Slashdot Mirror
Green Security Clearance Laser Pistol Available
nazgul000 writes "You thought those green laser pointers sold by ThinkGeek and others were pretty cool, didn't you? Well, think again." It seems obligatory to point out that even laser pointers, and certainly anything more powerful than those, are capable of causing real damage.
because they seem like advertisements...
word.
...Hooked up to a scope, this could be a very deadly tool. This would easily blind someone at a distance.
I hate having strict regulations on everything..but.. the thought of a couple of kids playing a prank and permanently blinding me while I'm on my way to work is very scary.
That being said, I really want one. I wish the site hadn't died so soon.
Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/
i.e. is it strong enough to melt metal?
Agreed. I don't think this guy should be able to sell these things to just anyone. Well... he says "responsible adults", but I doubt he's doing background checks. Assuming our Department of Homeland Security isn't a complete joke, shouldn't they have some issues with this?
-Shippy
Just need three lasers, red, blue (not yet widely available), and green, and means to switch their (big not needed!) output power to 256 levels very rapidly. Then a fairly simple arrangement of horizontal and vertical rotating mirrors can scan the flickering beams across, say, an ordinary home-movie projection screen, rather like we do with electron beams and electromagnets in a CRT. Somehow I think somebody somewhere has been working on this...but the lasers have so far been too expensive. But not much longer! Remember Blu-Ray? That diode laser is the last piece needed!
Don't be a dick. It's hillarious that they got the patent. It's tragic that the USPTO granted it.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
even a BB gun that is just as dangerous as this laser is.
Uh, can your BB gun permanently damage the eyes of pilots from the ground? Didn't think so.
-Shippy
Uh, can your BB gun permanently damage the eyes of pilots from the ground? Didn't think so.
Unless those pilots happen to be standing on the ground, not moving around, this laser can't hurt them either.
It takes sophisticated tracking equipment to keep a laser aimed at a distant moving target like a plane or a car - significantly beyond the capabilities of human eye-hand coordination.
Given the divergence of the beam over a couple of thousand feet, the "dot" will probably be about the size of a CD, thus significantly reducing the amount of energy per square inch. Combine that with the near impossibility of tracking a distant moving target by hand there is no way Joe Blow could keep this laser aimed at an airplane cockpit long enough to damage a pilot's eyes. That's assuming the pilot was too stupid to turn his head away either.
Now, if this laser's output was in the 10s or 100s of watts, then you'd have another story.
But, at a max of 0.2 watts, you are just being a hysterical pussy.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The trouble with /. is that when you post something funny there are half a million people who get it, but still twelve who don't, and they need to post about it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Nope, and neither can this laser.
I don't know if you've ever played with a laser pointer or not, but I can't even hold one still enough to keep a dot within a centimeter from one side of my living room to the other for a few seconds. That's about 11 feet. Now, I suppose that if you could get within 11 feet of the pilot you might be able to blind him if he didn't see you standing there with a laser but from that distance you could just throw a rock into the turbine and blow the engine up.
More likely, if you are in the pilot blinding business you are going to be a good few thousand feet away. Add in to that that it's going to be difficult to find a place where you can stand and get line of sight into the pilots eyes. I don't know about you, but when I look up at a plane I see the bottom, which is usually made of metal, not glass. I'll give that if you tried real hard you might be able to find a tall hill within a few thousand feet of the airport that would give you line of sight to the pilots eyes.
Now that you've got your hill, and your laser and a plane is taking off (or landing) facing directly at you you just need to aim it right at his eyes. I'm assuming here that you have mounted some huge scope to the laser so you can *find* the pilot's eyes from 1000+ feet. And probably a tripod. All that's left is to hold that beam right on his eye for several seconds while he's moving, the plane's moving and you are moving. Don't forget the beam is going to be spread out some at that distance, which means less power per square centimeter which means you have to hit him longer.
Is it possible? Just barely with great resources and planning. Is it likely? No. Once again, just buy a $150 rifle from Walmart and shoot holes in the fuel tanks.
I once had a truck driver and his passenger bouncing a red laser into my eye off of my rear view mirror as I was driving down the road!! Unfortunately they didn't have a "how's my driving" sticker and their tag was so crud-encrusted I couldn't make out the number. I would've loved to have been able to tell the FHP exactly who to go nail though - it's very scary when you're driving along, minding your own business, and all of a sudden are literally seeing red. Lucky for me, the afterimage only lasted a couple seconds and there was no (apparent) lasting damage.
Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS.
I wouldn't like the soldering iron i use to burn out my eyesockets by pointing it onto a roundish surface.
Buy all your crazy japanese videogames from
The best part is that this is apparently a requirement for making the device legal for licensing. Reminds me of how the US mandates that any soot in diesel exhaust here now has to be under a certain size, but the bigger particles are filtered out by lung cilia and the smaller ones aren't. Makes you wonder who makes this shit up.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Specular reflection
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Yeah, remember that when you're dying from cancer, because corporate 'special interests' were let off 'the hook', and you're too fucked up on morphine to say goodbye to your kids.
Oh, and have a nice day. Heheh...sucker
it is a general rule that if you need goggles, you are not right for the job.
If that's the attitude you had towards safety, I'm glad you're no longer in that line of work. I suspect your insurance carrier wouldn't have been too pleased, either.