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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."
Pfft. Call me when they implement a 'microwave digital surround effect' on this thing. Then I'll be impressed.
Is this one of DARPA's toys?
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 the rick rolling possibilities. We're in for a world of pain if these things become available on the internet.
On a more serious note, engineering and scientific work ethics? Does that at all exist anymore? I can't imagine anyone willingly developing a technology with so many malevolent uses. Didn't we learn anything from the Manhattan project?
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
These sound like HSS speakers, which use ultrasonic carrier waves to demodulate sound when the frequencies come into contact with flesh and bone.
http://www.atcsd.com/site/
And friend of mine has a couple of these speakers. We recently used them at an art opening to beam the music of the primes into people's heads (playing the digital root of each prime number through a hexatonic scale, rests in the music were created by the occurrence of the primes in the digital-roots matrix we used to develop our own unique prime number sieve).
-=/\- Jizzbug -/\=-
Futurama lifted that almost word for word from Isaac Asimov's Dreaming is a Private Thing.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I see enormous benefits in this technology.
1. Listening to music as loud as you want while not forcing it on others
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)
3. Throwing a gigantic party with great tunes while letting the geezer next door -- who never listens to anything harder than Captain and Tennille -- get his beauty sleep
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I think there's a similar effect that explains the "whooshing" sound you hear when you watch shooting stars.
For years, scientists have believed that the sound was a figment of human imagination, even though many people would swear to hearing it. The problem is that the meteors are miles and miles overhead, but the sound is heard simultaneously. Now I've personally heard the whoosh of a bolide during a the massive meteor shower, and I'd be prepared to swear it was simultaneous with the flash of the meteor trail, even though I know that sound could not travel that fast, even if it were a mere few thousand feet.
It's even more psychologically convincing because the sound isn't really a "whoosh"; it's not what you'd expect. It's more like the sound of slurping the last bit of milkshake with a straw, listened to through a long PVC pipe.
I read a few years ago that physicists found an accoustic effect created by the low frequency electrmagnetic energy working on water droplets of a certain size. This would make sense because when I did hear the "whoosh", I was lying on my back on the dewy grass. I've also read that wireframe glasses can account for the simultaneous sound.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Obviously, you should run a wire from your tinfoil hat to a conductive grounding strip attached to the heel of your shoe.
Actually, the devices I've used connect to the toe of your shoe, not the heel - Both heels are often lifted while walking. And you need to be sure that you run wires to both feet instead of just one. Also, unless you have a conductive floor (we did when we were using these, but for a very different purpose), spikes are more effective than strips. But you need to plan for the terrain. 1/4" spikes are fine for walking (and very effective for grounding) in damp vegetation or earth but may impede your progress on asphalt. In that case, you'll need very shallow spikes and will just have to accept limited grounding unless you're willing to run a very long cable to a copper rod.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
As a deaf guy it saddens me when tech like this is used for military purposes and it's consumer uses are not considered.
Remember the thing where you put the transmitter on your tongue and you can hear bypassing the ears? I'd like to try one of those. But rather than look like a drooling idiot I'd love to get my hands on one of these babies. Just strap it on a hearing aid and skip the ears entirely. Way better than a cochlear implant, non-invasive and perfect sound. Nice.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Hmm...
Now avoiding TFA like the plague, it occurs to me that "shockwaves" within the skull able to cause hydrostatic pressure loads comparable to 120+ decibels (is that loud enough for ya?) hitting your eardrums might just damage something other than eardrums.
But lets not even think about the fine possibilities such as massive damage on the cellular level - just consider the overpressures that could be set up within blood vessels. It will be interesting to see if there is any increase in "massive cerebral hemorrage" as a cause of death going forward.
Or an increase in the wearing of hats by the political class anytinme they give a speech :)
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
...up until recently, generations of police officers learned how to use physical force to gain compliance. And generally speaking they knew how to do it with minimal force and maximal compliance -- a friend who is a 2nd generation police officer had his father demonstrate some of the techniques, and it was fairly amazing how well he could hurt me without actually "hurting" me (ie, leaving lasting marks, breaking bones, bruising, etc.)
The gripe my friend the cop has is that with all the touchy-feely policing (and the expensive court payouts) they have, you really can't gain compliance through physical force the way you used to be able to, so they are largely left with their guns and their tasers. And since the tasers aren't lethal, they're somehow considered "OK" to use for any problem solving short of killing someone.
I think they should start allowing the police to carry saps and clubs again as well as teach them physical force and stop letting them use a taser as a universal problem solver.
A Taser was designed to replace a gun.
Although I agree with your overall point that Tasers are seriously overused, your initial premise is incorrect.
Tasers were never intended to be used as a replacement for a gun. They are an additional non-lethal weapon to use alongside the baton and pepper spray.
Unfortunately, politicians and even the police themselves use the "Tasers replace guns" myth to win people over to the idea. After all, who wouldn't prefer to see a Taser used instead of a gun?
But that's not what happens. When the situation calls for a gun to be used, then the officer will use their gun. Period. They will never consider using the Taser instead, and they were never expected to. This is why the number of incidents involving police using their guns has not decreased since Tasers were introduced. Nor was it expected to.
The problem is that Tasers seem really harmless. You press a button, and the guy falls to the floor. Shortly thereafter, he gets up and he's apparently fine. So, hey, why not use it even in cases where the use of a baton or pepper spray would cause mass outrage?
And that's exactly what's happening now.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein