Word: cordless
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...response, advocates say that SDI research, like the space program, will have spin-offs that benefit private industry. The knowledge gained through Apollo flights helped scientists develop a multitude of products, from miniature computer chips to the cordless Dustbuster vacuum cleaner. Says John Rittenhouse, executive vice president of the aerospace and defense division at RCA: "We're not banking on SDI reaching production. We're banking on the fallout to commercial and consumer areas for the payoff." Technology spawned by SDI could conceivably be used to build better communications equipment, air-traffic-control systems or industrial robots. High-speed computers...
...Cordless and snout-shaped, the Dustbuster is 14 1/4 in. long and weighs 1.4 lbs. To clean up small domestic disasters, the user grabs the Dustbuster from its wall rack, vacuums up the mess and returns the machine to its base. There, its three nickel-cadmium batteries are recharged so that it will be ready for the next spill. Life expectancy: 150 hours, or five years of 15-to-20-second bursts...
...turned out that the transmissions that the woman had heard on her AM radio were coming from a nearby home whose occupant, Leo DeLaurier, owned a cordless telephone. DeLaurier was apparently unaware that such devices are little more than short-range radio transmitters whose signals can sometimes be picked up by ordinary radio receivers. During the next month, the police say, they recorded more than 100 hours of incriminating conversations by DeLaurier about the sale of cocaine and marijuana. Then they arrested DeLaurier, his wife and 22 other people on drug charges. DeLaurier objected to the use of the tapes...
Legal experts point out that cordless phones are one of many new-age technological devices that fall into a legal no man's land, an ambiguous region inhabited by such consumer products as personal computers and the ubiquitous message beepers and by sophisticated police equipment like mini- video cameras. The lack of clear legal rules for police use of the equipment promises to keep the courts busy. Just last month two federal courts clashed on the issue when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago overruled a federal district court and found that video surveillance...
...Kansas Supreme Court was the first state high court to rule on the cordless-phone issue, holding last March that those who use such phones are broadcasting over the public air waves and have "no reasonable expectation of privacy," a finding that may surprise the 7 million or so owners of the popular instruments. But to rule otherwise, Rhode Island's attorneys argued before that state's supreme court, could mean that the woman who inadvertently overheard DeLaurier's conversations might be held criminally liable for violating the federal wiretapping law. DeLaurier's lawyer, however, asserted that this 1968 legislation...