Technabob » theft http://technabob.com/blog Cool Gadgets, Gizmos, Games and Weird Science Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:30:11 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Little Old Lady Kills Internet in Parts of Georgia and Armenia http://technabob.com/blog/2011/04/07/little-old-lady-kills-internet/ http://technabob.com/blog/2011/04/07/little-old-lady-kills-internet/#comments Thu, 07 Apr 2011 15:45:42 +0000 Shane McGlaun http://technabob.com/blog/?p=53119 I would bet that most of us have heard about the price of copper skyrocketing. In fact, people all across the US and the world are stealing copper anywhere they can including from cell phone towers. A 75 year-old woman in the country of Georgia was scavenging for copper when she cut a little fiber optic cable apparently to see if it had copper inside.

fiberoptic fail

That one little cable was very important to much of her country and neighboring Armenia. As it turns out that cable carried about 90% of the Internet traffic in Armenia and the service was down for about 12 hours. The woman was arrested by police in the village of Ksani, and she was charged with damaging property and might face three years in prison.

A spokesman for the Georgian interior ministry said, “She found the cable while collecting scrap metal and cut it with a view to stealing it.” Apparently, the cable was well protected according to the owners Georgian Railway Telecom. I think protection was lax if an elderly retiree could find it and cut the cable.

[via Yahoo!News]

]]> http://technabob.com/blog/2011/04/07/little-old-lady-kills-internet/feed/ 0 This Car Protected by Half a Million Volts of Electricity http://technabob.com/blog/2007/02/18/this-car-protected-by-half-a-million-volts-of-electricity/ http://technabob.com/blog/2007/02/18/this-car-protected-by-half-a-million-volts-of-electricity/#comments Sun, 18 Feb 2007 22:00:55 +0000 Technabob http://technabob.com/blog/2007/02/18/this-car-protected-by-half-a-million-volts-of-electricity/ Eye of Sauron,… the theft deterrent device generates hundreds]]> This theft prevention device is sure to scare off even the most hardened criminal. The custom-built Tesla coil emits a massive purple electrical field around the owners car, making thieves think twice before even looking at this car.

tesla alarm

Named after Tolkien’s Eye of Sauron, the theft deterrent device generates hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity to create an amazing and ominous light show. The Australian builder of this project achieved this incredible effect by rotating an aluminum conductor rod around the orbit of the coil, then capturing it with a time lapse photograph.

Now if only there were a way to make this thing portable, they’d sell millions.

[via Neatorama]

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