Homeland Security Commissions LED-Based Puke-Saber 378
E++99 writes "Homeland Security has contracted with Intelligent Optical Systems, Inc. to develop an "LED Incapacitator," a nonlethal weapon consisting of a large flashlight with a cluster of LEDs capable of emitting "super-bright pulses of light at rapidly changing wavelengths." Sounds innocuous enough... until they they shine "the evil color" at you and you start puking! A working prototype has been completed, and they will soon be putting it through its paces. Homeland Security hopes to give it to Border Patrol agents and National Guardsmen by 2010."
I WANT A SICK-STICK! (Score:2, Funny)
Real source (Score:3, Informative)
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Other uses... (Score:5, Insightful)
This will work just great... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:This will work just great... (Score:5, Funny)
Sunglasses at night
I wear my sunglasses at night
So I can so I can
Watch you live and breathe your storylines
(And) I wear my sunglasses at night
So I can so I can
Keep track of the visions in my eyes
While she's deceiving me
It cuts my security (has)
She got control of me
I turn to her and say
Don't switch the blade on the guy in shades, oh no
Don't masquerade with the guy in shades, oh no
I can't believe it
You got it made with the guy in shades, oh no
(And) I wear my sunglasses at night
So I can so I can
Forget my name while you collect your claim
And I wear my sunglasses at night
So I can so I can
See the light that's right before my eyes
While she's deceiving me
She cuts my security (has)
She got control of me
I turn to her and say
Don't switch the blade on the guy in shades, oh no
Don't masquerade with the guy in shades, oh no
I can't believe it!
Don't be afraid of the guy in shades, oh no
It can't escape you
'Cause you got it made with the guy in shades, oh no
I said I wear my sunglasses
I wear my sunglasses at night
Wear my sunglasses at night
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Or (Score:2)
Some people really don't think these things through very well.
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a) something the good guys have?
b) something the bad guys have?
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Maybe Mythbusters can test this out as a followup to "Brown Note".
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Re:This will work just great... (Score:4, Insightful)
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I realize that being anti government, especially anti Bush is pretty hip-cool right now, but...
I don't think you could call these guys "bad" when they just spent an ass-load of time and money to invent a weapon that makes you puke when they could have just said "screw 'em", saved an ass-load of money and simply shot whoever the puke-ray was intended for with a REAL gun. We already invented the 9mm. Why waste the time?
I think these "Bad Guy
Re:This will work just great... (Score:5, Insightful)
But if the cops shot everybody, most especially the white children of Middle America, there'd be hell to pay. Better to scare the little shits off with tasers and rubber bullets and puke rays when they try to protest over tossing the quaint Geneva Conventions, that musty old Constitution, or the Magna Fuckin' Carta in the dustbin.
Re:This will work just great... (Score:4, Insightful)
I really don't think that this is something that has been developed for usage overseas.
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Well, actually we still need the firehoses, but not until afterward.
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Sweet! (Score:5, Interesting)
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No need to wait, its already in standard HTML: blink.
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
A full background rainbow color cycle going on: Accept Jesus Forever Forgotten [dokimos.org]
This site has a scrolling polka dot pattern: SoulWax [soulwax.com]
How not to make a website: The World's Worst Website? [angelfire.com]
Or just a really bad color scheme: Lubees Pump and Irrigation [lubees.com]
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
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Sorry, but I would think that saying it gets people to want to close their eyes and puke, and that one guy tried to change his wallpaper with his eyes closed, would clue most people.
You've got to admit, it sure out-does the goat guy or tubgirl ...
Anti-accessibility (Score:5, Funny)
Take THAT all you people that don't put alt tags on your images!
(By the way, does the "evil color" work on colorblind people?)
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
Cover your eyes? (Score:5, Interesting)
Two Words.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Two Words.... (Score:5, Funny)
new years eve in NYC would be more epic, mount the light emitters ON THE BALL instead of normal lights
Re:Two Words.... (Score:5, Funny)
dupe (Score:5, Funny)
if only they were INTERESTING stories (Score:5, Funny)
On whom will this fiendish device be used? Are YRO at risk if this nasty little tool falls into the hands of border guards and police? What if someone immobilized by this device falls and hits his head because he can't break his fall with his hands? Will he sue? Doesn't this violate the Constitution somehow?
Version 2.0 (Score:2)
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A What Saber? (Score:5, Funny)
from the article (Score:2)
and This fall, in Phase 2, researchers at Pennsylvania State University will test the LED Incapacitator on volunteers at the school's Institute of Nonlethal Defense Technology. Intelligent Optical Systems will use the test results t
Re:from the article (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't it be easier to just have border officials who spoke Spanish?
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We're against ILLEGAL immigrants, which is not the same thing.
Legal liability? (Score:4, Insightful)
-Someone gets this device used on them. They have damage from stomach acid in their esophagus. They sue.
-They use this on someone who is sick (from another cause). They puke up blood/get sicker/die.
-(This is BS, but lawyers will sue for anything these days) "Psychological trauma" caused by the device.
Is it a reasonable expectation that the device may be used on you if you go to airport/border?
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People have won lawsuits after the egregious/lethal application of tasers.
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This sounds a whole lot less likely (especially than tasers) to be lethal. The exception would be with epileptics, but I think those would be very rare cases.
I'm sure that egregious applications of ANYTHING could still result in lawsuits. But if you're talking about liability for using the device when the sufficient cause to use it is being challenged, I think the
Short on details, long on imagination (Score:2)
Some vendor comes up with an implausible-sounding "weapon" based on what is little more than a glorified LED flashlight, now available online for about $20. They describe how it's a "non-lethal weapon", and need bajillions of BUXORZ to "ensure adequate performance".
Forgive me if I'm a bit the skeptic... but what really makes we want to puke about this is just what an incredibly OBVIOUS waste of money this is! How much money are we going to pay to have somebody put together a b
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do not want (Score:2, Funny)
How will we protect ourselves? (Score:5, Funny)
Now if someone just invented these "sunglasses"...
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hmmm... I wonder who they will hire... (Score:5, Funny)
Probably those same people ... (Score:2)
Probably those same people who put up the friendly warnings when somebody PISOs on the MOHADO.
Nail in the coffin (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nail in the coffin (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, this can, at some point, will be misused, just as any law enforcement tool will eventually be misused, but would you rather have them misuse something lethal?
Re:Nail in the coffin (Score:4, Insightful)
You must have an awfully short memory. How about non-lethal foam-rubber projectiles?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Los_Angeles_May_Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's see a slightly larger selection of quotes...
several people began pelting Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers with rocks, bottles, and other debris
the LAPD had approximately 600 officers on the scene
police fired 146 foam-rubber projectiles
27 marchers and 9 members of the media were injured,
Video footage shows police striking with their batons at apparently non-combative protesters
many reporters were also pushed and beaten
The good and the bad (Score:5, Insightful)
With a gun, there's a certain level of commitment before it's used. An officer of the law must make a determination that he or she is really certain about before shooting, because hitting an innocent person is absolutely unacceptable. As a result, the tendency is to, unless there's no option, NOT shoot someone if you can hold them at bay with the THREAT of shooting. A side effect of this is that an officer given a bad order to shoot is much more likely to abstain, because once he pulls the trigger, it's all over.
As a result, innocent folks are often held at gunpoint until their identity/non-criminalness is confirmed. While traumatic and stressful, this is better than an alternative that's growing increasingly common:
Enter, the taser. Potentially a wonderful tool for stopping an attacker without permanently injuring them, doctrine has instead developed in many police and security departments to 'Zap first, ask questions later'. The 'non-injurious' aspect of the tool means that the bar is that much lower on whether or not to shoot, because "after all, if they're innocent, then it's just a bit of discomfort".
The growing number of non-lethal tools is on the surface a good, even GREAT thing. The real danger though, is a long term one. With the bar set so low, more and more people will be subject to excruciating pain, and eventually, this technology may evolve into a tool of even greater oppression of liberty than anything we have now.
