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Why Protesters In Cairo Use Laser Pointers
New submitter Ahmed Shaban writes "Why do protesters in Cairo use laser pointers? At the beginning, they were used to light up snipers on rooftops. Later, it just became fashionable to use them, and such things spread very fast among the youth of Cairo, who can find the high power laser pointers for sale on the sidewalks. The article contains amazing photos of a chopper lit up by green laser pointers."
No. Laser tag have fog machines.
stupid people do stupid things like live in Egypt and blind pilots of vehicles carrying a ton of fuel over their heads
Fog machine.
Atmospheric effects like fog machines and hazers are why you can see them in Laser tag.
You can see the ones in the Egypt videos because they're just really powerful. Far more powerful that what is legally available in the USA without a variance.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
With the Egyptian military completely on board with the protesters this time around, I guess the laser pointers dont have much actual purpose anymore.
Its actually quite remarkable what is happening there. More people were protesting than had voted for the president because the president decided that their constitution didnt apply to him, so the military takes down the president in response but remarkably doesnt assume power.
How many countries actually have a military that would do this sort of thing? I'm fairly certain that mine, with a military that runs an agency well known now for violating the constitution, would not.
"His name was James Damore."
aren't weapons that blind people banned by the Geneva Convention?
Anyone want to invest in a cataract treatment center in Cairo, they're going to need it in a few years...
Simple as that...
I know the 'copters are being illuminated by hand-held laser pointers but the photographs do look like those produced by Michael Yon http://www.michaelyon-online.com/the-kopp-etchells-effect.htm showing the Kopp-Etchells Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_rotor.
It is not working because they did not actually have democracy there, contrary to what the media (which likes to suck presidential wang) tells you.
...are the moronic A/Cs on /. who seem happy to denigrate the Egyptian people for celebrating the peaceful overthrow of a useless leader.
The fact that the army has removed these incompetants and are immediately handing power back to the people is un-precedented and incredible. The Egyptian people and army could teach some other nations a thing or two, I think, not to mention some of the ignorant bigots who plague /.
Smivs on the intertubes!
The military is on their side!...
Aren't these the same people that shoot live bullets in the air to celebrate? Maybe lasers are somewhat less dangerous...
Technically they did have democracy and got what they voted for, but what they didn't have were safeguards to ensure that a president couldn't just declare himself dictator for life after being elected. And so that's what he tried to do as early as possible. They need to adjust their system, institute checks and balances, constitutional changes requiring national referendums etc.
Oh wait, it didn't crash! With hundreds of pointer directed at it, it didn't crash. I'm wondering, have there been any aircraft crashes attributed to pilot blindness caused by laser pointers reported anywhere in the world? It seems to me that the prohibition has more to do with law enforcement and the military not wanting people identifying where drones are flying overhead since the actual risk to pilots seems to be non-existent.
you mean like I do with my cat ?
You use your cat to confuse riot police?
Laser Tag does not use real lasers, it is just a focused bright LED.
Most laserpointers are 1mW or less, so they don't reflect enough particulates in the air unless it's foggy. The green ones in the video are usually at least 5mW, which is powerful enough to reflect off enough dust in the air to be visible under normal conditions.
It's one of the big errors that scifi movies have with lasers in space combat (the other error being that laser pulses move slow enough to be seen). even with insanely powerful lasers, they'd be practically invisible in space because there's nothing for them to reflect off. Unless, of course, you want to pretend that all laser space battles take place in dust or gas clouds...
Agreed. We use 10mW and 20mW green lasers for star pointing in astronomy. They're clearly visible to nearby users but get more than about 10-20ft away and that's no longer the case. Judging by the pictures in TFA the ones the protestors were using were probably in the 150mW+ range.
My understanding is that they didn't really have much of a choice in who to vote for. It was between a known bad guy and a probably bad guy, so they went with the latter due to lack of choices to begin with. Is it really a free and democratic election if you don't have choices?
Police and cats have much in common
1) They both enjoy stalking weaker prey
2) They both enjoy toying with their prey
3) They both have a love/hate relationship with lasers
4) There's tons of videos on YouTube of them both doing dumb things
Used to; I stopped when the changed something about the composition of their vests and the cat started to fart like crazy after eating a few.
Seems the same in US too..
Sooo
This is just more US Hegemonic "agression"?
Didn't the Egyptians have a roll? or is this more infintalizing other contries/populations in favor of demionizing the US.
Take responsibility, stop trying to blame outside influence for everything. Morsi was a homegrown problem and the US didn't install him, Egyptians did.
the US worked with Sadat, Mubarak, Morsi, and it will likely work with the next in line and the one after that.
we didn't force Mubarak to oppress people and run sham elections, we didn't force Morsi to try to assume total control, and we wont be forcing the next gut to do whatever it is he does to cause some future grievence.
the US has plenty of dirt on it's hands but little of it is Egyptian dirt.
Most lasers over 5mW are already illegal to import to the US unless you have a specific commercial or industrial purpose. The lasers in the pictures are almost certainly at least 5mW or higher to be that visible in the air.
I was in the dorms at college when Obama was elected for the first time. His supporters rioted and caused a bunch of property damage and ruffed up people.
There's also been cases of sports fans rioting when their team has won.
People do crazy shit to celebrate that just seems counterproductive to an outside observer.
Now get a stack of 10,000 of those little laser pointers all hooked to one power source...
Now you have a weapon. Pretty good one too.
10,000 of pretty much anything would be a formidable weapon. 10,000 people throwing pebbles, for example.
That doesn't make the pebble into a formidable weapon.
That these helicopters continued to fly shows that either the danger of laser pointers have been highly exaggerated, American pilots are wusses, or both.
If it were so easy, many South American countries would have become as prosperous and democratic as the US since their constitutions were basically copies of the US Constitution. Yet, somehow, it didn't really work.
You can see the same in many former British colonies. If you read their Constitution, you'll see that they're not much different from what you find in any modern democracy. Bill of rights, checks and balances, constitutional protections for both negative and positive rights. They also inherited the common law tradition and much of their legislation is copy-pasted from UK legislation circa 1960. It's so similar in theory that UK-trained lawyers can usually practice with minimum to nil extra training, as most of the legal education is done from UK textbooks and case books anyway.
Yet, in practice, it's quite different. Sure, you have the same theoretical protections, but they do little good when everyone is free to ignore them. It's nice to tell the courts that they have to be independent and fair, but how do you guarantee that?
"They need to adjust their system, institute checks and balances", etc. is all wishful thinking. It's about as useful as telling a developing country that all they need to do is grow. It's true but pretty useless as far as advice goes. The tricky part is knowing how to move from the equilibrium where the law is widely ignored, where formal checks and balances don't work, where the constitution is not worth the paper it's written on, to a better equilibrium. As far as I can tell, no-one has yet found a magic recipe for that because things are usually the way they are for a reason. It's not like bad institutions just spring up at random: they are usually people who have an interest in maintaining the status quo, and we were able to see times and times again that removing whoever happens to be in power doesn't do much to solve the structural problems and can even lead to worse outcomes (Iraq? Libya?).
If an aircraft is on auto-pilot, there's negligible risk.
If an aircraft is currently under human control while cruising, there's a slight risk.
If an aircraft is under human control while taking off, landing or performing any sort of maneuver, there's a reasonably significant risk.
Have you ever had someone shine a bright flashlight in your face? It's a lot like that. It causes you to jerk away, confuses you, and partially blinds you for anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes. Any of those can be deadly given that the person with the laser probably doesn't know if the aircraft is on autopilot or is preparing to land.
It's one of those laws where, sure, 98% of the time nothing bad will happen if you do it. But that last little bit of a time, something *really* bad could happen. So it's a felony.
Uh, I just bought a 1 watt laser pointer without a variance. I'm fairly sure the Egyptian ones are less powerful judging by the fact that that chopper didn't burst into flames like the things I point my laser at tend to do.
Nope, just mail order that mofo. These guys sell 1W+ blue lasers:
Wicked Lasers -- any colour, any power, get em before they're gone.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
"The pilot should have bailed out and let the damned thing crash into the crowd."
Pilot bailing out....of a conventional helicopter.
And to think /. was once a techy site.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
It's one of the big errors that scifi movies have with lasers in space combat (the other error being that laser pulses move slow enough to be seen).
If you had asked me, I would have said that it was lasers makes pew-pew noises in space.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
bigger picture:
http://mashable.com/2013/07/01/egypt-protestors-laser-pointers/
You can see the ones in the Egypt videos because they're just really powerful. Far more powerful that what is legally available in the USA without a variance.
You didn't read the article at all did you?
As crowds packed Tahrir Square in the centre of Cairo to celebrate the overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi on Wednesday night, three things filled the air - noise, fireworks and, unusually, laser beams.
Fireworks make lots of smoke
Why were there only two candidates? Couldn't they have used a larger piece of paper with room for 4 names?
As for the laser pointers, the video on the article was pretty cool. Hope the pilots don't have any problems flying like that.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
No, no.
We were perfectly free to ignore Crazed Religious Warmonger and Incompetent Hypocritical Dronemonger last time around and vote for some random non-entity instead, hoping against the very laws of the universe that somehow, without ungodly amounts of money and the entrenched PR machines surrounding our two parties, that a majority of our fellow Americans would do the same.
It's all fun and games, 'til someone loses an eye.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
return to base, return to base, your fight'n a laser war”
Egyptians revere cats.
So obviously they are fascinated with laser pointers as well.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The "damage" the laser pointer could do to a plane is indirect. It can't destroy or harm the plane itself, but it can harm the pilot. It can of course cause eye damage if it happens to hit the pilot right in the eye, but any "near miss" that hits the cockpit can have adverse effects on the safety of the plane or chopper. It can startle the pilot, the sudden brightness of a laser hitting a target that scatters the beam (and with plenty of shiny surfaces in the cockpit, there's a lot of chances for that) can momentarily blind him or at least impair his vision considerably in a critical moment and so on. Still, a lot of freaky things have to happen at once to make it dangerous. A laser has to hit the cockpit in just the "right" way at just the "right" time with a hint of pilot error mixed in for good measure.
As this example shows, the hazard is actually pretty small. Negligible, even. Still, it's a hazard that is very easily and without any serious infraction to your liberties avoided. You don't have to go out of your way or are inconvenienced in any way by not pointing your laser at a plane. Personally, I'd consider it part of common courtesy not to do it, I mean, I would consider it kinda irritating or invasive, maybe even threatening, if someone pointed a laser at me, so it's kinda likely other people feel the same way, so why should I point a laser at a target I do not want to irritate, annoy or even threaten (unless said target first agreed that I may do it, for you nitpickers)?
But as I had to learn, common courtesy is a bit like common sense. Not very common actually.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You'd likely find an "Emergency Powers" clause which allow the President (or whatever he's called) to rule by decree. It only takes one clause like that to make a complete mockery of the rest of the constitution.
