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Laser Strikes On Aircraft Becoming Epidemic
First time accepted submitter AlphaWolf_HK writes "Ars Technica has a story about a 52 year old man who was arrested and sentenced to three years in jail for shining a high powered green laser at a helicopter along with an interesting video showing how he was tracked down. The FBI says that laser strikes are becoming epidemic, saying that they expect to see reports of 3,700 of them this year."
Make the bastard spend his years in line for the TSA.
Find a technical solution, not a legal "solution"
There is not a legal solution that is going to work. People just don't get it. Throwing people in jail doesn't solve the problem. You can have a death penalty sentence and it won't make one bit of a difference. Putting people in jail is nothing more than revenge against someone who didn't understand what they were doing in the first place. If they actually understood it and realized the danger and the risk (legal) they wouldn't have done it.
Find a technical solution to the problem. If you can't do that and this is that serious an issue clear the surrounding area of people. We built homes in some really stupid places. Lets get rid of them.
Seriously, you want a laser light show? Don't go harassing other people with them. Be responsible with your toys.
Also you pretentious fucktards with those bright hi-beams? Fuck you.
"sentenced to three years in jail for shining a high powered green laser at a helicopter "
Good. And since it's a federal crime, he gets to serve 85 percent of that.
I almost had someone arrested for shining a laser at my friggin' eyes across a bar. But since I knew the person and knew he wasn't "all there" I just confronted him.
But if it was anyone else, I would have pressed charges. Yes, it's assault.
There needs to be *at a minimum* public education on this issue, and if nobody is willing to do that, then handheld lasers need to be outright banned for unlicensed individuals. This opinion is unpopular for slashdot, but shit really has gotten out of hand.
--
BMO
Actually I think a few of these cases getting out and being better known -would- prevent many cases. Face it, this didn't start proliferating as a problem on it's own. People saw the news where a few of these cases happened and though "oh that's funny, I could do that too, no one can catch me". Cases skyrocketed over the last couple of years since the news got posted.
That same approach can be made to curtail the problem. It just requires an equal amount of energy being put into it.
The only problem I see with this particular article was that it was very clear just how much of a dumbshit the guy with the laser was. If he had been inside a building or car going from place to place to change where he used the laser from he probably wouldn't have been caught. Likewise had he discarded the laser the second he saw a police car coming, while out of site of the helicopter, chances are fair they wouldn't have found the evidence either.
What "technical solution" do you see to visible light being shown through a window? And how could you make it commercially viable to every aircraft in the sky? Brainstorm it. If you find something, great, but that's a pretty damned huge problem.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
NAS Oceana (Virginia), for instance. Very close to the beach, final approach right over the beach and hotels. Mix in some beer fueled idiots on a 5th floor hotel balcony...
They've had many instances over the last few years.
Lasers are going to get banned.
Mere possession of one without a license (which will be damned near impossible for any individual to obtain) will be a felony.
Public humiliation via stocks IMO, with plenty of rotten tomatoes
The sentence seems like it is overkill till you stop and think about it. The person is purposely trying to blind pilots, people who are flying vehicles which can weigh more than I want to know flying and capable of flying hundreds of miles and hour and trying to blind them. Safe to say I want those people to be able to see so they don't crash into anything as one down plane can result in hundreds of deaths easily.
And even ignoring the worst case scenerio thinking, one person near a airport doing this with good aim can cause quite a bit of havoc by blinding a few pilots. They can easily cause delays if the pilot has to wait to recover from being disoriented to land which costs the airlines money and delays passengers, etc.
Plus the guy who got 3 years probably won't even serve anywhere near that due to good behavior and with how overcrowded prisons/jails are overcrowded. I doubt he even see 6months and will get probation after that.
What was /he/ flying?? An Apache?
Green lasers are used, outside the lab, for day/night use in ballistic targeting systems. They're also powerful enough in some cases to cook the retina even at ranges of several miles.
anecdotal source: I use a Magfire green designator on an AGS PCR1 for ratting - the rats aren't bothered by the laser, they run a mile when they're hit with a red. They drop when they're hit with a lump of tinshot doing 700 feet per second.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
The title got me worked up for something much, much more awesome than the actual story.
My solution would be to mount even more powerful lasers on some of the aircraft. Fight fire with fire. Plus, it would just be cool.
Technical solution: Mount a weapons-grade laser on the aircraft and return fire.
=Smidge=
You want a technical solution that shields the pilots/airborne vehicle from lasers? That would be technically impossible. So there you go, other than legal, what other solutions do you have?
the sad stew which is destroying "The Grand Experiment", since it's the perfect justification for control freaks to pass more and more laws restricting freedom.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Find a technical solution, not a legal "solution"
Drone strike?
of the average person, the scary part is that half the population is dumber than that.
Let's break this down:
At it's most benign level, lasers can cause fear and temporary blindness.
Without considering the cost in human lives... most aircraft weigh in at about a ton plus, including highly combustible fuel. A crash is ALWAYS disastrous. I see no humor in this.
At worst, lasers are a common targeting system for anti-aircraft weapons. A military aircraft would be justified in a preemptive strike on ANY laser source on our home soil. Frankly, it should be standard policy for police as well as military. A smoking crater where a car or home used to be would be educational regarding the reckless use of lasers.
Frankly, 3 years imprisonment is far too light a sentence for such stupidity.
For a country in constant fear of terrorists hijacking their planes you take it pretty lightly when someone actually tries to make airplanes fall. Three is a very light sentence, they should make an example of those that get caught.
My young Stepson got one of these (powerful green laser) and I was pretty much blown away at the power of it... I did see when he was unpacking it lots of warnings so I spent some time with him when he first tested it out. So we get outside at night and what is the first thing he tries to do, yep point it a plane flying overhead... so cue the huge boring lecture from me about the danger of these things and how if he gets caught pointing his laser at planes, or cars or people's eyes he will be sent to a boys home... well I think he got the point. The main thing is that kids need to understand the danger of these things and there is a responsibility for parents to keep up with the times and actually understand that "new toy"...
Wait, what?
You don't want a legal solution lest some idiots be thrown in jail unjustly, but you'd be okay with forcibly removing everyone from a large area and tearing down their homes?
There are approximately 76000 aircraft departures in the US every day. 76000*365= 27,740,000. 3,700/27,740,000= .00013. So 0.013% of flights have reported a laser strike and no aircraft have been downed. It would seem that the FAA need to look at the definition of epidemic.
Also, people in hell want ice water.
You want a technical solution that shields the pilots/airborne vehicle from lasers? That would be technically impossible. So there you go, other than legal, what other solutions do you have?
A military solution, obviously.
If someone pulls a gun or a knife on you then you are (more-or-less) allowed to respond to the threat with deadly force in self defence. If someone shines a laser in your eyes while you are operating a vehicle (more dangerous when done to a car) then the threat is similar and so the same response should be allowed.
Failing that, perhaps a pair of Super Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses?
Seems a little odd that a helicoptor escort can be that easily distracted/disabled. If the guy hasn't kept pointing it at them, they wouldn't have been able to find him either.
The morons still using Laserpointers in Powerpoint presentations here have problems hitting the right spot on a 10 foot screen, how are they hitting a plane several hundret feet away???
There is not a legal solution that is going to work.
We could make reporting them illegal. That should slow it down... since most of the people who do this are getting the idea from watching it in our popular media. Mind you, I don't advocate this position, but... it is a legal solution, and it would work.
As far as technical solutions... The only one is not having an aircraft with windows. You might imagine there are some problems with that plan. And due to the wide range of frequencies that lasers can operate over, there's no way to design glasses that could be used to filter them out.
Perhaps the solution is to restrict the sale and use of lasers, even though that would mean that bluray burners and other optical media, as well as home theatre projectors and a few other legitimate uses would have to be shitcanned -- or at least redesigned so extracting the laser from the assembly would be difficult or impossible without destroying the laser in the process. Most of these laser strikes are made from commodity consumer equipment... if we redesign the equipment so the lasers self-destruct upon tampering, we cut off the supply.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
You could certainly make it a combination of technical and legal. For example you make it illegal to manufacture or import a laser of any but a handful of wavelengths. Then install filters for those wavelengths over the cockpit windows. Yes it won't stop everything. But the vast majority of lasers are commercially purchased. If you can't purchase one that will get into a cockpit, problem solved.
For the ass-hats who insist on building their own and proceed to point it at airplanes and cars, well we can start with two to four charges of assault and go on to three hundred cases of attempted first degree murder. Followed up by a couple hundred civil lawsuits. Not only can they spend the rest of their lives in jail, but they will be bankrupted as well. If they happened to be married -- until their spouse gets a divorce -- joint property for the win. Go ahead and make the wife and kids homeless.
There is no rational reason why a civil society should have to put up with this kind of shit.
You all are losing sight of what this is really about--pardon the pun. Shining lasers into human-flown airplanes = bad, don't do it unless you're being attacked. These people are quite stupid for doing this. However, lasers are going to be very effective, perhaps more effective, when they start flying unmaned ariel drones all over the place to spy on us "for our safety".
Did anybody notice this alleged "proliferation" of laser incidents and, more importantly, the attention and demonization from the authorities, all seemed to start right about the same time the FAA was being ordered by the Reichstag, er, Congress, to write rules allowing these for-profit corporate abominations to pollute our skies?
Pointing a video camera at someone doesn't have the potential to cause blindness. This is more like assault / firing something at someone, ie if you fire a slingshot at a person you are gonna get done for assault, get caught firing a gun at a plain and you are in big trouble. Same deal. The 52 year old douche that did this deserves everything he has coming, probably more.
One of the most natural things in the world a kid with a lazer pointer will do is shine it straight up into the sky. Watching the unbroken beam of a lazer disappear into infinity is a pretty impressive sight. I could see where a young person casually waving a lazer around the night sky might breifly pass the beam over an aircraft.
Have we slid so far down the slippery slope that something like this will become punishable? Who do I vote for to restore some common sense?
I worry about kids growing up today. There's some really stupid shit that can get them in big trouble.
with some kind of mirror-like a one way mirror that would just reflect the beam away
You want a technical solution that shields the pilots/airborne vehicle from lasers? That would be technically impossible.
Impossible? Almost all of the cases in question have involved handheld 532nm green lasers from a substantial distance, so all you really need to do is mix up a coating to apply to the windows that contains the same dye that laser safety goggles use. The filtering wouldn't have to be particularly strong to effectively eliminate the green light, resulting in a slight orangeish tint to the aircraft windows. Alternately, instead of coating the windows you could make filters from plastic sheets that attach to the windows at night using Velcro or some other means. It's not a difficult problem to solve.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Are you suggesting flying sharks?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Perhaps the solution is to restrict the sale and use of lasers, even though that would mean that bluray burners and other optical media, as well as home theatre projectors and a few other legitimate uses would have to be shitcanned -- or at least redesigned so extracting the laser from the assembly would be difficult or impossible without destroying the laser in the process.
Everything you said was right except this. You're not going to prevent people from getting their hands on lasers. That's a fool's game. But if you take away the green laser pointers from Random A. Yokel that's good enough to prevent the vast majority of abuses. Is it sad that such a thing is necessary? Yes. Is such a thing necessary? I believe the answer to that is also yes, but I'm open to other suggestions that actually nominally "solve" the problem.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I remember the time when I bought a HeNe Gas laser back in the 80's to make a spectacular laser show with, for the neighbors. I had no intentions on shining lights on airplanes or innocent people at all.
And I use lasers all the time in my electronics lab for experimentation.
Unfortunately, lasers have become so cheap, and super powerful laser-pointers (which has no real world use whatsoever) has become available to the street-kids, so we'll undoubtedly see these lasers become illegal for anyone to possess and own. Including innocent experimenters at home, thanks to the idiots in the streets who just find it fun to point 200mw lasers at anyone.
5mw is enough for anyone who wants to "play" with a laser pointer, it'll reach several hundred meters, enough to bedazzle the laymen out in the streets, and makes no difference from any 200mw+ laser whatsoever visibly, and furthermore...it won't blind anyone, not destroy pilots sights or policemen etc.
In fact...not even a 200mw laser will blind ANY pilot, as it is a physical impossibility to hold a 200mw laser beam of any significant distance steady by a human hand, it will shake - it will sway, it will swing...and the atmosphere will pollute and defocus the beam itself so it won't harm anyone.
Sad...just sad.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Are you serious or just trolling under the guise of ignorance?
Flying a plane at night and getting shined, even very briefly, in the eyes can totally screw up your night vision, disorient you, and greatly affect your ability to fly the plane/helicoptor. How in the hell is that even remotely related to video recording police?
Next time you're in plane, think how would you feel during the landing approach (the most critical part of the flight) if your pilot was temporarily blinded and disoriented by some punk with a laser pointer.
Well, first... the lasers don't have much effect on the aircraft although they may suprize the pilot.
Second: The technical solution is Polarized glass.
Oh you mean like attaching a hard-to-deactivate mems accelerometer that shuts off the laser if its inclined to above the level of the horizon?
They can pry my cd burner from my cold dead hands.
This space available.
A friend got one of these green lasers, purely because it seemed neat. He keeps it in his gun safe now. He quickly realized it was too powerful to be safely used without eye protection, he has no practical use for it, and he can't trust most people to use it responsibly if he lets them handle it. Even after a lengthy explanation of what not to do with it and why, some people will still point them at a person/animal/vehicle/building/something else that you would think would be bloody fucking obviously off-limits.
So yeah, I guess they are going to have be illegal now.
It's a BEHAVIOR problem. There is no such thing as a technical solution to a behavior problem.
