"this may sound like a stupid question, but how is it physicly possible to blind a pilot from the ground?"
I'm leaning to the theory that the diffuse beam hits the laminated cockpit glass on-axis, and diffuses through it, making enough of a glare problem to reduce visibility.
I didn't specialize in optics in physics, so I don't feel qualified to comment, but I just can't buy the theory that a consumer laser caused actual retina damage from kilometers away.
On the other hand, if the pilot is testifying that his vision was damaged by the laser, and if an opthamolgist corrorborates with expert testimony, and if there is some evidence that the New Jersey guy did this intentionally, well, he'd better get used to eating corned beef and working in a machine shop.
I am picturing, not a laser into the pilot's eyes, but rather light diffusing laterally into the windscreen glass, impairing visibility. To me that sounds much more likely. If consumer power laser light can do that much damage at kilometers distant, I am now terribly afraid of the glimpse I get at the supermarket, past the mirror on the checkout stand!
> it isn't NEAR enough power to harm anyone's eyes.
The pilots are testifying that it impaired their ability to fly the plane. If you think they are committing perjury, please write an amicus curare brief expressing your opinion. Perhaps you can testify as an expert witness (a physisicist? and Opthamologist? a pilot?) and you can affect the outcome of the trial.
"It's the same thing over and over again. Management is often too disconnect from the innerworkings of an organization, and doesn't understand the key interaction mechanisms making them ineffective at evaluating whether a merger/buyout will be successful.
So is it any wonder why software projects fail?"
No. My question here is more along the lines of "Why doesn't management fail?"
Or even, if the people at the lower rungs of an organization are so smart, why haven't they used this superior intelligence to better their careers, and replace this inept management?
"The problem pertaining to the populace not being warned was that the countries hit decieded it was not cost effective to put a warning system in place."
In their defense, it's not as if we're talking about countries that have all the other conveniences and comforts squared away, and they cut this one corner.
Maybe they put a higher priority on getting the concepts of antibiotics and refrigerated food out there. A civil alert network sounds like a reasonable thing to me, sitting here in my economically flush world. But I don't live in a remote island village that lacks pretty much everything I'd consider fundamental to a modern society.
"Any 5-Star hotel, and most others of any size, have internet access."
People in the resort areas did relatively well, in terms of survival. There was still a lot of death, but you seem to be focusing on the places where there were tourists, where there was generally modern technology existing, etc., and you aren't considering that most of the tragedy occurred in remote parts of the Indonesian archipelago where people don't even typically have telephones or electricity, where even had they been warned, there was NO PLACE TO RETREAT TO, where entire island communities, and in some places, entire tribal civilizations have been completely wiped out.
There's no "5 star hotel", "early warning" to it.
Don't pretend Indonesia is Miami or Oahu!
Let's cut the hindsight game. If you knew the Amazon delta was going to flood, how would you warn the natives? I don't care how you'd evacuate Rio de Janiero. How are you going to save the lives of the remote tribes in the jungle? That's the closest thing I can think of to compare with this -- and I'd go as far as to say the natives in the Amazon are closer to technology than the islanders in Indonesia.
"Whatever you do, don't donate to the Red Cross. When 9/11 occurred they took donations intended to help victims of 9/11 and used it elsewhere."
More accurately, they used it *everywhere* it was needed. Don't frame it as if a bunch of "Red Cross Executives" bought themselves new Porsches and Hawaiian beachfront property with it.
"Taking me out of that paradigm sucked because I was untrained for it. It is more like I am commiserating with the French grunt than bashing him."
I get it. That's cool.
"They may have been aiding Sadaam brutalize his people."
It's okay that we definitely did it, but not okay that they, possibly, allegedly, might have. This I do not understand.
"The French government was awefully self-righteous when they were proclaiming their non-support for our military action due to concerns for peace."
Last time I checked, France still had national sovreignty, and was entirely within reason here. The US acted like a spoilt child and whined and blamed its problems on them. It was okay for France to make the decision of a sovreign nation, and it was not okay for America to make them a national scapegoat. The only thing that saves my respect is the fact that, to my knowledge, nothing official has been declared against France.
"Reading some of the things I have been reading about their actions in the Oil for Food program makes me doubt they were honest."
I have no source of information that is not heavily biased against France and the UN. Everything I've seen about the Oil for Food program has been presented to me as propaganda.
I'm sure if you follow the money from that boondoggle, you'll end up in some American pockets.
"Mostly, their troops are glorified police officers."
That sounded to me, a whole hell of a lot like criticizing soldiers, not governments.
I'm just sick and tired of hearing about France this and the French that, as if they are some sort of enemy of the US. I don't know where it originated (maybe something Pat Robertson said, who knows), but what's strange is that the anti-French sentiment *persists*, and seems to be persisted by people who, if pressed, would not be able to make a cogent argument of what exactly is the matter with France. Whatever it is, was supposed to be so terrible that we can't even eat French Fries (A New Jersey invention, correct?), and we weren't even supposed to drink Champagne. But that idea was also supposed to be some kind of self-evident, obvious fact. Nobody has ever explained it to me, just repeated the whole "cowardly, surrender-monkeys" thing.
So when I get to your message, where you claimed to know the contribution of the French troops to be nothing more than glorified police officers, it raised my blood pressure a bit.
I still wonder where you're coming from. You're a soldier yourself. Seems like you of all people should know better. What are, for instance, MP's in Iraq supposed to think about that sort of thing? After all, they really *are* nothing but glorified police officers. Think about this please.
And maybe somebody can explain to me what makes France such an obvious goddamned scapegoat? I really don't get it. It will never be appropriate, in my ethos, to hold contempt for a nation that is supporting your own in a time of war. If they have boots on the ground in Afghanistan, they are to be held in precisely the same regard as any US soldier. They are, after all, in the same force, on the same side, taking risks and making sacrifices.
>I figured that they could just go ahead and sing the > "dad is great" song from Bill Cosby when they do >that. That should be deterrence enough.
Sorry, I've worked with too many straight-up juvenile delinquents (literally, wards of the state), and other antisocial kids. I'll never put up with any bullshit from any kids, especially not from manipulative teenagers.
Yeah, I know the chip doesn't *really* do anything I can't come close to with a soft synth or one of my keyboards, but that's not the point. (Please don't press me about what IS the point, because I'm not sure I could formulate an answer that doesn't make me sound fanatical.)
"Mostly, their troops are glorified police officers. Their troops did not see anything like the action the US Special Forces saw in Afghanistan."
I fail to see how you can say something like this, and not realize you're shitting on any serviceman whose job isn't exactly "first wave, front line, point."
It almost seems like some people are afraid of finding any reason to respect the French. Or something like that. There seems to be a subculture that carries some value assumption that the French are somehow bad, counter to American interests, or generally deserving of hostility or criticism. But that idea is only held within that subculture, and the rest don't even understand the premise.
But the important thing to me, is if you want to dismiss the contribution of anyone who is your ally in combat, who has soldiers in your military operation, you might as well be wiping your ass with the flag after you shit on the grave of a soldier. In my opinion, that is precisely what you did when you tried to squirm out of accepting that the French sent soldiers to fight alongside your army in Afghanistan.
If you can tell me what unit YOU were in, and what combat YOU personally saw in Afghanistan, and if you can give an eyewitness account of the cowardice and lack of contribution by the French, maybe I can hold a higher opinion of you. Somehow, I think you won't be able to do that, but I'll keep the option open.
" Why build a synth to do that when there's always http://www.sidstation.com/ and http://www.hardsid.com/ "
Actually, I'd like to have a hardsid too. But your question shows that you totally miss the point. If I bought a Quattro, I'd suddenly need 4 more 6581's. But I wouldn't stop building my synth!
A padlock on the refrigerator and cabinet doors, to which only you have the key, will go a long way to solve your problem. If that's too extreme for your household, then a cabinet and a small fridge in a part of the house that's off limits will give you some privacy. This is a privacy/respect issue, and should be treated like one.
"Unfortunatly, the stereotype is fairly true. Its a serious health epidemic."
But it's not just an American phenomenon. I've seen plenty of obesity all over South America, in Canada, in Europe -- I'm certain that the fattest woman I have ever seen in my life was an Italian, and it seemed to me that entire towns in Germany were populated by rotund women and portly men.
I never have understood how the obesity finger gets pointed at the US. There are lardasses spanning the globe.
"I don't know that they really care though, more likely is they just float around and don't care until they come home."
But where will you find a tailor to let out the waist of your space suit? What if you fatten up enough that you can't buckle the crash webbing around you?
It depends on the scope of popularity you mean, but yeah. I still use a C64 in my keyboard rig, toghether with a Moog Song Producer, for sequenced SID output. Ok, I rarely actually use it, but it's still part of my setup, and I'd miss it.
I'm also building a 4-SID midibox based on this design: http://www.ucapps.de/midibox_sid.html and that, itself, is quite popular.
Since I have so much extra C64 crap accumulated in this endeavor, I also have a little shrine with a couple of old games and music tracks, along with a MAME box and a PC that's a jukebox and DVD player, and that's all in the livingroom by the TV, which is purely for the entertainment of others (I rarely ever turn it on.)
It's popular with me because of the specific characteristics of the sound chip. It's popular with other people I know purely because it's a piece of history. I have no idea what these Yeronimo assclowns are thinking. Nobody whose into C64 retro stuff has two nickles to rub together, much less to be worth suing them.
Slashdot Mirror
"What kind of home repair can you perform with a laser pointer?"
None that cannot be done more conveniently with a chalk line and a spirit level.
"this may sound like a stupid question, but how is it physicly possible to blind a pilot from the ground?"
I'm leaning to the theory that the diffuse beam hits the laminated cockpit glass on-axis, and diffuses through it, making enough of a glare problem to reduce visibility.
I didn't specialize in optics in physics, so I don't feel qualified to comment, but I just can't buy the theory that a consumer laser caused actual retina damage from kilometers away.
On the other hand, if the pilot is testifying that his vision was damaged by the laser, and if an opthamolgist corrorborates with expert testimony, and if there is some evidence that the New Jersey guy did this intentionally, well, he'd better get used to eating corned beef and working in a machine shop.
>Truly, truly harmless.
I'm not buying the "burned retina, permanently damaged eyesight" assumption in this story.
What I would believe, is a diffusion across the laminated glass of the cockpit, effectively reducing the visibility due to the glare.
That would be a lot easier to do, considering the angles involved and the divergence of the beam at those distances.
I am picturing, not a laser into the pilot's eyes, but rather light diffusing laterally into the windscreen glass, impairing visibility. To me that sounds much more likely. If consumer power laser light can do that much damage at kilometers distant, I am now terribly afraid of the glimpse I get at the supermarket, past the mirror on the checkout stand!
> it isn't NEAR enough power to harm anyone's eyes.
The pilots are testifying that it impaired their ability to fly the plane. If you think they are committing perjury, please write an amicus curare brief expressing your opinion. Perhaps you can testify as an expert witness (a physisicist? and Opthamologist? a pilot?) and you can affect the outcome of the trial.
Even if you reinvent it, you will be liable for royalties.
USPTO 5,707,114
"It's the same thing over and over again. Management is often too disconnect from the innerworkings of an organization, and doesn't understand the key interaction mechanisms making them ineffective at evaluating whether a merger/buyout will be successful.
So is it any wonder why software projects fail?"
No. My question here is more along the lines of "Why doesn't management fail?"
Or even, if the people at the lower rungs of an organization are so smart, why haven't they used this superior intelligence to better their careers, and replace this inept management?
"The problem pertaining to the populace not being warned was that the countries hit decieded it was not cost effective to put a warning system in place."
In their defense, it's not as if we're talking about countries that have all the other conveniences and comforts squared away, and they cut this one corner.
Maybe they put a higher priority on getting the concepts of antibiotics and refrigerated food out there. A civil alert network sounds like a reasonable thing to me, sitting here in my economically flush world. But I don't live in a remote island village that lacks pretty much everything I'd consider fundamental to a modern society.
"Any 5-Star hotel, and most others of any size, have internet access."
People in the resort areas did relatively well, in terms of survival. There was still a lot of death, but you seem to be focusing on the places where there were tourists, where there was generally modern technology existing, etc., and you aren't considering that most of the tragedy occurred in remote parts of the Indonesian archipelago where people don't even typically have telephones or electricity, where even had they been warned, there was NO PLACE TO RETREAT TO, where entire island communities, and in some places, entire tribal civilizations have been completely wiped out.
There's no "5 star hotel", "early warning" to it.
Don't pretend Indonesia is Miami or Oahu!
Let's cut the hindsight game. If you knew the Amazon delta was going to flood, how would you warn the natives? I don't care how you'd evacuate Rio de Janiero. How are you going to save the lives of the remote tribes in the jungle? That's the closest thing I can think of to compare with this -- and I'd go as far as to say the natives in the Amazon are closer to technology than the islanders in Indonesia.
"Whatever you do, don't donate to the Red Cross. When 9/11 occurred they took donations intended to help victims of 9/11 and used it elsewhere."
More accurately, they used it *everywhere* it was needed. Don't frame it as if a bunch of "Red Cross Executives" bought themselves new Porsches and Hawaiian beachfront property with it.
"These satellite images are not perfectly aligned as the Earth and the satellites have moved between the images that were taken."
I can just hear the Tsunami-deniers already. It was all faked! The pictures don't even line up!
"Taking me out of that paradigm sucked because I was untrained for it. It is more like I am commiserating with the French grunt than bashing him."
I get it. That's cool.
"They may have been aiding Sadaam brutalize his people."
It's okay that we definitely did it, but not okay that they, possibly, allegedly, might have. This I do not understand.
"The French government was awefully self-righteous when they were proclaiming their non-support for our military action due to concerns for peace."
Last time I checked, France still had national sovreignty, and was entirely within reason here. The US acted like a spoilt child and whined and blamed its problems on them. It was okay for France to make the decision of a sovreign nation, and it was not okay for America to make them a national scapegoat. The only thing that saves my respect is the fact that, to my knowledge, nothing official has been declared against France.
"Reading some of the things I have been reading about their actions in the Oil for Food program makes me doubt they were honest."
I have no source of information that is not heavily biased against France and the UN. Everything I've seen about the Oil for Food program has been presented to me as propaganda.
I'm sure if you follow the money from that boondoggle, you'll end up in some American pockets.
>My criticism is with the French government.
You have a funny way of expressing that:
"Mostly, their troops are glorified police officers."
That sounded to me, a whole hell of a lot like criticizing soldiers, not governments.
I'm just sick and tired of hearing about France this and the French that, as if they are some sort of enemy of the US. I don't know where it originated (maybe something Pat Robertson said, who knows), but what's strange is that the anti-French sentiment *persists*, and seems to be persisted by people who, if pressed, would not be able to make a cogent argument of what exactly is the matter with France. Whatever it is, was supposed to be so terrible that we can't even eat French Fries (A New Jersey invention, correct?), and we weren't even supposed to drink Champagne. But that idea was also supposed to be some kind of self-evident, obvious fact. Nobody has ever explained it to me, just repeated the whole "cowardly, surrender-monkeys" thing.
So when I get to your message, where you claimed to know the contribution of the French troops to be nothing more than glorified police officers, it raised my blood pressure a bit.
I still wonder where you're coming from. You're a soldier yourself. Seems like you of all people should know better. What are, for instance, MP's in Iraq supposed to think about that sort of thing? After all, they really *are* nothing but glorified police officers. Think about this please.
And maybe somebody can explain to me what makes France such an obvious goddamned scapegoat? I really don't get it. It will never be appropriate, in my ethos, to hold contempt for a nation that is supporting your own in a time of war. If they have boots on the ground in Afghanistan, they are to be held in precisely the same regard as any US soldier. They are, after all, in the same force, on the same side, taking risks and making sacrifices.
>I figured that they could just go ahead and sing the
> "dad is great" song from Bill Cosby when they do
>that. That should be deterrence enough.
Sorry, I've worked with too many straight-up juvenile delinquents (literally, wards of the state), and other antisocial kids. I'll never put up with any bullshit from any kids, especially not from manipulative teenagers.
"I remember something about them having a musical interface, but I was not into that at that time. Is that what you use the C64's for?"
The sound chip on the C64 is a pretty damned good synthesizer, with a very good analog filter, and it's quite a unique sound generator.
I'm too lame to have any samples of my own music, but check this out:
Fusion of Two Dragons
Yeah, I know the chip doesn't *really* do anything I can't come close to with a soft synth or one of my keyboards, but that's not the point. (Please don't press me about what IS the point, because I'm not sure I could formulate an answer that doesn't make me sound fanatical.)
"Mostly, their troops are glorified police officers. Their troops did not see anything like the action the US Special Forces saw in Afghanistan."
I fail to see how you can say something like this, and not realize you're shitting on any serviceman whose job isn't exactly "first wave, front line, point."
It almost seems like some people are afraid of finding any reason to respect the French. Or something like that. There seems to be a subculture that carries some value assumption that the French are somehow bad, counter to American interests, or generally deserving of hostility or criticism. But that idea is only held within that subculture, and the rest don't even understand the premise.
But the important thing to me, is if you want to dismiss the contribution of anyone who is your ally in combat, who has soldiers in your military operation, you might as well be wiping your ass with the flag after you shit on the grave of a soldier. In my opinion, that is precisely what you did when you tried to squirm out of accepting that the French sent soldiers to fight alongside your army in Afghanistan.
If you can tell me what unit YOU were in, and what combat YOU personally saw in Afghanistan, and if you can give an eyewitness account of the cowardice and lack of contribution by the French, maybe I can hold a higher opinion of you. Somehow, I think you won't be able to do that, but I'll keep the option open.
" Why build a synth to do that when there's always http://www.sidstation.com/ and http://www.hardsid.com/ "
Actually, I'd like to have a hardsid too. But your question shows that you totally miss the point. If I bought a Quattro, I'd suddenly need 4 more 6581's. But I wouldn't stop building my synth!
Dammit, Eater. You owe me a Dr. Pepper and a new Keyboard.
> I'm starting to get this at home with the kids.
A padlock on the refrigerator and cabinet doors, to which only you have the key, will go a long way to solve your problem. If that's too extreme for your household, then a cabinet and a small fridge in a part of the house that's off limits will give you some privacy. This is a privacy/respect issue, and should be treated like one.
>In Germany they eat a lot of fatty sausages, and
>places like France obsess on "good satisfying food".
I don't know about Beijing, but I've sure as hell seen plenty of fat natives in both Germany and France.
"Unfortunatly, the stereotype is fairly true. Its a serious health epidemic."
But it's not just an American phenomenon. I've seen plenty of obesity all over South America, in Canada, in Europe -- I'm certain that the fattest woman I have ever seen in my life was an Italian, and it seemed to me that entire towns in Germany were populated by rotund women and portly men.
I never have understood how the obesity finger gets pointed at the US. There are lardasses spanning the globe.
"I don't know that they really care though, more likely is they just float around and don't care until they come home."
But where will you find a tailor to let out the waist of your space suit? What if you fatten up enough that you can't buckle the crash webbing around you?
> the previous ISS crew consumed food meant for the
>other crew. "They had permission to do that but did
>not record how much they had eaten".
Here I was with the notion that the mass of the station would be known to a fraction of a gram.
"I'm wondering if they bought the name just so they could make money out of lawsuits"
Maybe they can also solve blood shortages by getting it from stones and turnips.
"Seriously. Is Commodore really still popular?"
It depends on the scope of popularity you mean, but yeah. I still use a C64 in my keyboard rig, toghether with a Moog Song Producer, for sequenced SID output. Ok, I rarely actually use it, but it's still part of my setup, and I'd miss it.
I'm also building a 4-SID midibox based on this design: http://www.ucapps.de/midibox_sid.html
and that, itself, is quite popular.
Since I have so much extra C64 crap accumulated in this endeavor, I also have a little shrine with a couple of old games and music tracks, along with a MAME box and a PC that's a jukebox and DVD player, and that's all in the livingroom by the TV, which is purely for the entertainment of others (I rarely ever turn it on.)
It's popular with me because of the specific characteristics of the sound chip. It's popular with other people I know purely because it's a piece of history. I have no idea what these Yeronimo assclowns are thinking. Nobody whose into C64 retro stuff has two nickles to rub together, much less to be worth suing them.