I have a 200mW green laser. It is strong enough to be seen on a clear night, up to some 10km away.
If I use it during rain or fog it is seem as a very strong light cylinder.
Is that not the textbook definition of a coup d'etat?
Just because a government is democratically elected doesn't mean it's a democracy. History is full of democratically elected governments that then turn into totalitarian regimes.
If Obama woke up tomorrow and ordered that all Tea Party members be arrested, I would expect our military to essentially remove him from office - in the immediate case by ignoring him, and in the longer case by Congress impeaching him and removing him from office - which would still require the cooperation of the military (they'd have to decide to listen to Congress and not the President.)
In Egypt, there isn't really a constitutional mechanism to get rid of a leader who, while democratically elected, isn't fulfilling his responsibilities as a democratic leader, so the best thing they have is the Army takes care of it.
So while this may technically be a coup in that the elected leader is being removed from office through a non-elective means, it's not necessarily undemocratic, if you believe the elected leader is abusing the freedoms of the people and the coup is to create the opportunity for someone who does respect the rights of the people to be elected.
paintball
If the military don't behave now that they're in power again,
the Egyptians will get
http://www.wickedlasers.com/arctic .. and do actual damage ..
-f
I saw them being used at a rally in Rio the day before as well.
A week ago in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt I have not seen a single plane preparing for landing or just taking off that was not hit by one or (usually) more laser pointers. Basically anything that flies or moves or might be remotely interesting is a target. If you are on a boat at the end of the day/early evening, better wear some serious eye protection as you/your boat will be a target. If a group of women gets into a taxi and are spotted they are covered in green laser light. They are sold everywhere, models with way too much power are more rule than exception and they are very popular both with Egyptians and the bottom-feeder all-inclusive crowd which in Sharm is mostly Russian, Polish and Italian.
Night vision goggles are extremely sensitive to light, If the laser hits the goggles directly, the shooter might be blinded for quite some time.
I think they become stupid. It's a group dynamic thing. Take a reasonable person, put him in a group with those he subconsciously recognises as his 'tribe,' give them a cause to celebrate. Everyone bases their standards of behavior on everyone else in the group, so the apparent stupidity escalates rapidly.
It's one of the big errors that scifi movies have with lasers in space combat (the other error being that laser pulses move slow enough to be seen). even with insanely powerful lasers, they'd be practically invisible in space because there's nothing for them to reflect off. Unless, of course, you want to pretend that all laser space battles take place in dust or gas clouds...
Thus the use of sandcasters in the Traveller RPG. Basically dump bags of sand into space around your ship to absorb/reflect any laser weapons.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
No, that's what the sharks are for.
Space is full of dust on an astronomic scale. On a scale relative to humans, it's a void. When projecting a narrow beam of light through space, the odds of it hitting enough dust to give a visible reflection to an observer is pretty small. The average density of space* is around one atom per cubic centimer. That means you would have to project a laser with a 1cm diameter about three million kilometers before it interacted with enough atoms to constitute a single single spec of dust. That's nearly eight times the distance of the Earth to the moon.
Of course, it might hit high density dust pockets, but those are fairly far about and would just be seen as a few glimmers of light between the projector and the target, certainly not enough to make any sort of line as projected in Science Fiction.
* http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/DaWeiCai.shtml
While rare, ejection seats for helicopters aren't entirely unheard of. I'm too lazy to look it up but IIRC there are some Russian helicopters that have them. I believe the most common design is rocket powered and launches the pilot out sideways and away from the aircraft.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
It's one of the big errors that scifi movies have with lasers in space combat (the other error being that laser pulses move slow enough to be seen). even with insanely powerful lasers, they'd be practically invisible in space because there's nothing for them to reflect off. Unless, of course, you want to pretend that all laser space battles take place in dust or gas clouds...
Thus the use of sandcasters in the Traveller RPG. Basically dump bags of sand into space around your ship to absorb/reflect any laser weapons.
And lots of other SciFi, such as the Earth Strike series by Ian Douglas (a pseudonym of ex-Navy W.H. Keith). Too bad for Hollywood, which requires an unthinking and/or ignorant audience, or somehow equates SciFi with unscientific Fantasy.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
It is possible with the protests and huge crowd, that there is a higher than normal amount of dust in the air. This is a dry and dusty climate.
The truth shall set you free!
Only those that don't comply with labeling requirements and certain safety features are illegal (whether import or domestic production). Anything that complies is legal, regardless of power output.
The illegal imports are lasers sold for pointing purposes. Those are restricted to =5mW.
It's one of the big errors that scifi movies have with lasers in space combat (the other error being that laser pulses move slow enough to be seen
But combine those two errors, and we have a bit less of an error - Simply one of nomenclature rather than physics.
Pulses of light like we see in the movies would would more likely come from some sort of particle beam. It would travel slower than the speed of light, and most likely radiate energy during its trip (thus making it visible from the side).
Of course, I don't particularly expect that Hollywood grasps either point, they just like cool glowy weapons that also happen to make noise.
So, like choosing between Lieberals and Cons in Canada?
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
I'm guessing you've never seen Shrek II...
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Enough energy to vapourize a ship would have enough energy to create particle/anti-particle pairs all along its length. The creation/annihilation of these particles would give off radiation in all directions.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
+1 for the Traveller reference. Brings back memories.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
Yet these helicopters that were targeted at lenght by a few dozen to a few hundred laser pointers continually for several hours did not drop from the sky. The pilots were not blinded, they returned safely to their landing spot. Only thing that happened is that the surveillance camera's where less effective.
I'm thinking laser pointers aren't such a problem after all.
I wasn't an English major. It's why I have a job now.
I am sorry but you are plain wrong! "Enough energy to vapourize a ship" can be achieved with an infrared laser (photons of energy below 1 eV). Even if you allow for multiphoton interactions it is orders of magnitude below the threshold for the pair creation (1.02 MeV for electron-positron) . There aro no lasers that produce photons in MeV range. Also, the annihilation of electron and positron, which is the lowest energy particle-antiparticle anihilation, produces gama photons ~.51 MeV which are quite invisible to humans.
Only if you ignore the primaries. Which, of course, nearly everyone does.
Kind of like how here on slashdot, how everyone ignores slashdot's polite requests to participate in firehose (IE decide which stories get posted and which ones don't) and then bitches and whines about editors posting bad stories.
Just to expand on this, the vacuum of space can be several magnitudes better than the best vacuum you can produce on earth. How visible is your laser when it shines through a vacuum tube envelope?
Even a nebula has a better vacuum than we can easily produce.
Did you mean the primaries that also use first past the post voting?
It is turtles all the way down.
Well, if you actually want to blind someone, you aim it properly and use it in a pulsed mode. Much lesser chance of hitting something you didn't intend to. But of course, the "enraged crowd" part is kind of at odds with playing nice.
Ezekiel 23:20
As this example shows, the hazard is actually pretty small. Negligible, even. Still, it's a hazard that is very easily and without any serious infraction to your liberties avoided. You don't have to go out of your way or are inconvenienced in any way by not pointing your laser at a plane. Personally, I'd consider it part of common courtesy not to do it, I mean, I would consider it kinda irritating or invasive, maybe even threatening, if someone pointed a laser at me, so it's kinda likely other people feel the same way, so why should I point a laser at a target I do not want to irritate, annoy or even threaten (unless said target first agreed that I may do it, for you nitpickers)?
But as I had to learn, common courtesy is a bit like common sense. Not very common actually.
And that's the problem - common sense goes out the window when faced with a opportunity to use the law against others. Pilots are told to report laser light even when it's nowhere near their planes. The hobby astronomer who points out stars with his laser pointer becomes the target, not the plane. Valid uses suffer because of potentially invalid uses.
My telescope can be used to start a fire too - why not arrest me as an arsonist in potentia while at it?
Not to mention how it could be used to look at children!
In my opinion, the laws are created the wrong way around. Instead of targeting laser pointers, make willful interference with operations of vessels a crime, with the punishment varying based on the interference and possible effect of it. I.e. a civil law approach, where the law can be interpreted based on the actual circumstances and common sense, not applying one situation to other unrelated situations because of ill fitting precedents and language having no leeway.
You win the Appropriate User Name Award. :-)
(Are there really no conceivable qualitatively different effects that an extremely dense EM field could cause? A thought experiment: Given a sufficiently large number of short-impulse lasers, wouldn't it be possible to send out a bunch of light impulses in such a manner that the converging bursts of photons would create a tiny black hole by virtue of their sheer mass, said black hole generating particles with energy much higher than the any of the original photons ever had?)
Ezekiel 23:20
America has problems with its 'democracy', quite horrifying - especially as it claims to be the leader of the 'free' world!
Both China & America spy extensively on their own citizens and practice censorship, although the American forms are normally more subtle - neither is 'free' & 'democratic'. Possible the Americans are more hypocritical?
I thought some sci-fi got around that by saying those beams weren't lasers at all, but instead were plasma or perhaps something altogether different. According to Star Trek canon, for instance, their beams are "phasers" which are actually FTL; in a battle between FTL-capable ships, lasers would be pretty useless after all since the ships could easily outrun the lasers.
That seems like it'd depend on the movie and the kind of technology it posits. For instance, if we're talking about a sci-fi movie with FTL-capable ships, a slower-than-light weapon would be mostly useless; it'd be like trying to use a sword or other non-thrown weapon against someone in a car: you'd only be able to get a good hit on them if they're stuck in traffic.
Morsi tried to "declare himself dictator for life after being elected."
Sorry, but citation needed. I've been Googling for this and can't find him guilty of anything above rank incompetence.
If anybody can show me what he did that was so bad other than being a crap leader or vague accusations of being devious and manipulative (of course he is! He's a frikkin' politician!) I'd love to see it.
The most factual account I can find is here where author Esam Al-Amin says:
"The people in Egypt went to the polls at least six times: to vote for a referendum to chart the political way forward (March 2011), to vote for the lower and upper house of parliament (November 2011-January 2012), to elect a civilian president over two rounds (May-June 2012), and to ratify the new constitution (December 2012). Each time the electorate voted for the choice of the Islamist parties to the frustration of the secular and liberal opposition.
"To the discontent of the Islamists, all their gains at the polls were reversed by either the Mubarak-appointed Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) or the military."
I'm really trying not to be a troll but people keep saying that Morsi wanted to become a dictator but I can't find any stories of him doing anything other than breaking election promises. In my country, that's considered pretty normal and no cause for a coup.
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
I don't see anything inherently wrong with first past the post voting. There are disadvantages, sure, but there are also disadvantages to any alternative, such as second choices counting as half votes or something like that. And the options are really limited since a primary must be winner take all: you can't have a candidate as, say 60% Romney and 30% Ron Paul.
I think it would be worth considering switching to a parliamentary system, but changing the constitution to allow for it seems far less likely than voters simply outgrowing stupid partisan politics.
