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Set Free Your Inner Jedi (Or Pyro)
sirgoran writes "We've all thought about being the hero fighting off evil-doers and saving the day ever since we first saw Star Wars. The folks at Wicked Lasers have now brought that a little closer to reality with their latest release: a 1-Watt blue diode laser that can set skin and other things on fire. From an article at Daily Tech, where they talk about the dangers of such a powerful laser: 'And here's the best (or worst) part — it can set people (or things) on fire. Apparently the laser is so high-powered that shining it on fleshy parts will cause them to burst into flames. Of course it's equally capable of blinding people.' The thing that caught my eye was the price: $200. I wonder if they'll be able to meet the demand, since (if it works as advertised) this will be on every geek's Christmas list."
The label that read "do not look at laser with remaining eye"?
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Local pet stores sell sharks in record numbers.
With that said, I might be trying to get one of these because you can do some pretty cool stuff if you mount a laser this powerful in a plotter. It gets even better if you gut the plotter and add a Z axis so you can melt the top layer of material selectively, then lower the z stage, add a bit more material, and again melt it selectively: a relatively inexpensive, relatively high-precision 3d printer.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Does the right to bear arms cover arms which are for more awesome than ever conceived of by the writers of the constitution?
I'd suggest you not have bare arms if this thing can set flesh on fire.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
I'm not sure if people get how crazy dangerous even a low end class 4 laser is to people's eyesight. Even diffuse reflections can cause blindness. And blindness from a direct beam or specular reflection is virtually instant, literally before you can blink. This laser is not a toy. Not something you can casually show off safely to your friends. You can blind people, forever, accidentally, in an instant. Just keep it in mind.
Even the most ardent advocates of gun ownership being available to any and everyone will probably agree that selling a gun to someone who has no idea how to use and store it safely is a bad idea.
So other then what I imagine to be the joy of setting things on fire with a laser, what purpose can this thing serve? This kind of product should be sold with the same level of precaution as explosives and firearms.
END COMMUNICATION
There is a high power laser pointer ban, but the ban is on marketing terms only. Only class 3a or lower lasers (0-5mW) may be marketed as laser pointers. Class 3b and higher lasers (5-500mW) may be sold in a hand-held form, but not marketed as pointers or amusement devices.
More to the point, there are regulatory requirements for features in high power laser devices that are often ignored.
All types of laser devices of any power must be registered with the FDA prior to sale in the US. Note this is registration per product type, not per sale. Class 3b and higher lasers must have a key based lockout, a remote interlock connector, and a warning label affixed to the product. Most importers of cheap chinese lasers of class 3b (>5mW) fall afoul of all of these requirements, and they are often confiscated in shipping with no recourse for the buyer.
http://www.fda.gov/Radiation-EmittingProducts/RadiationEmittingProductsandProcedures/HomeBusinessandEntertainment/LaserProductsandInstruments/ucm116373.htm
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfCFR/CFRSearch.cfm?FR=1040.10
The only class 3b hand-held lasers I've seen recently which meet all the requirements above are sold by wickedlasers.com. In the past year they have added a safety "key" and interlock connector to their class 3b laser products, and they now meet all the legal requirements. Other vendors might also meet the legal requirements, but I have not personally seen any.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
The real question is, does the FDA regulates the sales of freakin' sharks?
BWHAAHAHAHAHAHAHahaa....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I'm looking forward to setting the disco ball hanging in the middle of my living room on fire in front of 20-50 of my friends. What could go wrong?
The 2nd amendment covers arms. If you use, or intend to use, this as a weapon, it's arms. So yes, it's covered.
At the time, "arms" consisted of the following (and more, and were being developed into new forms every day): All manner of pistols, rifles, muskets, cannons, explosive and solid cannonballs, cannonballs filled with shards, frigates with multiple decks of cannon, wagons with explosives and multiple guns rigged to fire in unison, chain shot, flaming missiles soaked with pitch and other inflammable, easily spread and extremely hard to extinguish compounds, swords, knives, bayonets, fighting canes, brass knuckles, battering rams, catapults, siege towers, caltrops, mines, pits, biologically contaminated materials, glass bottles, garrotes, whips, chains, both fused and mechanically triggered explosives, striking weapons like sticks and poles and pikes and quarterstaffs and maces and war-hammers, spears, bows, axes, arrows and crossbows... I could go on for pages.
Knowing this, and knowing that arms development and refinement went on all the time, what did they put in the constitution? They put "arms." No more, no less. So it's pretty darned clear they meant: "Tools you use to project violence."
Not that the USG pays much attention to the actual meaning and intent of the constitution.
As for "awesome", I don't think this is any more "awesome" than having a flaming arrow fired from a ballista 500 yards (or more) away arrive in your eye socket or your forearm. And that's been an available weapons technology for over 2,000 years.
Firestorms have always wreaked huge havoc; bio-weapons have been known, and used, for centuries; incoming chain shot, pitch, and barbed weapons, and worse were the rule of the day, and death and maiming has always been death and maiming. Though we do have better medical technology now, so that at least alleviates the previous almost-guarantee of death by peritonitis, gangrene, and similar. Presuming you survive the injury at all.
Weapons aren't nice. The sudden realization of the panic-stricken that they might be hurt by deployment of a weapon doesn't really change anything except one's state of mind. Before lasers, we could still burn your eyes out from a distance. Before nukes, we could still burn you (and tens of square miles around you) out at thousands of degrees, leaving all manner of chemical poisons lying around in the aftermath, and leaving people on the periphery with all manner of creative types of injuries. Google the Berlin and Tokyo firestorms for examples. Before anthrax, we could still infect you and yours with all kinds of things; see General Jeffery Amherst's letters ca. ~1763 for some bio-weapons history. Before airplanes, we could still deliver explosives and fire by air. And in the end, if your legs terminate at the mid-femur, the question of how it happened - sword, grenade, flying masonary, 50 cal. bullet, infection, weapons shrapnel, mine... that's kind of beside the point. It all sucks about the same.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
> It's not very good as a defensive weapon: it doesn't really have very good
> stopping power - even if blinded, a gunman could still kill you (and he
> might have even higher motivation to do so). It has a very high chance
> of collateral damage.
You know... I've personally never mugged anyone, nor been shot with a gun that has "stopping power". So I can't really say 100% for sure. But I would imagine that if I were blind and on fire, I wouldn't be able to continue mugging my would-be victim.
Imagine all the people...
So.. what happened? Does your sig offer insight into that?
What you call brush control devices use jets of propane or similar gases. Flamethrowers in the military sense (which are now extremely rare in the US, even in the military) use a gel or liquid fuel that is usually not completely burned by the time it reaches the target, thereby leaving a flaming substance that allows an easier transfer of the heat to the target. Those that use propane stop delivering heat once the flame jet is removed.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
The grandparent's assertion requires the acceptance of the definition of "begging" as dodging or avoiding rather than the current universally accepted dictionary definition.
"begging" in this context does not mean "dodging". "begging the question" means that you are being asked to accept a postulate for the sake of argument, and that postulate is equivalent to the question being debated. You are metaphorically being asked for something, which is the dictionary definition of begging.
Anyone who says "eh, language evolves" when "begs the question" is misused should consider how they'd react when someone points to their monitor and says "computer" or points to their tower and says "CPU". If enough people use "computer" to mean "monitor", then that's what it really means right?
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