A fence, or wall. Step about 15 or 20 feet away from the wall, pick up the hard drive, and THROW the hard drive at the fence/wall Hard. Throwing the disk drive down from a 2nd floor balcony also works (make sure there is nobody down there before throwing); repeat two additional times.
The basic notion is this will subject the disk drive to forces that will damage the very sensitive mechnical servo mechanisms, and the heads on the drives.
Next, grab a hammer and a chisel. Wear face protection. Find a portion of the disk drive that is plastic, use the chisel and hammer to cut through the plastic a bit, until the seal is broken.
Get
A tub full of brackish muddy water with some salt and some citric acid.
You know... put enough water in a tub to fully immerse the target drives, drop the hard drives into the muddy water.
The destruction is almost immediate... but for good measure, soak them a few days.
If you're feeling really diabolical, run an electrical current through the water.
Or why you should never buy a GPS system made by IBM.
IBM doesn't usually sell GPS navigation software directly to consumers;
instead what will happen is other companies OEM IBM's software in their
consumer products, and people will have the software without ever knowing
that their shiny new nav unit is actually a piece of hardware running an application written by IBM.
OF course.... the days of shiny new nav units are numbered, as Smart phones
such as Android/iPhone, are obsoleting dedicated nav devices by having
apps that perform the function.
To mine publicly available information that cannot be considered "private" due to it being published?
And present that information in a bundle to a paying customer based on search criteria....
Essential open source Windows admin tool No. 15: VirtualBox
No. In this case the open source tools are weak; VirtualBox is cool, but in my experience not so stable all the time. Use VMware Workstation or VMware Server or ESXi/Hyper-V/XenServer as appropriate for important admin work.
Essential open source Windows admin tool No. 14: Virtual Router
Hell no... Can anyone spell "pwn m3"?
Essential open source Windows admin tool No. 13: ClamWin Antivirus... does not come with an on-access real-time scanner... Although it may not work as well as a commercial real-time option for virus scanning,
Are they fsck'in insane?
Windows admins have good security tools available that actually work... why the heck would we want to trade them for a tool with lower up-front cost but higher cost of ownership in the form of more frequently having systems get infected needing to get rebuild, and all those resulting headaches?
Periodic scanning is essential in a security strategy, but should not be the first line of defense, because it's slow to respond -- scans take along time.
The use of real-time tools is practically mandatory in a reasonable end point security strategy.
Having a machine able to infected with no real-time detection mechanisms 12 to 18 hours before the next scheduled scan is a really really bad idea.
I thought CERN was all about science. What's this about building bridges?
Building bridges facilitates Science by providing more sources of $$$.
CERN is about science, but even Newton had to eat.
I'm a bit taken aback that they've allowed a non-European country to join, but the
United States is still relegated to "Observer status" (E.g. 'Source of $$$, but not allowed to participate or become a full member')
If this statement can be shown to be false, then you have just committed perjury.
They probably won't enforce it
What should happen instead, is congress should pass a law, and set a very steep fine.
Require a proof of creditworthiness and ability to pay the fine to obtain the patent.
The patent office should be allowed to make a finding, charge the penalty, and receive the proceeds,
if anyone's found patenting something there is prior art for, before or after issuance of the patent.
There should be a significant cash reward to anyone proving a patent is invalidated by prior art.
With some fine charged for any validation, but a much larger fine charged if it can be shown
the applicant new or should have known about the prior art.
E.g. $5000 penalty for an unintentional application for patent on something there's prior art for,
$20,000 or 10% of applicant and sponsor's net worth or annual cash received/gross sales (whichever is greater) in case of prior art where applicant demonstrably KNEW or could have known was prior art and failed to prove due dilligence and exhaustiveness in their search.
This is anticompetitive, it ensures no one else can use these patents as an advantage against intel.
No, it ensures noone can use those patents against anyone else.....
No law prohibits a company from being anticompetitive in the form of disallowing another company from stealing the legal rights to their own investment, to enable the 'competitor' to put the company who made the original investment at a disadvantage, by having rights to research the original company funded.
Intel could have specified that Intel would own any legal intellectual property rights of researchers, therefore Intel would have any patents -- funders of university research do that all the time.
What Intel is doing is pro competitive, since it means Intel won't have the patents to hold over would-be competitors heads.
Given that Universities are for the most part funded by government and other public funding sources one could make the case that they should ALL operate this way. Universities are the last entity that should be locking up ideas with patents.
What should happen is the creator/inventor should have a right to any patents as a success incentive, and whoever supplies funding should be entitled to the rest, and name their terms as Intel is doing; universities already get plenty of money for hosting the research, they should definitely be paid their costs but they get that -- who thinks any significant portion of the $2.5 million goes directly to the use of researchers anyways?
NOPE. It goes to the university, and the researcher gets the use of research budget which is a limited percentage of that, the rest of it goes to pay for 'facilities' and 'administrative costs' of the university.
Every resource of the university's the researcher uses also gets charged from the budget -- for example, "lab hours", "hours of computing on the time sharing system", "megabytes of data transferred over the university's T1", etc, all those activities create artificial fees the prof has to pay, at exorbitant rates also, hello $1000/hour to use a small lab.... and you thought cell phones were expensive. The phrase "Hollywood Accounting" comes to mind
The research budget isn't an incentive or reward for research, and the researcher gets paid nothing -- unless they're an employee, then they might receive a salary; still, it's not really fair compensation given the value of their work.
So yes, I'm saying the average University is the bad guy in this situation.
That's missing Windows 2000, which wasn't exactly a "skip" release.
Windows 2000 was a server release, in the same vein as Windows NT.
If you wanted to include 2000 you would need to include the NT releases in between as well.
Windows 1.0
Windows 2.0
Windows 2.1
Windows 2.11
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1 Windows for Workgroups 3.1 Windows NT 3.1
Windows 3.11
Windows for Workgroups 3.11
Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 3.51
Windows 95
Windows NT 4.0
Windows 98 Windows 98 SE NT 5.0/Windows 2000
Windows ME Windows 2000 Advanced Server NT 5.1/Windows XP
Windows XP Media Center
NT 5.2/(Windows XP 64-bit) NT 5.2/Windows Server 2003 NT 5.2/Windows Server 2003 R2
NT 5.2/Windows Home Server NT 6.0/Vista Business
NT 6.0/Windows Vista Home
NT 6.0/Windows Server 2008 NT 6.1/Windows 7 Windows Server 2008 R2
Windows Home Server 2011
Every time a Linux distro comes out it doesn't cost three digits to upgrade
Doesn't cost 3 digits for the upgrade on Windows either... at least not if you're subscribed to Software assurance.
It just costs a bit every year for the subscription.
DMCA. Repeat after me, DMCA. The fact arcade games are in proprietary ROMs or even soldered to the mobo, you removing them to "archive" or medium shift, it illegal in the US
Compilations consisting of lists of Internet locations blocked by commercially marketed filtering software [...]
Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete. [...]
Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.
Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling of the ebook's read-aloud function and that prevent the enabling of screen readers to render the text into a specialized format.
If you legitimately own a copy on some medium, medium-shifting to another one is legal, just like you can rip your own music CDs to mp3s.
Yes... but is it legal to buy the CD and then download the MP3 version of the same thing from someone else who doesn't have a right to upload that MP3 to you?
Seems like buying a legitimate copy of the media and then obtaining the ROM from someone not authorized to give it to you would be similar. Unless you are going to, er, try and dump the rom yourself from your own media....
I'm sure that soon enough there will be a "Turnitin Plus" or similarly named more-expensive version of the TurnItin product
that includes "Matching of material used with WriteCheck", and attempts to inform the teacher about their students' use of WriteCheck, particularly if they submitted the paper to write check, and previous revisions were showing as flagged, it might match against the WriteCheck submissions and inform the professor about possible issues identified in earlier pre-submission versions.
