The enter key being pressed after doing something silly like typing up an example command line for a half written script that will automate some large process to simply copy and paste into another document.
While the reality of it is the reason they said 'hands off' was to avoid just such an accident, an engineer actually executing the test plan before it was actually ready to do its job, by accident. And it happened.
Its really one of those moments where the poor guy is just the most perfect example of why management said 'hands off'. Has to be a shitty feeling to be in, I'm sure they'll be giving him shit for years.
And will the current Debian release run software originally written for the original without modification?
I'd be just about any amount of money that you'll find more packages designed for the original release of WindowsXP to work on the latest fully patched version than you'll find will work on any Linux distro over that time span.
You don't have to install service packs to patch, those are patch rollups, you can apply any of the patches in a service pack without actually installing the service pack. So no, they don't support old service packs, but thats simply a technicality since they do support the patches themselves, just not that particular name for a set of specific patches.
That is absolutely false! You could buy a brand new machine with XP installed up until a year ago.
Only if you went out of your way and requested it. For the last several years, certainly since Vista was released, MS has done everything they can to prevent people from buying XP machines while still allowing the people who really really wanted/needed it to do so.
Netbooks being the one exception to that statement, however considering XP will still maintain support until 2014 and its probably getting more difficult to find an XP based netbook its not like the support is going to disappear on those users shortly after they've bought there netbook either.
Basically, the only people who bought XP recently that are getting the short end of the stick are the people who knew what they were getting into.
Generally, in order to 'abuse monopoly power' they actually have to be a monopoly, and they are about as far from it as you can get. They are exclusive providers of nothing. They happen to be devices that people (us router flunkies) happen to approve of and use in most cases, but they aren't the only game.
Cisco fits the middle ground areas well, but you don't use them at the high end. Juniper can provide bandwidth Cisco simply can't handle. You don't use them at the low end as they are just over priced, though you might use their gear in small offices anyway if you want to tie it into the a larger Cisco centric management system with fewer headaches.
The Multiven case some how revolves around they fact that they get 'hurt' because Cisco doesn't give out software updates... Then use someone else if you don't want to pay for updates. Multiven isn't being treated differently. Cisco hasn't changed this sort of behavior recently, its been that was for 20 years.
There really hasn't been any indication Cisco manufactured evidence, only heresy from the guy trying to get out of going to jail, and he only started saying that crap after he a delay (that could happen for any number of reasons) came into play that made room for his statements to seem plausible. If they were fabricating evidence, he would have started making those statements the instant he was arrested, not months later.
Cisco isn't your friend, but there is no indication here that they've actually done anything wrong. The only thing there is at face value is a guy who thinks he should get a bigger piece of the pie and he's trying to use the court system to do so. He is losing. Seems like things are working about like they should.
You're seriously comparing getting beaten to getting arrested for a crime you've committed?
The simple solution to prevent the arrest would have been to not commit a crime.
If you come after me with a lawyer, you're a rather stupid individual if you don't expect my response to be an all out assault on you with every weapon I have available.
The guy wasn't a Cisco employee.
The difference is... no one gets beaten today. You're free to work elsewhere. The only reason you aren't free to work else where is because you don't actually have the skills you claim to have and know no one else will hire you.
Even at the worst the economy was, finding a job wasn't actually that difficult, there have been plenty through the entire ordeal, it just required that you were ACTUALLY qualified for the job, cause if you weren't some one else who is was going to get it instead of you. At no point did McDonalds stop hiring, so you could have had a job, you just didn't actually want to work.
f carriers offered a $5 "extra" you could tack onto your phone plan for a tablet, ok, then *maybe*.
Thats just awesome. You've been getting ripped off for so long, you now think its OK for them to charge you an additional $5 to use the data you've already paid them for on a different device.
You're not saying its okay to charge me for the data, then charge me for the privilege of using it in the way I want to use it.
Dear freaking god let the government step in and put an end to this sort of shit like they did on traditional land lines long ago. It blows my mind that people think its OK to be given an unlimited data plan, or even X number of MB but then not be able to use it how they see fit... and pay more for the privilege of doing so.
So the iPad, iPhone and iTunes sync your contacts, notes, mail, songs, videos, and photos between all 3 if you don't mind syncing manually, of course they'll all 3 sync over the air with several services to stay insync without plugin type syncs.
not exactly sure whats supposed to be impressive about what BlackBerry offers, could you maybe tell me how its supposed to be impressive?
BlackBerry ceased to matter the instant the iPhone came out, even though the iOS groups is targeted at personal users and BB at corp users, its so far beyond the point of mattering anymore that I just can't understand why you even bother to bring it up?
The source code only tells you what you're phone is doing if you actually compiled the source and put it on your phone yourself. Using someone elses precompiled binary build pretty much negates any usefulness the source itself offers as the binary may have been compiled with source other than what you are looking at.
The source is irrelevant unless you are compiling it yourself. You don't have any clue what source the binaries were compiled against unless YOU did the compiling.
Of course, if you REALLY want to be paranoid, you have to take into account that you really don't know what the compiler is doing either and IT could be sneaking something in...
But... all the tin foil hat stuff aside, unless you compiled ALL of the code running on your phone yourself, all you can do is speculate about what it actually does based on a copy of the source you think it was built from, you truly don't know anything.
The iPhone was not the completely radical, unprecendented game-changer that a lot of people like to suggest.
Really? Than what do YOU attribute to the fact for the fact that the smart phone world is drastically different than it was pre-iPhone and that it changed pretty much on the day the iPhone was available (arguably, the change started when the TV commercials did)
No one particular component of the hardware my be a game changer, but its really retarded to suggest that it didn't flip the industry on its head when it came out.
You could of course also just right click on it (or option/alt click if you have a single button mouse/crappy track pad config) and select Eject... which is the typical intuitive thing to do for someone like yourself.
No, you don't use ICMP echo requests (and most other forms of ICMP), its too easy to filter upstream since it can safely be ruled out of the normal flow of traffic.
While many ICMP packets are indeed useful and blocking ICMP in general is a really retarded thing that some less than clueful people like to do on firewalls (seen often here on slashdot) it will in general not screw proper traffic up too much if you block ICMP echo requests/replies upstream during a DDoS.
If you want to do a proper DDoS, you have to make the traffic look like legitimate traffic so its indistinguishable from traffic the site actually wants so they can't easily block it.
If you just try to ping -f me, I'll just call my upstream and tell them whats going on and ask them to drop it upstream to my address space until further notice.
UDP dns queries are a good one to use as they can be spoofed and are pretty much impossible to block to a legitimate DNS server. TCP based connections like an HTTP request are more effective in the sense of the amount of traffic generated but are effectively unspoofable if you want to actually do more than a syn flood. If you can't spoof them then you become traceable and can be blocked since you're going to come from a specific address for each request, which can then be filtered, even if its a DDoS. Building a table of IPs to blackhole doesn't take long in most cases and can be pretty effective assuming your upstream firewalls/routers can handle the size of the blacklist, which may not be all that easy depending on the size and load of your upstream routers, but still far easier than dealing with a flood of legitimate looking UDP packets.
I haven't seen an effective ping flood since 1998-99 on any thing but some little tiny sites that simply don't know what they are doing.
It wouldn't be functional on my network, you may be able to plug it into a port, but you wouldn't move any data through those wires.
I'd know about it the instant you plugged it in, the switch port would throw you into NULL land, and that would be that, followed by someone showing up at that port promptly to ask wtf you thought you were doing.
Its unlikely, being that managing the network isn't your job, that you are fully aware of all the requirements and conditions that apply to data in your hospital. Its unlikely that you are as well versed at managing the server as they are.
Without rambling on about all the other reasons why you shouldn't be running your own server, to put it bluntly, the fact that you asked on slashdot is proof enough that you shouldn't be running a server in that environment. Of course, to follow up, the fact that they simply want a login/admin access is a good indication that your IT department is substandard as well.
Nothing talks on my networks that I don't have complete control over. Its my job to make sure things are done right, that includes preventing people like yourself from having any possible way to break company and legal requirements, of which I'm sure you are bound as a hospital. My job is to make sure everyone else can do what they need to do and make sure no one else screws it up for them. Letting someone who isn't part of my management domain have control over something that isn't separated into its own private unreachable network isn't going to happen... opening a firewall port? I don't think so. Thats just begging for problems.
Interestingly enough, notice the major players in this industry which are pretty good at supporting OSS are also moving away from... GCC and Samba... to things that don't have such restrictions.
The major products are free to use GPLv3, but the writing is on the wall, they're going to lose support from the big guns and be replaced by alternatives without those restrictions. Basically cutting of their nose to spite their on face.
From a purely economical point of view, OO is a complete waste of funds. Its too fat and bloated to run using a central server and dumb terminals for display.
Its too big to be agile.
Its to annoying to use to replace MS Office for most people who aren't geeks and doing it just to spite MS.
The reality of it is, OO.org was a pretty shitty product compared to what it was competing with, and the ONLY reason it had a snowballs chance in hell is because it was free as in no cost. Outside of this community, the rest of the world doesn't give a flying fuck about libre, they want works. They'd be more than happy to pay for MS Office compat since everyone they want to deal with uses it and not OO.org.
Sun was using it to try and compete with MS in some meaningful way, but that was pretty much a failure. Oracle probably just took a few minutes to look at it and simply said... 'no fucking wonder Sun was going broke, this is a stupid waste of time, its never going to beat MS Office or even make a dent big enough for anyone to notice'.
The only people who care are a statstically irrelevant portion of the population who are both geeks AND irrationally afraid of paying for software or running Windows. Since these sort of things don't apply to pretty much everyone else in the world, Oracle just did what any intelligent business would do. Its part of the reason Oracle still exists and Sun doesn't.
You can mod me down, mark me as a troll or whatever because you're a rabid OSS/Anti-Microsoft zealot but that doesn't actually change reality. The sooner this is recognized the sooner you can move on to doing things that ACTUALLY promote OSS software and things that have a change of moving away from MS.
Your planning for today, I plan for tomorrow. I rewired my home because it was built in the late 70s, with 14 gauge wire, and multiple rooms on a single line/breaker.
12 gauge isn't enough currently, thats only rated for a total of 15 amps (local code) and its rather inefficient to put 15 amps on it, the wires will heat up and you're get voltage drop for no other reason than being cheap.
14 gauge is (by local code) is for 10 amps or less (and connected to normal wall outlets, 2 slots, 1 round ground). 12 gauge and 15 amp outlets are 2 slots, one with a T shape, and a ground pole, this is what every house now days should have in it as a minimum as we continue to draw more and more electrical power. 10 gauge (by local code, only allowed to carry 20 amps, though realistically at that point you can safely, though slighly less efficiently carry 30) is the only thing you should be installing.
Yes, our electrical code here requires larger than normal wire compared to most of the country, partially because of the reality learned by living in a technology hub where people regularly burned their houses down by over loading circuits that were barely capable of providing what they were rated for.
You may not mind brownouts when you turn on the vacuum or microwave, but I do.
If you run up to a stop light and stop, you then have to accelerate back to cruising speed. That takes time.
I regularly pass people who ran up to the next light and were forced to stop by simply adjusting my speed so I can maintain a higher average speed by not stopping.
I pass the guy who stopped at the light and is now doing 15kph and accelerating because my timing allowed me to not slow down completely and cross the same threshold at 50kph, allowing me to easily get in front of him with FAR less energy used for starting AND stopping.
So while the light turns green at the same time, I hit the light at 50kph, and you are at 0. I win. I'm also more likely to be able to time the next light to do the same. I'll also cause far less wear and tear on my cars mechanics... and save a lot of fuel that you. So not only will I get there faster, I'll spend less on brakes and fuel. I win... again.
Average speed over the course is what matters, not highest.
Compared to say... a bus which is about the same size and can carry the same amount of people?
Cutting the track isn't required to derail a train, just partially throw a switch somewhere along the route, all you need to do that is a bolt cutter to cut the lock on the switch. Or... parking a car on the track... or... any of a large number of other ways it can be done if someone wanted too.
Highways slow down because people are stupid and rubber neck, but traffic can still flow. Derail a train and its done for days at a minimum, even in good times.
You really want MULTIPLE egress paths if you're thinking of safety. In a disaster it is likely one or more of your original egress options is going to fail. Just look at any recent natural disaster and tell me how the trains faired... have they even FOUND all the ones that were lost after the initial tsunami in Japan? How many people died on trains from the Indian ocean tsunami? Certainly less people than died in cars, but there were also such a large difference in the number of people in cars compared to trains that its hardly a useful comparison.
Your argument assumes that people can be organized and transported out on trains quickly enough that the disaster doesn't get them as well. I challenge you to get out of a city faster after the first train as left and you're waiting for the next one than someone in a car. That presumes there is a train sitting there ready to carry people out when the disaster is coming or has happened, which would be luck at best since trains aren't generally left just hanging around they typically stay in use (like aircraft) as much as possible to make it economically viable. They have more or less a very limited number of path options which can easily be cut off in a disaster, a car can go offroad, even a passenger car can to some extent, and doesn't have a fixed path.
Slashdot Mirror
The enter key being pressed after doing something silly like typing up an example command line for a half written script that will automate some large process to simply copy and paste into another document.
While the reality of it is the reason they said 'hands off' was to avoid just such an accident, an engineer actually executing the test plan before it was actually ready to do its job, by accident. And it happened.
Its really one of those moments where the poor guy is just the most perfect example of why management said 'hands off'. Has to be a shitty feeling to be in, I'm sure they'll be giving him shit for years.
Sounds like what happened by accident to a certain archeologist Arthor Dent ran into with Marvin.
And will the current Debian release run software originally written for the original without modification?
I'd be just about any amount of money that you'll find more packages designed for the original release of WindowsXP to work on the latest fully patched version than you'll find will work on any Linux distro over that time span.
You don't have to install service packs to patch, those are patch rollups, you can apply any of the patches in a service pack without actually installing the service pack. So no, they don't support old service packs, but thats simply a technicality since they do support the patches themselves, just not that particular name for a set of specific patches.
That is absolutely false! You could buy a brand new machine with XP installed up until a year ago.
Only if you went out of your way and requested it. For the last several years, certainly since Vista was released, MS has done everything they can to prevent people from buying XP machines while still allowing the people who really really wanted/needed it to do so.
Netbooks being the one exception to that statement, however considering XP will still maintain support until 2014 and its probably getting more difficult to find an XP based netbook its not like the support is going to disappear on those users shortly after they've bought there netbook either.
Basically, the only people who bought XP recently that are getting the short end of the stick are the people who knew what they were getting into.
People would laugh at the idea of mandatory age-ratings on books
Really? So anyone can by a copy of Playboy or Hustler?
I think you better check again, or refine your definition of book.
My company has about 10 servers that have had last visible downtime in 10 years than Amazon has today alone.
Its not really hard, it just requires skill, know how, and vigilance.
Are they abusing monopoly power?
Generally, in order to 'abuse monopoly power' they actually have to be a monopoly, and they are about as far from it as you can get. They are exclusive providers of nothing. They happen to be devices that people (us router flunkies) happen to approve of and use in most cases, but they aren't the only game.
Cisco fits the middle ground areas well, but you don't use them at the high end. Juniper can provide bandwidth Cisco simply can't handle. You don't use them at the low end as they are just over priced, though you might use their gear in small offices anyway if you want to tie it into the a larger Cisco centric management system with fewer headaches.
The Multiven case some how revolves around they fact that they get 'hurt' because Cisco doesn't give out software updates ... Then use someone else if you don't want to pay for updates. Multiven isn't being treated differently. Cisco hasn't changed this sort of behavior recently, its been that was for 20 years.
There really hasn't been any indication Cisco manufactured evidence, only heresy from the guy trying to get out of going to jail, and he only started saying that crap after he a delay (that could happen for any number of reasons) came into play that made room for his statements to seem plausible. If they were fabricating evidence, he would have started making those statements the instant he was arrested, not months later.
Cisco isn't your friend, but there is no indication here that they've actually done anything wrong. The only thing there is at face value is a guy who thinks he should get a bigger piece of the pie and he's trying to use the court system to do so. He is losing. Seems like things are working about like they should.
You're seriously comparing getting beaten to getting arrested for a crime you've committed?
The simple solution to prevent the arrest would have been to not commit a crime.
If you come after me with a lawyer, you're a rather stupid individual if you don't expect my response to be an all out assault on you with every weapon I have available.
The guy wasn't a Cisco employee.
The difference is ... no one gets beaten today. You're free to work elsewhere. The only reason you aren't free to work else where is because you don't actually have the skills you claim to have and know no one else will hire you.
Even at the worst the economy was, finding a job wasn't actually that difficult, there have been plenty through the entire ordeal, it just required that you were ACTUALLY qualified for the job, cause if you weren't some one else who is was going to get it instead of you. At no point did McDonalds stop hiring, so you could have had a job, you just didn't actually want to work.
f carriers offered a $5 "extra" you could tack onto your phone plan for a tablet, ok, then *maybe*.
Thats just awesome. You've been getting ripped off for so long, you now think its OK for them to charge you an additional $5 to use the data you've already paid them for on a different device.
You're not saying its okay to charge me for the data, then charge me for the privilege of using it in the way I want to use it.
Dear freaking god let the government step in and put an end to this sort of shit like they did on traditional land lines long ago. It blows my mind that people think its OK to be given an unlimited data plan, or even X number of MB but then not be able to use it how they see fit ... and pay more for the privilege of doing so.
...
So the iPad, iPhone and iTunes sync your contacts, notes, mail, songs, videos, and photos between all 3 if you don't mind syncing manually, of course they'll all 3 sync over the air with several services to stay insync without plugin type syncs.
not exactly sure whats supposed to be impressive about what BlackBerry offers, could you maybe tell me how its supposed to be impressive?
BlackBerry ceased to matter the instant the iPhone came out, even though the iOS groups is targeted at personal users and BB at corp users, its so far beyond the point of mattering anymore that I just can't understand why you even bother to bring it up?
The source code only tells you what you're phone is doing if you actually compiled the source and put it on your phone yourself. Using someone elses precompiled binary build pretty much negates any usefulness the source itself offers as the binary may have been compiled with source other than what you are looking at.
The source is irrelevant unless you are compiling it yourself. You don't have any clue what source the binaries were compiled against unless YOU did the compiling.
Of course, if you REALLY want to be paranoid, you have to take into account that you really don't know what the compiler is doing either and IT could be sneaking something in ...
But ... all the tin foil hat stuff aside, unless you compiled ALL of the code running on your phone yourself, all you can do is speculate about what it actually does based on a copy of the source you think it was built from, you truly don't know anything.
That is probably the best Linux to non-geek item comparison I've ever seen ... and I don't even like Linux :)
I'd argue the 'always works' part ... but equally so for both Linux and the razor ... you can easily screw both of them up by mistreating them.
The iPhone was not the completely radical, unprecendented game-changer that a lot of people like to suggest.
Really? Than what do YOU attribute to the fact for the fact that the smart phone world is drastically different than it was pre-iPhone and that it changed pretty much on the day the iPhone was available (arguably, the change started when the TV commercials did)
No one particular component of the hardware my be a game changer, but its really retarded to suggest that it didn't flip the industry on its head when it came out.
You're missing the forest for the trees.
You could of course also just right click on it (or option/alt click if you have a single button mouse/crappy track pad config) and select Eject ... which is the typical intuitive thing to do for someone like yourself.
How else would you have it done?
Get a keyboard with 20 F keys and don't remap F1?
No, you don't use ICMP echo requests (and most other forms of ICMP), its too easy to filter upstream since it can safely be ruled out of the normal flow of traffic.
While many ICMP packets are indeed useful and blocking ICMP in general is a really retarded thing that some less than clueful people like to do on firewalls (seen often here on slashdot) it will in general not screw proper traffic up too much if you block ICMP echo requests/replies upstream during a DDoS.
If you want to do a proper DDoS, you have to make the traffic look like legitimate traffic so its indistinguishable from traffic the site actually wants so they can't easily block it.
If you just try to ping -f me, I'll just call my upstream and tell them whats going on and ask them to drop it upstream to my address space until further notice.
UDP dns queries are a good one to use as they can be spoofed and are pretty much impossible to block to a legitimate DNS server. TCP based connections like an HTTP request are more effective in the sense of the amount of traffic generated but are effectively unspoofable if you want to actually do more than a syn flood. If you can't spoof them then you become traceable and can be blocked since you're going to come from a specific address for each request, which can then be filtered, even if its a DDoS. Building a table of IPs to blackhole doesn't take long in most cases and can be pretty effective assuming your upstream firewalls/routers can handle the size of the blacklist, which may not be all that easy depending on the size and load of your upstream routers, but still far easier than dealing with a flood of legitimate looking UDP packets.
I haven't seen an effective ping flood since 1998-99 on any thing but some little tiny sites that simply don't know what they are doing.
Your server would be rather useless.
It wouldn't be functional on my network, you may be able to plug it into a port, but you wouldn't move any data through those wires.
I'd know about it the instant you plugged it in, the switch port would throw you into NULL land, and that would be that, followed by someone showing up at that port promptly to ask wtf you thought you were doing.
Its unlikely, being that managing the network isn't your job, that you are fully aware of all the requirements and conditions that apply to data in your hospital. Its unlikely that you are as well versed at managing the server as they are.
Without rambling on about all the other reasons why you shouldn't be running your own server, to put it bluntly, the fact that you asked on slashdot is proof enough that you shouldn't be running a server in that environment. Of course, to follow up, the fact that they simply want a login/admin access is a good indication that your IT department is substandard as well.
Nothing talks on my networks that I don't have complete control over. Its my job to make sure things are done right, that includes preventing people like yourself from having any possible way to break company and legal requirements, of which I'm sure you are bound as a hospital. My job is to make sure everyone else can do what they need to do and make sure no one else screws it up for them. Letting someone who isn't part of my management domain have control over something that isn't separated into its own private unreachable network isn't going to happen ... opening a firewall port? I don't think so. Thats just begging for problems.
That was my tought too ... GCC and Samba.
Interestingly enough, notice the major players in this industry which are pretty good at supporting OSS are also moving away from ... GCC and Samba ... to things that don't have such restrictions.
The major products are free to use GPLv3, but the writing is on the wall, they're going to lose support from the big guns and be replaced by alternatives without those restrictions. Basically cutting of their nose to spite their on face.
on to anything worth their time.
From a purely economical point of view, OO is a complete waste of funds. Its too fat and bloated to run using a central server and dumb terminals for display.
Its too big to be agile.
Its to annoying to use to replace MS Office for most people who aren't geeks and doing it just to spite MS.
The reality of it is, OO.org was a pretty shitty product compared to what it was competing with, and the ONLY reason it had a snowballs chance in hell is because it was free as in no cost. Outside of this community, the rest of the world doesn't give a flying fuck about libre, they want works. They'd be more than happy to pay for MS Office compat since everyone they want to deal with uses it and not OO.org.
Sun was using it to try and compete with MS in some meaningful way, but that was pretty much a failure. Oracle probably just took a few minutes to look at it and simply said ... 'no fucking wonder Sun was going broke, this is a stupid waste of time, its never going to beat MS Office or even make a dent big enough for anyone to notice'.
The only people who care are a statstically irrelevant portion of the population who are both geeks AND irrationally afraid of paying for software or running Windows. Since these sort of things don't apply to pretty much everyone else in the world, Oracle just did what any intelligent business would do. Its part of the reason Oracle still exists and Sun doesn't.
