Apparently, if the BBC is to be believed, this DIY Cruise Missile is not a spoof, but a real project.
A New Zealand man who built a cruise missile in his garage claims the New Zealand government forced him to shut down his project after coming under pressure from the United States.
Bruce Simpson says he built the missile using parts bought off the internet to show how easily it could be done.
They've had them in Europe for years. Several European police forces have tried to ban them on the grounds that it makes both retail and mass surveillance more difficult. And now it looks as if “they are finally coming to the USA.
Say hello to the disposal cell phone. Buy it for cash at retail, throw it away when you are done with it, and make calls that while not untraceable are certainly going to be much harder to link back to you. The phone of choice for the tourist, for the young and poor without credit histories, for when you need an extra phone because someone in the family is going out of town, but the tool also for every dissident and whistleblower, and perhaps for drug dealers too. Pity the web site gives no idea what they'll cost. And amusing that the web site markets the phones with a clip from CSI Miami in which the disposable phone “provided a crucial clue.”
No doubt we'll be hearing about attempts to ban these pretty soon.
'Something' Felled An Abrams Tank In Iraq – But What? Mystery Behind Aug. 28 Incident Puzzles Army Officials. This story hasn't gotten nearly enough media. The M1A1 and M1A2 tank are mainstays of the US Army. And this M1A1 appears to have been holed by something new and somewhat mysterious.
Shortly before dawn on Aug. 28, an M1A1 Abrams tank on routine patrol in Baghdad “was hit by something” that crippled the 69-ton behemoth.
Army officials still are puzzling over what that “something” was.
According to an unclassified Army report, the mystery projectile punched through the vehicle’s skirt and drilled a pencil-sized hole through the hull. The hole was so small that “my little finger will not go into it,” the report’s author noted.
The “something” continued into the crew compartment, where it passed through the gunner’s seatback, grazed the kidney area of the gunner’s flak jacket and finally came to rest after boring a hole 1½ to 2 inches deep in the hull on the far side of the tank.
As it passed through the interior, it hit enough critical components to knock the tank out of action. That made the tank one of only two Abrams disabled by enemy fire during the Iraq war and one of only a handful of “mobility kills” since they first rumbled onto the scene 20 years ago. The other Abrams knocked out this year in Iraq was hit by an RPG-7, a rocket-propelled grenade.
Experts believe whatever it is that knocked out the tank in August was not an RPG-7 but most likely something new — and that worries tank drivers.
Mystery and anxiety
Terry Hughes is a technical representative from Rock Island Arsenal, Ill., who examined the tank in Baghdad and wrote the report.
In the sort of excited language seldom included in official Army documents, he said, “The unit is very anxious to have this ‘SOMETHING’ identified. It seems clear that a penetrator of a yellow molten metal is what caused the damage, but what weapon fires such a round and precisely what sort of round is it? The bad guys are using something unknown and the guys facing it want very much to know what it is and how they can defend themselves.”
…
The soldiers of 2nd Battalion, 70th Armor Regiment, 1st Armor Division who were targets of the attack weren’t the only ones wondering what damaged their 69-ton tank.
Hughes also was puzzled. “Can someone tell us?” he wrote. “If not, can we get an expert on foreign munitions over here to examine this vehicle before repairs are begun? Please respond quickly.”
His report went to the office of the combat systems program manager at the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command in Warren, Mich. A command spokesman said he could provide no information about the incident.
“The information is sensitive,” he said. “It looks like [members of the program manager’s office] are not going to release any information right now.”
While it’s impossible to determine what caused the damage without actually examining the tank, some conclusions can be drawn from photos that accompanied the incident report. Those photos show a pencil-size penetration hole through the tank body, but very little sign of the distinctive damage — called spalling — that typically occurs on the inside surface after a hollow- or shaped-charge warhead from an anti-tank weapon burns its way through armor.
Spalling results when an armor penetrator pushes a stream of molten metal ahead of it as it bores through an armored vehicle’s protective skin.
“It’s a real strange impact,” said a source who has worked both as a tank designer and as an anti-tank weapons engineer. “This is a new one. … It almost definitely is a hollow-charge warhead of some sort, but probably not an RPG-7” anti-tank rocket-propelled grenade.
…
OK, the M1A1 is a little long in the tooth (mid-80s mostly), overweight, and drinks fuel like crazy. In contrast, M1A2 is vintange 1993, overweight, a fuel hog, but carries improved armor.
Both types of tank have been deployed to Iraq. The idea that the tank has some vulnerabilities is not utterly new.
Coincidentally, another Abrams — the latest model this time — was taken out, a couple of days ago by a “roadside explosion”.
The next air war will not be over Iraq. It will be over the Knee Defender which advertises itself as a way to “protect against reclining seatbacks on airplanes – save more legroom – can help you guard against economy class syndrome – thrombosis – DV”. It's a little piece of plastic that air passengers can slip on the seat in front of them, and freeze it in place — turning every seat potentially into one of those awful immobile ones sometimes found just in front of the exit row.
Already, one airline has banned it in response to traveler complaints. What drives people to carry a plastic block onto a plane to reduce the comfort of the folks in front of them? I'd wager that in most cases it is not a concern with proper posture, nor the supposed health advantages. Rather, it's to make room for that laptop—on which it so often seems the business traveler plays solitaire and watches movies…
Actually, this would make a decent law school exam question: does the deployment of Knee Defender in order to prevent the other passenger's seat's from reclining amount to the commission of any sort of tort? [I'll bet there are no contract claims against the airlines—they have their boilerplate down to an art form.]
[PS: this lawtechguru site is worth a visit.]
For years, I've been lugging an aged and heavy Dell around, hoping it would break so I could replace it with something lighter. But they build them tough. And I had a good warranty. The first major collapse came a month before the 3-year warranty lapsed, and they came and fixed it almost as good as new.
Then one of the Alt keys died. But you can't replace a laptop just because one redundant key goes.
But now, finally, I've run into a problem I can't solve, which means I need a new laptop.
Anyone can put out a small, incomprehensible, and illegible sheet purporting to explain (in a language vaguely like English) how to install computer hardware. But only Hardware Analysis had the forethought to write a crisp, clean, manual on How NOT to install computer hardware. (Found via Slashdot
While an excellent and clearly presented exposition of the basics, this account does not include some of the more advanced subjects serious tyros might expect to see covered. For example, I did not see any discussion of the powerful advantages of bleeding on motherboards, subsequent to cutting onself on the sharp edge of the removed side of the computer case.
Furthermore, too much attention is paid to the dramatic effects caused by removal of large parts which should stay fixed. As a result, insufficient attention is paid to the magnificent effects that can be achieved by dropping a very small screw into invisible and inaccessible crevices. The process of picking up, shaking, and turning over the computer in an attempt to make the loudly rattling screw appear can, I recall, threaten to cause injury not just to the internals, but to the operator and to surrounding furniture as well.
Jotwell Blenderlaw