The non-infringing account owner shouldn't be liable in that situation, but is the one who's likely to be named in the lawsuit.
The non-infringing account owner might claim to be protected under the 512(a) DMCA safe harbour, for Transitory digital network communications, due to merely routing packets for the offender.
The 512(a) safe harbour has the great benefit that the 512(c) DMCA letter takedown provision does not apply -- that is there is no kind of DMCA letter to to force a 'service provider' or 'router operator' to block packets, disconnect a user, or provide information, if infringement is reported -- that is, ISPs can ignore DMCA letters, because the 512(a) safe harbour does not have the 512(c) DMCA letters provision like the 512(b) and 512(d) safe harbours do..
Since you cant share ownership of an internet account, someone has to have their name on the paper work. If its you, then its your account and you are liable but also in a position to dictate change. If its him, then its his problem.
--
What if you formed a corporation and opened the account in the corporation's name?:)
It's reasonable to assume the website is logically connected. CAs generally execute their transactions through the website.
Especially for domain validated certs, usually the process of issuing a certificate is entirely automatic -- the customer logs in through the website, requests a certificate either by filling out a form or sending in a CSR. If they fill in a form and the CA generates their private key, the person who compromised the website might be able to steal the customer's private key, when the customer downloads it using the website.
Anyways, some kind of validation e-mail goes out to the domain's administrative contacts for a domain-validated cert.
The last step is the customer clicks on a link in the e-mail, which contains a link to guess what? A page on the CA's website.
So someone who gained illicit access to the website is potentially in a position to snoop on all that traffic, and possibly generate 'false' traffic of that nature some time in the future. Web designers who do some scripting often aren't well versed in software security design -- there's a good chance that scripts on the website have access to backend databases -- possibly sufficient access to create a false customer record or falsify a "domain verification".
Ummm... Your assuming the website is connected, logically or physically, to their CA infrastructure. Fundamentally what you're saying is true, but so is "someone broke a car in their parking lot so they may be able to issue their own certs."
If someone broke into a car in the parking lot, there might be a chance they could lie in wait for the PKI admin who owns the car to get in, so they can put a gun to their head, and force them to login using the perp's Wifi-enabled laptop, grab the private keys and divulge the passphrase to unlock them.
The CA/PKI might not have been invaded yet
A compromise of a website can lead to an intruder gaining further access, however.
Suffice to say... access to a webserver is a foothold that an intruder can attempt to leverage to gain further access.
Depending on how robust the further lines of defenses are, and if any security mistakes were made (such as webservers
allowed through firewalls to some internal hosts or credentials the intruder can capture that can lead to access to systems closer to back office or CA functions).
Even a compromise that doesn't result in immediate PKI access may lead to that, through additional successive breaches, and successive social engineering... also known as "Advanced Persistent Threat" (to use the latest lingo for referring to the situation)
You have to really mark the cost up to cover research and development, tooling costs and the overhead of the office where the guy checks how much correction you need.
You charge for the service of 'checking how much correction' the person needs.
If the sales are so low, that would make the market ripe for consolidation with other device makers.
It's not as if there is much R and D and tooling costs to develop such a simple product, however, seeing as hearing aids have been around so long.
Hearing aids are also not as complicated as cars.
Cars are vastly more complicated, have numerous elaborate mechnical, electronic, software systems, and vastly more materials and investment involved to engineer and construct one.
Hearing aids on the other hand are on an order of complexity similar to common earbuds.
$500 or so per unit would be understandable, given the low volume.
$8,000 is insane.
Handheld lasers are not required to make holograms.
You can utilize mounted lasers with separate external power supply modules
and hard wiring for the hobby of holography.
Not that there are many (any?) people doing holography anymore...
So no one would ever want to use one as part of a hobby?
No one would ever find a use you do not know of?
Their own documentation shows this thing is too powerful to safely be used as a pointer.
There's really no substantive legal use for this thing that has been documented.
If its only uses are "to have fun with" and criminal uses, then there is not much to redeem it there.
There might be some ways to use this as part of a hobby, I suppose.
I wait an explanation of what that is, and why the laser is required to be handheld and easily portable for that use.
Most lasers of this strength are not highly mobile. If the thing didn't have an integrated power supply, or it wasn't otherwise so portable, it would not be such a huge issue.
Being handheld is such a problem, because it means someone could use it to wreak havok from a hiding place, and then get out of the area quickly, evading any consequences or identification of the perpetrator... since its distance is so long, they could probably escape just as easily as if they were wreaking havoc with a long range sniper rifle; a long range sniper rifle that happened to be a full-auto machine gun as well, with an added advantage of making NO noise when in use.
This thing terrifies the hell out of me. And, while my view might not be popular...
I feel the regulators should exercise eminent domain and force wicked lasers to stop selling these 500mW plus units to consumers.
The "warning" just is not good enough. There is a lack of informed consent from the people in public places persons with this laser will go to.
Their own marketing material admits these are too powerful to use as laser pointers at any time, and for god sakes... even capable of damaging satellites in orbit.
Frankly... these are seriously dangerous pieces of equipment.
It seems like the equivalent to a high-powered machine gun is being marketed as if it
was some sort of harmless water gun.
Instead... these lasers should be treated as munitions, such as C4 or high powered machine guns.
Any highly portable device that can cause instant blindness, start fires, and burn flesh, from a substantial distance,
that can be easily moved out quickly, should be subject to at least the most basic of distribution and use controls.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe timelines.com should be suing the owners of timeline.com before they go after Facebook?
A fence, or wall. Step about 15 or 20 feet away from the wall, pick up the hard drive, and THROW the hard drive at the fence/wall Hard. Throwing the disk drive down from a 2nd floor balcony also works (make sure there is nobody down there before throwing); repeat two additional times.
The basic notion is this will subject the disk drive to forces that will damage the very sensitive mechnical servo mechanisms, and the heads on the drives.
Next, grab a hammer and a chisel. Wear face protection. Find a portion of the disk drive that is plastic, use the chisel and hammer to cut through the plastic a bit, until the seal is broken.
Get A tub full of brackish muddy water with some salt and some citric acid.
You know... put enough water in a tub to fully immerse the target drives, drop the hard drives into the muddy water. The destruction is almost immediate... but for good measure, soak them a few days.
If you're feeling really diabolical, run an electrical current through the water.
1, 1 electrons, 2, 2 electrons, 3, 3 electrons, 4, 4 electrons , 5, 5 electrons , 6, 6 electrons, 7, 7 electrons!
Or why you should never buy a GPS system made by IBM.
IBM doesn't usually sell GPS navigation software directly to consumers; instead what will happen is other companies OEM IBM's software in their consumer products, and people will have the software without ever knowing that their shiny new nav unit is actually a piece of hardware running an application written by IBM.
OF course.... the days of shiny new nav units are numbered, as Smart phones such as Android/iPhone, are obsoleting dedicated nav devices by having apps that perform the function.
To mine publicly available information that cannot be considered "private" due to it being published? And present that information in a bundle to a paying customer based on search criteria....
Essential open source Windows admin tool No. 15: VirtualBox
No. In this case the open source tools are weak; VirtualBox is cool, but in my experience not so stable all the time. Use VMware Workstation or VMware Server or ESXi/Hyper-V/XenServer as appropriate for important admin work.
Essential open source Windows admin tool No. 14: Virtual Router
Hell no... Can anyone spell "pwn m3"?
Essential open source Windows admin tool No. 13: ClamWin Antivirus ... does not come with an on-access real-time scanner ... Although it may not work as well as a commercial real-time option for virus scanning,
Are they fsck'in insane?
