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Laser Etching a Laptop
ptorrone writes "I didn't really plan using a $20,000 laser cutter on my 17" PowerBook to etch a 19th-century engraving of a tarsier, a nocturnal mammal related to the lemur (also the vi book cover), but it seemed like it had to done. The results are stunning..."
The CEO was using it to clean under his fingernails of course.
Someone save me from this sanity.
Why not choose the tiger from this O'reailly book??t ml
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mactigerpg/index.h
Would have made more sense to me anyway.
if your pants fit well, it's not only because of the pants
It's a good thing that those Tarsiers are mainly insectivorous and do not eat Apples! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarsier
Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
How much effort would it take to convert an epilog laser printer into a high-powered moonraker? :P
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
Why didn't he use a sheep?
...Is it just me or is O'Reilly trying to show us what geeks are going to evolve into?
You see, that's nothing. In my days, we used the bottom of tea mugs to etch random abstract art! Usually, the result was a series of displaced rings.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
If only one of his coworkers would of switched the image with "hello.jpg"
Why didn't you etch his Noodliness, the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Fitzhon
A laptop with large identifying markings is less likely to be stolen.
...voided?
Just think: you won't have to invite girls back to your place to view your etchings.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Just imagine it, etching a goatse, with the apple in the middle.
O'Reilly has more of a clue than most companies. I suspect that they are sitting back and thinking that they just got free advertisement and will have more as the laptop gets exposed.
Kind of like all the penguins that everybody is selling for Xmas. That will help Linux as most will think that Tux looks similar.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
A tiny Tux? Or even better, some weird flying windows? Or an "Intel Inside" logo. You'd get some funny looks for that.
She: Hey, are you a traitor? Me: No, I'm atheist.
liger. It's pretty much my favorite animal.
For one, a laser capable of cutting metal generaly won't be used for etching, and a laser designed for etching won't be able to cut easily.
I know $20k seems like a lot of money for a machine to slashdotters, a $20k laser system won't be cutting, IIRC, laser cutters go around $200k and up. $20k is mid-to low end for laser etchers though. I considered financing a $10k etcher, but I didn't know how I could make it pay for itself, unlike the techies and investors in the '90s bubble, I wanted a good business model to justify spending money.
Yeah, so do I. Oh wait: MAKE comes from O'Reilly, the Publisher of Record for geeks and tech enthusiasts everywhere.
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Obviously, the animal to engrave using a laser would be a friggin shark.
What is better for identifying an item as yours? A tiny serial number laser-etched somewhere inconspicuous, or a huge lemur on the case that is not easily scratched out? It'd be cool if Apple were to see this and offer custom laser etchings on all of their notebooks.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I have a feeling they are okay with it, plus the burned image is derived from the original, not from O'Reilly. I'm not sure that you read the article at all.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
1) Guy wants picture from vi book on notebook
2) goes to some lab where they have a machine to do it
3) copyrights free image is imported into Coreldraw
4) Laptop is etched
5) picture is on laptop
PS: what is wrong with slashdot? I have to sign in constantly...
PS2:
6) ???
7) profit!!!!
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Laser etching for your mac. I saw this linked in another post and am now considering it.
What would make more sense, from a business standpoint, is to provide the service to large corporations that supply laptops to their employees. Etch the company's corporate logo onto the laptop, along with a phone number to call for a reward. Unlike an adhesive sticker, this can't be removed and would make a stolen computer a hell of a more difficult sell, assuming a thief would even bother with it in the first place.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
One more piece of trivia: the cover page woodcut animals featuring in front of the OReilly books are from the Dover Pictorial Archives. It is a collection of 18th to 19th century wood and copperplate engravings of animals, ie no copyright issue to care about... In fact, the students in my former research group get used to choose one from the archive as well as a decoration for their own thesis. Many university/art school libraries have that collection. Feel free to use them when need a drawing of some cute animal.
http://www.oreilly.com/news/lejeune_0400.html
The artwork was originally from a Dover book. Dover publishes books full of public domain art, along with their reprints of classic and out-of-print textbooks.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Yes, that's 100% correct. Of course the magazines use lithography, where a rubber-faced sheet of about 44" x 60" is fastened over a rotating drum (this is called a press blanket). The metal plate is inked and the blanketed drum rolls over it, transferring an inked negative of the plate to the blanket. The blanket then rolls against the paper that is being fed through the press so that negative on the blanket gets transferred to the paper as a positive.
Each color of ink is applied separately with a separate plate- cyan, magenta, yellow, black, and then usually a glossy coating. Sometimes special metallic colors are applied in subsequent press units. So, you would never put the whole lemur like they did on one plate unless it was a black-and-white printing. This was a very SMALL plate laser etcher as magazines are pretty small and do not run on standard presses, which are about 40-48" wide and print things such as cereal boxes, beer cases, and the like.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
I have to give them props on the concept, but couldn't they have chosen a more appropriate design? The problem with the powerbook lid is that the Apple logo in the middle is the most prominent thing and is right in the middle, so you need a design that will compliment it, and will maintain some sort of symetry. The lemur, or whatever it is, makes the thing look "right heavy" and is a complete non-sequitor to the apple.
EtchaMac have been doing this for a while
http://www.etchamac.com/
.sigs are for losers
I hope they got permission from O'Reilly to do this?!
You know things have gone down the crapper when people wonder about the legality of engraving a nifty picture on their own laptop. I mean, it's not like he's selling them.
So what were you planning when you placed your 17" Powerbook in the $20,000 laser cutter?