"Glen Talberts" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:40:48 +0100, "JamieM"
wrote:

LOL, didn't realise it was April fools day yet.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/22/r...-laser-shield/

"If you ask a young boy to spec out his ideal boat, you might hear of
helipads, swimming pools, missile-proof hulls, mini-submarines and laser
shields. Well, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich is one of those people
with the time and money to listen to his inner child, and he's gone and
put
all of the above together inside a $1.2 billion 557-foot vessel of luxury
and excess. The Eclipse will attempt to repel paparazzi with a laser
system
that is said to "detect CCDs" (we suspect they mean it detects the
autofocus
light), and responds with an intense beam of light that precludes unwanted
photography. We don't know how well the automatic system will work, but it
must be fun to manually point the lasers at the paps and go "pew pew!"


A much simpler, much more inexpensive, and more effective concept was a
baseball cap with 3 or 4 small slave-triggered flash-units in it. Whenever
paparazzi would fire a flash at the intended celebrity the flash's would
instantly fire back ruining all their shots. This was of course most
effective at night, but then that's when their cameras are the most
annoying.



I'm sure he would look super cool wearing that set-up, as would his guests.
;-)

OK, so we can safely say that Engadget were just being stupid by suggesting
it detects the AF light.

But, I very much doubt it's picking up the "CCD" either, after all, the
sensor would be
behind both a mirror and the shutter most of the time. I'm guessing it's
nothing more than big f*ck off flood lights, maybe with some automatic heat
signature recognition guidance just to be fancy? But then that would mean
they would need a
lot if they were swarmed by paps.

As for lazer, it that were true, I'm sure that would lead to no end of
public liability
claims.

So basically, the way I see it, is that it's just more PR bollox to show off
his new toy.