... is there any use for that thing other than arson? 'Cause I'm just not seeing a benign function for a double-ended plug and it's just too clumsy to be for torture or kink.
-- Steve's brain is insufficiently caffeinated to process this concept. (A)bort (R)retry (F)ail?
Surely a conventional extension cord is better for that, right?
Unless there some function for a male-male power cord that I'm missing, this is designed to plug a power source into a power source which leads to either a short or a cross-feed.... in any case, making all the breakers pop or turning the cord into a supersized toaster element if the breakers have been sabotaged.
This is a more systemic solution. Run plug from one live socket to a dead socket. Every formerly-dead socket on that circuit is now live, up until the host socket's circuit breaker trips.
For when you've put up your Christmas lights and got them all strung just the way you want them and then realize, crap, the end of the strand next to the wall socket doesn't have prongs, and the end with prongs is nowhere near the wall socket.
I'm not entirely sure on this, but I think that would blow out all the lights, or just not work, since the current would be flowing opposite to normal, assuming the lights in question had defined positive and negative prongs.
No, no, I'm not saying it's a good idea, I'm just saying that's the line of thought involved for people who don't have any idea why that might be dangerous. I mean, I'm an intelligent person and a Ph.D candidate, but if someone asked me why that was a bad idea, I'm not sure I understand the fundamental electrical badness enough to articulate it. If all you've got before you is the problem of 'two female plug ends need to be connected', why wouldn't the immediately obvious solution be to get an adapter that connects them?
Before we had "the cloud", there would occasionally be a single computer that was very important and could not be turned off. Perhaps it was processing a hundred queries per second and downtime would cost millions of dollars per minute, or perhaps the filesystem had not been unmounted in forever and the next fsck would be unskippable and take a year and somebody who had long-since left had changed the password that keeps you from changing the boot options, or perhaps you didn't want to interrupt the 100 GB file transfer running on the 1200baud modem.
Unfortunately, whoever had first bought the machine had neglected to put it on an uninterruptible power supply with generator backup, and a long series of lazy and/or skittish admins had never bothered or dared to bite the bullet; and today someone brought to your attention that the power company is doing "maintenance" tonight---the "turning it off for a few hours" kind of maintenance.
There's a generator and UPS ready to go. Too bad that in order to move the power strip over to them, you need to unplug it. ...or do you?
At the point where they're both connected, won't the UPS and the live supply start arguing? Or are UPSs designed to match phase and smoothly take over?
... I *think* the idea is that you plug the new UPS-etc into the same power bar and trip the breaker on that while leaving the breaker on the new UPS-etc untripped.
Then you unplug the non-UPS side, and reset the breaker.
I'm not sure, though. And that's completely insane.
It is, without doubt, a terrible idea. The fellow who taught me the trade had one, and that was his story of how he had used it. Allegedly $INSTITUTION sysadmins did it all the time, way back when.
Feeding a large stage dimmer power distribution from the "wrong" end. Times to do this are when a) you want to program lights at an outdoor concert in the middle of the night (since it's dark, duh) and b) the generator is offline and the shore power isn't connected[0] c) You really need to test the dimmers (and not just fixed power for say moving lights) d) the generator guys are asleep and really pissed if you wake them up.
The dimmer guy came over to us electricians and asked for a male-male 63A three-phase cable. He explained the situation. We understood, told him he was crazy and showed him where our connectors + cables were and turned our backs.
[0]Large concerts are usually powered off generators since the local feed can't handle the amount of power, and they usually have a 63A three-phase "shore power' connected, if nothing as a "clock reference", so you can pull a small (<40kW) load without the generator having to run.
I may or may not have considered constructing one of those to pipe power from our portable generator into the house circuitry without the expense of incorporating the proper routing through a cutover switch and the breaker panel..
Or, in other words: If you know enough about what you're doing to know when this is the appropriate solution to your problem, then you don't need our help to make one. If you can't make one without help, then you shouldn't have one; you might hurt someone besides yourself, and that wouldn't be right.
yes, I'm serious - for one thing, power points in Australia have three prongs. I'm *guessing* that this sort of cord would be completely unsuitable for routing power to some some sort of custom subnetwork, but I don't know why
Aussie plugs are plus/minus/ground like North American ones. And Wikipedia Pete says that sometimes Australian plugs don't have a ground, like NA ones.
Male plugs have prongs that stick out. They go on your appliances. Female plugs have slots for the prongs. They go on your walls. Power flows from the walls with their female plugs into the male plugs and up the cords to the appliances.
But anyway: This is a two-prong male plug, and then a second two-prong male plug on the other end of the cord.
This allows you to connect one power outlet to another. Like an extension cord, except instead of "move the wall socket to the end of the cord", you have "connect two wall sockets directly to each other"
This is *insane*. There is *never* a good reason to do this. In the comments above we've come up with a dozen TERRIBLE reasons why someone might want to do this, and they are all, well, terrible. If you think you need this plug, then your circuit is bad and you should feel bad.
The plugs in the baskets in the picture are cord-free - presumably, this is a place where you choose your connector of choice, your wire of choice, your length of wire, and your preferred far-end connector, and they put the cable together for you. I've never been to one of those, but I can easily see the idea and why a specialised shop would offer that service. And they have a BIG SIGN that says FUCK NO ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MINDS STOP ASKING.
hmm. I guess I can see why a standard male-to-female extension cord would be the usual way to go, barring some bizarre custom set-up in the shed you were trying to wire up, or something.
.... but do the electrons even care? surely they're just looking for a connection, any connection, regardless of the shape? otherwise you wouldn't be able to join wires together at all.
In fact, think of it like this: If there are no other cars on the road, driving on the wrong side and driving the wrong way on ramps and driving backwards down highways is not a big deal. There's nothing to hit.
However, as soon as you have traffic, you're fucked and so are they. And even with no traffic, sometimes you'll encounter a door that won't open because the sensor is on the other side and you'll slam into it and explode.
It's a bad idea to sell a tool that allows users to do this.
You missed the great big primary and overriding reason why it's a Bad Idea:
Plug one end into a live circuit, and you are now waving around the other end with two closely-spaced bare metal rods with rich chunky amps just begging for someone to let them short the circuit.
It seems unlikely that this wouldn't be obvious, but not everyone is as highly trained in the ways of electrons as we.
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-15 04:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-15 04:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-15 05:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-15 05:26 pm (UTC)-- Steve's brain is insufficiently caffeinated to process this concept. (A)bort (R)retry (F)ail?
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-15 05:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-15 05:38 pm (UTC)Unless there some function for a male-male power cord that I'm missing, this is designed to plug a power source into a power source which leads to either a short or a cross-feed.... in any case, making all the breakers pop or turning the cord into a supersized toaster element if the breakers have been sabotaged.
-- Steve just doesn't get the draw of this thing.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-15 05:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-15 06:19 pm (UTC)-- Steve still thinks the sign is right, and that such things should never exist. Too damned dangerous.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-16 02:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-16 04:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-15 05:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-16 10:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-16 10:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-15 07:18 pm (UTC)Unfortunately, whoever had first bought the machine had neglected to put it on an uninterruptible power supply with generator backup, and a long series of lazy and/or skittish admins had never bothered or dared to bite the bullet; and today someone brought to your attention that the power company is doing "maintenance" tonight---the "turning it off for a few hours" kind of maintenance.
There's a generator and UPS ready to go. Too bad that in order to move the power strip over to them, you need to unplug it. ...or do you?
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-15 09:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-16 02:11 am (UTC)Then you unplug the non-UPS side, and reset the breaker.
I'm not sure, though. And that's completely insane.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-17 06:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-15 11:19 pm (UTC)The dimmer guy came over to us electricians and asked for a male-male 63A three-phase cable. He explained the situation. We understood, told him he was crazy and showed him where our connectors + cables were and turned our backs.
[0]Large concerts are usually powered off generators since the local feed can't handle the amount of power, and they usually have a 63A three-phase "shore power' connected, if nothing as a "clock reference", so you can pull a small (<40kW) load without the generator having to run.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-15 05:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-15 06:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-15 06:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-15 08:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-16 12:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-16 02:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-17 08:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-16 09:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-16 11:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-16 10:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-16 10:50 pm (UTC)Male plugs have prongs that stick out. They go on your appliances. Female plugs have slots for the prongs. They go on your walls. Power flows from the walls with their female plugs into the male plugs and up the cords to the appliances.
But anyway: This is a two-prong male plug, and then a second two-prong male plug on the other end of the cord.
This allows you to connect one power outlet to another. Like an extension cord, except instead of "move the wall socket to the end of the cord", you have "connect two wall sockets directly to each other"
This is *insane*.
There is *never* a good reason to do this. In the comments above we've come up with a dozen TERRIBLE reasons why someone might want to do this, and they are all, well, terrible. If you think you need this plug, then your circuit is bad and you should feel bad.
The plugs in the baskets in the picture are cord-free - presumably, this is a place where you choose your connector of choice, your wire of choice, your length of wire, and your preferred far-end connector, and they put the cable together for you. I've never been to one of those, but I can easily see the idea and why a specialised shop would offer that service.
And they have a BIG SIGN that says FUCK NO ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MINDS STOP ASKING.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-17 08:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-17 02:28 pm (UTC)That's backwards.
There is no reason, ever, at all, why that is a good idea.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-17 10:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-17 11:18 pm (UTC)The electrons don't care. The devices *do* - and if the other plug is live, you've just created a short circuit.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-17 11:51 pm (UTC)However, as soon as you have traffic, you're fucked and so are they. And even with no traffic, sometimes you'll encounter a door that won't open because the sensor is on the other side and you'll slam into it and explode.
It's a bad idea to sell a tool that allows users to do this.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-18 09:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-17 08:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-17 09:15 am (UTC)Plug one end into a live circuit, and you are now waving around the other end with two closely-spaced bare metal rods with rich chunky amps just begging for someone to let them short the circuit.
It seems unlikely that this wouldn't be obvious, but not everyone is as highly trained in the ways of electrons as we.