Whatever happened to being able to do whatever you wanted to with the computer you bought?
Being able to use your own legitimately purchased items in whatever manner you desire is a dangerous idea, citizen.
Gads. If the thought patterns of the media industry become legally enforced, soon there'll be whole new meanings for things like:
soup spoon tea spoon coffee mug dixie cup (only dixies allowed inside) salad fork crowbar (good luck changing a tire.. that'll be illegal unless you have a tirebar) etc.
Welcome to an era where the producer has a legal right to sit on your shoulder the moment you purchase a product.
The digital era threatens current <b>revenue models</b> by changing the environment in which copyright operates. To prevent unauthorized copying of their works, copyright holders have traditionally relied on practical barriers as well as their legal exclusive rights to control reporduction and distribution. The new technologies vitiating those practical barriers--peer-to-peer (P2P) services, digitial compression technologies, and others--are demonstrating just how empty those legal rights may be and how poorly matched they may be with cultural norms and practice.
I quit reading the.pdf after that. There's no Constitutional right to protect a revenue stream. That the authors mention "compression technologies" in the same context as P2P, in hurting their revenue model, is disgusting. As for "cultural norms and practices"... sharing music and entertainment has been something our culture has done since prehistoric times.
And, under the DMCA (and other existing laws), I probably just violated the copyright of the publishers of that.pdf by quoting it verbatim without their prior written consent. Screw 'em.
After all, Moore's Law predicts exponential growth, and clearly exponential growth can't continue forever before we reach hard physical limits; light isn't getting any faster. The growth must eventually slow down and even end
If we measure the speed of light in terms of feet per second as opposed to the more commonly known kilometers per second, the multiplier will yield a number which is greater (ignoring units). This will be good enough for the people in marketing and the salesmen at the major electronics outlets.
Similarly the onus will no longer be on the programmers or engineers to produce faster, more efficient, or more capable products. Businessmen, investors, and executives being what they are they will simply pressure the marketing department to produce more glitz and glam. Was the onus ever really on them? That's arguable. The size of programs has increased to the point where even a simple word processor wouldn't fit on a hard drive of 10 years ago, yet are the word processors of today helping us to write better letters? For all the extra horsepower and storage space we still do (mainly): e-mail, surf web, print pictures, play games. The only people who have a significantly improved computing experience are those who no longer have to wait 18 hours for the graphical rendering, mathematical modeling, or compilation to finish.
Intel has already shown us the way of advertising. Those three blue guys who are always doing some really neat stuff like taking off with rocket jetpacks or surfing around on anti-gravity boards. What does that have to do with processor capability, quality, or reliability? Nothing. At least automakers genuinely show a car in use doing something that a car does. When's the last time your processor caused you to physically fly to work?
Six pilots have already reported being blinded by laser light reflecting off of a building. You didn't know? A likely excuse. We can't have terrorists using cheap trigonometry tricks just to get out from the charges. It's nothing short of flat out stupid to be laser painting a building with a reflective surface halfway across the city. Only a moron would do such a thing without any regard for the path of the reflected beams. I hope you get all 25 years just to make an example of you.
Purely logical then... how is it logical that a man deliberately points a laser at a plane and a helicopter? It's not, so then the police and pilots must be making their story up. Is it logical that the pilots were blinded? No, not by a 5 mW laser. I have one here. You can't even see it down the block. Is it logical to take a man in for a lie detector test when the pilots and the police didn't have to give their statement under lie detector monitoring? No. That's a recipe for witch hunting.
That paints a different light which can be interpreted to mean that he was deliberately pointing out the jet. Both articles you cite use this language. I think the public opinion is being swayed by language which deliberately skews the story. I wouldn't be surprised if all subsequent articles stick exclusively with the second wording and will probably never quote the lie detector questioning directly.
As for the police helicopter also being hit with the beam I'm still suspicious. Police reports are always skewed to justify the actions of the officers. No one wants to be found guilty of misconduct and spend time off without pay. The police helicopter reportedly was attempting to scout the area with the plane's pilot. Wouldn't they be doing that in the day? Wouldn't it be a little difficult to see a 5 mW green light during the daytime? Wouldn't it be even more difficult to see the light making contact with the outside of the chopper while looking at the ground? The goal wasn't to "fly the chopper around like a target to see if the terrorist comes back". The goal was to fly the chopper around and see if the pilot could recognize and identify the area from which the light had been coming.
Too many ifs for me to believe, rank and file, that this guy was even recklessly endangering anything. With this much reasonable doubt I'd want the Cessna pilots to give a lie detector testimony to back up their claims of being blinded or even seeing the light make contact with the windshield.
Banach was the one that said he shined the light at a jet
You're guilty of misinterpretation. Banach said he had hit the jet with the beam. The article does not report if the answer included modifiers such as "incidentally" or "while pointing out a constellation".
think how powerful the light had to be to see it during the daytime
I don't think that fits the type of laser used in this incident. Never skip the reality check.
Did I mention he confessed? I think that's just a little important
Admitting that the beam hit the jet is a lot different from confessing to even targeting the jet. I'm not the only one making inferences here.
Why do you think they would set up some random guy?
It wasn't random. The police canvassed the neighborhood asking the residents if they knew anything about a laser. This was the only guy with a laser. I'll lay 100-to-1 odds that he didn't even know that the laser made contact with anything until the police told/grilled him about it.
If he were innocent do you not think his lawyer might have mentioned that?
It's tough for his lawyer to argue that his laser didn't hit the plane. That says nothing about whether or not he was even targetting the plane. That's what lawyers do, especially relatively low-to-middle paid lawyers. They don't make any statements which aren't absolutely true.
When playing baseball, if you bean the batter, you are indeed guilty of hitting the batter with the ball. You are not guilty intending to hit the batter. You're not even guilty of recklessly throwing a ball. The only FACT we have here is that some pilots claim laser contact was made.
What of a quarterback throwing an interception? Is that a crime? Brett Favre does it all the time. He's not trying to hit the interceptor. He's trying to hit his receiver. He doesn't see the interceptor until it's too late.
This fellow was out at night, looking at stars, and doesn't notice a small Cessna going past at 3000 feet. Stargazing can be good on even a moderately cloudy night. What were weather conditions on the night of the incident? None of this is reported. I'm doing nothing more than forwarding reasonable doubt to counter all the hate mongers whining for this guy's head.
I guess you could just say anti-law enforcement
Law enforcement is free to question the guy. What's with the lie detector?
Do you know anything about the pilots or the man? Are they related in any social context? Has the man in question ever had personal conflicts with any members of the local law enforcement? There is a human factor to all of this.
What makes you think that two online stories can even come close to giving you all the facts, or that they would even choose to do so if it reduced the glam factor in the story?
Critical reading would require there to be information to back up the inferences
That's under editorial license and selective reporting. It never would've made the headlines if it weren't reported to paint the guy in a bad light now would it?
Watching the mod points stack up, none of you could ever work at Google. You're incapable of thinking outside the box.
You dont blame your children, you take the blames.
Let me guess this straight. The cops are flying around in the middle of the day and supposedly they can see a green dot on the outside of the helicopter while they're sitting on the inside? Then they go knocking around the neighborhood. They don't find anyone so they go flying around a few hours later. Now, maybe the second time it's dark enough where they can see the beam from the green laser, but they still can't see the outside of the helicopter unless they're hanging out the windows.
Then, when the cops come questioning around the neighborhood, this guy mentions off-handedly that, well, yeah... his daughter was out back with the laser that he brought home from work. The cops swarm the house and say they'll have to take the girl away for questioning. At that point the guy stands up and says,"Wait. Don't take my daughter. I was just making that up. It was me out back waving the laser around."
"Oh wait? You mean that laser hit a plane? No! I didn't know! You mean you're going to subject me to a lie detector test based on nothing more than a hunch and light you supposedly saw on the outside of the helicopter while inside of it? Have the pilots had a lie detector? Have the people in the police chopper had a lie detector?"
I'd say the guy's taking the fall for his daughter and should be applauded.
Remember that the pilots did not say they were blinded
And while Banach was subjected to the intense scrutiny of an FBI lie-detector tests, the pilots weren't. Why should we believe the pilots?
Furthermore something like a police helicopter would be very visible (running lights, remember?)
I've been wondering about the police helicopter. Apparently the cops and the pilot went out to try to find the source of the light. Wouldn't that be done in the daytime? Isn't it also kinda tough to see a dot of light on the outside of a helicopter if you're inside the copter?
There's too much here that doesn't add up. I think this is a case of "we saw the beam of light in the sky and assumed it was aimed at us".
I use the brain I have
You have not exercised a single moment of critical or individual thought. You have reacted in a fashion that one would expect from doing nothing more than reading the articles.
anti-government paranoia
I said nothing which was anti-government. The government is free to go arrest people and subject them to lie-detector questioning if it's plausible that the accusers aren't exaggerating the story or flat out making it up. In all fairness, if you want to strap me to a lie detector, then your accusation better have been made under lie detector questioning first.
it apears that he actually was painting the police helicopter
How do we know it's true?
After being taken to an FBI office and given a lie-detector test, Banach said "he had hit the jet with the beam... while pointing out the constellation of Ursa Major to his daughter", court documents say.
The flash temporarily blinded both the pilot and co-pilot, but they were later able to land the plane safely. The pilots were not subjected to a lie detector test.
Then, on Friday, a helicopter carrying Port Authority detectives was hit by a laser beam as its crew surveyed the area to try to pinpoint the origin of the original beam. Similarly, the detectives were not subjected to a lie detector test about the actual contact of the beams. Apparently their written reports suffice.
Please, get a clue! Google or read a book about physics
Most people have neverending disdain for those who think they know everything just because they've read it.
I've stared straight into the sun long enough to have a ten minute afterimage. I've stared straight into a laser long enough to see the kinda neat pattern that's inside the beam. Other than the afterimage (which wasn't blinding and did go away) I've never been blinded.
I think people are overreacting on exaggerated and probably falsified reports. Why? Because they believe everything they read but have no experience whatsoever with reality.
both days he accidentally flashed an aircraft while flashing the stars?
No. I believe that on both days there were reports of lasers and this guy was the only one they could dig up who would admit to having used a laser to point at stars. The rest is pressuring him to admit that there's a possibility that it may have been his.
What's still left is the credibility of the pilots and the police. The pilots probably own stock in a red laser factory which is losing shares to the green ones. The cops? I've read enough "suicide by cop" stories to understand that, in many cases, if you're within sight of a police officer he'll think you're aiming at him. There has to be some probable cause or else the officer won't get paid for the leave.
What evidence has been presented to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the laser ever made contact with the plane or the chopper? I'm skeptical. I think it's a case of 1/2 mile being close enough when they're looking for someone to catch and no one else is around.
Are you saying everyone should have the freedom to blind a pilot controlling a plane full of passengers and then to do it again?
I think they're saying we have the right to use green lasers to point constellations out to our children without fearing that the local police will badger us with,"Don't you agree that, while viewing the stars, you MIGHT have struck an airplane?" I don't see the transcripts of the questioning session cited in any of the news articles.
Admitting that it's possible and admitting that it occurred are two different things... but in a scenario like this I don't think the police care.
Common sense tells me that while he may not have intended
Common sense tells me that the laser never hit the plane, never hit the police chopper, and that the story was conveniently put together by prosecuters and a media which has nothing useful to report about the war or terror.
Was that the type of questioning which does or doesn't adhere to Geneva conventions. Seriously. "I was pointing out stars. Yeah, I suppose the plane might've flown past" counts as an admission but doesn't prove anything.
The flash temporarily blinded the pilots
Sure it did. No one would ever exaggerate in order to gain attention. Never.
A couple of these recent incidents the pilots complained of being temprarily blinded
Some people will say anything to get attention and paid time off. "I don't want to fly to Denver tonight, the stewardess and the waitress at the bar are BOTH offering me a threesome, and I've already had five drinks... I know, I'll say that a laser blinded me. That's been a pretty popular excuse, errrmmmm... story lately."
if you dazzle a pilot on short final, the odds of an accident go up significantly... This is a real threat
Yeah... I'm sure _NO_ racy stewardess has ever been going down on a pilot at the end of a flight. "Quick, hurry up, we're almo... mo... mo... mo... MO... ahhhhh... landed."
An airplane flew past a laser aimed at the stars and the pilots were all stoned and drunk so they reacted in a paranoid manner. In order to gain credibility they had to drum up the story to include "blinding light".
then at a helicopter
The police, hearing the pilots yammering on the scanner, noticed the laser across the sky and similarly approached it. As they approached the laser danced about from constellation to constellation, so they figured that close enough counts when writing a report to include probable cause.
I seriously believe that part was added in by the police to make the story credible. If they'd tell the truth the DA probably would've told them to get stuffed.
he admitted shining lights on a jet
If you're looking at the stars, and the pilots say they were blinded, and you say,"Well, I suppose it could've passed over the jet while I was pointing out Capricorn" that counts as an admission to the media.
