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Ray Gun Puts Voices Inside Your Head
Sportsqs writes "The Sierra Nevada Corporation claimed this week that it is ready to begin production on the MEDUSA, a damned scary ray gun that uses the 'microwave audio effect' to implant sounds and perhaps even specific messages inside people's heads."
This is surely the dawn of a new age for conspiracy theories, second only to that of the advent of recorded media (with all of those damned subconscious messages).
"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."
that they should name it Medusa, a villain who was defeated by reflecting it's magic back at it...
remote torture anybody?
imagine playing Cliff Richard to you victim incessantly. unable to sleep. unable to get away from it. all you need is somebody to point this thing at his head.
imagine doing it at just enough of a low level so he is not aware of it.
imagine jururs being threatened at long range. imagine blackmail from a distance.
what if an unverifiable, untraceable voice announces in your ear "rob the bank or I shoot your wife", what would you do?
this is damn scary, where is my magneto helmet?
"all standard forms of defence against auditory input" probably means anything in or covering your ears. The tinfoil hat only blocks electromagnetic waves, which is what they are supposedly using.
The tinfoil hat might actually be one of the few ways you can block this without any special materials or equipment.
If they see someone with a tinfoil hat, they'll probably just yell at him.
Heck, combine it with some prerecorded messages and parents will snap these up "for the children".
Top sellers could be:
All with constant repetition which only ends when the desired action is performed.
A Human Right
Another way for marketing wankstains to pollute our heads with their psychologically manipulate garbage. Hopefully the powers that be will see the strong public interest argument in not using this to beam 'important messages' into peoples heads.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
1) Subliminal messages don't work. It's a sham that a psychologist made with fake data that scared the crap out of politicians so that a law was implemented quickly and people fear it to this day (though I still do fear spammers using this, as they have no morals).
So... Why exactly do you fear it if it doesn't work?
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
I've been saying this all along. Tinfoil hats,and Faraday cage like devices in general, can't be relied upon unless they're grounded.
In many cases, you'll get significant attenuation without grounding, as in the case of foil shields for protecting passport RFIDs, but grounding, even imperfect grounding, would improve shielding tremendously.
Obviously, you should run a wire from your tinfoil hat to a conductive grounding strip attached to the heel of your shoe. Then you replace your floors with carbon impregnated panels, and for the final touch connect them to a six foot copper rod driven into the earth.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
1) Subliminal messages don't work. It's a sham that a psychologist made with fake data that scared the crap out of politicians so that a law was implemented quickly and people fear it to this day (though I still do fear spammers using this, as they have no morals).
So... Why exactly do you fear it if it doesn't work?
Because audible spam in my head would be even worse than the e-mailed spam in my in-box or the visible spam on billboards (and bus stops, sides of buildings/cars, etc.)
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
People should be able to believe whatever the hell they want to believe as long as they don't try to force it on others. If they don't believe in evolution, fine, it's their right -- but they shouldn't be allowed to practice biological science.
attaining the necessary volume might involve power levels that could cause neural damage.
Yeah, that'll stop this from widespread use.
Like how they banned Tasers, because attaining the necessary pain might involve power levels that could cause cardiac arrhythmia.
Oh, wait, no they don't... All those people died of "excited delerium", not Taser-induced arrhythmia. Slip o' the tongue there, don't sue me bro...
Yeah, that sure worked for Stalin and Mao Tse Tung. They never committed any atrocities at all.
The reality is that there are a few nutballs out there in every religion, including atheism.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
There are all kinds of quips about tinfoil hats and paranoia to be made on this one. Trouble is, think about what that means. We are living a tinfoil hatter's paranoid fantasy, it just happens to all be true.
Massive wiretapping? Check.
Ubiquitous surveillance? Check.
Substantial expansion of state power? Check.
Secret prisons and disappearances? Check.
Directed energy weapons (both pain and sound)? Check.
Classified laws? Check.