Not all are green lasers. You only have to go wicked lasers to find lasers of all sorts of frequencies. One of your sibling posters suggested, combing these filters with legislation to only sell lasers at specific frequencies. That would eliminate most of these complains (unless the pesky chinese start selling these lasers directly from china, aliexpress anyone?). But I am not a fan govt interference and I would rather they spend time educating people/children and making the punishments well known, than legislating laser frequencies.
And you are assuming, it is easy to build such filters. It is not that easily to build analog filters that block a very narrow range of frequencies. It would very very difficult to build and would still result in loss of light in other frequencies. If you are talking about blocking multiple frequencies, you might as well forget about this idea.
Mod UP! It really is a solution that will work pretty much perfectly.
"One of the most natural things in the world a kid with a lazer pointer will do is shine it straight up into the sky."
Good lord.
First of all, the odds that a kid would shine a laser into the sky and accidentally hit an aircraft are... well, stupendously low. The laser point is incredibly tiny, and the sky is incredibly large. And the slightest movement of the hand holding the laser has huge implications at the distance where an aircraft would intersect it. If it's not trained and held on the target, it would never be noticed.
So, "no" to whatever point you're making.
The technical solution is to shoot these people on site.
Submitter here...
You're talking about much more than airports here. You'd also necessitate removing homes from hospitals as well since they use helicopters for emergency transport, and hospitals by their nature are near residential districts. This would also include police helicopters that fly at low altitude when following suspects.
I used to live near a hospital, helicopters flew at low altitude over my house somewhat frequently. I just recently moved near a smaller airport, which kind of works out nice as someone in my household owns a small aircraft.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Actually, I thought of one. Get rid of the window. Replace it with an array of video cameras and a big viewing screen. Put different color filters on each of the cameras and have a computer system that will turn off one of the cameras if it gets excessive amounts of light.
I didn't say it was an affordable solution.
"I have a different perspective on this. To me, it's a dick-measuring contest where the "authorities" are putting Joe Q. Citizen in his place for daring to point a marker at them. It doesn't feel terribly different from what the cops do to citizens who videotape their conduct during protests--beat them silly."
thats a pretty dumb way to look at this, just so you know. and its not at all like your comparison.
the moron blinding pilots didn't know it was a cop helicopter, he was just dumb and unlucky enough that it was.
sadly some morons have no clue what isn't acceptable until someone has to make a law and charge em. you forget laws and stupid rules exist because of stupid people who abused their freedom in the first place.
We make films to filter out many wave lengths. Why isn't something used on the windscreen to protect the pilots?
Lasers emit monochromatic light, hence it shouldn't be too hard to block just the few small wavelength bands that common lasers use while letting the rest of the light pass through the cockpit wind shields.
Federal investigators have released this video of a French citizen wanted in connection with an array of high-power green lasers aimed skyward.
Rumours that the "attack" was actually part of a concert were dismissed by US Federal Music Expert, Sam Confederate IV, who said "I know both types of music, and that there noise in the video ain't country *or* western."
However, attempts at having the suspect- known only as "Jimmy Shelljar"- deported from France to the United States have run into problems. A legal document, addressed to "Our bestest friend, Nicolas "L'Americaine" Sarkozy, The French White House, Paris, France" was returned marked "no longer at this address". In addition, scribbled underneath was a cartoon of a "cheese-eating surrender monkey" making an obscene gesture and the message, "Fuck you, arrogant Yankee scum! Signed President François "La Socialiste" Hollande".
Investigators believe that the suspect is motivated by frustration at not having released a worthwhile album in over ten years. More news as we get it.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Why not invert the colors of that police video? Also found on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k4C8grAGP4#!
Just for fun I took a screenshot of that video which looks like it has negative colors.
Then I opened it in GIMP and inverted the colours, lowered the contrast by bending color contrast curve.
The result was a much nicer image where the 3D objects looked "real", like the cars with "true" shadows etc.
It probably would have been even better if I could have used some of the other color channels, obviously available as the cameraman keeps switching between the different modes. Blending these may even produce near daylight images I guess. This must be available in real time even to policemen.
The current police movie looks so 1980s.
I doubt it is too expensive to get better shots than this. Wht's holding them back?
Send him to effing Guantanamo. Then close Guantanamo. Give it back to the Cubans. Let them deal with the scum we sent there.
Find a technical solution, not a legal "solution"
There is not a legal solution that is going to work. People just don't get it. Throwing people in jail doesn't solve the problem. You can have a death penalty sentence and it won't make one bit of a difference. Putting people in jail is nothing more than revenge against someone who didn't understand what they were doing in the first place. If they actually understood it and realized the danger and the risk (legal) they wouldn't have done it.
Find a technical solution to the problem. If you can't do that and this is that serious an issue clear the surrounding area of people. We built homes in some really stupid places. Lets get rid of them.
Ah, yes, just like how the answer to armed robbery is to give everybody bulletproof armor (not just kevlar vests, no, I mean full-out mech bodysuits). Or maybe give everyone the telekinetic power to make guns fall apart in people's hands, a la The Sphinx from Mystery Men?
What? You're suggesting the answer is instead to give everyone guns so that nobody will shoot each other? Isn't that just trying to keep peace with the threat of revenge against murderers who didn't understand what they were doing in the first place? No, no, that won't do at all, need moar technical solutions to crime, break out the mech armor!
I know little about aviation, but wondering if ripping out the windows, or at least having some means of turning them opaque for a few seconds is actually not an impossible solution. Can a pilot fly a plane using only the instruments? Could some kind of camera system be rigged up so they are looking at a video feed vice out a window?
Extreme measures and cost of doing it would be enormous even if feasible, so this is just curiosity.
But the orientation of the polarization is unknown. It could be adjusted by the pilot but wouldn't prevent an initial surprise effect. It is practically useless.
So they're going to go around and collect all those DVD, CD, and BluRay players? Not a chance, lasers for civilians are here to stay.
How the Chinese mail order places is not unlike the US dropping guns behind the enemy line back in the old days. ;)
Lasers are not the problem. The appropriate solution is to label the crime what it is -- attempted murder against the number of people onboard. Have fun with your back to back life sentences for trying to kill 300 people, jackass.
Killer sharks escaped from an aquarium earlier today, none have yet been recovered.
Fight fire with fire.
Perhaps a camera system that pinpointed the guilty party would be more useful. You wouldn't get everyone, but maybe enough that word would get out.
I still like your idea better but frickin airliners with frickin lasers are just never going to fly.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Any attempt to interfere with an aircraft is an attempt to shoot it down by disabling the crew.
That's terrorism and merits execution.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
At least they can't do it again while they are in jail. I say lock 'em up and find a technical solution.
so what does it look like when a laser is shined into the cockpit anyways?
I've always wondered what exactly that does.
No, you do not want a technical fix to a social problem. What'll happen is people will start blaming their bad behaviour on technology. "Well it's Boeing's fault they made the cockpit's glass able to filter out green lasers and not this blue one I made from an old PS3!"
Frankly, I don't see why you think jail isn't a deterrent. Just reading this story makes me never want to even own a green laser.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
"mix up a coating to apply to the windows that contains the same dye that laser safety goggles use."
All goggles for 532 nm that I've seen block everything in the range 300--550 nm, which makes them look orange. Most goggles are based on dyes, and those don't come in 10 nm bandwidths.
It would be cheaper to place a few cube corner retroreflectors in the cockpit, to give send the beam back to the guy who's holding the laser.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
Take your meds.
** bang bang **
What could possibly go wrong? The cost/weight of high def video cameras and display screens isn't so bad, but the potential for failure is going to spook most pilots. They know that wires don't short out and make their windows go black...
On the other hand, a lot of aircraft could benefit from a low angle looking camera/screen so the pilot can see the runway clearly on approach.
How about a technology similar to transitions lenses where a powerful light will cause immediate tinting of the window around the beam (not the entire window, just the area where the beam is shining through). It may still cause a temporary problem, but it would prevent extended problems.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
http://www.laserpointersafety.com/news/news/other-news_files/label-aircraft-warning-oval.jpg
I can see this leading to the arrest of anyone who points a laser into the sky regardless of it being pointed directly at an aircraft or not.
I think both need to be there, but isn't a technical solution much easier ?
I'm pretty sure if you ask a physicist, they'll come up with a solution pretty quickly. I am not a physicist, but aren't lasers always polarized ? Wouldn't two polarization filters in a 90 angle to each other, completely phasz out any laser ? I'm not sure about normal light though :\
The possibility of the cameras failing at a bad time, getting dirty, or whiting out when flying directly into the sun makes this solution more risky than the problem in my opinion.
But, you can put these technical videos on the evening news a couple of times a month to show just how boneheaded it is to think you can get away with this.
Waaay back in 1993 I got a laser and shined it on the wall of a building about 1/2 mile from my house, just to see if I could see the spot, play with collimating lenses, etc. Well, the people in that unit were home and saw the light, so they stepped out onto the balcony - it took me about 1/2 second to switch the laser off (and the 2.2mW red with a spot size of about 6' wasn't going to be hurting anyone anyway). mostly I shut it off because I didn't want them sighting back along the beam and calling the cops with my address.
You want a technical solution that shields the pilots/airborne vehicle from lasers? That would be technically impossible. So there you go, other than legal, what other solutions do you have?
How about a mechanism that tracks the location each pilots eyes, and then looks for laser light
When it detects a laser, it blanks out a small portion of the LCD enabled windshield that's between each eye and the ground.
If the laser is a relatively small point source relative to the overall area of the windshield than it should work as long as the windshield is clean and free of scratches that would disperse the light. I thought I remembered reading about a similar mechanism being proposed for cars designed to act as an automatic sun visor by blacking out the area of the windshield between the driver's eyes and the sun.
I'm pretty sure they can make lightweight military-grade lasers these days.
I think we need both the solutions.
A bastard than strikes a laser beam to a aircraft should be prosecuted by murderer attempt.
Preventing people living near airports surely would help with a lot more of issues.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
If the USA border can stop Canadians from bringing Kinder Surprise eggs into the USA, I'm pretty sure they can also prevent sales of non-approved lasers from China.
Has no one developed a film or resin to go on the aircraft to prevent this from being bad as it is yet? Seems if we're building neural-processors, quantum computers and better solar technology along with nano...why hasn't this been addressed yet?
Right...military budgeting...get as much in your budget as possible by using up more than you have last year, and spend it all on the lowest bidder...*shrugs*
But I am not a fan govt interference and I would rather they spend time educating people/children and making the punishments well known, than legislating laser frequencies.
The dangers of guns are well known as are the penalties for using them to commit a crime, yet there are still over 10,000 homicides by gun in the USA every year. It's going to take more than education to prevent laser crime.
It would be cheaper to place a few cube corner retroreflectors in the cockpit, to give send the beam back to the guy who's holding the laser.
Doesn't that just help the guy aiming the laser know when he's hit his target?
You can already get green-laser safety goggles for medial purposes which have a notch filter right around 532nm but a colour-balanced view outside that frequency. At http://brinellgreenlaser.blogspot.ca/ they specifically mention using them for pilot protection.
Seems to me the pilots could just wear these on takeoff/landing and they'd be fine.
"Go ahead and make the wife and kids homeless."
That fact that democracy lets people like you have power over me is fucking terrifying.
They were designed originally for medical purposes.
If the helicopter pilot is being an asshole and flying low over homes and hovering there then drop his craft with a rifle with a laser pointer.
It took someone doing just that in southern Kentucky before all the filed complaints were addressed. They addressed those complaints by harassing the complainers claiming they shot the helicopter down.
So no one is filing complaints now. They just go out of their way to piss off the pilots who are violating regulations and harassing citizens.
Reflective coating on the outside of an aircraft. Essentially this is the solution to directed energy weapons: durable mirrors.
That's about a million times easier to say than do, and do well, of course but that's basically the only technical solution.
When light hits a surface some combination of 3 things happens: Reflection, refraction, absorption. Refraction (where it goes through the material) isn't any good since that's the thing we're trying to avoid, and 'redirecting' light from the outside and inside just means you can't see anything looking out. So it's a matter of cranking up the other two. If you had a material that was optically dense in one direction but not another (that would absorb the energy, preferably without catching fire) that would be ideal, but off the top of my head, and admittedly, it's been a while since I was in an optics lab, I can't think of an easy way to accomplish that, or you reflect the energy away.
Materials can have different optical properties at 90 degrees to each other - it looks one way front on and another side on, but that doesn't really help any if you want to see out. And there are are things like 'one way mirrors' but they rely on a difference in luminosity between the two sides, not, afaik, some particularly unidirectional property.
The other option is enclose the cockpit and do everything with cameras.
So ya, a technical solution is not all that feasible. The problem with the law 'making an example' of some people is just that: it's unfairly treating some people for 'public benefit'. It's like a 600 000 dollar fine for sharing a CD on a P2P network, or at least it might come across like that. Now if you can prove that an aircraft can suffer catastrophic failure due to a laser then you charge anyone doing it with attempted murder and see what happens from there, but I think the argument that it's an awareness problem first and foremost is probably true.
Phew, that was simple. Thanks for solving that for us!
- the FAA.
Nice strawman. Murder or attempted murder requires mens rea. Most people who do this are not trying to kill anyone. They're just being idiots.
Reckless endangerment, sure. Attempted murder? Good luck getting that to stick. You'd be laughed out of court.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
um, no. Has lawsuits stopped downloading movies and music? Figure out a coating for the cockpit glass. Fix the problem, not litigate it.
Technical solution - laser detectors near airports that direct counterfire at the origin of the laser. All you need to do is aim a laser back at the source and give it enough energy to blind anybody in the immediate vicinity. You could do that with a very high degree of accuracy - laser guided weapons are already a solved problem and you can run the counter laser at low power until the beam is on the target and then send a bright pulse. It would be impossible to evade, and as long as you vary the wavelength basically impossible to defend against.
You can't really just clear the area of people - the range of lasers is rather long, and aircraft cover miles while on approach/departure.
However, I don't know that any of this is really that necessary - you just need some high profile captures and prosecutions and chances are most will fall into line.
Flip-up panels. If something goes wrong, you reach over, flip it up out of the way, and you have your windows back.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Air to ground missiles designed to track lasers to their source? Sounds like a technical solution to me
What? Move homes because some assholes like to aim lasers at aircraft? I've got a better solution, treat it as attempted murder. Instead of punishing the innocent make the guilty suffer for a change. I think this guy should serve15-20 years of hard time in a cell with a 300 pound roomate named "Bubba." Anyone who doesn't know that aiming lasers at aircraft can kill doesn't need to be running around loose anyway. I think the problem isn't that they don't understand but that this stuff isn't treated like what it is and that is attempting to kill.
that doesn't mean we stop fighting murder
right is right and wrong is wrong. of course we pursue technical solutions wherever possible. but we also pursue social and legal solutions
and we also consider the magnitude of the crime: if someone does {XYZ} and it results in {ABC}, well if {XYZ} is a small easy and completely unnecessary effort (shine a laser) and {ABC} is a large serious effect (a blind pilot), then we have to do something about that. no, we have to do a lot of things about that. technical, social, AND legal
but the idea that something is difficult to enforce, so we stop trying, is stupid. it doesn't matter how hard enforcement is. it matters that something has a large potential to harm and the person has no right and no good reason to do that thing. so we go after it and we punish it as best we can. no matter how hard
this is the way of a just society. it has to be this way. people understand if justice is hard to do. they don't understand if no one is trying to pursue justice
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Find a technical solution, not a legal "solution"
Posts like this one betray a fundamental lack of understanding at just how effective the legal system actually is.
Sure, it's not perfect, some people are found guilty, and it's no guarantee that people will behave, but when administered fairly, laws are a very effective solution to keeping the peace. I park my convertible downtown regularly with the understanding that although it's more vulnerable than other cars, and is more valuable than other cars, that the relative risk of theft is still rather low. Thanks to things like registration requirements, VIN numbers, and too many other obvious innovations to name, the reality is that cars, which are highly mobile, relatively vulnerable cachets of concentrated cash, are safe to own for average people because the actual risk of theft is so low.
Despite owning one for over 25 years, I've only once had a car stolen, and that was when I left it unattended in a parking lot in a bad part of Los Angeles for over 2 months.
The legal system is highly effective. If you don't believe me, go rob your nearest convenience store for $500 and see what happens.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I've flown with laser protective goggles, and they kinda suck, particularly at night. So much so that the US Navy prohibits takeoff and landing with LEP (Laser Eye Protection) on.
I have a welding helmet with a LCD shutter, as soon as the the photo-voltaic cell detects a bright light, the lcd goes black; cost less that $50.00 at Harbor Freight; lots of people like pilots spend more than that on sunglasses. Sure you couldn't go completely off the shelf with it, the helmet is about shade 3 even when off, which is pretty dark at night, and I'm not sure what would happen trying to look at an LCD display in a cockpit while wearing LCD's on your eyes, but it's very plausible.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
(sigh) normal light has polarity, also.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
If someone is an idiot and thinks it would be funny to shoot a gun into a crowd it's still attempted murder.
Sorry, the details are wrong on the 17% figure. Actually, only about 1% are incarcerated right now and around 3.5% on parole. Still astonishingly high, but a misquote. The 17% figure is supposed to be the rise in the incarceration rate year-by-year, which is on a sharp upward trend right now. My bad. We are, however, still #1 in the world on per capita rate of incarceration and have held that dubious distinction for almost a decade. Also, our rate increases year over year assure us that we'll retain that title for decades to come. God Bless America. :(
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Rather than the technical solution of wearing plate armor when grocery shopping we put people who in jail who stab random people in the supermarket. The legal solution works perfectly well.
So, basically you're arguing that any crime that is widely violated needs to be revoked and replaced with a "technical solution". You do understand the difference between technology and magic, right?
A less-expensive alternative would be to place IR cameras on all approach vectors where the plane is low enough that a small laser pointer would be effective. Where it's happened here, the land beneath one of the approaches is owned by the port, and the other approach is a county park. A few cameras looking for warm bodies would be a start. TSA already patrols those areas anyway.
You actually believe that makes sense, don't you?
Is this the next phase of the stupid laser-pointer-in-the-movie-theater gag that was "becoming epidemic" in the late 90's? Why do some people become idiots when they get a laser in their hands?
I was always impressed how that died off without any serious crackdown. People just squawked about it until it was common social knowledge that nobody though you were cool and everyone thought you were a dick.
Hopefully this dies off too.
You could certainly make it a combination of technical and legal.
Yes, ban them for everyone. Just like the TSA, it's for your own good! Everyone must be punished because of the actions of certain people!
well we can start with two to four charges of assault and go on to three hundred cases of attempted first degree murder.
Yes, that's great. We have to appear Tough On Crime. That always works.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
" If they actually understood it and realized the danger and the risk (legal) they wouldn't have done it"
What planet do YOU live on AC? Because it obviously ain't Earth, which is crawling with douchebags. Ever hear of "Knockout Kings"? Or of people throwing bricks from overpasses? There have been enough PSAs on this that they know EXACTLY what they are doing, the just don't give a fuck and figure they can get away with it because "Herpa derp, how is that guy in that airplane gonna find me? Snort"
And I looove how your answer is take away innocent people's homes, you HONESTLY think that's gonna keep douchebags from doing this? These things can be seen for miles ya know. What are you gonna do, knock down everything within a 6 mile radius of the airport?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Undo mod
Excellent: We'll equip the pilots with Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses!
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
There's a big difference between being punished for your own crime, and being punished for someone else's crime, whether or not that someone else is a blood relative.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
The light is already diffuse once it reaches the aircraft (one video claimed up to a foot diameter), so only a small amount of the original light would be reflected. That would further diffuse before getting back to the original target, which wouldnt be terribly effective.
Video goggles with little TV screens and cameras.
The windows could be covered with LCD shutters a virtual camerathat activate the moment laser light is detected, and a camera view is projected on them; effectivly capping the brightness.
Basically, be able to fly the plane as if it were an unmanned drone.
If they actually understood it and realized the danger and the risk (legal) they wouldn't have done it..
Your thinking is so naive that it is tragic. You had a sheltered life, obviously.
There are crazy people in the world, and there are evil people in the world, and these people
often will not be influenced by arguments which involve reason. Force is required when dealing
with such people, because nothing else works. This is not pleasant but it is most assuredly true.
.
I thought the technical solution was pretty good.
Given a FLIR unit mounted beneath the aircraft (in a green/red-filtered bubble), tracking the laser back to its source would be easy to automate with any microcontroller. When you've done that, you have the perp's location to within a few meters. (Note the "TGT: latitude and longitude of the target, heading, and range") Have the computer the coordinates of the target via text message to 911: "Hi. I'm a robot onboard Flight XYZ. I'm flying here. Some asshat with a laser is there. If he values his life, he needs to be somewhere else. See my PGP public key at http://fucklaserstrikes.my-airline.com/authenticatebyPGP/flightnumber?=XYZ" in order to authenticate this message, and to get pictures of the target area.)
We're not fighting against terrists. We're fighting against idiots, and the odds that an idiot is going to be able to glue an IR beam onto his laser pointer and line things up well enough to blank out the FLIR unit and paint the aircraft in green, are slim to none.
Slap a cheap FLIR unit beneath the nose of the aircraft, hook it up to an Arduino, spend a million dollars flight-qualifying the combination, and let these assholes convict themselves.
Lets just ban everything that isn't corporate/government approved. Pretty soon you will have a bunch of dumb teenagers that think Katy Perry is the coolest person around because the only legal thing for kids to do anymore is watching her videos. No chemistry set (explosives), no electronics sets (dangerous), no computer programing (evil hackorz), but you can still subscribe to Raphsody and listen to all the Katy Perry you want to.
Oh wait, you already did that. Hows that working out for you?
Lasers are going to get banned.
How the f*&@ am I suppose to ignite matches across the room or pop black balloons without a high powered laser?
Find realistic alternatives to those applications... only then can you start looking at banning lasers!
Putting people in jail is nothing more than revenge against someone who didn't understand what they were doing in the first place. If they actually understood it and realized the danger and the risk (legal) they wouldn't have done it.
So, people who commit crimes did it because they didn't realize it was bad/dangerous/against the law? Wow, you are one naive person. Not a SINGLE person I know would be clueless enough not to understand shining a bright laser into a cockpit isn't dangerous. I mean, it clearly warns against shining in anyone's eyes on the device itself. It's like claiming people smoke because they don't know it's harmful.
Besides, if that was actually true and it was just an educational issue, enforcing the law and publishing the investigation and punishment as widely as possible would seem to be a great solution.
Find a technical solution, not a legal "solution"
Laser seeking small missiles should do the trick.
Professional survey lasers generally do not point skyward.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
You gotta really be a douchebag to point a laser at an aircraft. It's like dropping bricks off a highway overpass.
What the fuck is wrong with people? It's not like these are delinquent kids doing this laser thing. We're talking full-grown people.
It's a good thing my experience with the people in my life is nothing like the picture of humanity I see reflected by the media every day. Honey BooBoo Chile and The Apprentice and all that. If I really believed people were as messed up as the commercial media portrays, I might get depressed.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You wouldn't want something that completely blocks out all light, you only want to localize it around the beam.
Otherwise, you're effectively creating a denial of service attack against the pilot.. so long as you shine the laser, they can't see where they're going.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Perhaps a camera system that pinpointed the guilty party would be more useful. You wouldn't get everyone, but maybe enough that word would get out.
That would be fine -- if it's correct. It would be a shame if someone could go to prison on account of lens flare....
You don't think that at all. You're just trying to put words in his mouth because you're a lying piece of shit and you know you're too stupid to refute what he actually said.
The account in TFA sounds a bit confusing:
"Suddenly Trooper Basteri saw the laser -- a powerful green beam coming from the shore. It snaked across the water and up towards the helicopter's cockpit. Basteri warned Riley that the blast of light was imminent, and warned him not to look at it."
The impression I got was of the attacker firing some sort of photon missile at them, an "imminent" "blast of light" "coming from the shore". I would rewrite the acount so that instead of being targeted by a single beam, the helicopter was instead targeted by "pulses" of laser light. Some of the pulses would have missed them because they were wrongly targeted. Only in a sci-fi movie can one dodge a laser beam fired in the right direction.
Actually a number of them are potentially trying to bring the aircraft.
See 'chemtrails' for a conspiracy community of whackos who think that airliners are trying to poison them, and that bringing them down would be just awesome.
Like dropping bricks off a freeway overpass.
I bet there are at least 20 years worth of "reckless endangerment" and "interfering with air traffic" and other crimes. Is there such a thing as "attempted manslaughter"?
"Just being an idiot" is not an excuse for putting peoples' lives at risk. Dude needs to look at losing one or two decades. It has to be enough time to deter.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The only problem I see with this particular article was that it was very clear just how much of a dumbshit the guy with the laser was. If he had been inside a building or car going from place to place to change where he used the laser from he probably wouldn't have been caught. Likewise had he discarded the laser the second he saw a police car coming, while out of site of the helicopter, chances are fair they wouldn't have found the evidence either.
Watch the video again. I agree he was dumbshit, but that is not why he was caught. He was caught because he just happened to target a police helicopter on that particular night. Had it been any other type of aircraft he would not have been caught. Note, how hard it is to pinpoint his location with the visible light camera at night, and how intense the laser energy was. They were able to track him thanks to the long range IR camera, which is not common civilian equipment.
There may have been things he could have done to increase the difficultly of finding him with the IR camera, but at the end of the day he just picked the wrong aircraft to fuck with. But could have been worse for him, he could have lased an armed Predator.
We aren't talking insanely high powered lasers here... How feasible some sort of polarized that filters most easily available lasers be? If it didn't screw up night sight it might even be possible to polarize in a way to limit how essential sunglasses are. Frankly anything that decreases cockpit glare without hurting visibility would be a godsend for flight crews.
The video looks almost like the drone strikes in COD: Modern Warfare.
It doesn't have to be a big drone, just big enough to make the goof who points lasers at aircraft think about finding another hobby, like jumping into the tiger pit at the zoo.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There's also the difference between punishing someone directly and "punishing" them by imposing a penalty on someone else that happens to have a negative effect on them. If a parent with young children does something truly terrible and goes to jail, society is not punishing the children that have to go without a parent even though the children sadly suffer (probably them most) as a consequence. If that was the breadwinner of the family, they will suffer even more acutely.
In the case of joint property, spouses agree to share in each other's fortune and misfortune alike. If they don't want that arrangement, they don't have to enter into it. If you marry someone who imposes large torts on others by their own stupid and unjustifiable behavior, you will suffer the consequences.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Not to mention, can you imagine the cost of replacing every aircraft window with polarized glass? I mean, have there actually been *any* confirmed cases of a plane crashing due to a laser strike? If not, I'm pretty sure the airlines are not all going to jump at the chance to spend millions of dollars on upgrades, especially when things like *bird* strikes are 100x more dangerous...
That is already a solution. They can go completely dark and still fly the craft. There's enough sensors to do that. They do have to work as if they'll be in the air when a nuke or other bright light source goes off.
That's for military craft. If a civilian craft is being targeted there are some solutions but if it comes to it a subset of the systems on military craft can be made available.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
By that standard, no one who commits a crime should ever be punished because it would also hurt the criminal's family.
Sorry, but the collateral effect on the family is a way to encourage women not to marry and have children with douchebags.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Sorry, but a few hundred counts of attempted murder is entirely appropriate.
Pretty much everyone is aware that blinding a pilot during takeoff or landing has the potential to cause a crash that will kill hundreds of people.
That is entirely the point.
They are intentionally taking an action with the potential for mass murder for shits and giggles.
Nice strawman. Murder or attempted murder requires mens rea. Most people who do this are not trying to kill anyone. They're just being idiots.
Reckless endangerment, sure. Attempted murder? Good luck getting that to stick. You'd be laughed out of court.
Well, at least in California, the malice required can be implied by reckless indifference to an unjustifiably high risk to human life (described as an "abandoned and malignant heart"):
(a) Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought.
[ Snip some abortion boilerplate ]
Such malice may be express or implied. It is express when there is manifested a deliberate intention unlawfully to take away the life of a fellow creature. It is implied, when no considerable provocation appears, or when the circumstances attending the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart.
The Supreme Court of California explained it thus People v. Thomas, 41 Cal. 2d 470 - Cal: Supreme Court 1953
That is shown when, as here, the defendant for a base, antisocial motive and with wanton disregard for human life, does an act that involves a high degree of probability that it will result in death. By his own admissions defendant's conduct demonstrates that he was not averse to endangering life for the sake of the sexual pleasure it gave him. Only a person with an "abandoned and malignant heart" could value the attainment of that pleasure more highly than human life.
Second-degree murder is ordinarily defined as 1) an intentional killing that is not premeditated or planned, nor committed in a reasonable "heat of passion" or 2) a killing caused by dangerous conduct and the offender's obvious lack of concern for human life.
What could possibly go wrong? The cost/weight of high def video cameras and display screens isn't so bad, but the potential for failure is going to spook most pilots. They know that wires don't short out and make their windows go black...
On the other hand, a lot of aircraft could benefit from a low angle looking camera/screen so the pilot can see the runway clearly on approach.
Probably it's more practical to put the viewing systems in visors. If something goes wrong with the visor, you can raise it. You also would get the advantage of multiple cameras, multiple viewing angles, multi-spectral imaging (infrared and UV), etc, with a processor that cuts out any malfunctioning camera. Some such features are already available, but more limited than I envision. I can even imagine military applications where you put cameras on the wingtips, potentially giving pilots stereoscopic vision out to kilometers. That could be very handy for landing a plane on a carrier, or in a dogfight.
Laser pointers are unpolarised; how would a polarising filter help to stop them?
Pretty soon you will have a bunch of dumb teenagers that think Katy Perry is the coolest person around
Pretty soon? That ship has sailed a while ago...
This is why we can't have nice things.
In all seriousness, jackasses doing things like this are why we end up banning things that responsible people should be able to have. Take your pick whether that's laser pointers, alcohol or other intoxicants, guns, or whatever else.
The thing this moron didn't get is not the legal risk to himself, it's the risk to the life and limb of the pilot of the craft and anybody he crashes on. If he's the sort of selfish prick who values his own amusement over the safety of the people in the helicopter/plane/whatever, then yes, throw him in a hole where he can't do any harm, and throw the other 3,699 who are going to do that this year in there with him.
Because of the stupid few, all handheld laser devices are now restricted imports(ie Banned) in Australia and it is illegal to own a laser over 1mw. (Weak laser pointer power) So applying a film, goggles, blah blah blah. These people need to be educated, they are endangering the lives of these people. They do deserve jail time. These people are the stupidest of the stupid of people and deserve to be taken out of circulation. Now however having a 1000mw laser when you are lost in the bush would definitely help people find you, however I think that these lasers need to be banned like fireworks as the general population is too stupid to respect their dangers.
The other option is enclose the cockpit and do everything with cameras./quote
That is probably the optimal way to do it.
Electrostatic windshields that turn opaque while supplied with energy. Gracefully fails to transparent when no energy is present. Transparent displays layered over the top would allow you to see outside as well as providing an interface for flight data and navigation.
For landing especially that could be useful in bad weather. Have the landing strips outlined in the display along with visual clues for wind patterns.
I disagree. It must be made clear to people that shining a laser at an airplane or helicopter is about as dangerous as shooting at it. Serious jail-time is appropriate for this, it is attempted manslaughter after all. Track down every idiot doing this and make sure every conviction makes it into the press. Maybe that will help.
There are no technical solutions. Or rather they are not acceptable for fighting civilians doing this. The only working technical solution is to shoot back and kill the cretin holding the laser.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
So, reply to small nuisance with an act of terrorism?
I can very well see why you posted anonymously.
I searched "knockout kings" and found a game and a band.
Is there another definition that I'm missing please?
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
You want a technical solution that shields the pilots/airborne vehicle from lasers? That would be technically impossible.
Impossible? Almost all of the cases in question have involved handheld 532nm green lasers from a substantial distance, so all you really need to do is mix up a coating to apply to the windows that contains the same dye that laser safety goggles use. The filtering wouldn't have to be particularly strong to effectively eliminate the green light, resulting in a slight orangeish tint to the aircraft windows. Alternately, instead of coating the windows you could make filters from plastic sheets that attach to the windows at night using Velcro or some other means. It's not a difficult problem to solve.
Dichroic filters would perform well enough for this; however, it would be more practical to make glasses than tinted windows.
. Attempted murder? Good luck getting that to stick. You'd be laughed out of court.
There was a person convicted of murder in Florida for loaning their car to an acquantance who drove to where he killed someone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Holle
So it seems less has gotten a conviction without anyone being laughed out of court.
Learn to love Alaska
I'm meant goes black figuratively, the amount of darknening is adjustable, but the amount of visual obscuring wouldn't be any worst then being laser dazzled.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Lasers and stupid people/assholes wont gp away, even with legislation. Take the teeth out of the beast and their bite is less detrimental.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
If they actually understood it and realized the danger and the risk (legal) they wouldn't have done it.
I think it was Plato who said that knowledge would lead to virtue. 2000+ years later there's precious little evidence for that. So try again.
This is so clearly and obviously a poblem, and avoiding the behavior so simple and unrestrictive of rights that I don't feel having this activity be criminal is a bad idea. Yes, there should be a technical solution as well, for a wide variety of reasons. But I see that as an adjunct to legal protection, not a replacement for it.
Basically, shining a laser (even a low-power laser) at someone should be considered a form of assault. And it needs to be societally recognized that this is the case. Just as two people can play fight, or you can play fight with your cat (until your cat's had enough and bites you that is) you can play assault each other with a laser pointer. You don't have to get ridiculous about enforcing it. But it should be considered assault if it's non-consensual, and the acknowledgement that it is is a cultural expectation we need to all do our parts to help uphold.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I think you'd have a whole slew of other problems if you flew "directly into the sun." :)
By that standard, no one who commits a crime should ever be punished because it would also hurt the criminal's family.
Sorry, but the collateral effect on the family is a way to encourage women not to marry and have children with douchebags.
Sadly there is something genetically ingrained in women that makes them attracted to douchebags.
Being a douchebag or even being abusive (!) is a great way to never be alone on a Saturday night. Women vote for this kind of guy with their feet, even if their words are against him.
Green has by far the greatest apparent luminosity per milliwatt of power, for example you need about 100mw red to equal the aparent brightness of 5mw green.
Also, the green lasers are well collimated for mass produced DPSS and have the tightest beam. Other colors than red come out as a line and not a dot requiring wild and expensive aspherical collimator designs for a tight beam at any distance. Near IR dissipates and the dot cannot be seen past a few dozen meters so they are not a threat against aircraft. Defending against green would cover about 95% of aircraft threat and filtering 532nm is easy and cheap.
The other option is enclose the cockpit and do everything with cameras./quote
That is probably the optimal way to do it.
Yeah, because lasers definitely won't overload the cameras.
Two big problems with that concept:
First, these lasers are very low power, milliwatt scale. What makes them dangerous isn't that they are so powerfulm but that the light is highly columned, so after the light enters an eye it can be focused down to high intensity on the retina. A window sensitive enough to be tinted by a laser would be tinted by the other more diffuse sources of light that you need to get through.
Second, laser pointer light doesn't stay pin-point over very long distances. 3 km away a laser pointer beam is at least a meter across.
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
What "technical solution" do you see to visible light being shown through a window? And how could you make it commercially viable to every aircraft in the sky? Brainstorm it. If you find something, great, but that's a pretty damned huge problem.
Personally, I'd start taking stock of what the preferred color of laser-strikers is and look into the possibility of having protective eyewear available. If you are looking at strikes on numerous frequencies, you have a real problem; but if it's 95% cheapie solid-state greens a $30 pair of glasses will substantially attenuate that color without knocking out your ability to see things. Standard safety equipment in laser-using environments.
Does anybody have stats on strikes by color?
Two linear filters of the same type, one rotated 90 degrees from the other will block all light that is linearly polarized. A better idea is to only sell laser pointers with a circular polarization filter and build one into the planes windows. Light usually becomes circularly polarized after it is reflected off of something (glare) so this would help the pilot in other situations. The hard part is preventing people from taking the filter out of the laser pointer.
Nice strawman. Murder or attempted murder requires mens rea. Most people who do this are not trying to kill anyone. They're just being idiots.
I dunno...I doubt this guy thought that shining a laser in a cockpit was the equivalent of assault:
"56-year-old Robert Bruce Jr. was indicted in mid-June for incidents reported on or about April 11 and June 5. He was charged with two counts of interference with flight crew, two counts of aiming a laser pointer at an aircraft, and two counts of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers or employees." (http://www.wvec.com/my-city/vabeach/18-incidents-of-laser-pointing-at-NAS-Oceana-jets-164398916.html)
Low Orbit Ion Cannon. House is painted with green laser. You are clear to go hot, over.
There is an alternative. If the asshat thinks it is funny to lase the cockpit of an aircraft full of people, wonder how they'd like having one passed across their eyes. I know what it feels like - I've done it under controlled conditions (almost flat batteries in a 5mW visible red pointer, edged slowly toward closed eye) and it was the most painful thing I've ever done.
I never looked up how the mechanism of optic pain works (I don't think I would enjoy the read) but as a punishment, a quick flick across the retinas would provide an object lesson never forgotten. Especially as a second offence would be a longer exposure, and if the person was stupid enough to make it a third ...
Alternatively, just shoot the prick so it can't happen again, after all, it isn't just those on the plane - how about the poor bastards on the ground the plane may end up hitting. That racks up quite a score and all because some dickhead might think it funny to flash an aircraft with a laser.
Don't get me started on dropping stuff off overheads though - that counts as an instant requirement to remove the person from the gene pool in my book. I swear, as each generation comes along the participants get stupider & stupider, common sense dies a little and more pointless laws are drafted around the world which simply get ignored.
Sort of like Zaphod's glasses in HHGTTG.
This is a HAM radio problem. Treat it the same. License for the appropriate lasers and nab the flaunters.
I'd hate to belabor the obvious, but has anyone considered corner-reflectors? If the doofus gets back exactly what he gives, it might persuade him to reconsider.
And technical solutions are cool. And let's charge the guy with aggravated assault or attempted aggravated assault. Between that and a civil suit brought against any idiot who thinks it's funny to risk permanently damaging someone's health (or 'just' crashing an airplane), and a little public education on the side, I think you could curb this.
Seriously, this is no different than cyber-bullying or cyber-stalking. Like those, where we have harassment and stalking laws in place, use the existing laws and make it clear it's not a game just because the people are miles away.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Actually, I thought of one. Get rid of the window. Replace it with an array of video cameras and a big viewing screen. Put different color filters on each of the cameras and have a computer system that will turn off one of the cameras if it gets excessive amounts of light.
I didn't say it was an affordable solution.
And what exactly do you think happens to all this expensive equipment when it's painted by a high-power laser? The good news is, the pilot's eyes will be saved.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Contrary to popular belief, you can't fight fire with fire. All you end up with is more fire. If you do want to fight fire, call a firefighter. They know how to do it.
That is a good idea. Incidentally, getting rid of the pilots works and it`s cheap.
It will probably be implemented over the next few years.
So yeah, problem solved!
I happen to live in an area where pilots regularly violate laws on altitude. IIRC, the law is 1000 feet above ground level in populated areas. My area is definitely *residential* as I am surround with at least 1000 other houses, though they are not close together as in a typical suburb, but clearly it falls under the regulations.
I've been through this before: 1000 people are going to respond and say that I am wrong: it cannot be that these pilots choose to violate the law, but you have never been in a position to try and complain about these things, and I can assure you that unless you can afford a lawyer and a private investigator, there is nothing you can do about the pilots how regularly intrude on your space. I have called the FAA and every law enforcement body that I fall under and all I ever get, at best, is sent to someone's voicemail.
Nobody cares at all about the slim minority of people who are regularly intruded upon by these assholes. The helicopters fly sometimes within 100 feet my house, barely skimming the treetops, and from inside the house everything is shaking. These are the biggest, richest assholes of them all - they are flying to their second home or third or 50th home and could give a shit about being inconvenience to spend the time to ascend and then descend. The next ones are the pilots is small planes. These guys don't vibrate the house, but they are VERY loud and the pitch of the engine and extremely annoying.
In some areas it is even worse with the problem of helicopters, and what I wonder is if these residents who are lasering these pilots do it out of anger for not being able to do anything else about the violations. I do empathize with their position, but violence is not the solution for me. I'd be willing to bet that as more people learn about this cheap method of encouraging pilots to fly elsewhere, the more of the asshole pilots will get lasered. I'm saying it's right, but frankly, they should be flying at higher altitudes.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
AFAIK, implicit mens rea applies only to murder itself, not attempted murder. Certainly in most jurisdictions the charge would be reckless endangerment.
wwwwwoooooooooosssssssssssshhhhhhhh
!!!!!
Have fun with your back to back life sentences for trying to kill 300 people, jackass.
After you've shown that there was an actual risk of killing anyone at all. This is just the same as the "liquid bomb". A "movie threat" that never would work in the real world yet the bureaucrats are compelled to take action to cover their asses.
Full virtual cockpit probably wouldn't be that hard. You'd want some damn fine software engineering on it because it'd suck if your full virtual cockpit BSODed at takeoff or landing. At altitude you might even have time for a reboot.
Put screens on the floor too and you could have the effect of standing on a glass floor at 40K feet too. Which would be pretty neat...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You are forgetting the stupid people.
Wow. Dramatic video of catching a perpetrator. And interesting representation of what a laser hit looks like in a helicopter. It's so easy to become captivated by a video even if it has no relevance.
How many tragedies have resulted from these thousands of incidents?
If I can just learn if there were 5 or 50 or 500 fatalities resulting from laser strikes, then I will be better able to weigh the significance of the problem. I'm pretty sure that is what elected officials will be asking.
Each year a certain number of people die from drowning in their bathtub. A few die from shark attacks. Some, including celebrities, die from erotic asphyxiation (hah! I speled that rite on the frist tri!). Legislators have to decide where is the most effective place to put their limited funds and protect people from a dangerous world.
...omphaloskepsis often...
And you are assuming, it is easy to build such filters. It is not that easily to build analog filters that block a very narrow range of frequencies. It would very very difficult to build and would still result in loss of light in other frequencies. If you are talking about blocking multiple frequencies, you might as well forget about this idea.
I'm being pedantic, but it's called black paint.
Right, but a gun is a lethal weapon in any situation. A laser pointer is not. A laser pointer is only a catalyst for disaster when used in the wrong way in the wrong place at the wrong time.
300 counts of reckless endangerment should be enough to keep a dipshit off the streets for a long time. No need to use the homicide playbook until something serious happens.
Now, if the plane crashes, it should be reckless (3rd-degree) homicide for the casualty count and attempted homicide and reckless endangerment for the survivor count. Add in assault and battery for the full count, too. Remember, kids, you can (and will) be charged with multiple crimes if you do this. You'll be charged for everything you did, not just the most egregious one. They add up, especially with the sheer quantity of victims on a commercial flight.
This, and this alone, is the reason we don't need more laws against terrorism. We already have them. It's just not called "terrorism". It's called "manslaughter", "destruction of property" (or sometimes "vandalism"), and "assault". No need for special names, laws, funds, or other panicky bullcrap. Just call a spade a spade and you'll find yourself winning friends and influencing people in no time. Sadly, the law-enforcement and "security" communities think that fighting "terrorism" is the way forward. I think as highly of them as I do of the ones that would shine lasers into cockpits. Morons, the whole lot of them.
Sure there is, enucleation of the eyes would stop this problem for all offenders.
Found the technical solution, enucleation of the eyes for all offenders. Stops repeat offenders every time.
Don't have to kill them. Enucleation of the eyes would stop this problem for all offenders, and stops repeat offenders.
Why should I have to accept any aircraft flying over my property when I am not being paid for it?
This is why we can't have nice things.
In all seriousness, jackasses doing things like this are why we end up banning things that responsible people should be able to have. Take your pick whether that's laser pointers, alcohol or other intoxicants, guns, or whatever else.
No, the jackasses doing this aren't why we ban things, it's the innumerate cowards who see 10 incidents a day, over the whole US, as so terrible a threat to justify arbitrary restrictions on the 299,996,300 of us who aren't being jackasses.
Putting people in jail is nothing more than revenge against someone who didn't understand what they were doing in the first place. If they actually understood it and realized the danger and the risk (legal) they wouldn't have done it
Really? Really!?!?
How much higher level brain function is necessary to understand that trying to shine a bright, focused light source in the eyes of a pilot flying an aerial craft at over a hundred mph is dangerous?
If these people could get guns as easily as lasers, they would be shooting at planes or people.
The only place for them is in jail or soylent green.
My own tests show that they are partially polarised, planar. But not perfectly. Even in the orientation which blocks the greatest proportion of light, a significant amount gets through. It just dims a little, compared to the ninety-degree rotation of the filter. Still wouldn't be much use, as there is no way to determine in advance which way the pointer is being held. I haven't tried using a circular filter, but I don't imagine the laser has any circular polarisation.
"The other option is enclose the cockpit and do everything with cameras."
How long before we can ditch the cockpit and fly large aircraft entirely on computer control? No pilot at all.
Most commercial aircrafts (not helicopters as in TFA/TFS) can land without much human interaction today. I think it stands for a technical solution already in place today.
Tomorrow is another day...
I think you replied to the wrong post.
There's a dipshit living in an apartment building on my street that points a laser at people out walking at night. Not sure if it's a kid or adult 'cause I'm not turning around to look when I see the little dot dancing across the sidewalk in front of me and my dog. And I keep my head down when I have to walk towards the building not knowing if the jackass is shining it at people that night or not.
As a general rule, if you're guilty of *one* crime, the jury will consider you a piece of vile criminal scum and find you guilty of anything they possibly can just to increase the sentence.
That's how the Australian prosecution managed to get someone convicted for possession of child porn for a few comedic Rule 34s of Lisa Simpson. The individual in question had prior convictions for possession of actual child porn, so the jury loathed him. I suspect if he had been charged with regicide and theft of the lost Mars rover he'd still have been found guilty somehow.
My solution would be to mount even more powerful lasers on some of the aircraft. Fight fire with fire. Plus, it would just be cool.
I would mount Lasers on Sharks and train them to laze the planes . . .
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
They fight forest fires with fire, dumbshit. Burned grass doesn't burn.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
You want to see some bureaucratic counter-terrorism, try to find a bin on the London underground. You won't. The management removed every bin at the stations following the 7-7 bombings, out of fear that someone would hide a bomb in one. The 7-7 attackers didn't even use the bins - they just kept their bombs in luggage they were carrying.
I think they took the bins away in order to inconvenience people, because being inconvenienced by anti-terror measures is reassuring to some.
"There is no rational reason why a civil society should have to put up with this kind of shit."
Because most of these attackers are just dumb, immature teenagers, and if given a modest punishment will probably grow up to be productive and law-abiding (as much as most people can be). A prison sentence, on the other hand, disrupts their education and renders them almost unemployable, strongly pressuring them towards a life of crime upon their eventual release.
I'm sure you did stupid things when you were a teenager. We all did.
Practicality aside, it'd be much easier to get the FCC to certify a piece of protective eyewear than a modification to the aircraft.
There is no such thing as a technical solution to a behavior problem.
I hear this position frequently, and it's wrong. If people are drinking from a cholera-infected pump, that's a behavioural problem - and removing the pump is a successful technical solution. If people are driving away from their car crashes, that's a behavioural problem - and putting license plates on cars is a successful technical solution. Anything can be cast as a behavioural problem - and most of the time, they're solved by technical solutions.
The idea that technical solutions can't possibly work is an odd one, given the ready availability of counterexamples. I suspect that it may be held by people who either have a poor grasp of technical matters, or who hold a romantic attachment to the idea of human behaviour being unaffected by the environment. Or it might just be parroted by people who heard it once and think it sounds profound.
Easy, we just use two polarizing filters offset by an angle of 90 degrees from each other!
I welcome our new 99% overlords.
What "technical solution" do you see to visible light being shown through a window?
It's called a polarized lens filter. Any person working in a lab with lasers wears them already.
And how could you make it commercially viable to every aircraft in the sky?
It would increase the costs of the windows in the cockpits, as for how much I can't say for sure. But I do know you can buy stuff like "peel and stick" window tint for your car, and I know you can get it in polarized versions. I'm guessing it might be a little more costly than an off-the-shelf consumer version, but compared to the cost of Law Enforcement actions or having one crash it's insignificant.
Or alternately, the pilots could just wear safety glasses which are polarized. But neither of those solutions allows for passing draconian laws and giving the police yet another "reason" to kick your door down at 3AM in the name of "national security".
Laser pointers are unpolarised; how would a polarising filter help to stop them?
Sigh. Go read a photography book, there isn't enough room here to explain it to you. Not trying to be rude, but your statement shows a fundamental lack of understanding in regards to lasers, "laser" pointers, light, and what the various types of polarization filters do and how they work.
I don't think it is, and this isn't the same. What do you call it when some guy is pointing towards a messier object with his kids and a plane flys by a mile away?
>who didn't understand what they were doing in the first place
Do you really think these people don't understand. The guy was a complete f***head - who knew exactly what he was doing.
Now imagine if I went down there with a lead pipe and beat him within an inch of his life for destroying people's eyesight permanently. Would you be standing on your soapbox saying that I "... didn't know what [I] was doing"?
I say treat them as criminals. You might as well be taking a knife to someone's eye - it does just as much damage - and I can assure you that this would result in jail time.
If you break the law, expect to be punished.
But implementing his proposal and similar ones would likely reduce the prevalence of such females.
Basically if a douchebag and his family are killed, those genes are eliminated from the pool. Repeat over enough generations and you have fewer douchebags and fewer women who want to be with those douchebags.
It's a BEHAVIOR problem. There is no such thing as a technical solution to a behavior problem.
Wrong. There are two problems here. People intentionally trying to fuck with the aircraft is the behavioral component. The other problem is that certain types of light, upon entering the cockpit, cause problems for the pilots. That's a technical problem.
Your statement is no different than telling me to not bother putting locks on my house because robbery is a behavioral problem, or that I shouldn't bother using passwords for any accounts/sites because hacking is a behavioral problem.
We use technology to mitigate, prevent, or solve many behavioral problems in many aspects of life, so how the fuck did this get a +5 Insightful?
It is sometimes called "the knockout game". Basically what happens is half a dozen punks pick someone at random and you get "points" based on whether you can knock them out with a single hit. Of course once the person is "knocked the fuck out" they then proceed to rob them...if they are lucky. Some just stomp the hell out of them.
And then there is flash mobbing which I think that damned PC term needs to be thrown out and call it what it is...wolf packs, because that is what they are, they are like a pack of wolves preying upon the weak. If you'll look at that list for every one that did it for robbery you have another that just stomped the shit out of some random person just for the fuck of it.
So i think it would be pretty hard not to argue that there are plenty that would blind a pilot and risk a plane crash simply because they are sick little douchebags. As I said in the original post look at those that throw brick off of overpasses, just to cause accidents and make people suffer. No profit, no gain, just sick little fucks being evil that's all.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I don't think these lasers will cause many planes to crash. But the pilots might suffer permanent eye damage.
And who pays for the pilots with permanent eye damage? Not like they can continue flying planes. In many countries the taxpayers and/or insurance policy holders would end up paying.
I don't know about you, but I value my eyesight highly. So the fewer assholes and kids going around with powerful lasers the better.
To me the benefit vs harm ratio is even better for personal handguns than for these lasers. What fucking great benefit to you and society is a powerful handheld green laser? So that you can point at stars? Use a long stick.Therefore I'd be very happy if such laser weapons are banned or at least regulated similar to fully automatic firearms. And people illegally using and smuggling them thrown into jail.
That video was made in Hollywood as a propaganda tool for the feds. Not that I condone what that laser faags are doing, but I just hate the psyops.
Nice strawman.
That word does not mean what you think it means.
I suspect that of the 3700 reported "laser attacks" this year, 99% will be in the USA and something approaching 100% of those will be traceable to sunlight shining off of ground objects... ... and that the FAA will spend $6 million developing a "laser awareness video" that it will relegate to some dusty corner of its website.
You missed the "color filter" part.
Of course the perp could use more than one laser with different colours. In which case the perp when caught should be blinded with lasers and tattooed all over with "I am a sociopath".
If they actually understood it and realized the danger and the risk (legal) they wouldn't have done it
I think most of them do know what they are doing and how dangerous it is. They think it is cute and funny. But you can be darn tootin they'd be pissed off, if their friends pointed the lasers at their eyes.
1) Isn't there a way to detect coherent/laser light?
2) Given the beam is 1 meter across and bright, you could tint the window when stuff suddenly goes bright - and that's good enough - whether it's a laser or powerful searchlight you're going to get dazzled anyway so if I were a pilot I'd rather the window be blinded than my eyes be blinded. I can still fly by instruments. Whereas my retinas might not heal enough = I lose my job or worse be permanently blinded.
Yeah that's the problem with these laser weapons. I can see way more practical uses for guns than for these lasers. The harm to benefit ratio is way too low for these lasers.
Even for fun - you use your hand gun in a shooting range, it goes bang, it makes holes and it's unlikely the "reflections" will hurt anyone standing at the safe areas. Whereas using those powerful handheld lasers aren't going to be as fun, and the reflections can still blind people far away.
I'd suggest laser fight competitions and laser fairs at the participants own risk.
Perhaps a camera system that pinpointed the guilty party would be more useful.
I think this is already how they do it, or something similar.
I'm a little leery of the "epidemic" part here, though. 3,700 a year sounds like a lot, but goog returns number of flights as somewhere between 8-14 million per year. And I could be wrong, but I don't think there's ever been an injury from flashing an aircraft, right?
That's not to say we should wait until someone dies to do anything, but perhaps we shouldn't get too out-of-control over this just yet. I do kind of like the licensing idea, much like in radio. That seems like an inexpensive method that even a kid could pass, but would ensure that someone understands the non-zero probability of something bad happening if they're not operated correctly.
Lasers are useful things. I have a couple of projects in mind right now, and I know I'd be pretty cranky if they were outright banned everywhere over stupid stuff like this.
Yes exactly - the simplest solution that works best.
Also last I heard pilots are trained to fly on instruments alone so even if the 'e-windows' went down they wont be so shocked or helpless.
Well, yes. If precision-shooting with a high-powered laser is available. I was more thinking of death by hellfire.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
it's also an incentive for men not to marry and have families with female douchebags.
Just keeping the balance here.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Practicality aside, it'd be much easier to get the FCC to certify a piece of protective eyewear than a modification to the aircraft.
That sounds practical to me.
"a welding helmet with a LCD shutter, as soon as the the photo-voltaic cell detects a bright light, the lcd goes black"
The problem is that most of the danger with laser light is not the power per unit surface, but rather the high degree of collimation that causes the eye to focus the light onto a spot on the retina. A photosensor wouldn't detect the difference between diffuse and collimated light.
Too bad that TFA only mentions "high power", which could mean 5 mW (the highest that is still in the somewhat safe class 3a) or one of the crazy 300 mW handheld lasers which can cause permanent eye damage in a fraction of a second and are legally required to have a keylock.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
No motive mentioned. The guy was probably annoyed by the stupid helicopter hovering over a residential area at night. Stop doing that and the problem is solved. Bad city planning is often a cause of crime, which is why there is so much of it in America. And why does a ship need a helicopter escort? If it's so important, they should make the ship wait until morning. That will never happen of course, because it would cost the shipper money. Screw the people living in town. If you ask me, the helicopter pilot was the one who should be in jail.
Oh you mean like attaching a hard-to-deactivate mems accelerometer that shuts off the laser if its inclined to above the level of the horizon?
Until they pull out their not-hard-to-deactivate pocket mirror...
... I don't see why you think jail isn't a deterrent. Just reading this story makes me never want to even own a green laser.
I agree. If judges start handing out the max five years in jail and $11,000 fine in every case, and publicize this fact, laser attacks will drop off pretty quickly.
It's not a crime where there is some potential "pay-off" if you don't happen to get caught, like bank robbery.
If you're looking at Messier objects, the sky is clear and you should have seen the aircraft's navigation lights.
Reckless endangerment seems about right. The public does need to be made aware of how serious this sort of thing can be before we start slapping on very heavy penalties.
So, have people taken to just throwing garbage on the ground since there are no refuse bins?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
But there are really two kind of people. Those who aim a laser at an aircraft, and those who don't.
Those who do think that EVERYONE does it, that is their defence and they think EVERYONE else is also stupid enough not to realize their possible consequences of their actions. But this group, while small is not just near insane, they are also VERY VERY LOUD.
So in every discussion, they shout out about their actions and make the rest think that apparently it is normal after all to be an asshole. It isn't. Their favorite battle cry is "have you never been a teenager and did something stupid".
Honest answer for the majority: "No I haven't".
Proof? If all of us REALLY did it, the world would be a hell hole. Take something as simple as speeding, if it was really something all of us did all the time, then there would be a LOT more traffic tickets. It is a small percentage that speeds all the time that accounts for the number of traffic tickets. You can drive on the highway yourself and see that the majority are following the speed limit.
Same with tying cans to cats. NOBODY does this, except a few sociopaths who then shout out about it making the world think this is normal behavior. It isn't.
It even has more serious consequences, part of women's lib wanted women to have the same sexual freedom men had. But did men, the majority of men really have that much sexual freedom? If men could sleep around, they needed women to do that with, so logically, the rates are the same on both sides. Yet there is a generation where you had some women jealous of men's freedom to have multiple partners while for most men, this simply ain't the case at all.
Check for yourself, have you ever increased the number of female sexual partners in conversation?
Right, because we believe the "media" story of the few to be the norm. If a hollywood star has a thousand girls, then so must everyone else. Nope, sorry.
We got to stop treating the freaks of our society as normal. Shining a laser at an aircraft is not normal. It ain't fun, it ain't harmless, it ain't something any normal person has any reason or desire to do.
Que the loud sociopaths protesting that they are normal after all: GO!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
And the people, pissed off with all these fucking annoying loud helicopters hoping to get on COPS! flying by when they're trying to get to bloody sleep.
OF COURSE they're going to piss off the pilot.
And, given these incidents are increasing rapidly, where are all the extra crashes due to pilots being blinded by all these "high power laser" strikes?
Aren't they happening? After all, the officials INSIST that they're deadly (though when using "non lethal weapons" themselves, they seem pretty passe about the danger of them then...), so there must be plenty of cases of a crash caused by this now, right?
Or were they talking bollocks?
And it DID reduce overall (if you included gun violence in the picture before and after: some people who would have used a gun used something else.).
Guncontrol laws worked in the UK. The stopped gun crime and gunshot accidents almost completely.
Unfortunately, you don't like the facts.
That happens to be the theory behind drone strikes.
I call it the "Cheese Stands Alone Doctrine". (I made that up myself).
You are welcome on my lawn.
Countries with strict gun laws have fewer shootings.
I know because I live in one.
A polarized window will necessarily reflect at least half of incident light (unless that light happens to be polarized at right angles to the laser light, which is extremely implausible). You really don't want to loose half of the light in the cockpit. And there is no particular reason to believe the laser light would be polarized in any particular plane, since the user can simply turn the laser around its axis. Also, of course, this would be a major change to existing airframes, and hence very expensive to implement. Of course, expensive + does not work looks like a perfect match for the TSA....
Stephan
They carry their rubbish in their luggage with their bombs.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
Yes, and they just send more cleaners round to pick it up. Also at major train stations in London, but in fact the general effect has been less garbage since people know about it and take the garbage with them or dispose of it outside the station.
But actually, GP is wrong: this was not a reaction to 7/7 but dates back to the early 1990s after the IRA bombed London multiple times, including the Underground and train stations. Some of those bombs were indeed hidden in bins. At the time the IRA was detonating bombs in London every few months so it was not an imaginary threat.
Why?
Because he was pissed off and who the hell can check? No damage done, no visible effect to anyone else on the trajectory, but by pretending to be temporarily blinded and eye burning (I get that if I feel tired and rub my eyes), disorientation OUGHT to be seen in an uncontrolled temporary piloting problem but wasn't. And distracted? Well, someone in the cockpit saying "Hey" is distracting.
But pretending all this he can big up the "crime" done and get his own back with lilly-white hands.
PS if the light illuminated the cockpit, it can't have been very intense, could it? It was still only 3mW of illumination. About as much as the LED diodes on the cockpit....
I'm guessing you're the typical bleeding heart who doesn't think people should be punished for their crimes.
i actually believe the only rational response to a crime(including one that has not yet been committed) are to deter people from committing said crime (and thus prevent it happening).
this can take two forms:
1) punishment of individuals who commit said crime - for the sole purpose of preventing others from committing the crime or the criminal from re-offending/committing other crimes.
2) education(for people that have not yet committed crimes)/rehabilitation(for those that have) - so that all people can learn to function in society without committing crimes.
in the case of rehabilitation - the person should either be removed from active society(i.e. jail/psych ward e.t.c.) or monitored until it is no longer deemed necessary (i.e. large threat no longer exists)
so no, i do not believe in punishment for the sake of "you are evil therefore you will suffer"/Revenge. This quite obviously serves no purpose and anyone that does believe this to be appropriate is a complete idiot in my opinion.
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
Welders use a sheet of LCD material, with a solar cell to power it. When they strike an arc, the solar cell powers the LCD, which darkens and protects their vision. Glasses could be made for aviators which include rapid polarizing ability based on a rapid change in the relative intensity of green light (in the range common to green lasers). This will protect the vision of the pilots. Alternatively, purchasing laser glasses which are designed to highly attenuate the green laser wavelength would help immensely. Come on, it ain't rocket science... jus' plain old planes and whirlybirds!
I'm an individual! Just like everyone else!
You really are getting a boner over this blinding shit, aren't you?
I wonder if you're the sort of person who takes a lazer pointer and points it at people's eyes so they become blinded...
The right to bear arms is apparently sacrosanct. After all, lasers don't hurt people, people do.
Do the maths. Remember to include:
1) the reduction in intensity from beam spreading in the half mile distance.
2) the area of effect over which the beam will play
3) the area of effect that will need to be hit to cause blindness
4) the time over which that effect would be hit if it were hit
Hand held over half a mile? Even if you're surgeon-level steady, that's probably a two degree circle.
At half a mile (900 yds) that's an area 30 yards across.
Traversal of that region would take something like 1 second if you're trying to track, side to side.
The dilated eye is roughly 1/5th inch across.
1/1800th of a second.
A square area, so about 1/4000000 second light time.
The intensity of a 1mW laser is about 50kW from an incandescent.
The flash is similar to a 1/80th W incandescent.
No, actually they took the bins out after the IRA bombings during the troubles, because the IRA did use bins to hide them
That same approach can be made to curtail the problem. It just requires an equal amount of energy being put into it.
People are well aware that you get a life sentence or death for a murder, and yet there are still plenty of murders each year. Merely publicising the fact there are stiff penalties does not curtail crime.
car going from place to place to change where he used the laser from he probably wouldn't have been caught.
You do realise one of the main uses of police helicopters is to track cars. They're almost inescapable.
What "technical solution" do you see to visible light being shown through a window? And how could you make it commercially viable to every aircraft in the sky? Brainstorm it. If you find something, great, but that's a pretty damned huge problem.
It already exists and is marketed to pilots. Anti-laser glasses. Commercially available lasers are of a limited number of types, each of which emit a very specific wavelength of light. It's not that difficult to produce a composite filter for those particular wavelengths.
http://www.honeywellsafety.com/Pages/Article3Column.aspx?id=40266&LangType=1033
Reckless endangerment is not putting notch filter film (which apparently already exists for the frequencies in question based on another post under this article) on the windscreen. People use green lasers to point to objects in the sky in astronomy outings. If they're crossing an aircraft, there are several perfectly innocuous reasons why this could be.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Every adult has been a child and a teenager first. Most people have done something stupid that's endangered other people's life at some point. Probably didn't realise it at the time. They were just being a stupid kid.
Yes, you too, whether you want to admit it, or even remember it.
So your solution is to lock most people up from their teens to their thirties.
That's how the Australian prosecution managed to get someone convicted for possession of child porn for a few comedic Rule 34s of Lisa Simpson. The individual in question had prior convictions for possession of actual child porn, so the jury loathed him.
I don't know the Australian law, but that seems strange. In Britain a jury doesn't know an accused's criminal record (if any) until after they make their verdict. Knowing of an accused's criminal record would be grounds to reject a juror. Which probably makes finding Juries for very famous ex-cons quite difficult.
Now however having a 1000mw laser when you are lost in the bush would definitely help people find you, however I think that these lasers need to be banned like fireworks as the general population is too stupid to respect their dangers.
Are they more or less dangerous than a 1W laser?
In other news today, the Sun was arrested for appearing slightly above the horizon twice a day at the ends of many east-west oriented airport runways and public highways. A court order was issued to henceforth limit the output of the Sun to less than 2 milliwatts at these times.
If you can prove intent, then yes it should be tried as attempted murder. At a minimum, shining a high powered laser at anyone, regardless of where they are at, is battery. Attempting to blind them with it would be mayhem. Also simple assault for every person in the plane, paticularly if they were not directly exposed to the beam. Mayhem being a felony, and the multiple counts of simple assult and battery cumulating into felony aggravated charge, you can be sure the offender will do time. Pretty much any laser can cause permanent damage to the eyes, and the label on the device says it can cause harm... really it is akin to discharging a weapon.
The bins were originally removed in the 1990s following an IRA bomb in a litter bin. And that wasn't the first time they'd been used. Metal litter bins make an explosive far more devastating, by containing the blast, and by contributing shrapnel.
They started to return after the IRA risk was over. But they still weren't around in large numbers by 7/7.
7/7 highlighted the risk of bombers in London, and bins may well have been used by subsequent bombers. So it wasn't an imaginary risk.
However, it's only solid bins that are a risk in that way. I see no reason why there aren't the type of bins that are a suspended hoop with a plastic sack hanging from them. That's what they have in Paris.
Actually...they can. One reason front in-windscreen defroster technology common in some markets is passed over in the US is because the failure mode of the device is opaque.
Yeah, like the Terrorists are just Evil. It's just their nature; they can't he'p it. Free to go.
Am I the only one who noticed that video is timestamped April 2010 while the arrest this story is talking about happened in 2007? Sheesh.
But implementing his proposal and similar ones would likely reduce the prevalence of such females. Basically if a douchebag and his family are killed, those genes are eliminated from the pool. Repeat over enough generations and you have fewer douchebags and fewer women who want to be with those douchebags.
But these women are hot!
Has lawsuits stopped downloading movies and music?
No, and neither has a "technological solution" stopped it.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
If you honestly believe that this is going to:
A - Work
B - Not have any negative consequences
You are really naive.
Scenario: some numbnut lases you in the eyes. You're now blind. Numbnut gets arrested, you're still blind. Numbnuts gets convicted, and will serve many years in prison. Meanwhile, you're still blind. All because said numbnut didn't realise the pretty light was a weapon but some sort of flashlight.
Ban them, and make possession of these things a crime with a minimum ten year sentence.
Fuck them.
Anyone who uses a laser to point at the sky in an astronomy outing is dumb enough that they should be charged with reckless endangerment. Laser pointers are useful to point at things because they produce a bright spot on the thing being pointed at. They will not produce this bright spot if aimed at an astronomical object, and when used on such objects, will be no more useful for pointing than just pointing one's finger.
Thank you.
I agree entirely that some people will perpetrate violence on others for teh lulz. Society has removed the idea of respect for another person from itself. It's doing a pretty good job of removing respect for oneself too.
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
I recall seeing one of those in London - St Panc international, near the gates for the tube. But only the one.
Never. The fun of recreational flying is that you're piloting.
But I would think we're not too far off from big commercial aircraft going this route.
10+ a day, every day.
On a bad day, I'm sitting inside one of those airplanes when a pilot gets blinded during takeoff or landing. No one's died yet, we believe, but when you take out a 777 going thru a flock of birds at takeoff/landing, or with a nice tailwind blowing it sideways, you're not in for fun.
We agree: lasers don't need to be banned. I own numerous ones, not counting the ones in my CD/DVD drives. For me, they're low-power, used for leveling, pointing, and testing angles of incidence. Should I find an idiot at the end of a runway with one, I'll be happy to turn the individual in. Those bruises on the throat didn't come from me, officer.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
No, they're not dumb; that would be you.
At night, the backscatter from a good green laser pointer is bright enough to create a visible beam in excess of 10m -- unless your finger is much longer than mine, this substantially reduces parallax vs. pointing with your finger.
Congrats on outing yourself as a moron, though.
Well looking at Wicked Laser's web site, their most powerful handheld laser ( 1,250mW), Spyder Arctic has a beam shape of 2 X 5 mm, and a divergence of 1.5mRad, so at 1Km, the beam would be about 3X7.5m, add in a little more or particular splatter would be enough dispertion to still make PV detection highly possible. The PV cell can easily be embeded into the frame of the glasses surrounding the lens, or even embed then into the shutter itself with difficulty. For that matter, the first polarizing filter and the lcd shutter could be mounted on the planes windows and the second polarizing filter can be on the lenses of the flight crews glasses.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Tracks to the source of the laser
you are absolutely correct - especially because there is something called 'adaptive software filtering'
Sounds like they have one - These m!@#$%!@#$%rs are FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT!
from the article:
"
Suddenly Trooper Basteri saw the laser—a powerful green beam coming from the shore. It snaked across the water and up towards the helicopter's cockpit. Basteri warned Riley that the blast of light was imminent, and warned him not to look at it.
Riley in turn quickly struggled to bank the copter to the right so the beam wouldn't penetrate the vehicle. But the concentrated stream moved too fast.
"
just have them warp drive the hell outta there next time they see the laser beam coming their way - problem solved.
A better solution is for all commercial aircraft to carry a laser guided rocket with the power of a hand grenade. It will lock onto the idiot's laser and zoom in and destroy him and any other idiots standing around with him. There's too many people on the planet and our oxygen producing oceans are dying from all the pollution. Google: ocean dead zones or mass fish kills or super trawlers.... we probably only have 20 or 30 years left before the mass extinction and we could postpone this with a nuclear war. Without wars throughout time, we'd already all be dead. War is good. The Earth can only handle X amount of people's pollution for any length of time, and we're already at 2 or 3X. Half the world is either starving to death or in a state of war. California is out of gasoline, soon it will be Zombieland in the U.S. Think outside the box before it's too late. Now, let me see, China not only is aiming lasers at our spy satellites but china is always trying to hack into our military network and shut it down. THAT'S AN ACT OF WAR. Good excuse to get rid of about 1.5 billion polluters. I'm kidding of course... but if you think the Muslims are fanatics, just wait till the environment starts to really deteriorate. Environmental fanatics will come out of the wood work like a bees out of the hive. Keep in mind, our atmosphere is only 4 miles thick, and our Oceans are only 2 miles deep. With most of the life withing 100 feet of the surface. That's a thin skin of life. The worst ocean pollution is agricultural runoff, all those insecticides and nitrogen creating those red tides that suck the life out of the ocean. There's too many people and they're so dumb that they're breeding like a cancer, and like cancer cells they're becoming more and more dysfunctional, drug using, and violent.. mensunion org
What did you expect him to do with that thing when you gave it to him? Is there a legitimate use for these things (from a young boys perspective)? What use is left when you tell him not to do this and that? I can't understand giving him one in the first place. Maybe its the parents that need some guidance about what they give their children.
Good ideas, but the government has to preemptively make the laws before the technology becomes available.
That's about a million times easier to say than do, and do well, of course but that's basically the only technical solution.
There are plenty of possible technical solutions. Since lasers are very directive, you could build a system that does several things:
- get the direction and angle of the incoming beam, get the GPS position and direction of the vehicle, estimate the position of the culprit, send an automated message to authorities with some priority for cops (or the fucking TSA so they get off their lazy ass for once).
- Also take a low light zoom picture (with a polarizing filter so the laser doesn't ruin it) so you can tell if it was a 3rd floor window or whatever.
- Also (or instead of sending the cops), beam a powerful laser in the exact same direction (maybe use reverse phase mirrors ?) so that the guy knows he did something stupid. For some people it may be enough "oh shit!" to keep them from doing it again, while for some others it maybe more like "we got it, let's do it again", I don't know.
You could probably build something like this from a cell phone and 1000$ worth of optics.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Pure democracy = majority rules. Representative democracy = representative majority rules but a single activist judge can overrule the will of the people. Either way, someone will always have power over someone else.
Okay, never mind the implications for the innocent family members of the asshat who lose everything because of him (Sure there probably are some women who've done stupid things with lasers, but I'd be willing to bet money that over 90% are carried out by males) Also, it's more probably that the attacks were carried out by a minor or a young adult who's unmarried than an older adult who has real responsibilities and commitments.
So, we lock up a 17-year old punk for life, and litigate his family into indigence. Now what? Don't we already have enough homeless people sleeping in parks or under bridges and urinating in public? Isn't the housing market still fairly weak without forcing a bunch more homes into foreclosure--Think about your own home's value when the brat down the street leads to your neighbors defaulting on their property. These newly unemployed, uninsured, and homeless folks are now going to be relying on already stretched food banks, panhandling, or crime just to make it through the day and provide for their basic needs. So now, expect a greater load on social services, emergency rooms, jails, and morgues from people who used to be gainfully employed and self-reliant.
The kid pointing green lasers into cockpits may not be thinking about the consequences, however you haven't fully thought out the consequences of your actions either!
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They fight forest fires with fire, dumbshit. Burned grass doesn't burn.
Not to pile on, but they also fight oil wells with fire. A controlled explosion exhausts the local area of oxygen, and the wellhead fire is extinguished.
Seems pretty unlikely to cause so many reports. Especially since most amateur astronomers know of the dangers and illegality of shining green lasers at planes.
How many did the 3000+ laser "strikes" bring down?
I have no problem with following up on these "strikes" if an aircraft is on approach. But otherwise... this is a HUGE waste of resources.
"There is not a legal solution that is going to work. People just don't get it. Throwing people in jail doesn't solve the problem."
Tell me about all the types crimes that have been eliminated from throwing people in jail. So I guess we should legalize rape and murder.
Deterrence is but one purpose of the criminal sanction.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
You actually took him seriously, didn't you?
Recreational flying means a handful of people at the most, and a small aircraft. The consequences of crash are quite small, compared with a passanger jet.
I have to wonder if its something else besides society...like the chemicals. After all look at the great depression, you had people seriously hurting but you didn't have wolf packs or people just going around bashing heads to have something to do.
But for the past 50 years everything we have eaten and drank has been full of chemicals, from hormones to plastics. They say you can give a newborn a blood test and find PBH in their bloodstream before they have taken their first bite, because the shit is in the mother's blood and get passed on.
So I have to wonder if what we are seeing is the chemical toxicity finally reaching dangerous proportions. After all what is the human mind but a bunch of chemicals and electrical impulses? Who knows what generations of constant exposure to all these chemicals are doing, or if there are groups or races in our population that are more susceptible to its effects than others. This is something that needs to be scientifically studied but sadly the PC police will never allow it, look at how those wolf packs are called "flash mobs" instead of telling the truth, large mobs of black youth just deciding to act like predators.
But with the constant barrage of chemicals in our food and drink I just don't see how you could throw all these chemicals into chemical beings such as we without having an effect of some sort.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
analogy. Putting a CD on a P2P network isn't good. If it isn't your song, I don't think that that gives you the right to "share" it with all of your best buddies on the internet. Regardless, I can't but help that shining a laser at a pilot as that pilot is trying to land is tantamount to 200+ cases of attempted murder. Seriously. It is like purposely trying to feel a six story tree onto a busy four lane highway when the cars are going at 70 mph just for the lulz.
The scale of the CD copying and laser pointing is all out of scale.
As I recall, a company developed a flexible Kevlar bin but it was too expensive.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
There are technical solutions to behavior problems. Example (a low tech one): jails keep troublemakers out of everyone's way.
An epidemic would be localized to one location or a small number of locations.
True, this happens only where airports are located but it would sound like it's happening all over the country, hence, pandemic.
Mojo is a perfect example of happens when you "unschool" children...
http://zenhabits.net/unschool/
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
You're talking about finding who did it. I'm talking about protecting the aircraft so it doesn't matter if someone shines a laser on you.
Shooting lasers back at people is a monumentally stupid idea. You'll blind someone innocent. And yes, reflecting the beam away from the aircraft without scattering the beam could blind someone as well, which is part of what makes is undesirable.
ref
I mention NY because there's a bunch of busy airports with lots of fat, juicy laser targets in holding or on approach/final.
And yeah, I'm fine with very publically charging a couple of little pricks waving green lasers at aircraft with 150-500 counts of Attempted 2nd Degree Manslaughter; maybe make the punishment a $10 fine per charge in this case but make good goddamn sure they carry every count around on their record. Three. Hundred. Felony. Convictions. Yep, utterly obliterate their lives and make fucking sure the entire world knows it ain't worth it - with shit like the Wicked Lasers Arctic 1.25W blue laser available, it's only a matter of time until some fucktard with $400 to blow decides to shine one of THOSE at a Heavy on final into JFK (over Queens). I don't care if s/he just thinks "it would be funny", strict liability. Light a plane = intent to kill every soul onboard.
Or the harder crims start using them as AAA against police choppers..that one should be punishable by summary execution, maybe rig up a Hellfire to ride the beam..
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Can we use this?
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
In the UK, they have a crime of "endangering transport" - it's regularly used to nail the idiots who lase aircraft, train drivers AND vehicle drivers, as well as the ones tossing things off overpasses. Penalties up to 15 years in jail and it's a lot easier to prove than attempted murder. FWIW, being hit in the face with a green laser while driving HURTS - and because they're usually just along the street you don't get the benefit of handshake reducing the burn (The idiot who lased me also lased several aircraft and a police helicoptor which was searching for him. No idea if he was caught or not.)
Or laser guided lasers.
Fire back at the bastard.
Like dropping bricks off a freeway overpass.
I bet there are at least 20 years worth of "reckless endangerment" and "interfering with air traffic" and other crimes. Is there such a thing as "attempted manslaughter"?
"Just being an idiot" is not an excuse for putting peoples' lives at risk. Dude needs to look at losing one or two decades. It has to be enough time to deter.
[Quote] 'It is not the severity of punishment that deters crime, but the certainty of it" [/unquote] Sir Robert Peel, I think. There's all sorts of lengthy prison terms out there now for all sorts of crimes and people still do the crime - and some get caught. But the length of time inside when caught doesn't prevent the crimes happening.
Just make sure we catch the idiots every time, bill them a thousand dollars every time. They'll stop immediately.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
What "technical solution" do you see to visible light being shown through a window? And how could you make it commercially viable to every aircraft in the sky? Brainstorm it. If you find something, great, but that's a pretty damned huge problem.
Just stick a thin, cheap transparent LCD layer onto the cockpit glass. When harmful beam of light is detected it automatically switches on to block harmful porton of that light from being let thru.
This same technology is available today in consumer sunglasses (Basically a dynamic coronagraph) not rocket science or something that will break the bank if your determined to develop a technical solution to this problem.
The one thing that really scares me is the not the consumer laser pointers used as toys by idiots but UV lasers in hands of bad guys with an agenda.
I don't think it is entirely appropriate to look at the cost benefit equation only in terms of a public nuisance with low probability of any significant harm being done.
Oh, I did my share of stupid stuff when I was a kid. I did your share and probably the share of 15% of all Slashdot users.
Thing is, the guy that aimed the laser at this helicopter was fifty-two years old. He does not have the excuse of being "young and stupid".
Fortunately, our laws are designed to go easy on stupid kids. Kids get let off, they get probation, and even if they're convicted and jailed they're usually sent to softer facilities that are more like boarding schools than prisons (unless they've done something really really bad or are black).
No, my solution does not require "locking most people up from their teens to their thirties". My solution doesn't even kick in until a kid is over 18 and doesn't affect the 18-30 year-olds unless they endanger peoples' lives.
If someone decides they're going to get drunk and go hop freight cars, they may well get badly maimed, but they're not going to cause a bunch of people to die. If they start aiming lasers at aircraft, they may well kill someone and should be punished severely, even if just a year in jail and a $10,000 fine. It's got to be enough (and certain enough) that they'll decide to aim their stupidity at something less harmful to other people.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Apparently you're not quite clear on what the purpose of a prison sentence is. It's not as much to keep dangerous people locked away as it is to serve as a deterrent. Right now, as it stands, there is not an effective and well understood deterrent against this kind of behavior.
Sure, a plane crashing during takeoff/landing and killing a lot of innocent people would be an effective wake-up call to not keep doing this. I think putting people who are going out of their way to endanger the lives of hundreds of people in prison would be just as effective without the loss of innocent lives.
Or would you prefer we take the more common route that governments seem to like lately and make the laws work against a product that has legitimate use, rather than the stupid and dangerous behavior?
And BTW, "most people" have not done something stupid that has endangered that many people. In fact, I'd wager that "most people" have not done anything even remotely that dangerous beyond driving like an idiot.
I might be able to fly blindfolded, too, but it doesn't mean that I would accept that option willingly when holding 300 lives in my hands.
What could possibly go wrong? The cost/weight of high def video cameras and display screens isn't so bad, but the potential for failure is going to spook most pilots. They know that wires don't short out and make their windows go black...
On the other hand, a lot of aircraft could benefit from a low angle looking camera/screen so the pilot can see the runway clearly on approach.
Probably it's more practical to put the viewing systems in visors. If something goes wrong with the visor, you can raise it. You also would get the advantage of multiple cameras, multiple viewing angles, multi-spectral imaging (infrared and UV), etc, with a processor that cuts out any malfunctioning camera. Some such features are already available, but more limited than I envision. I can even imagine military applications where you put cameras on the wingtips, potentially giving pilots stereoscopic vision out to kilometers. That could be very handy for landing a plane on a carrier, or in a dogfight.
Sure, but what stewardess is going to sleep with you after seeing you in that getup?
There apparently are laws regarding criminal stupidity. Should we be neutering these mouth breathers, not as a punishment, but as a means to stem the flood of idiot genes in our society?
And who pays for the pilots with permanent eye damage? Not like they can continue flying planes. In many countries the taxpayers and/or insurance policy holders would end up paying.
Insurance is a numbers game. There are something like 300,000 planes registered in the US, and that's not incuding the military (or rest of world of course). If it costs $50k to replace the windows on an airplane (could be more or less depending on the plane and depending on whether you value the passengers' eyes, too). That's a shit ton of insurance payments before it becomes worth it. I think the airlines should be more worried about maintaining the planes so that they don't kill everyone on board (including the pilots) than freak about what is so far an overblown problem.
I don't know about you, but I value my eyesight highly. So the fewer assholes and kids going around with powerful lasers the better.
Yeah, that was my (and many other's) point. To summarize, it's a behavioral problem, not a technical one. The solution is fewer assholes, not fewer lasers or magical windows.
Chk it
Note to self: always carry a roll of aluminum foil in case I am chased by a helicopter at night.
Then I can say I am going to a space convention or something...
I found it easily, so your faux naivete is unconvincing.
For both you can simply use a flamethrower.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
The vast majority of people are not sociopathic mass murderers, and do not aspire to be such. Therefore, chances are most people who shine lights at airplanes are unaware it's dangerous. So, require lasers to come with a full package inserts explaining the danger caused to aircraft, put a video showing the effects on websites, and maybe rent some TV ads. Make sure everyone knows what lasers do. It would also help if more people realized that airplanes do not 'fly themselves'.
If everyone knows the extreme dangers of lasering airplanes, then society can in good conscience criminally prosecute people for it.
Anyway we talk about this for pilots, but I've had a laser shown at me while driving at night. Annoying but fortunately it wasn't one of those 1W killers.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Shining a laser at a police helicopter:
* 2 counts of attempted murder
* Felony destruction of property (value of police helicopter)
Shining a laser at a passenger jet:
* 300 counts of attempted murder.
* Felony destruction of property (value of passenger jet)
Really damn simple.
In Australia the Jury does not get to hear the criminal record of the individuals on trial. I was on jury last year and it wasn't until we had given a verdict that we got to hear about the endless criminal history of the person.
A non-event?
So here's your real issue: you are pissed at women for ignoring you.
Social Credit would solve everything...
The natural right of the people to enjoy silence and be free from unnatural noise shall not be infinged! When complaints of bad noise pollution from aviation, jetplanes and helicopters are continously ignored, people must act on their own to protect their health. It is a proven medical fact that near-airport jet noise shortens human live by an average of 10 years, mainly by causing heart disease. (Mortality and heart surgery rate is extremely high among helicopter pilots, so the problem is as much suicidal as homicidal...) Anyhow, many ordinary land-dwelling citizens suddenly find themselves under low-passing widebody jets when new runways are built, often 4-5 miles from the previously existing tarmac.
I guess sooner or later we will see posse shining not just laser pens, but shoulder SAM-attached laser rangefinders on jets in protest. The desperation of humans and a sense of being opressed and deprived of health by the state and the aviation industry will drive them do cruel things. See, they are currently "compensated" with soundproofed doors and windows, so they are effectively incarcerated in their rooms and cannot enjoy their house gardens due to a jet passing low overhead every 90secs.
The solution should be NASA's silent, open propeller-fans for propulsion, not the cheap, noisy "tailpipe" jets currently in use. Also, the construction of high-speed rail must be emphasized, as much of aviation noise and tailpipe pollution comes from the too many unjustified short-hop commercial flights. There is no sense in flying less than 1000km overland, it simply cannot compete with a 300km/h top speed bullet train for the overall time from city centre to city centre. The establishment of an extensive national superexpress electrified train network in Spain eliminated over 2/3rd of their domestic flights (even though Spain is a hilly country, where byling tracks is much difficult.) They buy cheap french nuclear electricity to travel, rather than saudi fossil fuel. Political, economical and silent environmental win-win!
I only wish I could find a way to get my wife and daughter to ignore me.
Then I might finally make some progress with Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's a BEHAVIOR problem. There is no such thing as a technical solution to a behavior problem.
I take it you've never heard of B.F. Skinner.
600 grand for copying a cd is too much. But what sort of effect would shining a laser to blind a pilot on landing have? Let me walk this through for you. Pilots fly airplanes. To fly an airplane, you need to see where it is going. If you can't see the runway, then you will potentially crash. Runways are designed so that when the commercial airplane pilot hits the ground at 160 mph, they don't hit any bumps. Hitting bumps that fast would be bad for the plane. Crashing at that speed would very likely be fatal. Hence, attempted murder.
I don't care why he is trying to kill the people, he is trying to kill the occupants of that airplane. That is attempted murder.
Evolution could take care of toxicity in our food supply given chance, but we're so good at medicine now that we're not evolving any longer. Anyone who suggests returning to an evolutionary lifestyle is accused of supporting eugenics and labelled a right wing nutjob. There may be something to that. Anyhow to avoid a quick and easy Godwin, I'll leave that there.
I see it as a psychological problem. We put car chases and murder on the TV frequently, but anything that shows romance and love for each other is classed as a "chick flick". Machismo seems to be the mode du jour in everything. The softer side of our nature is ineffective in a competitive money making world and falls by the way as we teach our kids to be more aggressive and to work harder (not smarter) for the things they want.
If it were possible to live and eat organically these factors would still be present, although I'd happily allow that toxins contribute, even though I have no knowledge about the subject. I'm just guessing.
But thanks for posting, obviously as AC points out, my google-fu is weak =)
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
OK, so if you turn the windows into mirrors, how are they supposed to see?
If they can still see, they will see the light. It's not that the light is necessarily blinding, it's that it's distracting.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Once upon a time "he needed killing" used to be a justified defense.
Seems we could still use this, sometimes.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
What happens when the Chinese come out with a $2 kids laser toy that tracks planes automatically? Another national defense issue?
I come here for the love
Throwing people in jail doesn't solve the problem. You can have a death penalty sentence and it won't make one bit of a difference.
That is an issue with the sentence being incommensuarate with the crime, not a piece of evidence that deterrence has no effect at all. In fact, I imagine that this gimp getting caught and put in jail will have some effect on potential fellow idiots.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
My solution would be to mount even more powerful lasers on some of the aircraft. Fight fire with fire. Plus, it would just be cool.
How about some sort of (amplifying) mirror?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I'm sure you did stupid things when you were a teenager. We all did.
There's stupid as in "getting drunk and letting off a fire extinguisher in a hotel" and stupid as in "potential mass murder". And no, we haven't all done the latter.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Because the cockpit windows work perfectly when descending through a cloud, or other limited-visibility situations, right?
There's a reason why these pilots are also instrument-rated.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The general litmus test for self-defense is whether or not you're facing a legitimate, direct threat against life or limb - I'm wondering if potentially being blinded counts as an extension of the latter.
Solid state lasers are are polarized, so polarizing filters could block everything, or nothing, from different types of lasers. I made this mistake building a quantum cryptography demo at one point a few years ago.
No one has posted why people shine lasers at aircraft: they're far away and it's fun target practice. They want to see if they can get a harmless little spot on an innocuous, broad part of a small, moving target.
I highly doubt anyone is doing this to blind someone on the plane. If they wanted to do that, they would just head to a hotel near a freeway.
You can't, at least, not that I know of. Mirrors are bidirectional, you can have 'one way mirrors' which rely on illumination on one side versus the other, and they only work one way because of material layering, but the inside of an aircraft an aircraft isn't going to be brighter than outside always (nor would that really have the desired effect).
As I say, the question is whether or not there are materials that have different bi-directional properties along the same axis. I don't know of any, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
A right is something of which you cannot be deprived.
If what you said was true crime would be impossible, or rights would not exist at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well I'm a firm hater of all things politically correct and if there is a problem, like what we are seeing now with black youths forming wolf packs (which sadly I actually had to explain when someone said it was some racist slang when I took it from the German sub tactic of using large numbers as a force multiplier to insure a kill, which is exactly what the packs do, use strength of numbers as a force multiplier) rather than come up with newspeak words like "flash mobs" or pretend there are groups of Asians or whites doing this we should point out "Hey we have a problem here, what are we gonna do about it?" and tackling it head on.
And the reason i have to wonder if its not chemical is who typically eats and drinks the most chemical laden food? Those in the inner city because its cheap. The poor whites are bunched up more in the rural areas where access to cheap non chemical food like farmers market and small town grocers means they aren't getting constantly dosed with chemicals like the inner cities. Living in the south I can tell you a lot of poor folks still can as well, which means even in winter they have access to food without tons of chemicals and there is often at least one hunter in the family which means game meat which again, no chemicals.
And while I agree that constant media bombardment doesn't help things that would be a better explanation of the lone nut job, not the wolf packs. When you have as many as 200+ people in an area perfectly willing to go on a rampage, beating and robbing and just acting like no rules apply to them you have to wonder...what is different in THAT area than in others? its not poverty because the state with the lowest income WV also has the lowest violence levels.
So I think this is something that deserves serious study and all this political correctness is doing is giving fuel to the racist groups. I mean what does anyone think that Whites, Asians, and Latinos are gonna think when they see footage of 30+ black youths rampaging for no reason other than its Thursday? Nothing good I can assure you. that is why this phenomena needs to be studied NOW, so we can find out the root cause and do something about it, because if not the tensions are going to get higher until it becomes a powderkeg and blows up in everyone's faces.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Fully agree that political correctness is harmful to the very groups those expounding it claim to be wishing to help. You don't help someone with a problem by making excuses or shifting the blame away from them. Bill Cosby had it right with his "pound cake" speech.
If some of these blacks think they are being "oppressed", just wait until the retaliation comes if the black community where these things are a problem doesn't get its act in order.
I disagree about the chemically laden food. They eat it because it is fast, it is actually VERY expensive compared to raw ingredients. I try to live frugally where possible (since I know SS and medicare won't be there when I'm old.) and the one thing I NEVER buy is the highly processed food. It's not that I don't like it, I LOVE hot pockets and all that other stuff. I don't buy it because it is simply too darn expensive vs what I can cook myself. Frozen chicken breasts are relatively cheap, pork chops can be bought when on sale, wrapped individually, and frozen. You can fit a lot into a refrigerator freezer if you do some basic planning. Boiled potatoes are a good option as well. (I LOVE boiled potatoes.) Most of my cooking consists of "put stuff in pot, let simmer for an hour." NOT hard to do and once you figure out how to flavor it you can get a decent amount of variety for not a lot of money. If I was willing to put even a little more time into cooking my options would increase greatly, but I'm not bothered by bland food.
If you're poor, don't expect a lot of variety, you're probably going to be eating the same thing over and over like much of the world does. However if you do that, then you'll be able to spend the money you now have towards more important things, like paying down any outstanding debts you have, buying or repairing a car so you are not limited to whatever jobs are nearby. Perhaps attending to medical needs, a new pair of glasses to replace that 12 year old pair with an out-of-date prescription. I see that all the time, pun fully intended, in the jails I do work at. You think someone is illiterate by how they take so long to read and understand a form, turns out they can't see because they haven't had their vision checked in 15 years. (Also explains how they got caught in the first place.) Seriously, nowadays $200-$300 will get you a new prescription and set of glasses. I've seen it done for $150, including the eye exam, if you are willing to have Drew Carry frames and coke bottle lenses. Today the checkup is going to be the most expensive part, shop around.
When you have as many as 200+ people in an area perfectly willing to go on a rampage, beating and robbing and just acting like no rules apply to them you have to wonder...what is different in THAT area than in others? its not poverty because the state with the lowest income WV also has the lowest violence levels.
Probably has to do with the chance of being shot. WV has one of the highest firearm ownership rates in the country. My state of North Dakota also has a very high rate. Thefts are done when people are not home and they actually take efforts to make SURE nobody is home. That or they just break into a garage from the alley where nobody can see them. Thugs know that any gunshot wound showing up at a hospital is automatically reported to police and darn near impossible to explain away, bruises lacerations and broken bones are far easier to explain as a simple accident. Thus they take efforts to avoid violent confrontation.
As for motivation, could be any number of things. A sense of entitlement, seeking a thrill. It would be interesting to know so that it can be addressed. My speculation is that this is a further development caused by the welfare system and other government programs destroying the ability of young blacks to function in society. I'd be all ears to someo