Don't you people have ANY critical thinking skills, at all?
The chance of hitting the cockpit window twice (randomly) is 1 in nearly 12 quadrillion
Which is precisely why I find the whole story suspect. I've already heard the air traffic control record for that night, have you?
Pilot: "Traffic control. We're approaching landing and see a green laser light shining around the sky. Know anything about it?" ATC: "Not a thing. Is it pointing at you?" Pilot: "Not really. We were just checking on it." ATC: "Probably my neighbor looking at stars with his little girl again. You know that little girl punched my son at school 'cuz he tried to kiss her? Tell you what. Just say that the beam hit you twice and nearly blinded you. Don't forget the nearly blinded part. We'll get the police over there to do the same thing."
I strongly suspect that the "temporarily blinded the pilots" language was inserted by lawyers and law enforcement officials in order to turn a laughable coincidence of misguided stargazing into a news story.
Shining the laser on the police helicopter that was searching for him was a bad, bad idea.
I'm very skeptical that this is an accurate representation of the truth. The truth is probably closer to,"Yeah, we were cruising around in the police helicopter, heard on the scanner about some pilots who saw a funny light and deliberately flew in front of it, then we saw the light pointing at Orion's Belt so we figured, if we flew between Orion's Belt and the beam, we could nab the guy for deliberately trying to take us down."
"The Feds arrested him after he flashed a police helicopter searching for the source of the beam."
I think that part is inserted by the media to instigate disdain for the guy. He probably never pointed it at any police helicopter, but the feds know that Americans don't ever question what they read in the papers.
If the news story read,"Guy pointing at stars accidentally hits plane, nearby police helicopter spots the kilometer long beam and identifies the man's residence" then the public would probably have an outcry of remorse.
Upon further questioning, one police officer was heard to say,"Well, no, he didn't point the beam directly at us but, when we flew the helicopter over towards Ursa Major, it was close enough that we figured we could make a case for probable cause."
I'm mostly surprised that people are such sheep and eat this up. The questioning probably went something like this:
FBI: "What the heck were you doing out there?" Guy (frightened out of his pants): "I... we... my daughter and I..." FBI: "Don't try to blame this on your daughter!" Guy: "I'm not blaming it on her" FBI: "So you lied! Good, that's another count we have on you." Guy: "I didn't lie. My daughter and I were looking at stars." FBI: "What makes you think we're gonna believe that you were looking at stars?" Guy: "It was night?" FBI: "Don't get smart with us. Why were you pointing at the plane?" Guy: "It was night. I didn't see any plane." FBI: "So you deny that your green laser pointer was the one the pilots saw?" Guy: "No... I don't deny it..." FBI: "Then you admit it?" Guy: "We were looking at stars." FBI: "You were deliberately trying to hit an airplane with a laser pointer, that's what you were trying to do. And shame on you for lying to us to try and blame it on your daughter." Guy: "But... but..." FBI: "And you know what we're gonna tell the media, and you KNOW how gullible your fellow Americans are. Look at the story we've got everyone believing about the events over stock market and terrorist events of the last 10 years."
Slashdot Mirror
Whatever happened to being able to do whatever you wanted to with the computer you bought?
Being able to use your own legitimately purchased items in whatever manner you desire is a dangerous idea, citizen.
Gads. If the thought patterns of the media industry become legally enforced, soon there'll be whole new meanings for things like:
soup spoon
tea spoon
coffee mug
dixie cup (only dixies allowed inside)
salad fork
crowbar (good luck changing a tire.. that'll be illegal unless you have a tirebar)
etc.
Welcome to an era where the producer has a legal right to sit on your shoulder the moment you purchase a product.
Introduction
And, under the DMCA (and other existing laws), I probably just violated the copyright of the publishers of that
After all, Moore's Law predicts exponential growth, and clearly exponential growth can't continue forever before we reach hard physical limits; light isn't getting any faster. The growth must eventually slow down and even end
If we measure the speed of light in terms of feet per second as opposed to the more commonly known kilometers per second, the multiplier will yield a number which is greater (ignoring units). This will be good enough for the people in marketing and the salesmen at the major electronics outlets.
Similarly the onus will no longer be on the programmers or engineers to produce faster, more efficient, or more capable products. Businessmen, investors, and executives being what they are they will simply pressure the marketing department to produce more glitz and glam. Was the onus ever really on them? That's arguable. The size of programs has increased to the point where even a simple word processor wouldn't fit on a hard drive of 10 years ago, yet are the word processors of today helping us to write better letters? For all the extra horsepower and storage space we still do (mainly): e-mail, surf web, print pictures, play games. The only people who have a significantly improved computing experience are those who no longer have to wait 18 hours for the graphical rendering, mathematical modeling, or compilation to finish.
Intel has already shown us the way of advertising. Those three blue guys who are always doing some really neat stuff like taking off with rocket jetpacks or surfing around on anti-gravity boards. What does that have to do with processor capability, quality, or reliability? Nothing. At least automakers genuinely show a car in use doing something that a car does. When's the last time your processor caused you to physically fly to work?
Six pilots have already reported being blinded by laser light reflecting off of a building. You didn't know? A likely excuse. We can't have terrorists using cheap trigonometry tricks just to get out from the charges. It's nothing short of flat out stupid to be laser painting a building with a reflective surface halfway across the city. Only a moron would do such a thing without any regard for the path of the reflected beams. I hope you get all 25 years just to make an example of you.
Purely logical then... how is it logical that a man deliberately points a laser at a plane and a helicopter? It's not, so then the police and pilots must be making their story up. Is it logical that the pilots were blinded? No, not by a 5 mW laser. I have one here. You can't even see it down the block. Is it logical to take a man in for a lie detector test when the pilots and the police didn't have to give their statement under lie detector monitoring? No. That's a recipe for witch hunting.
Interesting differences about the nature of the confession.
After being taken to an FBI office and given a lie-detector test, Banach said he had hit the jet with the beam, court documents say
This fits with the claim that he was stargazing with his daughter and that contact with the plane was completely coincidental.
Banach, 38, of Parsippany, New Jersey, admitted to federal agents that he pointed the light beam at a jet
That paints a different light which can be interpreted to mean that he was deliberately pointing out the jet. Both articles you cite use this language. I think the public opinion is being swayed by language which deliberately skews the story. I wouldn't be surprised if all subsequent articles stick exclusively with the second wording and will probably never quote the lie detector questioning directly.
As for the police helicopter also being hit with the beam I'm still suspicious. Police reports are always skewed to justify the actions of the officers. No one wants to be found guilty of misconduct and spend time off without pay. The police helicopter reportedly was attempting to scout the area with the plane's pilot. Wouldn't they be doing that in the day? Wouldn't it be a little difficult to see a 5 mW green light during the daytime? Wouldn't it be even more difficult to see the light making contact with the outside of the chopper while looking at the ground? The goal wasn't to "fly the chopper around like a target to see if the terrorist comes back". The goal was to fly the chopper around and see if the pilot could recognize and identify the area from which the light had been coming.
Too many ifs for me to believe, rank and file, that this guy was even recklessly endangering anything. With this much reasonable doubt I'd want the Cessna pilots to give a lie detector testimony to back up their claims of being blinded or even seeing the light make contact with the windshield.
When playing baseball, if you bean the batter, you are indeed guilty of hitting the batter with the ball. You are not guilty intending to hit the batter. You're not even guilty of recklessly throwing a ball. The only FACT we have here is that some pilots claim laser contact was made.
What of a quarterback throwing an interception? Is that a crime? Brett Favre does it all the time. He's not trying to hit the interceptor. He's trying to hit his receiver. He doesn't see the interceptor until it's too late.
This fellow was out at night, looking at stars, and doesn't notice a small Cessna going past at 3000 feet. Stargazing can be good on even a moderately cloudy night. What were weather conditions on the night of the incident? None of this is reported. I'm doing nothing more than forwarding reasonable doubt to counter all the hate mongers whining for this guy's head. Law enforcement is free to question the guy. What's with the lie detector?
Do you know anything about the pilots or the man? Are they related in any social context? Has the man in question ever had personal conflicts with any members of the local law enforcement? There is a human factor to all of this.
What makes you think that two online stories can even come close to giving you all the facts, or that they would even choose to do so if it reduced the glam factor in the story?
Critical reading would require there to be information to back up the inferences
That's under editorial license and selective reporting. It never would've made the headlines if it weren't reported to paint the guy in a bad light now would it?
Watching the mod points stack up, none of you could ever work at Google. You're incapable of thinking outside the box.
You dont blame your children, you take the blames.
Let me guess this straight. The cops are flying around in the middle of the day and supposedly they can see a green dot on the outside of the helicopter while they're sitting on the inside? Then they go knocking around the neighborhood. They don't find anyone so they go flying around a few hours later. Now, maybe the second time it's dark enough where they can see the beam from the green laser, but they still can't see the outside of the helicopter unless they're hanging out the windows.
Then, when the cops come questioning around the neighborhood, this guy mentions off-handedly that, well, yeah... his daughter was out back with the laser that he brought home from work. The cops swarm the house and say they'll have to take the girl away for questioning. At that point the guy stands up and says,"Wait. Don't take my daughter. I was just making that up. It was me out back waving the laser around."
"Oh wait? You mean that laser hit a plane? No! I didn't know! You mean you're going to subject me to a lie detector test based on nothing more than a hunch and light you supposedly saw on the outside of the helicopter while inside of it? Have the pilots had a lie detector? Have the people in the police chopper had a lie detector?"
I'd say the guy's taking the fall for his daughter and should be applauded.
Remember that the pilots did not say they were blinded
And while Banach was subjected to the intense scrutiny of an FBI lie-detector tests, the pilots weren't. Why should we believe the pilots?
Furthermore something like a police helicopter would be very visible (running lights, remember?)
I've been wondering about the police helicopter. Apparently the cops and the pilot went out to try to find the source of the light. Wouldn't that be done in the daytime? Isn't it also kinda tough to see a dot of light on the outside of a helicopter if you're inside the copter?
There's too much here that doesn't add up. I think this is a case of "we saw the beam of light in the sky and assumed it was aimed at us".
I use the brain I have
You have not exercised a single moment of critical or individual thought. You have reacted in a fashion that one would expect from doing nothing more than reading the articles.
anti-government paranoia
I said nothing which was anti-government. The government is free to go arrest people and subject them to lie-detector questioning if it's plausible that the accusers aren't exaggerating the story or flat out making it up. In all fairness, if you want to strap me to a lie detector, then your accusation better have been made under lie detector questioning first.
How do we know it's true?
Please, get a clue! Google or read a book about physics
Most people have neverending disdain for those who think they know everything just because they've read it.
I've stared straight into the sun long enough to have a ten minute afterimage. I've stared straight into a laser long enough to see the kinda neat pattern that's inside the beam. Other than the afterimage (which wasn't blinding and did go away) I've never been blinded.
I think people are overreacting on exaggerated and probably falsified reports. Why? Because they believe everything they read but have no experience whatsoever with reality.
both days he accidentally flashed an aircraft while flashing the stars?
No. I believe that on both days there were reports of lasers and this guy was the only one they could dig up who would admit to having used a laser to point at stars. The rest is pressuring him to admit that there's a possibility that it may have been his.
What's still left is the credibility of the pilots and the police. The pilots probably own stock in a red laser factory which is losing shares to the green ones. The cops? I've read enough "suicide by cop" stories to understand that, in many cases, if you're within sight of a police officer he'll think you're aiming at him. There has to be some probable cause or else the officer won't get paid for the leave.
What evidence has been presented to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the laser ever made contact with the plane or the chopper? I'm skeptical. I think it's a case of 1/2 mile being close enough when they're looking for someone to catch and no one else is around.
Are you saying everyone should have the freedom to blind a pilot controlling a plane full of passengers and then to do it again?
I think they're saying we have the right to use green lasers to point constellations out to our children without fearing that the local police will badger us with,"Don't you agree that, while viewing the stars, you MIGHT have struck an airplane?" I don't see the transcripts of the questioning session cited in any of the news articles.
Admitting that it's possible and admitting that it occurred are two different things... but in a scenario like this I don't think the police care.
Common sense tells me that while he may not have intended
Common sense tells me that the laser never hit the plane, never hit the police chopper, and that the story was conveniently put together by prosecuters and a media which has nothing useful to report about the war or terror.
admitted under questioning
Was that the type of questioning which does or doesn't adhere to Geneva conventions. Seriously. "I was pointing out stars. Yeah, I suppose the plane might've flown past" counts as an admission but doesn't prove anything.
The flash temporarily blinded the pilots
Sure it did. No one would ever exaggerate in order to gain attention. Never.