You can get better quality 1W lasers for much less from other vendors. Wicked Lasers products are quite cheaply made, tons of complaints about them being out of spec and breaking after minutes of use.
If the pilots were wearing night-vision goggles the combination of the goggles having peak sensitivity in the red or near IR and the automatic gain circuits, green or blue lasers would be reduced to minor annoyance rahter than a hazzard.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
What, you mean like the blasters in Star Wars? Those aren't laser pulses, they're charged particles. They travel at a fairly slow speed.
It's one of those laws where, sure, 98% of the time nothing bad will happen if you do it. But that last little bit of a time, something *really* bad could happen. So it's a felony.
Frankly, in the list of crazy things in the US that are considered felonies I think this is one that should stay on the list. Aiming a laser at a plane puts hundreds of peoples lives at risk. It is criminal negligence at the very least, and attempted murder at worst.
IMO crimes should be judged on intent, not results (yes, I realize this isn't how it is usually done). Somebody who attempts to kill somebody but fails is a FAR greater danger to society than somebody who does something that most would consider perfectly safe and yet accidentally kills somebody. Negligence is obviously a lesser crime than malice, but it should still be punished, especially when it could cause loss of life.
Even with FTL ships, you’d have to be able to spin up the engines and get to c+ between when the laser is fired and when it reaches you. The only ship I can think of capable of that would be the Heart Of Gold, and that drive has potential side effects a lot more significant than getting hit by a laser beam.
Got any studies, statistics to back up your assertions? Didn't think so.
What, we can't pass judgement on whether it is a good idea to let kids play with nuclear warheads until a statistically significant number of cities have been vaporized?
Just staring at a bright light causes loss of night vision which makes flying more hazardous (there aren't exactly street lights in the sky). A laser pointer can actually cause permanent vision damage. Firing lasers at eyes is even a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
You don't remember back in November, when Morsi granted himself unlimited legislative power with no oversight?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Egyptian_protests
Thanks - I knew they had 'em but I thought they blew 'em sideways. I think I'd rather go sideways actually - or maybe in a capsule type of deal.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Hmm... I knew they had 'em but thought they went sideways. I'm not so thrilled about the idea of going up through the rotors but I'm sure they've mastered it. I wonder why it is nor more common?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I did not know they had a good glide rate but I had watched a few documentaries over the years that showed some different models that had ejection methods for helicopters. I guess gliding makes sense as it takes time for the rotors to spin down.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Well... it sounded good until someone started clouding the issue with facts. :-)
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
People bring up the Lincoln thing all the time (usually it's some bitter old southern racist who still hates Republicans for their "war of aggression" against his slave-owning grandpappy and who is angry the rest of the Democrats have moved-on...) but Lincoln was in an utterly unique situation (for the U.S.) which was that half the country, including parts of the military, had broken-off to form their own country over their demand that they had the right to own, and treat like cattle, another chunk of the population. At that moment in time, with even many families split by the war and brothers fighting against brothers, Lincoln was in a place never contemplated by the Constitution. if Half of America was currently Muslim-Brotherhood-aligned, blowing-up buildings and bridges, openly fighting the US military in cities around the country with hundreds of thousands of dead people and the US Military actually losing some of the battles, not many sane people would criticize a President for taking Lincoln-style actions. The criticisms of Bush43 and Obama is that they have undertaken many actions more severe than Lincoln did but without facing a threat anywhere near what Lincoln faced.
Lincoln was a good man, and his cause was entirely just. The founders of the nation tolerated slavery in the south as part of forming the union to fight for independence from King George... but they wrote at the time that they expected slavery to come to a natural end on its own. By 1860, however, it was quite clear that the Democrats were never going to give-up on owning black people and indeed they were demanding that new states added to the union be slave states. When Lincoln was elected, running as an opponent to slavery, the Democrats went crazy and split the nation over the fear he would free their slaves. They were dirtbags who deserved to lose the war. I hate sugar-coating. I'm sure some Democrat, unable to handle the truth, will flag this as a troll post... but it is a provable, well-documented FACT that no Republican ever owned a slave and nearly every slave owner was a Democrat. Indeed, after the war, it was Democrats who formed the KKK and one of the groups the KKK targeted for violence was Republicans (these too are documented FACTS.... as is this: Many Democrats currently sitting in the US Senate have knowingly cast at least one vote to have as their party Senate leader an actual Klan member (the Late Dem. Sen. Robert Byrd)).
http://what-if.xkcd.com/13/
"You don't remember back in November, when Morsi granted himself unlimited legislative power with no oversight?"
Yes, I do and I also remember (from the link you yourself posted) that "On 9 December, Confusion and disarray pervaded the ranks of Egypt's opposition after Morsi rescinded his November 22 constitutional declaration a day earlier."
So, he revoked the powers he had granted himself less than three weeks later. As I understand it, he gave himself these powers to protect the writing of the constitution that was later put to the people in a referendum. It was the opposition who were against letting the people decide on the constitution:
"Opposition leaders also called for more protests after Morsi refused to cancel the constitutional referendum in the wake of the declaration's annulment." (from your article).
The people from whom he was protecting the constitution were the unelected judges who were appointed during the reign of the previous dictator, Mubarak.
I'm not saying Morsi is a saint (he isn't). But the American media is making him out to be a bogey man because he is affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood (who happen to be the party who won power in what is regarded as a free and fair election). And nobody in the American media is calling BS on the Obama administration for refusing to recognise this as a military coup. If they call it a military coup, by law they can no longer pay the people who overthrew Morsi $1.3 billion a year. Don't you find that just a little odd?
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
Well, I think that may be correct, but that may also be a biased view. One provision in the constitution bases the law on Islamist views. Considering he used his power to prevent the constitution from being altered, and he's a part of a strong Islamist group, many in the opposition were kept from attempting to prevent the Egyptian government from being inherently based in Islamist views. His group also added more to the constitution, mentioning Sharia law, during that time period.
What's so surprising about an Islamic country having an Islamic constitution? Most Christian countries have Christian principles enshrined in their laws too. The monarch of the UK for instance is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
"Considering he used his power to prevent the constitution from being altered..."
If the people didn't like the constitution as Morsi's team wrote it, they had the chance to reject it in the referendum of December 2012. They didn't. They voted for it by a majority of 64%.
"...and he's a part of a strong Islamist group"
You mean the coalition that won a fair election?
Obviously, I've not read all the former Egyptian Constitution but it does have this proviso in it:
"Citizens are equal before the law and are equal in general rights and duties without discrimination between them based on gender, origin, language, religion, belief, opinion, social status or disability."
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Egypt
That doesn't sound that terrifying to me. Now, compare that to Egypt's neighbour, Saudi Arabia, where women are not even allowed to drive and I, as a non-Muslim, do not have the same rights in court as a Muslim. Yet, I don't see us supporting a coup there...
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
I work with lasers daily and trust me, those laser are NOT anywhere near 1mW. From the pictures, they look like >100mW. There is even a bluray laser!
Those people, specially the reporters, are getting irreversible long-term eye damage, there is no doubt of it.
The monarch of the UK also has almost no power in the government besides the natural sway from being connected. Just the ability to veto legislation, AFAIK, a power that hasn't been used in quite a while.
You can always say that religion isn't a factor, then say that religion is the basis for your laws. That doesn't mean that your laws are going to be nondiscriminatory by nature. On the contrary, by claiming the Quran as a basis for the laws of your country, you're inherently going to bias them towards Muslims.
In fact, the guarantee given by the Egyptian constitution is only applicable to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Here's a direct translation: link. Specifically, see article 43, where it states:
The state guarantees the right to practice one’s religious rites and establish places of worship for the heavenly religions. Details are specified by law.
Those "heavenly religions" are only the 3 Abrahamic religions, and nothing more, as those are the religions that the Quran, unsurprisingly, describes as the heavenly religions. In addition, it describes the details as being set in law, which means they're completely subject to change at any time, not an absolute right as we would consider it.
As for the issue of the legitimacy of the constitution itself, the High Constitutional Court ruled it was illegitimate before the coup, but after this wave of demonstrations was already taking place. However, Morsi's move to hold unlimited authority over the law was in response to the possibility of the courts making such a ruling and preventing the constitution from being finalized in the first place. The groups that did not like the constitution and filed those lawsuits? Largely the non-Islamist sects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constituent_Assembly_of_Egypt
I don't believe 33% is a reasonable number to have voted on it, either - if you're able to assemble the largest protests in recorded history at over 16% of the population, and a whopping 26% signed a petition for Morsi to resign, you'd think more than 1/3rd of the population would show up to vote on the constitution. Maybe was a type of protest in not voting, maybe it was coerced voting/nonvoting, maybe it was an unusually high turnout from the Islamist supporters. Honestly, who really knows without being there (because I sure as hell wasn't), but the actual number seems unrealistically low given the unusually high level of involvement of Egyptians in their government right now. I'd expect it to be higher than average US presidential election turnout given the situation.
What I'm saying is that there's a lot at play on both sides, and it seems like a substantial number of people were upset with what was being drafted. Also, this isn't even touching on his group's total ineptitude at actual governance, and likely-to-exist corrupt practices, just the umbrella issue of the constitution.
Why not? Have the Romney-Paul Corporation. Corporations are people too, so they should be able to run for office.
"The monarch of the UK also has almost no power in the government ... Just the ability to veto legislation..."
Am I missing something? That's a huge amount of power. You don't have to use the power. The fact that you have the power will stop people putting forward legislation that they know you will veto.
(It's interesting to note that officially the UK's form of government is not a democracy but a "unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy". The difference is important to lawyers if not citizens.)
"[B]y claiming the Quran as a basis for the laws of your country, you're inherently going to bias them towards Muslims."
That would be directly contrary to the Constitution (as quoted in my previous post).
Also, I don't see non-Christians being discriminated against in Western countries whose constitutions are clearly based on Christian values.
Good point about the "the 3 Abrahamic religions" being covered in the Constitution, though.
"In addition, it describes the details as being set in law, which means they're completely subject to change at any time, not an absolute right as we would consider it."
How do you make something an absolute right? You can't. Putting it in the Constitution (which declares your legal modus operandus) is the best way but even that is subject to change. The American constitution has had 27 amendments, most recently in 1992.
"As for the issue of the legitimacy of the constitution itself, the High Constitutional Court ruled it was illegitimate..."
So, unelected judges mostly appointed during a dictator's 30 year reign trump the will of the people?
"I don't believe 33% is a reasonable number to have voted on it..."
With respect, it doesn't matter what you think. The majority of people who voted were in favour of it. That's all that counts in a democracy.
If you claim there was systematic coercion, then please present some evidence and an explanation why nobody thought this was worth reporting. Otherwise, this is speculation and not relevant to the discussion.
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
> if we're talking about a sci-fi movie with FTL-capable ships, a slower-than-light weapon would be
> mostly useless
Would it? I think you make some assumptions about FTL drives to say that. Look at Star Trek, yes they had FTL via the warp drive, but, they couldn't do much other than communicate while at warp. In fact, I can think of only one time, off the top of my head, where warp was used during an engagement, in a manuever that involved firing, warping to a second location and then firing again: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Picard_Maneuver
Which tends to indicate that the weapons systems are only useful outside of the actual warp move.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
What are you talking about? They were at warp speed lots of time in battles in Star Trek. Without warp speed, it'd take minutes to hours just to cross a small distance within a star system, such as the distance between Earth and Mars (roughly 15 light-minutes IIRC).
Since you're going to refer to memory-alpha.org, maybe you should read the phasers article there. Here's an important excerpt; see the second sentence in particular. Apparently, ST didn't handle this whole topic with the greatest consistency.
I think the point is that even if you were detonating gigaton warheads you wouldn't hear a thing through the vacuum of space. At least not until the particulate blast wave reached your camera a considerable time later, that *might* still be carrying some detectable acoustic energy
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Although atmosphere does reduce the power, it's columnated light and in a vacuum anyway it would not lose any of its power. Dust, fog, humidity in the air will lower the power, but also cause you to be able to see the beam in the air. If you can't see the beam of a laser, it's likely delivering very close to 100% of its output power on target.
Years ago, when laser pointers were expensive, I had a 5mw red laser that we tested at 1/4 mile. It lit up an entire dumpster very nicely. (lenses weren't that good back then, it wouldn't hold a point for more than 25 feet or so, and TONS of scatter)
But on the other issue of power, just because it's a laser doesn't make it any more destructive than something else of the same power. A 100w lightbulb puts out 100x the power of a 1w laser pointer. And you don't see lightbulbs catching helicopters on fire. (even if focused in a spotlight) The only reason 1w lasers catch paper on fire is they're concentrating 1w of power into a 2mm x 2mm area. That would probably feel like a match at 1/2", enough to light paper. That's not going to melt metal obviously, at any range. The laser just lets you project that "half inch from a match" out several hundred yards. It doesn't make it more (or less) intense.
Somewhat back on topic though... wow.... that flight had to SUCK for those helicopter pilots. Someone hits one 727 with a laser pointer and the whole city loses their mind and the swat team rolls. That heli looks like it had 3-4 dozen green and at least two blue pointed at it. They would have to be out of their minds to look down except through cameras, and imagine the refractions going on inside the cockpit, with greens and blues scattering off all the shiny things. I bet that is an incredibly effective deterrent for the pilots.
Ironic, they sent in the helicopters as a show of force, and got driven off by the demonstrators using cheap, commonly available tech. Sort of like making the water canon truck leave by throwing rocks at it. Embarrassing.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
The legal limit for a class ///a laser pointer is 5mw iirc. And most laser pointers nowadays are pretty close to that. 10 years ago you could get a 2 or 3mw laser, and you'd pay more (as in... $150 rather than $75) for a 5mw pointer. (I have two from back then, one red, and one green, that one was awesome at the time) So I would be amazed if you could find anyone selling a ///a pointer NOT advertised as 5mw. (or "less than 5mw", meaning that's the legal limit we are trying to stay under)
There are other issues also, including wavelength. The first publicly available handheld reds were near infra-red. They may have done 5mw, but the human eye had very poor sensitivity at their nm, so it was borderline false-advertising. My good red one was deep into visible red and was around 10x as visibly bright as commonly available 5mw reds due to wavelength change. My green is only 3mw but is almost blinding by comparison with my red on a wall because of how sensitive the eye is to green compared to red.
Lots of good info on Wikipedia for laser pointers.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I think the point is, why would anyone stand around long enough to let a dangerous sub-light weapon reach them? You see it fire and you get yourself elsewhere any time before it reaches you. Of course even without FTL and at orbital distances you have a similar problem - if you can see the weapon approaching just get out of the way. The only semi-plausible explanation I can think of is that initiating FTL jump/warp/etc requires a warm up period which exceeds the weapon flight time, and/or which renders the ship particularly vulnerable. Maybe the enemies targetting lasers
As for Star Trek, I remember several warp-speed engagements, starting I think with the very first episode of the original series. Though it's usually either focused blasts to knock out a fleeing ship's engines, or some godlike entity or other toying with the Enterprise. I do think I remember a line somewhere about there never having been an all-out battle at warp speed that didn't go badly for everyone involved, but I might just be mis-remembering a line from Babylon 5 and the volatility of hyperspace.
Of course if we want to heckle about science in SF, there's always the fact that if special relativity is correct then pretty much *any* form of FTL is also a time machine that would enable no end of meddling with the past...
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Interestingly enough, the crowd on Tahrir square was actually cheering the military on. Every time the helicopters showed up it was cause for celebration. The crowd likely had no idea that they were annoying the pilots.
So? You can also by a fair quantity of your illegal drug of choice right now from that guy on the corner. And almost every online purchase you ever made was illegal (or did you calculate and pay the appropriate local sales tax as required by law?)
"Illegal" and "difficult to procure" are largely independent concepts, in fact doing/getting something legally is often far more difficult, and there is often no attempt made to enforce the law when you choose to break it. It's actually very convenient for aspiring dictators when the entire population is guilty of regularly breaking laws that are never enforced - you can then selectively persecute any troublemakers on impeccably legal grounds.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Why bother with a reflective coating? Just leave the lens cap on for the exact same effect.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
It seems like most people on both sides of the aisle are pretty disgusted with the options we're being offered. So how about for the next presidential election cycle we work to mobilize the majority of the population that doesn't vote at all. Ideally get them to vote for only third party candidates, at least as the default for every office they don't have strong feelings about the candidates for. Get enough disillusioned votes circulating and third party candidates will have a real chance. Sure, the immediate results would probably be a congress full of a bunch of nut-jobs and extremists who can't cooperate enough to get anything done, but is that really worse than a bunch of jaded career politicians beholden to unelected powers that want to screw us all over?
And once we prove it's possible we can at least realistically hope to get some decent un-beholden candidates in the next election cycle. If nothing else I'm betting several third parties would cross the threshold to qualify for federal campaign funds, and congress would be sufficiently dysfunctional to keep the goal-post from being moved.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Although atmosphere does reduce the power, it's columnated light and in a vacuum anyway it would not lose any of its power.
That's a common misconception. There's no such thing as a perfectly non-diverging beam. Even with perfect optics, your beam divergence is limited by wavelength and beam diameter -- if you make your beam wider, you can make it diverge less, but then of course it's less useful for burning things.
You can certainly make a laser that will burn things at a great distance, but that's generally done by dumping kilowatts into a few square centimeters, or megawatts into a square meter or so. I think it's unlikely that you'll ever see a self-contained, pointer-sized laser that will damage steel at hundreds of feet -- you'd need kilowatts coming out of a handheld battery. *I* certainly wouldn't want to be holding the thing.
Better report yourself as a rapist. As a man, you have every tool necessary to commit the crime.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I am not aware of a single missile guidance system that uses visible light to laser paint targets...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Knowing my country, the approach would probably be something like this: You'd have to go to your municipality, fill out a form stating that you have a laser and that you won't use it against planes, humans or animals, you get a stack of plane route maps that you have to heed and then they send you off with your laser. If a plane comes down due to laser lights, they know where to look. 'til then, nobody gives a shit. They've given you the lecture, they've given you what you need to be no harm to your surroundings, if you fuck up now it's YOUR fault.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's one of the big errors that scifi movies have with lasers in space combat (the other error being that laser pulses move slow enough to be seen).
Hence why I tend to think of them as plasma bolts. It's just that 'laser' sounds cooler than 'plasma bolt'. That, and people are more familiar with lasers.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
True, but it depends a lot on the quality of the columnating lens. The two very old handhelds I have here are using first gen plastic lenses. The green one starts at about 1.5mm x 1.5mm, the red one is an oddie, with a starter abut 1mm x 7mm. The red one basically coat a dumpster at 1/2 mile, it's older. And at that distance the newer green is a "dot" between basketball and beachball size, and has the entire dumpster and area immediately around it covered in scatter.
You don't notice this effect when firing the green one up in the air, it looks like a thin straight line all the way up to the clouds. It's of course getting bigger but as it gets farther away, so you don't notice unless it hits something a ways away but that's still reasonably close.
And at those distances, the scatter (I forget the technical term) is horrendous. I don't know if that's the lens or the laser. I assume impurities in the lens. Puts a green or red cloud of speckles all around the "dot".
When you're talking about lazing helicopter hovering over a crowd though, you're still going to get a dot less than a quarter inch wide. But a watt or two of power on that much surface area really doesn't do much unless it catches someone in the eye. Except for the eyes, it's as harmless as a flashlight.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
These are critical problems with first past the post voting that many other simple systems lack:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling's_law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law
I have every expectation that short of violent revolution, the situation will not change and I act accordingly. We get the government we deserve.
JMS addressed this in Babylon 5, after consulting experts he wanted to have some sounds in space, because the atmosphere of the ships was sufficient to carry the sound. Apparently.
I don't know how plausible that is, but I thought it was interesting.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Not entirely true. A 100w lightbulb has an efficiency of around 2.5% for incandescent or 7-10 % for CFL while laser diodes are in the 25-50+% range. So 100w of electrical energy will give you ~an order of magnitude more light from a laser diode. You can definitely set something on fire with light from a 100w bulb (thermal conduction is easier though - ha!) There is, of course, the technical difficulty of focusing that on a distant target which is far simpler with the collimated light from a laser pointer.
No realistic number of hand-held laser pointers are going to melt, soften, or physically damage an aircraft at even a fairly short distance. Today. (though some POC will eventually take ~100,000 of them calibrated to aim at an exact point just to get their 15 seconds of fame) As power and efficiency grows though, this becomes a serious concern. Cameras on aircraft face similar problems to eyes though - they focus the light down on a small sensor which is easily overloaded too. Optics and filters can help, but the more light you filter out the harder it is to see.
Looking at the evolution from 1mW systems costing $100s-$1000s+ to becoming dollar store throw-aways...and 1W systems being reasonably priced and about the size of a maglite things will get interesting. You can already buy a laser that will permanently blind someone fairly easily. Sure, doing so is universally illegal (geneva conventions) but that's not exactly a concern during riots and rebellion. Once could conceivably build a weapon capable of blinding someone from more than a mile away - at the extreme edge of sniper range and beyond. Well beyond the immediate security cordon typically given to VIPs. As optics and consumer stabilizers/tracking systems (think DSLR and lenses) continue to advance things get even more interesting.
The light itself is plenty dangerous though. Even unfocused, it's temporarily blinding or extremely disorienting. I'm sure good old 'murica will start cracking down hardcore at some point.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.