You can mod me down, mark me as a troll or whatever because you're a rabid OSS/Anti-Microsoft zealot but that doesn't actually change reality. The sooner this is recognized the sooner you can move on to doing things that ACTUALLY promote OSS software and things that have a change of moving away from MS.
Because after a period of time, after they've driven the other markets out of business ... they can raise the price to whatever they want.
They'll use their size and bank account to effectively give away things in order to make other businesses unprofitable, its a rather common tactic.
Yea, we have a constitution in America that gets ignored as well.
Whats written on paper isn't always what gets done, and yet our population doesn't seem to care :(
Your planning for today, I plan for tomorrow. I rewired my home because it was built in the late 70s, with 14 gauge wire, and multiple rooms on a single line/breaker.
12 gauge isn't enough currently, thats only rated for a total of 15 amps (local code) and its rather inefficient to put 15 amps on it, the wires will heat up and you're get voltage drop for no other reason than being cheap.
14 gauge is (by local code) is for 10 amps or less (and connected to normal wall outlets, 2 slots, 1 round ground).
12 gauge and 15 amp outlets are 2 slots, one with a T shape, and a ground pole, this is what every house now days should have in it as a minimum as we continue to draw more and more electrical power.
10 gauge (by local code, only allowed to carry 20 amps, though realistically at that point you can safely, though slighly less efficiently carry 30) is the only thing you should be installing.
Yes, our electrical code here requires larger than normal wire compared to most of the country, partially because of the reality learned by living in a technology hub where people regularly burned their houses down by over loading circuits that were barely capable of providing what they were rated for.
You may not mind brownouts when you turn on the vacuum or microwave, but I do.
For me, its the same size now as it was before I rewired. Mind you, I had a large, mostly empty box before hand, and now its almost entirely full.
However, the breaker box sits, out of sight in a closet, covered and for the most part, entirely invisible, so who actually CARES how big it is?
If you run up to a stop light and stop, you then have to accelerate back to cruising speed. That takes time.
I regularly pass people who ran up to the next light and were forced to stop by simply adjusting my speed so I can maintain a higher average speed by not stopping.
I pass the guy who stopped at the light and is now doing 15kph and accelerating because my timing allowed me to not slow down completely and cross the same threshold at 50kph, allowing me to easily get in front of him with FAR less energy used for starting AND stopping.
So while the light turns green at the same time, I hit the light at 50kph, and you are at 0. I win. I'm also more likely to be able to time the next light to do the same. I'll also cause far less wear and tear on my cars mechanics ... and save a lot of fuel that you. So not only will I get there faster, I'll spend less on brakes and fuel. I win ... again.
Average speed over the course is what matters, not highest.
An average train car can handle 30+ people.
Compared to say ... a bus which is about the same size and can carry the same amount of people?
Cutting the track isn't required to derail a train, just partially throw a switch somewhere along the route, all you need to do that is a bolt cutter to cut the lock on the switch. Or ... parking a car on the track ... or ... any of a large number of other ways it can be done if someone wanted too.
Highways slow down because people are stupid and rubber neck, but traffic can still flow. Derail a train and its done for days at a minimum, even in good times.
You really want MULTIPLE egress paths if you're thinking of safety. In a disaster it is likely one or more of your original egress options is going to fail. Just look at any recent natural disaster and tell me how the trains faired ... have they even FOUND all the ones that were lost after the initial tsunami in Japan? How many people died on trains from the Indian ocean tsunami? Certainly less people than died in cars, but there were also such a large difference in the number of people in cars compared to trains that its hardly a useful comparison.
Your argument assumes that people can be organized and transported out on trains quickly enough that the disaster doesn't get them as well. I challenge you to get out of a city faster after the first train as left and you're waiting for the next one than someone in a car. That presumes there is a train sitting there ready to carry people out when the disaster is coming or has happened, which would be luck at best since trains aren't generally left just hanging around they typically stay in use (like aircraft) as much as possible to make it economically viable. They have more or less a very limited number of path options which can easily be cut off in a disaster, a car can go offroad, even a passenger car can to some extent, and doesn't have a fixed path.