At 06:41 PM 2/4/05 -0800, Steve Schear wrote:

At 10:15 AM 2/4/2005, R.A. Hettinga wrote:

...

"The beautiful part of using the (microwave) energy is that it leaves the suspect in control of the car," he said. "He can steer, he can brake, he just can't accelerate."

Sorry Charlie, but I think newer vehicles are moving to fly-by-wire steering, especially hybrids that don't have an internal combustion engine running all the time so they can't easily use traditional hydraulic servo steering.

Also amusing will be the congealed lenses of bystanders, dead pacemaker wearers, fried business computers, in addition to the accidents caused by other disabled cars. But the cops will get their man, and the rest is collateral damage, put it on the perp's ticket. Besides, the ECU is shielded pretty well by the car metal and the unit itself is shielded from the electrical ignition noise. But someone needs to explain that to this "executive" who fancies himself an inventor and can't wait to suckle Caesar's teat, selling "cyber terrorist" gizmos to the man. Personally I only use the magnetron & horn (concealed in my rooftop fiberglass luggage holder) on inconsiderate cell-phone-using drivers. Better than jamming, because they get to kiss their RF front end goodbye, permenantly. So it helps everyone for several days, *and* sells new handsets, helping the economy. Works on pig radios too. Also works on the thumpa-thumpa drivers, and when I turn the power up I find that Chihauha's skulls are not meant to take internal pressure; a steam explosion is pretty messy, and fuzzy dice don't really clean the insides of windshields terribly well.