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Joined: Oct 2006
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And I thought double-male dryer cords for connecting generators was dangerous. This one takes the cake. Be sure to watch the videos. TAKE A LOOK AT THIS CONTRAPTION Note that they fail to mention what you do with the live ends of the wires/cords after the transition is made. Man, this thing has lawsuit written all over it. OHSA would have a field day with this one.
---Ed---
"But the guy at Home Depot said it would work."
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Joined: Jan 2005
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I love it ... "we developed this for our government customers." Sure they did. Just like I'm sure that law enforcement seizes computers 'in the act,' yet without also securing the power supply - or that there are no other ways to access the information. Time to click you heels and get back to Kansas, Dorothy! The best laugh are the 'accessory kits." Kit $2 is listed at $275, but I'm pretty sure I can get everything in it at the box store for less than $50. Gee, they even furnish a 40 cent roll of electrical tape! As bill Engvall would say: Here's your sign ...
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Joined: Feb 2009
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I've seen this before. For Law enforcment, it's actually a good tool, and probably about the only way to handle certain situations.
Nowadays, more and more people with something to hide will use some sort of hard drive encryption, which requires a passphrase when the machine is started. If the machine is powered off, the passphrase is lost.
Without the passphrase, there is no possible way to decrypt the drive, short of guessing the passphrase, which could take a very long time, (up to a few billion years) depending on how many characters were used...
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Joined: Aug 2007
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Interesting. Wouldn't they just treat the office and such as a crime scene and search in place?
I like it.
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Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 9,935 Likes: 34
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I imagine small police departments would prefer to get the system "running" and take it back to "their" geek. Like they say several times, if this machine is "logged on" the disk encryption is probably disabled. They want to dump it before the thing times out, assuming you walked away, and locks encryption back on. It sure sounds a lot easier to me to just bring a terabyte USB drive and let this machine dump to your unencrypted drive. "XCOPY <i> <your drive> /S/H/E/R/C" on each drive will get most of it. After you got all you could, reboot this with a hardware disk maintenance program to be sure you got all the partitions. A real geek could still hide stuff out there but they probably won't find it anyway. I am sure the NSA/FBI could eventually crack any encryption or data hiding scheme but if you are the Fumbuck Arkansas Sheriff department I doubt you would get much cooperation if you were trying to bust a guy who sold a pound of pot. It is a whole lot easier to just read and capture the data yourself.
Greg Fretwell
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Joined: Jan 2005
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Let me put it this way .... though crooks are famous for doing silly things, even the dimmest of them can figure out that simply flipping the power strip 'off' is going to shut down the computer.
Therefore, that product has the most marginal application.
As I see it, the stuff is like the 'audio grade' stuff ... a lot of sales kant intended to separate the gullible from their money. My theory is further supported by the ridiculous mark-up on those tool sets.
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Joined: Jul 2004
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If the crook is a lumen brighter than the power on LED he will have all of his secret data encrypted on a thumb drive and it wouldn't even be in the computer unless you were "doing business". Things like this are best made to look like something else and hidden in plain sight.
Greg Fretwell
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Joined: Jul 2004
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I assume they have a warning somewhere that you should ensure that the UPS and the PC are on the same phase. In real life that may really be all this magic box is. Just a N/C closed relay that picks if the two cords are not in phase preventing switchover, an OK light and a switch. Relay optional. It could just be a 'not ok' light and a be careful sticker.
Greg Fretwell
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Joined: Jan 2005
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And I was kind of looking forward to that 240v 'oops' moment.
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Joined: Jul 2004
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"Yeah, I thought the cops had me for sure but when he plugged in his gizmo he blew the breaker and shut the machine down." "He is easy to spot, the guy with black fingernails on one hand and no eyebrows"
Greg Fretwell
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Posts: 44
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