Mercenaries who answer to no law?? Check.
Seriously. They still have some really wacky ones about reptoids and masons and things; but much of conspiracy lore is so common that it doesn't even make the front pages anymore. The joke is on us.
If you are so crazy that you think Santa Clause is an FBI agent out to kill you and you strike out that does not meet the standard for legal insanity here.
That's OK with me. Sorry if it seems callous, but a mentally ill murderer is still a murderer. Criminal law serves to protect the public. It sucks to have mental illness and to be locked up, but it sucks more to get stabbed to death on a subway train.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Most likely no, as this device makes the skull vibrate, which is then picked up by the inner ear. If their ears don't work at all, this won't solve anything.
Yeah, and as an aside, don't you just love how when you read a report on any Taser incident, the police never mention the LAW, it's always about POLICY. Think about that, they are concerned with POLICY over LAW, something you would expect from a for-profit industry trying to maximize gains, but from a government agency specifically designed to uphold the LAW?
I know, some people are going to say that they follow policy which is more strict than the law, to which I call bullshit. If -I- were to taser you for noncompliance, I go to jail, because of my lack of a State Authorized shiny piece of tin on my chest. It's really that simple, just because you're a cop, doesn't mean you can break the law, the only instances of special treatment allowed by law are those bits that are actually CODIFIED into the law, anything else is abusing your position (that position being that it's far less likely to be arrested). I highly doubt that there are laws allowing you to physically harm someone who is not breaking any laws, but it seems that many police officers mistakenly think that whatever they tell you to do IS law.
Murder is murder, but if mentally ill people received actual help, instead indifference, from society and the heath care system, some murders and/or suicides might be avoided.
Wouldn't the money be better spent treating people prior to problems cropping instead of keeping them locked up afterwards?
A criminal justice system is not designed to help sick people.
Also, there is a *big* difference between seeing someone simply going limp after being tazed, and seeing someone getting beaten down with a billy-club. These situations play out very differently when broadcast on the 6:00 news.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
> If -I- were to taser you for noncompliance, I go to jail, because of
> my lack of a State Authorized shiny piece of tin on my chest.
One definition of 'government' is that it is the entity which claims a monopoly on the 'legitimate' use of force. Something to keep in mind when considering giving it additional authority, especially if the task can possibly be done by a private entity.
But thankfully our form of government (US) doesn't give a monopoly on teh use of force to the State. You CAN tase a bro if he is attempting to use force against you and in most jurisdictions (i.e those that are lawless) you will not be punished. The 2nd Amendment was recently affirmed to protect an individual right to the possession, bearing and yes the lawful use thereof. Our government gets it's powers from We the People and thus in theory doesn't any powers we didn't have to give it and we kept a generous portion.
Democrat delenda est
2. Rocking out to the loudest concert in history without anyone outside the venue hearing a whisper of it (on second thought, the RIAA might require this, so maybe it's not so good)
Followed by a dead-black spaceship plummeting into a nearby sun.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
"...a damned scary ray gun that uses the 'microwave audio effect' to implant sounds and perhaps even specific messages inside people's heads."
A little late to be crying "damned scary" wolf. The effects was proven about 25 years ago.
Yes, specific messages. In the original research the test was to beam spoken numbers (one at a time, 1 through 20) at the subject and have them guess which number it was. Results were 80% to 100% correct.
It's not subliminal in the denotation of 'below the level of conscious awareness'. The perception is that of a "heard" sound.
I'm surprised it took this long for someone to come out with this. The original works was, after all, done on commercially technology of the time.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
True, but completely offtopic. If the topic or a comment quotes Romeo and Juliet, I just might point that out.
The difference, of course, is that it's unlikely that Shakespeare read the Italian poem, but very likely that Futurama's writers have read Dreaming Is A Private Thing (the story is a commentary about writers). It's even likely that the Asimov reference was put there on purpose; that would be my assumption and I would applaud Futurama's writers for it if so.
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mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest