Actually, you have it backwards. About a decade ago, the government mandated that all cell phone providers provide real-time GPS for emergency calls (911) by 2004. So, these companies are just figuring out ways to make a profit on functionality they have already been forced to implement.
Haven't we had this conversation before?
To sum up: Knuth, Sedgewick, van der Linden, Kernighan and Ritchie. For more details, click on the link above.
However, there is a very famous case where the manufacturer's of VCRs were sued under copyright law. The point is that Betamax won, and now the RIAA and the DMCA is trying to reverse that decision.
If you are saying the commercials are more compressed I'm not sure that is a good indicator. I have some old video tapes of low-budget cable shows, and the commercials are much higher quality than the show itself. The difference is visible to the naked eye. I also remember being able to see the compression on TCM, especially on black-and-white movies. Big-budget shows, on the other hand might go the other way.
All of the high-rated comments are suggesting technical solutions. However, the person asking appears to be a teacher, not an IT person. I have been responsible for several computer labs, and I always start from the other end. I make sure the students know what is acceptable, and what the consequences are for unacceptable behavior. Then I implement what solutions I have time for, and can afford.
First, don't even let the students even turn on a computer until they understand the Acceptable Use Policy. Here are two that I have written, feel free to use or modify them:
Don't just hand these out and collect them. I always spent the first class going over it and giving concrete examples. I found that a great way to introduce the subject was to ask the students what they should and shouldn't do with computers. I would write their answers on the board, and by the end we would have almost the exact same things as those that are on the policy. Make sure to emphasize positive things as well, like research, games, asking questions, and telling someone about problems.
After that you are going to at least need some sort of imaging software. I always used Ghost, but several other programs were recommended in other posts.
Next, make sure you have security software. Firewall, anti-spam, anti-virus, and content filtering. If you don't have it, mention it often. Politely make sure that every teacher, administrator, and parent that you meet knows that the school refuses to protect the children. I eventually got eTrust from Computer Associates for a good price, and I'm sure Symantec would also be willing to give you a volume/educational discount, maybe to go with that networked version of Ghost.
Last, set boundaries. If you are a teacher, your time should be spent teaching. Of course you have to do some administrative work, but don't accept responsibilities that are not yours (i.e making accounts for hundreds of students, or setting up network hardware and software). Use what you have, and if things outside of your job description go wrong, politely remind people that it is not your fault, and not your job.
A licensed private investigator sitting outside your house at all hours? That's perfectly legal. Following someone in public? Legal. Photographing, recording, or videotaping someone? As long as you are in a public place, or have permission to be where you are, you can do it. You can even record events happening on private property that are visible from a public place. There is a grey area about how much technology you can use before you are violating someone's reasonable expectation of privacy, but if you are skinny-dipping behind your hedge and you can be seen from a nearby hillside you can't stop someone from recording it. You could even get in trouble for indecent exposure.
I used to work as a police dispatcher and ocassionally we would be asked to investigate a person sitting in a car outside of someone's house. If we went over and the person identified themselves as a private detective, and they were on public property we let them be. They could be asked to move on if they were causing a third-party violation of a restraining order, i.e the husband can't go near so he hires someone else, or if they were interfering with our own investigations. The PIs usually did not have to tell us who they were working for, but we wouldn't hide the facts. If the complainant asked who the person was we would tell them what we knew. Almost always they knew why they were being watched, and if it was a problem they could seek a restraining order.
Going through someone's trash? Legal. Although it may depend on when you do it. You can go through the trash on the curb, but breaking into a locked dumpster is questionable. You would have to wait until that dumpster arrived at a public dump.
Some of the other things are definitely illegal, and the big uproar is about using fraudulent means to obtain personal records. It's not "pretexting," it's fraud.
I have taught at every level, and I have only seen the kind of filtering you are describing for young kids. It is definitely overkill for the university level.
When I taught at a private Catholic school for Pre-K - 8th grade, we had filtering at that level. We used our ISP's filtering tool and still had some control over it. I could add sites and phrases to permit and deny lists. Even at that level we sometimes had trouble when students were researching legitimate subjects like reproduction, Hitler, the Holocaust, etc.
At public middle schools and high schools in our city, the filtering is done in-house, and things aren't just blocked wholesale. One time I pointed out to an admin that I could get to Penny Arcade from inside the school. I think it is funny, but I don't think the humor is appropriate for most students. He thought about it for a while, and then decided not to block it. His reasoning was that he hadn't had a complaint about it, and presumably he wanted to leave it open to those kids who could handle it. Believe me, these kids see and hear worse every day. In the end, a lot of it is up to the teachers and students.
I also teach high school students at a summer program at Wesleyan University where nothing is blocked. Not only do the students sign an acceptable use policy, but I spend the first class going over it and giving examples. I tell them that I am the final arbiter, and if I say, "Get off that site," they get off, the first time I ask. I tell them to warn me if they are researching something controversial so that if I look over their shoulder and see a swastika, a naked body, or the word "nigger" I won't freak out. I also understand mistakes. More than once students have ended up somewhere they didn't expect, like whitehouse.com. I have never had any serious issues, and again it is up to the teacher and the student. If I want to let them go to miniclip.com during a free period, that is my decision.
If high-school students can handle the responsibilty, there is no reason for your university to be restricting adults.
Let me put it simply. After seeing some videos of Trackmania I was all set to go out and buy it. Then I discovered it had Starforce, and now I won't even risk the free version.
Second, I own Heroes of Might and Magic I-IV and I play them regularly. I'll admit that I did copy the Heroes V disks so that I could try it before I bought it, but the DRM let me get all the way through the install before informing me it would not play without the original disk in the drive. I uninstalled it, and don't expect me to rush out and buy a copy any time soon.
These are two real examples where DRM actually decreased sales. Publishers take note.
I have to completely agree with this. I don't use Knuth much because he is heavy on the math, but Sedgewick pared all that down and said use this if you are doing this, and use this other thing if your going to be doing this.
Even if you aren't using C, I recommend "Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets" by Peter van der Linden. It is simply the best programming book I have ever read. Clear, funny, and full of explanations of all those things that aren't explained in classes or other books that have you tearing your hair out in the real world. There is a reason why this 12 year old book, about a language that is more than thirty years old, is still in print.
Speaking of old books, I am assuming that anyone that programs in C already has Kernighan and Ritchie's "The C Programming Language." Originally printed in 1978, with a second edition in 1988, this is the seminal work on C programming, and it is still in print today. I'm proud to say that my dog-eared copy is old enough that it does not say "ANSI Standard" on the cover.
Ugh, I've been reading too much British literature lately: Pratchett, Stroud, Herriot. The first thing I thought when I saw the word swede was, "turnip," and then the headline didn't make any sense.
My post was meant to be satire, and as such, was deliberately written to mimic the stereotypical posters who don't RTFA.
I have since read many of the posts, and several of them are exactly like what I predicted. Your other post makes the same point, although with a lot more vitriol; people don't read the article and immediately start Apple bashing. However reading at +5, most of the posts either point out that the summary was incorrect, or they state one of the things I summarised, "Apple is just defending their trademark, all companies do this."
How exactly did they fess up to that? I can just see the spokesman reading a memo to reporters..
"...and we at Hewlett Packard also regret using false pretenses to obtain the personal phone reacords of their spokesman, one Mr..... the freaking HELL?!"
This has actually happened. During the Watergate scandal, CBS News correspondent Daniel Schorr was handed a copy of Nixon's Enemies List during a live broadcast. He starting reading down the list of names, only to discover that his name was on the list! He handled it surprisingly well. You can hear the surprise in his voice, but he didn't make any comments and kept on reading.
I agree with most of what you say, and I almost always make a point of reading the book before seeing the movie. The book is almost always better. Frankly, I was astounded by the movie. I think it is a tribute to Tolkein that most of the movie looked almost exactly how I had imagined it. That means that he described a world so well that two people who had never met could see almost the exact same images, and I am not alone, many of my friends felt the same way.
This is summed up well in the forward that is printed in many copies of tLotR. I forget the name of the author, but he says that Tolkein seems not to be making up a story so much as just showing us a place that is already real. I think this is partly because he draws from the Western cultural memes that most of us are familiar with: Norse mythology, Arthurian legend, etc. I wonder how well the movie went over in other parts of the world?
As for Tom, I must make a distinction. Tom is a part of the story, and a great part too. However, what I was trying to say is that he is an anomaly in the continuity. According to the Silmarillion, there is a primary god, who apparently created gods of certain domains: war, water, etc., and then there are their servants; powerful beings who weren't guite gods, like Sauron. By saying that Tom was the first and would be the last it implies that he is either the primary god, which is unlikely, or that he exists beyond this universe. I came to that conclusion long before the movies came out.
Interesting point on Merry's sword vs. the Witch King. I never made that connection before.
The connection is hinted at in tLotR: Aragorn's ancestors are from the north, the Witch King is mentioned, and someone says that the swords creator would have been proud. However, the rest of the clues are in The Silmarillion, and after you get through that, the connection is obvious.
The Silmarillion explains a lot of the vague references made in the books, but not all. For instance, Tom Bombadil is not mentioned. Tom is in one of the other books, it may be Lost Tales, but it has been twenty years since I read it, so don't scream if I am wrong. I actually don't mind that they cut that part from the movie. I knew going in that some scenes would have to be cut, and I knew that would be one of them. The Old Forest is too much like Fangorn, Bombadil does not fit into the continuity, and except for the swords mentioned in the grandparent post, that whole section is not necessary for the plot.
All in all, every screenwriter or director has to make decisions when paring down a novel into a hundred page script, and with only a few minor exceptions I think Jackson did an amazing job.
I have seen people who still have pulse dialing. After all, some phone companies still charge extra for touch-tone! However, you can get a cheap phone that can switch modes on the fly. Dial using pulse. Have to get through a touch-tone menu? Press one button and the phone switches over.
Amen to that brother! After teaching on and off from pre-K to 12th grade, I have come to the realisation that the U.S. education system is fundamentally flawed. Kids can repeat steps they have been taught, and they can cut-and-paste to make an essay, but they are not being taught to think. Most students I know can't research, draw conclusions, state opinions, come up with original ideas, and create solid arguments. This is a serious problem because the American economy is completely dependent on increased efficiency and innovation. There are only so many unskilled jobs left, and these kids don't have the skills to get a white-collar job. We need them to learn these skills, not only to keep them off the dole, but so that they can create the new industries that will keep us all employed in the future.
I have taught programming as low as 5th grade. I always started with HTML. It can be written on any computer that has a text editor. I can be tested on any computer that has a browser. Although it is not really "programming," it does introduce all the basics.
I started with a lecture on giving computers "special codes" to start and stop doing something, and then introduced the basic tags html, head, title, body, h1, and p. On the first day, they were able to type in something incredibly simple, and get instantaneous feedback. So, they were learning the Edit, Save, [Upload], Review cycle.
They got a lecture on documents (files), programs (executables), folders, and shortcuts, and then they were introduced to a and img. This also introduced them to attributes, and I mentioned that in other languages attributes were called properties.
They also got a lecture on nesting, whitespace and indenting, which would help them later on with control structures. After, that it was on to Javascript, and non-linear concepts. Some of my lesson plans are still at:
Universities often have volume licensing, and many literally give away the software. MS Office sold at the educational price is between $100 - $200. At a school I was at with only 300 students, MS offered us Windows and Office for $70 a seat. At Wesleyan, I could not only get almost anything I asked for for free, but they would install it in a lab if I also needed it for my students. The best counter to this isn't OO.o but Star Office. It has more add-ons: clip-art, templates, etc. It comes with tech support, Sun will give it away free to schools, and each staff person and student can install up to five copies at home.
OO.o doesn't conform to the standard. I know that people will scream over this, but in the real world when you send out your resume or an important slideshow, the person on the other end has to be able to open it and it had better look the same as what you see. Even though OO.o's interface is almost the same as Office, there is just enough difference to turn off lazy people who don't want to, for instance, have to change the file type every time they save a new document. For example, I do use OO.o at home, and more than once I have opened a Word document and the formatting was completely borked: margins off the page, font sizes all wrong, etc. For those of you who would argue that it works for most things, you are right. However, when it comes to complicated formulas in Excel or macros in Word, OO.o doesn't cut it, and many people in academia are likely to actually use these functions.
Don't get me wrong, I would like to see more adoption of OO.o, or just open standards in general. I did end up installing OO.o at the school I worked at, but until there are open standards, or general adoption, then when I have to send something to a client, I have to make sure it works in Office.
Oh, and as soon as I left, the school turned around and installed Windows and Office on all their machines with the same license key. I wonder how WGA is treating them now?
I'm sure you know what you are talking about, but for the clairification of others I will explain. Fire engines pump an enormous volume of water (gpm or gallons per minute), but at relatively low pressure (around 100 psi IIRC). However, that doesn't make this useless. Your average pressure washer works the opposite way, enormous pressure but low gpm. A fire company could buy a unit capable of several thousand psi for around $1,000 at any hardware store. As another poster pointed out, this kind of system can produce a suppression fog, instead of a concentrated stream. Also, the unit would still be useful for venting and exploration. A 5000 psi pressure washer can easily cut through drywall and wood, and given time it can go through concrete, or even metal. In addition, the snake could access small areas, and could stay in a hot area by "sweating." Lastly, this is only a prototype, maybe they will eventually be able to decrease the pressure it needs to work.
Credentials: I am a former fire dispatcher, and I also used to run a paint store that sold pressure washers.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, you have it backwards. About a decade ago, the government mandated that all cell phone providers provide real-time GPS for emergency calls (911) by 2004. So, these companies are just figuring out ways to make a profit on functionality they have already been forced to implement.
Haven't we had this conversation before? To sum up: Knuth, Sedgewick, van der Linden, Kernighan and Ritchie. For more details, click on the link above.
However, there is a very famous case where the manufacturer's of VCRs were sued under copyright law. The point is that Betamax won, and now the RIAA and the DMCA is trying to reverse that decision.
If you are saying the commercials are more compressed I'm not sure that is a good indicator. I have some old video tapes of low-budget cable shows, and the commercials are much higher quality than the show itself. The difference is visible to the naked eye. I also remember being able to see the compression on TCM, especially on black-and-white movies. Big-budget shows, on the other hand might go the other way.
All of the high-rated comments are suggesting technical solutions. However, the person asking appears to be a teacher, not an IT person. I have been responsible for several computer labs, and I always start from the other end. I make sure the students know what is acceptable, and what the consequences are for unacceptable behavior. Then I implement what solutions I have time for, and can afford.
First, don't even let the students even turn on a computer until they understand the Acceptable Use Policy. Here are two that I have written, feel free to use or modify them:
Don't just hand these out and collect them. I always spent the first class going over it and giving concrete examples. I found that a great way to introduce the subject was to ask the students what they should and shouldn't do with computers. I would write their answers on the board, and by the end we would have almost the exact same things as those that are on the policy. Make sure to emphasize positive things as well, like research, games, asking questions, and telling someone about problems.
After that you are going to at least need some sort of imaging software. I always used Ghost, but several other programs were recommended in other posts.
Next, make sure you have security software. Firewall, anti-spam, anti-virus, and content filtering. If you don't have it, mention it often. Politely make sure that every teacher, administrator, and parent that you meet knows that the school refuses to protect the children. I eventually got eTrust from Computer Associates for a good price, and I'm sure Symantec would also be willing to give you a volume/educational discount, maybe to go with that networked version of Ghost.
Last, set boundaries. If you are a teacher, your time should be spent teaching. Of course you have to do some administrative work, but don't accept responsibilities that are not yours (i.e making accounts for hundreds of students, or setting up network hardware and software). Use what you have, and if things outside of your job description go wrong, politely remind people that it is not your fault, and not your job.
The answer of course is, "It depends."
A licensed private investigator sitting outside your house at all hours? That's perfectly legal. Following someone in public? Legal. Photographing, recording, or videotaping someone? As long as you are in a public place, or have permission to be where you are, you can do it. You can even record events happening on private property that are visible from a public place. There is a grey area about how much technology you can use before you are violating someone's reasonable expectation of privacy, but if you are skinny-dipping behind your hedge and you can be seen from a nearby hillside you can't stop someone from recording it. You could even get in trouble for indecent exposure.
I used to work as a police dispatcher and ocassionally we would be asked to investigate a person sitting in a car outside of someone's house. If we went over and the person identified themselves as a private detective, and they were on public property we let them be. They could be asked to move on if they were causing a third-party violation of a restraining order, i.e the husband can't go near so he hires someone else, or if they were interfering with our own investigations. The PIs usually did not have to tell us who they were working for, but we wouldn't hide the facts. If the complainant asked who the person was we would tell them what we knew. Almost always they knew why they were being watched, and if it was a problem they could seek a restraining order.
Going through someone's trash? Legal. Although it may depend on when you do it. You can go through the trash on the curb, but breaking into a locked dumpster is questionable. You would have to wait until that dumpster arrived at a public dump.
Some of the other things are definitely illegal, and the big uproar is about using fraudulent means to obtain personal records. It's not "pretexting," it's fraud.
I have taught at every level, and I have only seen the kind of filtering you are describing for young kids. It is definitely overkill for the university level.
When I taught at a private Catholic school for Pre-K - 8th grade, we had filtering at that level. We used our ISP's filtering tool and still had some control over it. I could add sites and phrases to permit and deny lists. Even at that level we sometimes had trouble when students were researching legitimate subjects like reproduction, Hitler, the Holocaust, etc.
At public middle schools and high schools in our city, the filtering is done in-house, and things aren't just blocked wholesale. One time I pointed out to an admin that I could get to Penny Arcade from inside the school. I think it is funny, but I don't think the humor is appropriate for most students. He thought about it for a while, and then decided not to block it. His reasoning was that he hadn't had a complaint about it, and presumably he wanted to leave it open to those kids who could handle it. Believe me, these kids see and hear worse every day. In the end, a lot of it is up to the teachers and students.
I also teach high school students at a summer program at Wesleyan University where nothing is blocked. Not only do the students sign an acceptable use policy, but I spend the first class going over it and giving examples. I tell them that I am the final arbiter, and if I say, "Get off that site," they get off, the first time I ask. I tell them to warn me if they are researching something controversial so that if I look over their shoulder and see a swastika, a naked body, or the word "nigger" I won't freak out. I also understand mistakes. More than once students have ended up somewhere they didn't expect, like whitehouse.com. I have never had any serious issues, and again it is up to the teacher and the student. If I want to let them go to miniclip.com during a free period, that is my decision.
If high-school students can handle the responsibilty, there is no reason for your university to be restricting adults.
Let me put it simply. After seeing some videos of Trackmania I was all set to go out and buy it. Then I discovered it had Starforce, and now I won't even risk the free version.
Second, I own Heroes of Might and Magic I-IV and I play them regularly. I'll admit that I did copy the Heroes V disks so that I could try it before I bought it, but the DRM let me get all the way through the install before informing me it would not play without the original disk in the drive. I uninstalled it, and don't expect me to rush out and buy a copy any time soon.
These are two real examples where DRM actually decreased sales. Publishers take note.
I have to completely agree with this. I don't use Knuth much because he is heavy on the math, but Sedgewick pared all that down and said use this if you are doing this, and use this other thing if your going to be doing this.
Even if you aren't using C, I recommend "Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets" by Peter van der Linden. It is simply the best programming book I have ever read. Clear, funny, and full of explanations of all those things that aren't explained in classes or other books that have you tearing your hair out in the real world. There is a reason why this 12 year old book, about a language that is more than thirty years old, is still in print.
Speaking of old books, I am assuming that anyone that programs in C already has Kernighan and Ritchie's "The C Programming Language." Originally printed in 1978, with a second edition in 1988, this is the seminal work on C programming, and it is still in print today. I'm proud to say that my dog-eared copy is old enough that it does not say "ANSI Standard" on the cover.
Ugh, I've been reading too much British literature lately: Pratchett, Stroud, Herriot. The first thing I thought when I saw the word swede was, "turnip," and then the headline didn't make any sense.
My post was meant to be satire, and as such, was deliberately written to mimic the stereotypical posters who don't RTFA.
I have since read many of the posts, and several of them are exactly like what I predicted. Your other post makes the same point, although with a lot more vitriol; people don't read the article and immediately start Apple bashing. However reading at +5, most of the posts either point out that the summary was incorrect, or they state one of the things I summarised, "Apple is just defending their trademark, all companies do this."
I agree with most of what you say, and I almost always make a point of reading the book before seeing the movie. The book is almost always better. Frankly, I was astounded by the movie. I think it is a tribute to Tolkein that most of the movie looked almost exactly how I had imagined it. That means that he described a world so well that two people who had never met could see almost the exact same images, and I am not alone, many of my friends felt the same way.
This is summed up well in the forward that is printed in many copies of tLotR. I forget the name of the author, but he says that Tolkein seems not to be making up a story so much as just showing us a place that is already real. I think this is partly because he draws from the Western cultural memes that most of us are familiar with: Norse mythology, Arthurian legend, etc. I wonder how well the movie went over in other parts of the world?
As for Tom, I must make a distinction. Tom is a part of the story, and a great part too. However, what I was trying to say is that he is an anomaly in the continuity. According to the Silmarillion, there is a primary god, who apparently created gods of certain domains: war, water, etc., and then there are their servants; powerful beings who weren't guite gods, like Sauron. By saying that Tom was the first and would be the last it implies that he is either the primary god, which is unlikely, or that he exists beyond this universe. I came to that conclusion long before the movies came out.
The connection is hinted at in tLotR: Aragorn's ancestors are from the north, the Witch King is mentioned, and someone says that the swords creator would have been proud. However, the rest of the clues are in The Silmarillion, and after you get through that, the connection is obvious.
The Silmarillion explains a lot of the vague references made in the books, but not all. For instance, Tom Bombadil is not mentioned. Tom is in one of the other books, it may be Lost Tales, but it has been twenty years since I read it, so don't scream if I am wrong. I actually don't mind that they cut that part from the movie. I knew going in that some scenes would have to be cut, and I knew that would be one of them. The Old Forest is too much like Fangorn, Bombadil does not fit into the continuity, and except for the swords mentioned in the grandparent post, that whole section is not necessary for the plot.
All in all, every screenwriter or director has to make decisions when paring down a novel into a hundred page script, and with only a few minor exceptions I think Jackson did an amazing job.
You mean like this?
"We have top men working on it."
"Who?"
"Top. Men."
I have seen people who still have pulse dialing. After all, some phone companies still charge extra for touch-tone! However, you can get a cheap phone that can switch modes on the fly. Dial using pulse. Have to get through a touch-tone menu? Press one button and the phone switches over.
Amen to that brother! After teaching on and off from pre-K to 12th grade, I have come to the realisation that the U.S. education system is fundamentally flawed. Kids can repeat steps they have been taught, and they can cut-and-paste to make an essay, but they are not being taught to think. Most students I know can't research, draw conclusions, state opinions, come up with original ideas, and create solid arguments. This is a serious problem because the American economy is completely dependent on increased efficiency and innovation. There are only so many unskilled jobs left, and these kids don't have the skills to get a white-collar job. We need them to learn these skills, not only to keep them off the dole, but so that they can create the new industries that will keep us all employed in the future.
I have taught programming as low as 5th grade. I always started with HTML. It can be written on any computer that has a text editor. I can be tested on any computer that has a browser. Although it is not really "programming," it does introduce all the basics.
/ index.htm
I started with a lecture on giving computers "special codes" to start and stop doing something, and then introduced the basic tags html, head, title, body, h1, and p. On the first day, they were able to type in something incredibly simple, and get instantaneous feedback. So, they were learning the Edit, Save, [Upload], Review cycle.
They got a lecture on documents (files), programs (executables), folders, and shortcuts, and then they were introduced to a and img. This also introduced them to attributes, and I mentioned that in other languages attributes were called properties.
They also got a lecture on nesting, whitespace and indenting, which would help them later on with control structures. After, that it was on to Javascript, and non-linear concepts. Some of my lesson plans are still at:
http://www.irolo.net/school/archive/saintmary/6th
Good luck!
Why don't schools push OO.o?
Don't get me wrong, I would like to see more adoption of OO.o, or just open standards in general. I did end up installing OO.o at the school I worked at, but until there are open standards, or general adoption, then when I have to send something to a client, I have to make sure it works in Office.
Oh, and as soon as I left, the school turned around and installed Windows and Office on all their machines with the same license key. I wonder how WGA is treating them now?
What about furry 1 | 2?
I'm sure you know what you are talking about, but for the clairification of others I will explain. Fire engines pump an enormous volume of water (gpm or gallons per minute), but at relatively low pressure (around 100 psi IIRC). However, that doesn't make this useless. Your average pressure washer works the opposite way, enormous pressure but low gpm. A fire company could buy a unit capable of several thousand psi for around $1,000 at any hardware store. As another poster pointed out, this kind of system can produce a suppression fog, instead of a concentrated stream. Also, the unit would still be useful for venting and exploration. A 5000 psi pressure washer can easily cut through drywall and wood, and given time it can go through concrete, or even metal. In addition, the snake could access small areas, and could stay in a hot area by "sweating." Lastly, this is only a prototype, maybe they will eventually be able to decrease the pressure it needs to work.
Credentials: I am a former fire dispatcher, and I also used to run a paint store that sold pressure washers.
Why is this under IT, and not under Developers?