It's so easy to get freeze rays confused with ice beams. :)

Succatash | March 25, 23:12 CET

I just remember that Ice beams are all Johnny Snow, keeps it straight in my head.

This is basically a wireless taser, right ? So cool (in its way) but not quite a freeze ray. And like the article writer, i've got my doubts about "painless" too ("less painful than being shot" sounds more plausible ;).

Saje | March 25, 23:17 CET

It's pretty easy, you can recognize ice beams by their inheret Johny-Snowiness.

Edit: Wow, hive mind, Saje.

[ edited by Pretty_Hate_Machine on 2009-03-25 23:18 ]

Pretty_Hate_Machine | March 25, 23:17 CET

Thats awesome!!!

wilder | March 25, 23:23 CET

It doesn't stop time though.

Sunfire | March 25, 23:26 CET

It might travel back in time though. C'mon eighty-eight feet is supposed to be pure coincidence ? Shyeah, right.

Saje | March 25, 23:41 CET

There's a couple of videos in the comments. It's a bit less impressive when you look at how it actually works, it's basically just a projectile taser. It seems to attach to the target so I doubt it's completely painless! It's still cool that they manage to fit the technology in a device small enough to be fired as a projectile, but not quite Dr Horrible's level of awesomeness ; )

ChromeShark | March 26, 00:14 CET

I saw an episode of Mythbusters last weekend where they tried in vain to turn a water pistol into a taser. The closest they got to success required that they shoot a water gun from inside of one of the world's largest Tesla coils. Cool effect, but hardly practicable.

BrewBunny | March 26, 00:44 CET

Maybe Ender Wiggin could use it in the battle room.

floofypooh | March 26, 01:59 CET

We should probably get the freeze ray out of here.

electricspacegirl | March 26, 05:06 CET

ChromeShark, based on what I can pick up from the linked page, I don't believe those videos show the device in question, as the French text in the first mentions a range of 30 meters - around 100 feet. That's within reasonable error of 88 feet, especially for an ad boasting of the unit's capabilities, but the device shown in the videos also resembles the picture accompanying the article, which is noted at its conclusion to not be the X12.

Mercenary | March 26, 07:29 CET

That's quite odd cos this article has an X12 that looks pretty similar and is apparently the same weapon as in those videos. If it's the same it seems it's like a taser projectile (basically a capacitor inside a shotgun cartridge) which makes much more sense to me - I was initially thinking it actually transmitted the jolt through the air (s'what I thought they meant by "wirelessly") and was puzzled as to how they'd packed the (huge) power required into a shotgun sized package.

When I see claims for "a range of 88 feet" I always think "OK, but what if i'm 10 feet away". That's gotta hurt. More I mean ;).

Maybe Ender Wiggin could use it in the battle room.

Remember, the gate is down ! ;)

Saje | March 26, 11:06 CET

I'm confused, too. I thought it was some kind of advancement on wireless energy transfer.

Succatash | March 26, 14:46 CET

I didn't think "Dr Horrible freeze-ray" so much as "(Shee-niou) high tech Alliance crap" (Ariel).

OneTeV | March 26, 16:00 CET