Windows admins have good security tools available that actually work... why the heck would we want to trade them for a tool with lower up-front cost but higher cost of ownership in the form of more frequently having systems get infected needing to get rebuild, and all those resulting headaches?
Periodic scanning is essential in a security strategy, but should not be the first line of defense, because it's slow to respond -- scans take along time. The use of real-time tools is practically mandatory in a reasonable end point security strategy.
Having a machine able to infected with no real-time detection mechanisms 12 to 18 hours before the next scheduled scan is a really really bad idea.
I thought CERN was all about science. What's this about building bridges?
Building bridges facilitates Science by providing more sources of $$$.
CERN is about science, but even Newton had to eat.
I'm a bit taken aback that they've allowed a non-European country to join, but the United States is still relegated to "Observer status" (E.g. 'Source of $$$, but not allowed to participate or become a full member')
If this statement can be shown to be false, then you have just committed perjury.
They probably won't enforce it
What should happen instead, is congress should pass a law, and set a very steep fine. Require a proof of creditworthiness and ability to pay the fine to obtain the patent.
The patent office should be allowed to make a finding, charge the penalty, and receive the proceeds, if anyone's found patenting something there is prior art for, before or after issuance of the patent.
There should be a significant cash reward to anyone proving a patent is invalidated by prior art.
With some fine charged for any validation, but a much larger fine charged if it can be shown the applicant new or should have known about the prior art.
E.g. $5000 penalty for an unintentional application for patent on something there's prior art for, $20,000 or 10% of applicant and sponsor's net worth or annual cash received/gross sales (whichever is greater) in case of prior art where applicant demonstrably KNEW or could have known was prior art and failed to prove due dilligence and exhaustiveness in their search.
This is anticompetitive, it ensures no one else can use these patents as an advantage against intel.
No, it ensures noone can use those patents against anyone else.....
No law prohibits a company from being anticompetitive in the form of disallowing another company from stealing the legal rights to their own investment, to enable the 'competitor' to put the company who made the original investment at a disadvantage, by having rights to research the original company funded.
Intel could have specified that Intel would own any legal intellectual property rights of researchers, therefore Intel would have any patents -- funders of university research do that all the time. What Intel is doing is pro competitive, since it means Intel won't have the patents to hold over would-be competitors heads.
Given that Universities are for the most part funded by government and other public funding sources one could make the case that they should ALL operate this way. Universities are the last entity that should be locking up ideas with patents.
What should happen is the creator/inventor should have a right to any patents as a success incentive, and whoever supplies funding should be entitled to the rest, and name their terms as Intel is doing; universities already get plenty of money for hosting the research, they should definitely be paid their costs but they get that -- who thinks any significant portion of the $2.5 million goes directly to the use of researchers anyways?
NOPE. It goes to the university, and the researcher gets the use of research budget which is a limited percentage of that, the rest of it goes to pay for 'facilities' and 'administrative costs' of the university. Every resource of the university's the researcher uses also gets charged from the budget -- for example, "lab hours", "hours of computing on the time sharing system", "megabytes of data transferred over the university's T1", etc, all those activities create artificial fees the prof has to pay, at exorbitant rates also, hello $1000/hour to use a small lab.... and you thought cell phones were expensive. The phrase "Hollywood Accounting" comes to mind
The research budget isn't an incentive or reward for research, and the researcher gets paid nothing -- unless they're an employee, then they might receive a salary; still, it's not really fair compensation given the value of their work. So yes, I'm saying the average University is the bad guy in this situation.
That's missing Windows 2000, which wasn't exactly a "skip" release.
Windows 2000 was a server release, in the same vein as Windows NT.
If you wanted to include 2000 you would need to include the NT releases in between as well.
Windows 1.0
Windows 2.0
Windows 2.1
Windows 2.11
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1
Windows for Workgroups 3.1
Windows NT 3.1
Windows 3.11
Windows for Workgroups 3.11
Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 3.51
Windows 95
Windows NT 4.0
Windows 98
Windows 98 SE
NT 5.0/Windows 2000
Windows ME
Windows 2000 Advanced Server
NT 5.1/Windows XP
Windows XP Media Center
NT 5.2/(Windows XP 64-bit)
NT 5.2/Windows Server 2003
NT 5.2/Windows Server 2003 R2
NT 5.2/Windows Home Server
NT 6.0/Vista Business
NT 6.0/Windows Vista Home
NT 6.0/Windows Server 2008
NT 6.1/Windows 7
Windows Server 2008 R2
Windows Home Server 2011
Every time a Linux distro comes out it doesn't cost three digits to upgrade
Doesn't cost 3 digits for the upgrade on Windows either... at least not if you're subscribed to Software assurance. It just costs a bit every year for the subscription.
My organization is on the verge of needing to move our equipment to 10gig soon, because the 1gig network is starting to become a serious bottleneck...
DMCA. Repeat after me, DMCA. The fact arcade games are in proprietary ROMs or even soldered to the mobo, you removing them to "archive" or medium shift, it illegal in the US
Except that an Exception to the DMCA was made:
37 CFR 201.40 Exemption to prohibition against circumvention
If you legitimately own a copy on some medium, medium-shifting to another one is legal, just like you can rip your own music CDs to mp3s.
Yes... but is it legal to buy the CD and then download the MP3 version of the same thing from someone else who doesn't have a right to upload that MP3 to you?
Seems like buying a legitimate copy of the media and then obtaining the ROM from someone not authorized to give it to you would be similar. Unless you are going to, er, try and dump the rom yourself from your own media....
I'm sure that soon enough there will be a "Turnitin Plus" or similarly named more-expensive version of the TurnItin product that includes "Matching of material used with WriteCheck", and attempts to inform the teacher about their students' use of WriteCheck, particularly if they submitted the paper to write check, and previous revisions were showing as flagged, it might match against the WriteCheck submissions and inform the professor about possible issues identified in earlier pre-submission versions.
The non-infringing account owner shouldn't be liable in that situation, but is the one who's likely to be named in the lawsuit.
The non-infringing account owner might claim to be protected under the 512(a) DMCA safe harbour, for Transitory digital network communications, due to merely routing packets for the offender.
The 512(a) safe harbour has the great benefit that the 512(c) DMCA letter takedown provision does not apply -- that is there is no kind of DMCA letter to to force a 'service provider' or 'router operator' to block packets, disconnect a user, or provide information, if infringement is reported -- that is, ISPs can ignore DMCA letters, because the 512(a) safe harbour does not have the 512(c) DMCA letters provision like the 512(b) and 512(d) safe harbours do..
Since you cant share ownership of an internet account, someone has to have their name on the paper work. If its you, then its your account and you are liable but also in a position to dictate change. If its him, then its his problem. --
What if you formed a corporation and opened the account in the corporation's name? :)
It's reasonable to assume the website is logically connected. CAs generally execute their transactions through the website. Especially for domain validated certs, usually the process of issuing a certificate is entirely automatic -- the customer logs in through the website, requests a certificate either by filling out a form or sending in a CSR. If they fill in a form and the CA generates their private key, the person who compromised the website might be able to steal the customer's private key, when the customer downloads it using the website.
Anyways, some kind of validation e-mail goes out to the domain's administrative contacts for a domain-validated cert. The last step is the customer clicks on a link in the e-mail, which contains a link to guess what? A page on the CA's website.
So someone who gained illicit access to the website is potentially in a position to snoop on all that traffic, and possibly generate 'false' traffic of that nature some time in the future. Web designers who do some scripting often aren't well versed in software security design -- there's a good chance that scripts on the website have access to backend databases -- possibly sufficient access to create a false customer record or falsify a "domain verification".
Ummm... Your assuming the website is connected, logically or physically, to their CA infrastructure. Fundamentally what you're saying is true, but so is "someone broke a car in their parking lot so they may be able to issue their own certs."
If someone broke into a car in the parking lot, there might be a chance they could lie in wait for the PKI admin who owns the car to get in, so they can put a gun to their head, and force them to login using the perp's Wifi-enabled laptop, grab the private keys and divulge the passphrase to unlock them.
The CA/PKI might not have been invaded yet A compromise of a website can lead to an intruder gaining further access, however.
Suffice to say... access to a webserver is a foothold that an intruder can attempt to leverage to gain further access. Depending on how robust the further lines of defenses are, and if any security mistakes were made (such as webservers allowed through firewalls to some internal hosts or credentials the intruder can capture that can lead to access to systems closer to back office or CA functions).
Even a compromise that doesn't result in immediate PKI access may lead to that, through additional successive breaches, and successive social engineering... also known as "Advanced Persistent Threat" (to use the latest lingo for referring to the situation)
You have to really mark the cost up to cover research and development, tooling costs and the overhead of the office where the guy checks how much correction you need.
You charge for the service of 'checking how much correction' the person needs.
If the sales are so low, that would make the market ripe for consolidation with other device makers. It's not as if there is much R and D and tooling costs to develop such a simple product, however, seeing as hearing aids have been around so long.
Hearing aids are also not as complicated as cars. Cars are vastly more complicated, have numerous elaborate mechnical, electronic, software systems, and vastly more materials and investment involved to engineer and construct one.
Hearing aids on the other hand are on an order of complexity similar to common earbuds.
$500 or so per unit would be understandable, given the low volume. $8,000 is insane.
Handheld lasers are not required to make holograms. You can utilize mounted lasers with separate external power supply modules and hard wiring for the hobby of holography.
Not that there are many (any?) people doing holography anymore...
So no one would ever want to use one as part of a hobby? No one would ever find a use you do not know of?
Their own documentation shows this thing is too powerful to safely be used as a pointer.
There's really no substantive legal use for this thing that has been documented. If its only uses are "to have fun with" and criminal uses, then there is not much to redeem it there.
There might be some ways to use this as part of a hobby, I suppose. I wait an explanation of what that is, and why the laser is required to be handheld and easily portable for that use.
Most lasers of this strength are not highly mobile. If the thing didn't have an integrated power supply, or it wasn't otherwise so portable, it would not be such a huge issue.
Being handheld is such a problem, because it means someone could use it to wreak havok from a hiding place, and then get out of the area quickly, evading any consequences or identification of the perpetrator... since its distance is so long, they could probably escape just as easily as if they were wreaking havoc with a long range sniper rifle; a long range sniper rifle that happened to be a full-auto machine gun as well, with an added advantage of making NO noise when in use.
This thing terrifies the hell out of me. And, while my view might not be popular... I feel the regulators should exercise eminent domain and force wicked lasers to stop selling these 500mW plus units to consumers.
The "warning" just is not good enough. There is a lack of informed consent from the people in public places persons with this laser will go to.
Their own marketing material admits these are too powerful to use as laser pointers at any time, and for god sakes... even capable of damaging satellites in orbit.
Frankly... these are seriously dangerous pieces of equipment. It seems like the equivalent to a high-powered machine gun is being marketed as if it was some sort of harmless water gun.
Instead... these lasers should be treated as munitions, such as C4 or high powered machine guns. Any highly portable device that can cause instant blindness, start fires, and burn flesh, from a substantial distance, that can be easily moved out quickly, should be subject to at least the most basic of distribution and use controls.
I can only hope they stay so expensive that these people are apt to keep the money for beer.
This is why high beer prices are a good idea. If beer were cheap, those people could buy both lasers and beer.
I'm still hardly convinced though that they won't partkae of a 5-fingered discount on the beer and use the money saved to buy the lasers :/