seeing plus and minus (sometimes called ground). However most power systems do not use the earth as a conductor for return currents - the loss is far too high. Note that with some 3 phase configurations, a neutral is not needed at all. As the article on the Pacific Intertie states,
"The wires have a capacity of 2 gigawatts in bipolar mode and 1.55 gigawatts with earth (ground) return."
They have the ability to use the earth as a conductor, but it costs 22.5% of their maximum bipolar capacity.
In electrial distribution systems, the ground/earth connection is only typically used to prevent electric shock by making sure that the external surfaces of electrical equipment is at the same potential as the earth (and by extension, you), and to help bleed off lightning-induced surges.
It looks like someone filled in data element 4 of an ISO-8583 request as type an12 type instead of n12.
The pacific intertie uses 3 poles; plus, minus, and ground (earth). You can transfer twice as much power while the voltage from a conductor to ground (and thereby the tower structure) is only half as much as a mono-polar system.
Three phase power is very popular in that it is used to turn very large AC motors. DC has no phase as such, so you'd have to use 2 larger wires (plus and ground) to carry the same amount of power. The line from The Dalles Dam in Oregon to SoCal actually uses plus, ground and minus, so that the voltage from a conductor to ground is only 1/2 the total voltage across plus and minus. Clever - insulators only have to withstand half as much voltage.
Everyone knows they're all pictures of boobs anyway.
Nah, he just 1337-ified this +4 Informative post.
You know, coffee burns really badly when shot through one's nose. Well played, sir!
Get your hands off those damned dirty tapes!
More like a 57 liter tank. Google says:
15 US gallons = 56.7811768 liters
15 Imperial gallons = 68.1913782 liters
I read that as contractors. I apparently saw 'contractor' in the next sentence and did the switcheroo. I was going to call you callous for using the term 'cooked'.
FYI, arc flash is not something to be taken lightly (no pun intended). It's dangerous as all get-out in high voltage panels that have a lot of available fault current. A typical 480V, 20kA fault can release the same amount of energy as 1.5 lbs of TNT.
I read the book when I was a kid. I thought the patient's name, Benes, was pronounced "Beans" instead of "Ben-ess". I still have the phrase "But we'll kill Beans!" floating around in my head. They said it every time they were going to do something remotely dramatic, so it and phrases like it got used a lot.
Did you snatch your sig from the bottom of their help page, or did they snag it from you?
Perhaps it you that fails at phrasing the question.
You'd better sell that Au-194 fast - its half life is 1.64 days! You'd be better off letting the Au-194 decay into stable Platinum-194 and collect that. It's a lot more valuable than gold.
Other sources quote the half-life of Hg-194 at about 520 years. The transmutation to gold is accompanied by a 328 keV gamma ray and the transition to Pt has gammas between about 300 and 1500 keV according to one source, and a 2.5 MeV according to another - not something you want in your house, but not too terribly energetic.
Should the owner of a home PC be the PC's admin by default?
Not my father or sister. It would save me lots of headaches and desperate phone calls if I had that switch.
In fact, it might be worthwhile to offer this as a feature - software publishers could form a guild to guarantee software authenticity. Have an optional phone number you can call w/ the serial # of your keyswitch and the code of the sfw you're installing. They'd give you a code for the switch that only opened the areas of the disk and/or registry required by that program.
I'm fairly certain that they use black powder, which provides a large 'thump' without requiring containment. Smokeless powder does not detonate, it just burns rather vigorously. If it's not contained, you get a rather disappointing whoosh. Black powder, OTOH, goes boom with or without containment.
propose a physical switch to toggle between read/write and read only.
And have social engineers disguise malware as OS updates or dancing bunnies [msdn.com], prompting the home user who doesn't understand risks to flip the switch to see the dancing bunnies.
If I'm the admin of that system, I'd install a key switch and keep the key for myself.
Better yet, I would install a keypad that is synchronized to my RSA keyfob - that way I could give the user a one-time code over the phone if I needed the button pushed.
The last technician to work on the spacecraft before launch sneezed on the lens and was too embarrassed to clean it off.
It proves that you suck at being a toaster.