Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Looks like the Taser parties are back on — Taser issued a terse rebuttal to the UN today, finding fault with its conclusion that being hit with a taser is equivalent to torture. Saying that the committee is “out of touch with the reality that confronts law enforcement officers every day worldwide,” Taser also noted that the criteria used to define torture, “extreme pain,” also rules out other common police implements like pepper spray and batons. Like some other reports we’ve seen, Taser says that since their products don’t actually electrocute people, the main danger involved in being struck with a taser is an “unassisted fall,” which seems to us like pretty much the only kind of fall there is — but we’re not getting in the middle of this one. Looks like this is going to be a long fight — everybody got their popcorn?

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

In a month that has seen several people killed after being tasered, a UN committee of ten experts has ruled that tasers constitute torture and are capable of killing. This flies in the face of the manufacturer’s statement, which is that any resulting deaths after a taser is used are “attributable to other factors.” Intended to prevent officers from having to use lethal firearms, the taser has arguably become well established as just another tool in a regular officer’s arsenal for use in scenarios where a firearm would never be considered. As for what effect this ruling will have on the sale of tasers, we’re guessing “not much” until all the involved parties come into agreement about the lethality (or lack thereof) of the taser.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

If you’ve been losing sleep over not knowing precisely what was going to happen to all that spectrum space that will be freed up when the imminent analog-to-digital cutover takes place, your insomnia is about to be cured. Reportedly, a UN telecoms meeting decided today to give mobile service providers access to the bandwidth currently reserved for terrestrial TV broadcasts. The US of A apparently pushed hard for a worldwide agreement on spectrum use, suggesting that a common approach was more reasonable than each nation choosing separate frequencies for next-generation services. As it stands, US citizens can look forward to reaping the benefits of this move sometime in 2009, but most of the world will be waiting until 2015 before making this section of the radio spectrum available for mobile activities.

[Image courtesy of toddemslie]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

If you’ve been losing sleep over not knowing precisely what was going to happen to all that spectrum space that will be freed up when the imminent analog-to-digital cutover takes place, your insomnia is about to be (at least partially) cured. The US of A apparently pushed hard for a worldwide consensus on spectrum use — suggesting that a common approach was more reasonable than each nation choosing separate frequencies for next-generation services — and sure enough, it ended up getting exactly what it wanted. Apparently, the 700MHz band will now be reserved for a mobile broadband standard accessible throughout much of the globe, including most of North America, Central America, South America, Europe, China, India, South Korea and Japan. Of note, Europe was able to land a concession that enables it to offer up “about half of the bandwidth available for mobile services in their region” compared to what is offered elsewhere, but the agreement definitely makes the forthcoming auction that much more interesting.

[Via RCRNews, image courtesy of toddemslie]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!