Dan Heath wrote: > This is the scourge of our society and will be our downfall.
I agree wholeheartedly. Our biggest problem isn't terrorism. In my opinion it's an economy stifled by many factors, one of the biggest being the fear of frivolous lawsuits. I just spent almost 2 years designing a portable waterjet cutter designed to cut into "hazardous threats", meaning anything from truck bombs, missile casings, warheads, chemical tanker railroad cars, or even cutting accident victims out of their crumpled vehicles. We built a prototype, and have spent over a year in testing, and then traveled the country demonstrating it. We built our first production model for NYPD, and now that it's time to deliver it, our company is getting cold feet. What happens if the unit malfunctions and fails to disable a bomb in Manhattan in time, and the resulting explosion ends up looking like ground zero? Then we get sued by the families of 500 victims and the company goes bankrupt. Not acceptable! The solution...don't sell it in the first place. Millions of dollars down the drain. I guess I shouldn't complain...it paid my salary for two years, and it was really interesting work, but it just irritates me to no end to have put that much effort into something that's now been shelved due to the fear of a frivolous, groundless lawsuit. The problem is that nobody's reponsible for their own actions or decisions anymore. And stuff doesn't "just happen" either. We live in a society where when something negative occurs, it's somebody else's fault, and the first place you look to place the blame is wherever the biggest pot of money lies. My father's been sued twice for a million dollars each time. They were both so rediculous it'd make you cry, but it cost him a year of sleepless nights, and well over $40,000 to defend himself, even though both suits were groundless. Sore subject, I guess. Sorry about the rant... Mark Langford, Huntsville, AL mailto:langf...@hiwaay.net see KR2S project at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford
