If your just not getting enough sound out of yoru iPod try one of these. 15 watts of pure tube power! The KT88 tubes can output more power but I think it will distort a little but 15 W is not bad for a desk unit. Be the envy of all your office mates as they listen in on your morning podcasts!
iTube: Tube-based Amp for iPod
Category: Technology
Laser Hummer
In 2003, the Army sent ZEUS, a Humvee armed with a 10kw solid-state laser, to Afghanistan, to blast mines and other explosives left over from years of war. In the six months ZEUS spent there, the laser-hummer zapped over 200 pieces of unexploded ordnance, according to the Army, “at one point setting a record for ordnance disposal by negating 51 pieces in less than 100 minutes.
Read more here:
Laser Hummer ZEUS
Plustech Walking Machine
Pretty cool, it would be neat to see twenty of these advancing through a group of trees. I wonder if anyone has ever bought one for sport use.
Plustech Walking Machine
Fire on Call Anywhere, Anytime
I was reading ‘Blogs of War‘ tonight and happened across this note about ‘project Falcon’:
The Pentagon is developing a suborbital space capsule within the next five years that would be launched from the United States and could deliver conventional weapons anywhere in the world within two hours, defense officials say.
This year, the Falcon program will test a launcher for its Common Aero Vehicle (CAV), an unmanned maneuverable spacecraft that would travel at five times the speed of sound and could carry1,000 pounds of munitions, intelligence sensors or other payloads,The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
(More here on Xinhua)
I found some more info on it over at military.com:
You’ve got less than 2 hours to strike an HVT 9,000 miles away. Who are you going to call? How about the FALCON program? Initiated by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force, the program hopes to give the U.S. a global prompt strike capability by using hypersonic sub-orbital vehicles — autonomous, remotely operated and reusable — to deliver its payload to targets worldwide.
(full text here: CRUISING IN OVERDRIVE: The FALCON Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle)
I’m going to group this into the same category as the new land robots with firearms mounted on them. It is something that if used for good could keep balance in the world, but if used for evil or against the common good, it could really screw up the planet. War should never become an easy option for anyone, but what can you do? Technology marches on, I can only hope that we gain the wisdom of the past so we can safeguard the future.
By the way, the flight opperations sound a lot like the old Dynasoar program on the ’50s. Up to 60km, glide and drop to 35Km and then boost up to 40Km and repeat until the target is reached.
If you ask me, getting 12,000 pounds of cargo 9000 miles in two hours would be the ‘killer app’ of the package delivery business. FalconFedEx anyone? (But then it wouln’t kill anyone and could never get the deep pocket funding that the military has. Baka.)
Laptop-controlled D&D Table
Wow, this is a cool idea. I can see this working with BattleTech and even StarFleet Battles (are these played anymore?)
Boing Boing: Laptop-controlled projector based D&D table
Nuclear Laptop
Oh yeah! Sign me up! I wan’t an alarm clock that will never ever run out of power even if the city grid is down for a year. Oh yeah, and a loptop that will run for days, that would be cool too. BTW, the latest copy of MobilePC has something on this subject in it… but remember that it’s the April issue.
British company unveils nuclear laptop battery.