The Chinese government this week demonstrated their ability to shoot down satellites and not to be out done the US government demonstrated their ability to shoot a working ray gun, capable of making you feel like you are on fire.

Various different military and defense contractors have been working on a ray gun design for close to 7 decades almost as long as the concept has existed in science fiction even.

The device can be fired from 500 meters away which is further than rubber bullets or other non-lethal devices. Its also further than the effective range of your average m-16. The device when fired makes the target feel like they are catching fire and of course they flee the pain.

The device is not expected to go into production until 2010, but could be used in deployments such as Iraq or afghanistan to protect troops without permanently harming innocent civillians that happen to be in the vicinity of people that pose a real threat.

Brigadier General Philip Coker challenged researchers back in 2005 to develop an energy gun of some type to be used in Iraq. He challenged researchers to come up with sometihng within 12 months. Todays test although not directly linked to that challenge, does show that designers and researchers were paying attention. Back then it seemed unlikely that the military might rush to use an experimental weapon, but the battlefield has been known to push the deployment envelope for troops and for weapons that might save those troops.

This war does not show any signs of ending under current conditions, maybe a ray gun could be one component that might level the battle field (this is not a playing field).

Technorati tags: Military Ray Gun, ray gun comes in past the deadline

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Yesterday the Wall Street Journal came out with an article that alleged that the current CFO of Siemens and one or more members of the board of directors at Siemens may have known about the corrupt practices taking place in both the wired and wireless divisions of Siemens for multiple years.

Today, the CFO and the board members mentioned came out to deny that they had any previous knowledge of the payoffs that were provided via fictional consultants.

Several employees of Siemens were arrested last fall and a few have agreed to cooperate with authorities and according to the WSJ article fingered current CFO Joe Kaeser.

German investigators have previously announced that Heinz-Joachim Neuburger, the former CFO and Kaeser’s predecessor, is a suspect.

The cooperative witnesses indicated that Mr. Kaeser saw some of their corrupt practices while he was involved in the wireless-telecom-equipment unit where he was an executive manager.

Tomorrow shareholders convene for an annual meeting where they will vote on Senior management’s actions. Those shareholders are not likely to be happy with the situation that has revealed that about $544 million of suspicious transactions had been found, which could result in writing those previously expensed items back on the books for tax purposes.

You can’t deduct a bribe.

Technorati tags: Siemens investigation, can’t deduct a bribe on your taxes, wireless industry corruption, telecom corruption

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I’m resurrecting a theme on my improving technology series. Today, I just wanted to review the technology of non lethal suppression weapons like tasers and things like mace pepper spray.

I first saw my first stun gun back in 1995, when I was fresh out of the Army and running a bar before I moved back to Illinois to go to college.

One night some guy came driving down the street in a van, and came into the bar offering to sell me a stun gun or some stereo equipment out of his van.

It was kind of a weird experience, but I didn’t realize why this guy would even have this type of an option until I learned that tasers, stun guns and many types of non lethal suppression weapons are not legal in all states, while guns are legal in all fifty.

If that isn’t a stupid paradox I do not know what is. It seems to me that the technology has continually improved in these types of weapons over the years. I remember my mother owning a tear gas pen that fired the tear gas with a charge that was triggered with a primer that you would find in a real bullet. It made one hell of a bang, but just sprayed dust.

These days you can dial up or dial down the stun on a taser, you can aim it much more effectively, and the fact that you can shoot it at all (as opposed to the old version that required that you be within arms length of your assailant) is a major advantage. But why do legislators want to prevent people from owning these items for self defense? It seems a lot safer than allowing everyone to run around with a lethal weapon after all.

The technology may have matured over the years, but the politicians don’t seem to have followed the same learning curve.

* This article is sponsored but the views and perspective are all our own.

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Maven Mapper’s is continually on the hunt for better knowledge management theories and applications in education. After all how are you to manage knowledge if you do not obtain good information or learn a fundamental as it is.

The problem is that many people contextualize facts, events and information not for what the facts are but combined with their contextual view of the facts that may or may not be correct.

We have found a new sponsor in Landmark Education, and they offers a means to help people learn how to separate their contextual perspective from what actually happened. They provide seminars and courses to help people learn their learning process not in a conceptual way but in a practical and useful way that a student or attendee can take immediately out of the course and begin to apply.

They offer landmark courses to help individuals, companies, departments, schools, students and more how to apply this knowledge and start generating immediate benefits. landmark provides an excellent flash video that walks through these concepts.

Landmark Education is owened by Landmark Education Business Development (lebd) and they put on many international forums through their landmark forum platform.

I have a personal belief that to truly understand what you might get out of a course you have to see a good syllabus. The absense of a good syllabus is an indicator that you might not find what you are looking for, but the presence of a good syllabus is almost always an indicator that you will get something useful from your education.

I have briefly mapped out the full syllabus with my own subjective perspective, but would encourage you to see the full syllabus yourself.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Evening session (3 hours)

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OK, so if you have ever run your triple a batteries down and for some strange reason you still had a fully charged 9 volt battery available (like anyone buys 9 volts these days) then you could conceivably hack the 9 volt and use it to run your triple aaa battery powered devices.

Do I recommend this?  No Way!

Do you want to experiment and see if its possible?  Do so at your own risk!

Regardless this little tutorial is rather amusing and a nice break from my normal writing. 

9 Volt Battery Hack! You’ll Be Suprised… - video powered by Metacafe

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