Imagine if a protest can be casually broken up by making everyone vomit or crap themselves uncontrollably. If the government has the ability to casually stop groups of people from coming together or otherwise detaining them while being able to argue "it's not fatal, it's just uncomfortable", then the bar on violating our rights as citizens drops too.
So I'm interested and optimistic about the technologies, but I desperately hope that better effort is invested in making them a net positive for all of humanity and not the boot that might otherwise grind our faces into the dirt.
Re:The good and the bad (Score:5, Informative)
You are correct in that non-lethal control measures are 'easier' to implement. But I think that once the decision is made to bring a situation under control, it is going to happen regardless. Maybe I just don't trust cops, but it seems like once things go bad they go the whole way. If firehoses are at hand, they bring out the firehoses. Tasers, clubs, rubber bullets, PIT maneuvers, etc etc.
Whatever it takes.
Re:The good and the bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, that's true, and in riot-type situations that is exactly what happens.
In this particular case I'm more worried about the potential for abuse in encounters with a single suspect. While truncheons and rubber bullets leave marks, presumably this device will leave no indication that it was used other than a case of foul breath. It would be easy for a lawyer to argue that person did not beat themselves between the shoulder blades with a club, could they prove that the suspect did actually throw up, and that it wasn't a case where they vomited from anxiety (from their guilt, of course) then decided to blame the puke ray?
Basically I worry about any tool that can be used unaccountably, and yeah the lesser barrier to usage that "non-lethal"* weapons imply. Accountability means a lot -- for example it's why the police are more likely to prevent you from hitting your head as you get into the squad car rather than ensuring that you hit your head, because those kinds of bruises became easy lawsuit fodder. So now the good cops have to make sure the suspect doesn't hit their head on purpose, but that's the price that must be paid for the actions of bad cops.
* Oh yeah, and remember back when that innocent bystander to a protest in NYC was shot through her eye and killed by a rubber bullet? Remember that for a while the press was referring to the pellet guns as "less-lethal weapons"? Can we go back to using that term? Because I'd like for us to keep that in mind before some cop decides to stick this in the face of some suspect with a condition for five minutes just to teach them a lesson.
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Re:The good and the bad (Score:5, Funny)
I can't help it, it's so beautiful...
BLLLLEEEUUUGGHHH!!
Re:The good and the bad (Score:4, Insightful)
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details are emerging (Score:2)
Morality of this? (Score:4, Insightful)
non-lethal != A-OK (Score:3, Insightful)
And we don't need to be using weapons on each other more often, but less.
Good reason for that (Score:3, Insightful)
Laws (Score:2)
Visual equivalent of the "brown note"? (Score:2)
Other comments regarding mirrors and sunglasses (and presumably, sunglasses with mirror lenses) would seem to be equivalent of those pictures of Daleks encountering staircases.
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heck with INS, I want one for mobile phone drivers (Score:2)
Gotta head over to MakeZine.com to see if there's already a kit for this.
LoB
That's really sick.... (Score:2)
Who si the loser here?
Sounds More Like... (Score:2)
So I'm confused here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Couldn't I just pull up into Home Depot's color center and have them make paint in the "evil" color and use it for whatever (pranks, revenge, robbery)?
Re:So I'm confused here... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So I'm confused here... (Score:5, Informative)
Right after a neuron fires it "rearms" the membrane by pumping ions across it. In time sequence its sensitivity varies smoothly through:
- The absolute refractory period: Nothing can fire it.
- The negative afterpotential: It can be fired but it takes extra stimulus.
- The positive afterpotential: It takes LESS than the usual amount of stimulus to fire it.
Then it returns to its normal, resting, sensitivity.
The sensitivity slope may be an artifact of the ion pumps and channels, but it appears to function as a mechanism for encoding the strength of a stimulus as a pulse rate.
This has a side effect: If a nerve is given short pulses of stimulation with a spacing corresponding to the length of time between a stimulus that fires it and the peak of the positive afterpotential, once it fires once it will tend to continue to fire in synchrony with the pulses from then on. If you have a bundle of such nerves with similar timing and all affected by the stimulus, each additional pulse picks up additional nerves and phase-locks them to the stimulus. Within a few pulses most of the fibers in the bundle tend to be firing rapidly and in unison.
You can see this with a strobe light with a variable repetition rate. Run it slow and you see distinct pulses - a flicker. Run it fast and you see a continuous light - the pulses have fused into a continuous response. But run it near the "flicker fusion rate" boundary and you get a lot of weird visual effects - notably flickering rainbow colors across the neighboring (or entire) visual field that tend to enhance and obscure the actual image with a flickering, undecipherable, psychedelic-poster version of itself.
You get colors other than those of the actual source (if it is colored rather than white) and effects in other parts of the visual field than the actual strobing light and things it is illuminating. This is because nerves for parts of the eye that would not normally be stimulated enough to trigger by this light (if it were non-strobing) still become entrained when they happen to be in a positive afterpotential period when a blink occurs.
(By the way: Don't try this if you're epileptic. It can produce a seizure. Indeed: Some people discover they're epileptic when they are exposed to such flickering lights.)
One speculation about the hypothetical "brown note" was that infrasound at a positive-afterpotential repetition rate matching that of nerves controlling the intestines might force peristalsis in the colon or trigger the appropriate reflexes for defecation. (It might be interesting to retry the debunking experiments with a train of narrow high-pressure pulses, approximating impulses, rather than a sine wave. B-) )
This flashlight appears to be attempting a variation of the same effect. By entraining the nerves of the visual processing responsible for locating onself in space and/or ones motion, it could create a visual illusion of movement that doesn't match the signals from the inner ear and the muscle-position sensors. A mismatch among these three systems produces motion sickness, nausea, and vomiting.
This reflex appears to be a defense against ingestion of neurotoxic poisons (such as those in some mushrooms and food-poisoning bacteria), using their disruption of the complex navigation system as an early warning and attempting to eliminate them from the digestive system before enough are absorbed to disable a critical system and kill the victim.
Brown Note (Score:2)
I assume (Score:2)
-Ted
Is there a way.. (Score:2)
What about epilepsy ? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I've seen interview where police were talking about tazors and they said they were only dangerous in rare cases if the victim was on drugs. The official tazor policy is that it is always the drugs that kill them not the tazors. I believe that like I believe the cigarette advertising from the 50s. If you think about it, police are _most_ likely to use tazors in drugs situations.
I read an article about a cop who killed a person accidentally with a tazor and he clearly seemed to fe
A Real Use (Score:3, Interesting)
The puke ray (Score:3, Funny)
Headlights (Score:4, Funny)
I see a new market here (Score:2)
They have the LED Puke-Saber...
Shortly afterwards, special contact lenses that filter the "puke color" out are developed, neutralizing the effects.
four words (Score:2)
I call bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
bah! we've had this for years on the internet (Score:4, Funny)
Bowel disruptor (Score:3, Funny)
Your genius is needed today more than ever, Spider.
Re:Oh no! (Score:5, Funny)
Use the MAD method: Wear mirror sunglasses.
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Re:Oh no! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh no! (Score:4, Funny)
Plan B: Brown Noise (Score:4, Funny)
Sure, you can close your eyes, but you'd better hold your ears too. One of their elite researchers has discovered the brown noise [youtube.com]
;-)
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Shine a bright flashlight at your eyelids and see if you can guess what will happen when you try this strategy.
As you guessed, one of us was bored enough to try. When I tried with either lamp or bright flashlight, even rolling my eyes up, enough light was visible to be easily seen. A few questions came to mind:
1. Since the wavelength of the beam changes a bit as it filters through your tissue, is that why they had to have shifting frequencies? After all, FTA:
"There's one wavelength that gets everybody," says IOS President Bob Lieberman. "Vlad [IOS top scientist Vladimir Rubtsov] calls it 'the evil color.'"
If one color gets everyone, why would they need "rapidly changing wavelengths", or did the reporter get their terminology mixed up?
2. Y'know that "pret
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Scopes and landmines? (Score:3, Insightful)
Welcome to America. Sorry about your mother and the rest of your family. Uh...our bad.