I think I’d buy a Hummer if I could have one of these too.

bang

The Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station (CROWS) is mounted on top of a HMMWV and controlled from a command center within the vehicle. This system can mount the M2 50-cal machine gun, the M240 medium machine gun, the MK19 automatic grenade launcher, and the M249 squad automatic weapon in addition to a powerful color day camera, an infrared camera, and a range finder. This system allows the gunner to sit within the armored vehicle and, using a computer screen, control the weapon with the use of a joystick. Prior experience with Xbox desired but not required.

via Defense Tech blog

humor site whacked by Fed law

http://www.gapingmaw.com/

It was a funny site. It had naughty pictures on it, which were funny. They had to take it down because of a law about porn, which this site is not. The law does not stop porn; it just makes it more expensive to have anything to do with naughty pictures, so that only people who sell porn will be able to show each other naughty pictures.

Those of us who just want to have a laugh or look at a naughty picture our friends made are SOL.

Retirement collapse alarm

Are pension funds the next S&L crisis?

The Economist thinks they might be. Boy, wouldn’t that be fun!

Product placement in magazines

I remember journalism! It was this cool thing that we had when I was a kid, where ornery underpaid people wrote things and were paid for it because advertisers knew people liked to read it. Anyway, now we’re just going to make it all an ad anyway, and dispense with those troublesome ink-stained wretches.

We are all an advertorial now.

Risks of debit card use

Via metafilter: Careful with that debit card, they may be putting a hold on your cash money for several days.

There’s a lot of hysteria about this with false reports of “$10 surcharges” etc, but retailers do put holds on credit cards regularly, and then they go ahead and do the same thing on a debit card which if you don’t have a lot of money can make your bank account kind of.. SPRAINED for a few days. Word to the wise (and broke).