I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "actively tracked". I think 21 CFR 1002.20 implies that any time a manufacturer finds out that anyone was injured by a laser, they have to send a notice to the FDA's director of CDRH "immediately".

"Simply" changing the level?

A LOT of things are different whenever you change levels. For instance, Class I devices do not need emission indicators. But higher powered lasers do need emission indicators. In fact, they need fail-safe emission indicators, which typically means using two LEDs and two current limiting resistors and two GPIO pins on your microcontroller. Not only that, but the color of the emission indicator must be substantially different from the emissions themselves, so that an operator wearing safety glasses can still see the indicator light up.

Plus, there's that whole product report thing that you have to send to the FDA's CDRH. I'm not entirely sure but it's probably a felony to put false statements into the Initial Product Report.

Any random person above the age of 16 can acquire a driver's license. There is no restriction, other than age.

Any random person above the age of 21 can purchase alcohol. There is no restriction, other than age.

Those statements are not true when it comes to controlled substances. The Controlled Substances Act effectively bans all Schedule I drugs for any purpose. Even people who would otherwise be allowed to manufacture, purchase, or consume Schedule I drugs (i.e. medical marijuana) are in violation of the federal law.

Now, is the CSA a regulation? Yes. All bans are a regulation, but not all regulations are a ban. This concept is easy to understand in terms of "all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares". Why is it so difficult when it comes to government regulations?

Have governments have banned you from driving? Because the government regulates who can and cannot drive, in the form of a driver's license. They also regulate how fast you can travel on the road.

Have governments banned you from drinking? Because government regulates who can and cannot buy alcohol.

I saw this article earlier and it's a bit misleading. Buried much more deeply...

The NIST tests were conducted on randomly selected commercial laser devices labeled as Class IIIa or 3R and sold as suitable for demonstration use in classrooms and other public spaces

That whole "Class IIIa/3R" thing is a pretty big deal. Lasers of this class are pretty heavily regulated because of the danger they can potentially pose. The color of the laser is almost unimportant, except for the minor detail of how green lasers are generated by dividing infrared light in half, which makes them subject to a bit more regulation since infrared is not a visible emission; invisible emissions are more strictly regulated, since there's no blink reflex to save your eyes.

I wonder what percentage of commercial laser pointers are Class IIIa/3R?

For the record, I did some research on lasers, because we were going to incorporate one into one of our products...until we learned how heavily regulated they are, and went with a diode that pumps out like 50x as much wattage, but doesn't fall under regulations since the emissions aren't coherent. Throughout my research, I learned that no one - literally, no one - has ever reported being injured by a Class IIIa/3R laser. The danger posed by these emissions is more theoretical than practice.

Something tells me you don't know the difference between a Code of Federal Regulations and a ban.

Innovation isn't gimmickry, but the Wii was gimmickry

I beg to differ. See, everyone always complains about the Wii's motion sensing. Yeah, it's pretty gimmicky and there are very few times that it actually works well.

But one thing that NO ONE ever gives credit to the Wii for is the POINTING. The ability to use a pointer in game is absolutely amazing. I never enjoyed shooters on the console until I could use the Wii to aim. The pointing technology in the Wii revolutionized games that were ported from other systems. My hit ratio in Resident Evil 4 went from 75% (on a good day) to 90% (on just about any day). It was much more fun to play Okami on the Wii than the PS2.

Rag on the motion controls all you want, but the pointing controls for the Wii made it the superior console in my opinion. The only thing better than the Wii is a computer with a mouse and keyboard.

You can hack at IOS (not iOS, IOS, the microkernel that runs on Starlet) and add SDHC support to any IOS you want.

In fact, you can even hack IOS so that it can redirect access from the SD card through Wifi. You can even redirect disc access through Wifi. It's a program called Riivolution. I used it once while texture hacking; just save the texture file to the right folder, tickle the game (e.g. leave area and come back) until it reloads the texture.

As mentioned by sibling posts, the problem is that Nintendo wanted to keep a fork of every single IOS ever, and games will always use the IOS that they request. So you either hack the IOS which gets loaded by your game, or you hack the game to request a new IOS, or you write a loader which ignores the IOS the game requests and loads a pre-specified one (e.g. Gecko OS uses IOS36, I believe)

PA has 13 red districts and 5 blue districts. OH has 12 red districts and 4 blue districts.

Sounds Republican controlled to me. Now, if you want to talk about a Republican popular vote...OH is still Republican controlled (51% R, 46% D in the last election), but PA would be narrowly controlled by Democrats (50% D, 49% R). But having a higher popular vote in today's United States of America doesn't necessarily mean that you control the associated legislature.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/23/world/europe/italy-quake-scientists-guilty

The experts determined that it was "unlikely" but not impossible that a major quake would take place, despite concern among the city's residents over recent seismic activity.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/23/italian-scientist-earthquake-condemns-court

But [Claudio] Eva insisted neither he nor his colleagues had given any reassurances in their brief, 40-minute meeting. "We always maintained it was not possible to predict or exclude an earthquake," he said.

Now who do I believe, some guy named Rary on the Internet, or Jethro Mullen from CNN and Tom Kington from the Guardian?

Would BDSM be considered violent? What about the stuff from Kink.com, where a woman may be tied up and beaten with various whips? I think they even have a series where two women wrestle and the winner fucks the loser with a strap-on.

Does the legality change when there's an interview at the beginning or end where the female explicitly states that they consented to their treatment, going so far as to describe what was done to her and whether she enjoyed it?

I admire the goal of trying to get rid of truly violent porn - the stuff that lacks consent. If it was limited to nonconsensual stuff, I can see it kinda sorta working. But as long as two consenting adults can violate the law, said law will be immoral and unethical - and nearly impossible to enforce.

But what if you have a corporate officer whose sole job is to manage risk, and that officer tells you "this is too risky", and you fire that guy because you didn't like what he said, and the next guy stood up and took notice that he could get fired from his cushy six figure job if he doesn't say what the boss wants to hear...

Remember how everyone is a felon? All the ratings agencies committed fraud. Everyone knows it.

The government is suing S&P for $5 billion. S&P will cease to exist if found guilty (they should have settled like Goldman Sachs). And the government likely has the evidence to prove fraud, against S&P and all the others.

Not that I think it's right. But if S&P had just refused to engage in fraud, the Feds would have no leverage. You reap what you sow.