Russia Today
Before you spend millions on making sure your radio-controlled, laser-launching, glow-in-the-dark hippie-mobile is of utmost quality for next year’s Burning Man, you might want to check out eBay.
It was there that one recent bidder realized that the Pentagon is picking over their warehouse for parts and offering up high-tech gizmos for pennies on the dollar.
In preparing for this year’s Burning Man, the annual week-long romp through the Nevada desert that has been attracting radical-minded self-expression enthusiasts for decades, Cody Oliver logged onto eBay in hopes of getting a gadget that would help him rig a remote-controlled “art car” for use at the fest. The freelance technologist had in the past built rocket-like vehicles to blast through Burning Man, and this year wanted to take things up a notch.
He almost did just that when he stumbled upon an industrial-grade pair of Omnitech Robotoics NGCM1 controllers on the online auction site. For only $1,000, Oliver became the proud owner of some serious crap.
It turns out that not only is the Pentagon putting spare parts on eBay, but the government has been paying millions for what Oliver called “the hack of all hacks.”...[Full Article]
