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The article doesn't have any pictures; one can be found here [jpassion.net].

I want my Acme rocket roller skates!

To create a Somebody Else's Problem field [wikipedia.org]? People are quite good at ignoring what they think isn't important (or what they don't want to recognize), so if you could find a way to convince people to ignore something, it would be just as effective as actual invisibility.

I really find it hard to believe that the "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along." i just saw is accidental, some meta-humour by Taco perhaps?

I'll believe it when I see it.

"Personally I'm still waiting for my cloak of evasion. 20% miss chance is awesome."

Yeah, but it doesn't work against constructs or undead, which is why I'll take my epic level cloak of elvenkind any day of the week.

Actually, according to D&D 3.5 rules, if you are invisible (as with improved invisibility), but are detected (ie enemies know where you are due to listen checks and/or maybe you just cast a spell, etc) you get a concealment bonus of 50%, which is better than that 20% evasion that you are talking about. So given a cloak of evasion or a cloak of invisibility, I would much rather have the invisibility, thank you very much. Even with regular invisibility I think it's a 25% concealment bonus -- still better than 20%.

From the end of TFA: So far the researchers have only worked through the mathematics to prove that the device is plausible. The practicalities of making one have yet to be solved.

Slashdotters already have the power of invisibility. They can snipe other users with impunity via the Anonymous Coward feature. ;)

Sounds like a rehash of a phase conjugate mirror.

http://www.cheniere.org/books/analysis/pc_wave.htm [cheniere.org]

You pick up a tattered cape (K unpaid). Only $250 for you.
You put on the tattered cape.
Suddenly, you can see through yourself.
The nurse hits.
You can not remove the cloak, it seems to be cursed.
The nurse hits.
The floor is too hard to dig here.
Really attack Wengretik the shopkeeper?
Wengretik strikes at thin air.
The nurse hits.
Wengretik hits. Wengretik hits.
You die.

... when certain objects are placed next to superlenses, the light bouncing off them is essentially erased by light reflecting off the superlens, making the object invisible.

Maybe I'm getting this the wrong way, but if the object "absorbs" the light coming to it through the lens, wouldn't that object be perceived as black? I thought "invisible" is when any light coming behind the object passes through it, and into the observer's eye, with no obstacles whatsoever. But maybe it's just me...

Didn't Jack Bauer already employ the "hoodie of invisibility" a couple of weeks (hours?) ago when sneaking onto the airplane?

I must not be a big enough nerd. I thought the cloak of evasion was something that helped you pay less taxes.

Keep it away from future Dick Cheney hunting parties. He already shoots at people he can see, imagine the damage something like this could cause.

most slashdotters can make themselves invisible simply by entering a room

(you're nodding your head right now, aren't you?)

Prof Milton's team calculated that when certain objects are placed next to superlenses, the light bouncing off them is essentially erased by light reflecting off the superlens, making the object invisible.

Wouldn't that make the cloak appear like a big black void of light?? Making things "invisible" requires light from the objects behind the cloak to pass through it.

MMPPI = Megnetic Multiplexing Photon Phase Inversion.

Ya, I made it up. Sounds cool though, so it must work. :P

From the article:
The cloaking device relies on recently discovered materials used to make superlenses that make light behave in a highly unusual way. Instead of having a positive refractive index - the property which makes light bend as it passes through a prism or water - the materials have a negative refractive index, which effectively makes light travel backwards.

Trust scientists to come up with a complicated term for "mirror" ... :)

Can you seen me now? .... no? good. Can you see me now? .... no? Good. Can you see me now? .... no? Good.

All of these "cloaking" stories suffer from basically the same problem. Making something invisible is much, much more complicated than blocking light, or cancelling light, or anything like that.

The article says, rather imprecisely, "when certain objects are placed next to superlenses, the light bouncing off them is essentially erased by light reflecting off the superlens, making the object invisible."

But "erasing" the light reflecting off an object doesn't make it invisible, any more than painting a car black... even matte black... makes it invisible.

In a dark room, if you cover a light with a black box it becomes invisible. When viewing a star from the earth, if it is occulted by, say, the moon passing between you and the object, it becomes invisible. If I pull a red cloak over myself, covering myself completely, you can no longer see me. You cannot tell who I am and if I stand very still perhaps you cannot tell that I am not a statue, so, in a sense, I have become invisible.

But, to become invisible in the sense of H. G. Wells' "The Invisible Man," or a Star Trek cloaking device, or James Bond's invisible car, or what have you, requires much more than "not being able to see" the object. It means not being able to detect the presence of the object... under real-world lighting conditions, with real-world scenes _behind_ the object, and from more than one vantage point at the same time.

That last one is the problem with many of these schemes. It doesn't do any good to make an object invisible when viewed by your right eye if there are "matte lines" around it when viewed with your left eye. It doesn't do a lot of good to make an object invisible as viewed from one soldier if it is visible to everyone else in the platoon.

At least to women anyway, I smile and say hello and they don't seem to see me. Go figure. :-P

Cloak of Stupidity Already Here!