A couple of these recent incidents the pilots complained of being temprarily blinded
Some people will say anything to get attention and paid time off. "I don't want to fly to Denver tonight, the stewardess and the waitress at the bar are BOTH offering me a threesome, and I've already had five drinks... I know, I'll say that a laser blinded me. That's been a pretty popular excuse, errrmmmm... story lately."
if you dazzle a pilot on short final, the odds of an accident go up significantly... This is a real threat
Yeah... I'm sure _NO_ racy stewardess has ever been going down on a pilot at the end of a flight. "Quick, hurry up, we're almo... mo... mo... mo... MO... ahhhhh... landed."
Just how naive do you think we are?
RTFA
Don't believe everything you read.
a laser was aimed at an airplane
An airplane flew past a laser aimed at the stars and the pilots were all stoned and drunk so they reacted in a paranoid manner. In order to gain credibility they had to drum up the story to include "blinding light".
then at a helicopter
The police, hearing the pilots yammering on the scanner, noticed the laser across the sky and similarly approached it. As they approached the laser danced about from constellation to constellation, so they figured that close enough counts when writing a report to include probable cause.
It's called critical reading. Try it sometime.
Note that not only did he hit the helicopter
I seriously believe that part was added in by the police to make the story credible. If they'd tell the truth the DA probably would've told them to get stuffed.
he admitted shining lights on a jet
If you're looking at the stars, and the pilots say they were blinded, and you say,"Well, I suppose it could've passed over the jet while I was pointing out Capricorn" that counts as an admission to the media.
Don't you people have ANY critical thinking skills, at all?
The chance of hitting the cockpit window twice (randomly) is 1 in nearly 12 quadrillion
Which is precisely why I find the whole story suspect. I've already heard the air traffic control record for that night, have you?
Pilot: "Traffic control. We're approaching landing and see a green laser light shining around the sky. Know anything about it?"
ATC: "Not a thing. Is it pointing at you?"
Pilot: "Not really. We were just checking on it."
ATC: "Probably my neighbor looking at stars with his little girl again. You know that little girl punched my son at school 'cuz he tried to kiss her? Tell you what. Just say that the beam hit you twice and nearly blinded you. Don't forget the nearly blinded part. We'll get the police over there to do the same thing."
It doesn't matter. He did.
I strongly suspect that the "temporarily blinded the pilots" language was inserted by lawyers and law enforcement officials in order to turn a laughable coincidence of misguided stargazing into a news story.
Shining the laser on the police helicopter that was searching for him was a bad, bad idea.
I'm very skeptical that this is an accurate representation of the truth. The truth is probably closer to,"Yeah, we were cruising around in the police helicopter, heard on the scanner about some pilots who saw a funny light and deliberately flew in front of it, then we saw the light pointing at Orion's Belt so we figured, if we flew between Orion's Belt and the beam, we could nab the guy for deliberately trying to take us down."
"The Feds arrested him after he flashed a police helicopter searching for the source of the beam."
I think that part is inserted by the media to instigate disdain for the guy. He probably never pointed it at any police helicopter, but the feds know that Americans don't ever question what they read in the papers.
If the news story read,"Guy pointing at stars accidentally hits plane, nearby police helicopter spots the kilometer long beam and identifies the man's residence" then the public would probably have an outcry of remorse.
Upon further questioning, one police officer was heard to say,"Well, no, he didn't point the beam directly at us but, when we flew the helicopter over towards Ursa Major, it was close enough that we figured we could make a case for probable cause."
I'm mostly surprised that people are such sheep and eat this up. The questioning probably went something like this:
FBI: "What the heck were you doing out there?"
Guy (frightened out of his pants): "I... we... my daughter and I..."
FBI: "Don't try to blame this on your daughter!"
Guy: "I'm not blaming it on her"
FBI: "So you lied! Good, that's another count we have on you."
Guy: "I didn't lie. My daughter and I were looking at stars."
FBI: "What makes you think we're gonna believe that you were looking at stars?"
Guy: "It was night?"
FBI: "Don't get smart with us. Why were you pointing at the plane?"
Guy: "It was night. I didn't see any plane."
FBI: "So you deny that your green laser pointer was the one the pilots saw?"
Guy: "No... I don't deny it..."
FBI: "Then you admit it?"
Guy: "We were looking at stars."
FBI: "You were deliberately trying to hit an airplane with a laser pointer, that's what you were trying to do. And shame on you for lying to us to try and blame it on your daughter."
Guy: "But... but..."
FBI: "And you know what we're gonna tell the media, and you KNOW how gullible your fellow Americans are. Look at the story we've got everyone believing about the events over stock market and terrorist events of the last 10 years."