Get ready for More laws

[n2ize]

In responsible hands lasers and laser pointers are facinating devices. Not only for pointing at things but for experimenters, hobbyists, etc. they are an inexpensive way to achieve a laser beam that can be used for a wide range of experiments, projects and applications.

Sadly, as the article below points out, the stupidity and sheer irresponsibility of some people will end up making it difficult to acqure these devices. because of actions like those described in the link below we can rest assured that lawmakers will be proposing restrictions and outright bans on the sale, ownership and use of these devices.

What they should really do is pass a law stating that any irresponsible moron who points one of these things at an aircraft, car, or person will be arrested as a terrorist and be hanged within 24 hours. Then they should follow through and hang a few of them. Then perhaps normal responsible people with common sense won;t have to make sacrifices on the behalf of idiots.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0120-lasers-20110120,0,3047759.story

[kc7jty]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1TmeBd9338

[n2ize]

Exactly what I mean. Cpould you imagine if they banned lasers ? How would GoldFINGAH have managed ??


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51Wg6k9cWhM

[KA5PIU]

Hello.

It already is against the law to import or sell high power laser devices, why do you think I scrounge them out of defective HD-DVD writers?
It is a Federal Felony to point a laser at an aircraft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_pointer
And the devices I produce are far and above what is being pointed at aircraft at the present time.

[suddenseer]

So far, the only use I have had for them is entertaining my pets. Actually I am the one being entertained.

[n2ize]

So far, the only use I have had for them is entertaining my pets. Actually I am the one being entertained.

Thats the most primitive use. Many other hobbyists, experimenters, etc. use them for a wide range of experiments, research, etc/ It's a shame that stupidity may make it hard on legitimate users. Stupid parents let their kids have these things thinking they are harmless toys. Then they point them at an aircraft. Then the lawmakers ban them. As usual, everyone loses on account of the stupic and the irresponsible.

[KA5PIU]

Hello.

For years mopeds were in that limbo area.
So, some retarded kid gets the parents to buy him a moped, takes the thing On the freeway! and gets to become road pizza.
The parents, both of sub par intellect explain that, "It don need no license" and could not understand how something like this can be sold to just anyone.
Now, get this, the kid had trouble with a regular bicycle and staying upright due to motor development issues.
So, in short, they hand him something with an engine.
Now there is a moped safety course and license!
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/msb/mopedinfo.htm

[ka4dpo]

I still like the idea of equipping commercial aircraft with missiles that will lock on to the location of the laser and go for that position even if the laser extinguishes. They won't try that again let me tell you.....

[n2ize]

I still like the idea of equipping commercial aircraft with missiles that will lock on to the location of the laser and go for that position even if the laser extinguishes. They won't try that again let me tell you.....

Only problem with that is you take out a lot of innocent people who had nothing to do with it. I think hanging them within 24 hours is best.

[n2ize]

Hello.

It already is against the law to import or sell high power laser devices, why do you think I scrounge them out of defective HD-DVD writers?
It is a Federal Felony to point a laser at an aircraft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_pointer
And the devices I produce are far and above what is being pointed at aircraft at the present time.

Expect tougher laws in the near future. Laws with sharp teeth. Most likely nationwide bans on all such devices and tough consequences for violators. The reason we have a "nanny state" is because people are stupid.

[suddenseer]

Thats the most primitive use. I am very primitive. I do primitive camping. I make primitive weapons. When the 'Mad Max' scenario finally happens, I will last a bit longer than most, not as long as others. It will be fun. I doubt if I will be using a low power laser when that happens.

[NQ6U]

I am very primitive. I do primitive camping. I make primitive weapons.

Do you know how to knap flint? I've always wanted to try that.

[suddenseer]

Do you know how to knap flint? I've always wanted to try that.I have an old 'sucrets' tin container of such goodies, and other tools.
I use a small tool makers stone and a carbide cutting tool insert for a much sharper edge, that lasts longer than the 'peckers' that I was taught. It takes longer, but the almost perfect sharp edge lasts longer. I use a mixture of primitive, and modern hand tools. I did not say I did traditional primitive, more survival slant. I have not gone for a week trip in years, but could if I had to. I may not want to.

[kb2vxa]

We started with common sense being the only government, sense was common... right? Then this guy goes up a mountain and spends the night in a thunderstorm, comes down with ten laws and gets in a big fight with his brother who happened to be a priest. That's when it started, separation of church and state and the beginning of each adding laws upon laws none of which ever agreed with each other. A few thousand years later along came a wise man who consolidated all those laws into just two, one for the church and the other for the state and the best part was they agreed 100% each based upon respect.

I don't know where we went wrong but somewhere along the line churches split off and so did states, each making laws upon laws to the point churches think they're states and states think they're churches, can't tell the difference anymore. Every day it gets worse, each justifies its existence by making more and more laws on top of laws and each trying to be top dog wanting to rule the world. Call it a nanny state if you will but I call it a daddy state, I'm hearing "Do as I say and not as I do." and "But it's for your own good son." until I want to SCREAM!!!

Let's get rid of the legislators and the laws, get back to common sense. It's easier than you think, since sense isn't so common as stupids who need nannies start by eliminating the nannies. Stupids will take care of the rest all by themselves, just replace the labels with Darwin Awards. Survival of the fittest doesn't mean the strongest, the fittest are the smartest and the smartest know just how much chlorine to add to the gene pool.

[n2ize]

I am surprised that, other than Rudy, there are no others out here who are interested in experimenting with lasers and optics. I built my first He-Ne laser in high school. When I saw it in operation I was totally captivated. I've been a hobbyist ever since. Lots of people at my electronics club are also very interested and engage in various laser hacks and experiments. The Amateur community is surprisingly void of experimenters.

[KC2UGV]

We started with common sense being the only government, sense was common... right? Then this guy goes up a mountain and spends the night in a thunderstorm, comes down with ten laws and gets in a big fight with his brother who happened to be a priest. That's when it started, separation of church and state and the beginning of each adding laws upon laws none of which ever agreed with each other. A few thousand years later along came a wise man who consolidated all those laws into just two, one for the church and the other for the state and the best part was they agreed 100% each based upon respect.

I don't know where we went wrong but somewhere along the line churches split off and so did states, each making laws upon laws to the point churches think they're states and states think they're churches, can't tell the difference anymore. Every day it gets worse, each justifies its existence by making more and more laws on top of laws and each trying to be top dog wanting to rule the world. Call it a nanny state if you will but I call it a daddy state, I'm hearing "Do as I say and not as I do." and "But it's for your own good son." until I want to SCREAM!!!

Let's get rid of the legislators and the laws, get back to common sense. It's easier than you think, since sense isn't so common as stupids who need nannies start by eliminating the nannies. Stupids will take care of the rest all by themselves, just replace the labels with Darwin Awards. Survival of the fittest doesn't mean the strongest, the fittest are the smartest and the smartest know just how much chlorine to add to the gene pool.

If I've learned anything in life is that the one thing common sense and common courtesy share is that neither of them are very common.

[suddenseer]

I am surprised that, other than Rudy, there are no others out here who are interested in experimenting with lasers and optics. I built my first He-Ne laser in high school. When I saw it in operation I was totally captivated. I've been a hobbyist ever since. Lots of people at my electronics club are also very interested and engage in various laser hacks and experiments. The Amateur community is surprisingly void of experimenters.When I was a young man, I did alot with lasers. We had a laser that was several watts I believe, powered by a 12v motorcycle battery. The laser was obtained by a friend who had access to the 'scrapped' box at a local manufacturer. The application was mostly used on the large tile digging machines. this was the late 70's We were older teens/younger 20's. Maybe liquor, and weed made us a bit daring. Most people had not seen a laser. We usually placed the red/green dots on the ground near unsuspecting people. I guess we entertained ourselves using people like I do now with my animals. Yea, we used mirrors, induced speaker voltage to make cool light shows to our music, but messing with the natives was more amusing.:lol:

[NQ6U]

What can you do with a home-built laser other than make and view holograms? I did take a class on that at the Exploratorium in San Francisco back in the 1970s but after I made a few, it became kind of boring. There are too many limitations on what you can photograph.

[suddenseer]

I agree, we did the laser/hologram optics experiments at WSU. It was boring after a few times. Like a ecomm net.:ugh:

[N7RJD]

What they should really do is pass a law stating that any irresponsible moron who points one of these things at an aircraft, car, or person will be arrested as a terrorist and be hanged within 24 hours. Then they should follow through and hang a few of them.

For a lawmaker to write legislation calling for the hanging of irresponsible morons
would be suicide for a large portion of them. Not saying it wouldn't be a good idea,
just saying that they'd never do it out of self preservation.

[KA5PIU]

What can you do with a home-built laser other than make and view holograms? I did take a class on that at the Exploratorium in San Francisco back in the 1970s but after I made a few, it became kind of boring. There are too many limitations on what you can photograph.

Hello.

Touch some fire to your butt? ;)
An IR laser with only a little bit of power pointed at a piece of glass makes an excellent listening device if you use a pickup device.
And, the very first laser I have was a damaged unit from construction that was being tossed.
It was connected backwards and fried a few parts.
I got into it and replaced a few parts and began to understand the basic design, it would fail if it got to hot.
It would fail if it was connected backwards.
It would fail for the hell of it, and they were all that way.
After a few weeks of playing with it and research I got it going to my satisfaction.
First thing I did was to fabricate steel brackets that held the thing together, both to support it, but also as a good heat sink.
I mounted the power supply transistors to a piece of steel that is itself mounted to the bottom bracket.
I use a bridge rectifier and brute force filtering and redesigned the power supply to run from 9 to 48 volts input, AC/DC.
I put in a MOV for 32 volts with a fuse hidden under the board.
No more failures.
I did over a dozen of them for my employers, rainy day work at home.
The only ones that failed after this were run over or fell in water.
I stopped repairing them after that.
But, this got me a lot of material to experiment with.
From that point on I found lasers to be interesting.

[n2ize]

There is a heck of a lot more going on in amateur laser research other than making holograms. There are so many new devices. And home lasers are becoming more diverse and capable of higher powers than ever before. Surveillance, communications, cutting and burning, measurement, and lots more are on the table of today's laser hobbyist. Not to mention the plethora of new devices that are appearing these days. Things have come a ways from the old He-ne days.

[n2ize]

For a lawmaker to write legislation calling for the hanging of irresponsible morons
would be suicide for a large portion of them. Not saying it wouldn't be a good idea,
just saying that they'd never do it out of self preservation.

:) Good point. I am afraid you are absolutely correct on that.

[n2ize]

Hello.

Touch some fire to your butt? ;)
An IR laser with only a little bit of power pointed at a piece of glass makes an excellent listening device if you use a pickup device.
And, the very first laser I have was a damaged unit from construction that was being tossed.
It was connected backwards and fried a few parts.
I got into it and replaced a few parts and began to understand the basic design, it would fail if it got to hot.
It would fail if it was connected backwards.
It would fail for the hell of it, and they were all that way.
After a few weeks of playing with it and research I got it going to my satisfaction.
First thing I did was to fabricate steel brackets that held the thing together, both to support it, but also as a good heat sink.
I mounted the power supply transistors to a piece of steel that is itself mounted to the bottom bracket.
I use a bridge rectifier and brute force filtering and redesigned the power supply to run from 9 to 48 volts input, AC/DC.
I put in a MOV for 32 volts with a fuse hidden under the board.
No more failures.
I did over a dozen of them for my employers, rainy day work at home.
The only ones that failed after this were run over or fell in water.
I stopped repairing them after that.
But, this got me a lot of material to experiment with.
From that point on I found lasers to be interesting.

Th solid state laser modules i.e. diode or DPSS are very finicky and easily damaged by too high a voltage, inadequate cooling.. This is particularly true of the diodes themselves. I've blown out a few and some I've seen that blow out if you look at them the wrong way. Well not exactly but you've been there done that. You know how temperamental they are.

[kb2vxa]

Just to catch up with this fast moving thread, lack of sense and courtesy common or not is the hallmark of the selfish Me Generation. The kids are grown, many have become politicians but morons or not they still have a sense of self preservation so the only place you'll see them hanging is in the back room deal making parlor.

When it comes to experimenting with lasers my friends and I got in on them early in the days of gas discharge tubes and Brewster windows. We got our parts, wiggly mirrors and all from rather short lived arcade games scrapped when the Nanny State decided lasers were too dangerous to allow the public anywhere near them and they were outlawed. We soon got bored with experimenting and found it more fun messing with Sasquatch, unsuspecting people make great pets especially driving cars wondering why the stop sign is blinking and the car ahead has alternating directional signals. The only trouble is rain and fog making the beam visible so an alert motorist can see the window it's coming from. (;->)

Speaking of Nanny, have you ever been through the checkout and caught the reflection of a bar code scanner straight in your eyes? That flash hurts like the devil, THERE AUGHT TO BE A LAW! (%-O)

[KC2UGV]

Common sense and common courtesy have been absent since humanity crawled from the oceans.

[n2ize]

Just to catch up with this fast moving thread, lack of sense and courtesy common or not is the hallmark of the selfish Me Generation. The kids are grown, many have become politicians but morons or not they still have a sense of self preservation so the only place you'll see them hanging is in the back room deal making parlor.

When it comes to experimenting with lasers my friends and I got in on them early in the days of gas discharge tubes and Brewster windows. We got our parts, wiggly mirrors and all from rather short lived arcade games scrapped when the Nanny State decided lasers were too dangerous to allow the public anywhere near them and they were outlawed. We soon got bored with experimenting and found it more fun messing with Sasquatch, unsuspecting people make great pets especially driving cars wondering why the stop sign is blinking and the car ahead has alternating directional signals. The only trouble is rain and fog making the beam visible so an alert motorist can see the window it's coming from. (;->)

Speaking of Nanny, have you ever been through the checkout and caught the reflection of a bar code scanner straight in your eyes? That flash hurts like the devil, THERE AUGHT TO BE A LAW! (%-O)

Problem is that too many stupid parents give their kids a credit card and let their kids buy high powered lasers off the Internet. These lasers they are buying are small, battery powered, and are much more powerful than the <5 Mw He-Ne lasers we played with years ago or the <5 Mw red or green pointers of a decade or two ago.. You will clearly see the beam from these lasers on a perfectly crystal clear night. Some of them will produce enough heat to burn or cut certain materials. And many of them are powerful enough to damage the eye in a split second. These are not toys but the parents don't realize how dangerous they can be or that junior is playing with a laser that can hurt or blind someone in a second as if it was a harmless toy. Yes, the flash can be painful, as a police helicopter pilot will tell you the night he was totally blinded and in pain when some stupid kid hit his aircraft with a beam from a "powerful" laser. These lasers are of a power level that requires great respect. They are not suited for simply aiming into the air or playing practical jokes or even playing with pets.

In the hands of experimenters and hobbyists who employ common sense and employ safety measures many of these new, powerful lasers are quite fascinating. But in the hands
of incompetent fools or silly children they can be quite dangerous and will invoke the Nanny state... and with good reason.