I hope this thread isn't too old to revive.
Well, I'm one of the fortunate few (having wired my own extension cords since the age of 5 or 6); and indeed ironically seem to be
way more of an engineer than many of the newbies put in charge of recent standards amendments (which often end up taking costly and ineffective "shotgun" approaches, to problems that could be fixed
properly at lower cost with a better understanding).
The original standards themselves, developed from the beginning into the 1980s, were generally
much better thought-out from what I've gathered; and of course the biggest dangers are from junk which meets
no standard.
Even in my spare time, I can put current mainstream "reviews" (made of course by
terminal sufferers of the Dunning--Kruger effect) of simple items to
shame as you can see in my mini-review thread at Hardware Insights (where I'm a staff member):
http://www.hardwareinsights.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=2160I also catch a
lot of junk just by astute observations, as you can see in my recalls thread there:
http://www.hardwareinsights.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=2279Here's hoping that at least a few people will follow my example, so simple items can be held to the same high standards as more complex technology (and therefore become as trouble-free as they rightfully should be).
