Sometimes the word "why?" is just an exclamation. We don't really expect an answer. We just wish something hadn't happened. Yet, perhaps you might be able to answer the "why" part of this question: Why has a laser manufacturer produced a Star Wars-ish laser that it proudly describes as being "the most dangerous ever created"?

I am indebted to Canada's National Post, which came across a product that really makes one wonder. It is called the Spyder III Pro Arctic.

(Credit: Wicked Lasers)

Its manufacturer, Wicked Lasers of Shanghai, is rather excited about its potential.

May I quote its Web site? "Don't let the Arctic name fool you, this laser possesses the most burning capabilities of any portable laser in existence. That's why it's also the most dangerous laser ever created."

Personally, I didn't let the name fool me. You see, just below this claim to success, Wicked Lasers offers a very bright yellow warning: "Extremely dangerous is an understatement to 1W of laser power. At close range, this Class 4 beam will cause immediate and irreversible retinal damage."

Oh, and "it will blind permanently and instantly and set fire quickly to skin and other body parts."

Wicked Lasers says it is quite aware that its product might be misused. Which is why, it says, "Laser safety flyers and LaserShades are shipped free" with the device.

Perhaps some would be reassured by such benevolence. However, Dr. Annette Dowd of the University of Technology in Sydney offered this analysis to ABC:

"People could very readily access this laser which could cause blindness. It could also start fires. It could be a very dangerous tool in the hands of people who didn't really know how to use it. It could potentially be used as a scientific instrument but it doesn't look like it's been designed to be used as such."

It has, however, been designed not to be too expensive. Together with shipping, the site suggested I pay a mere $227.96.

But still this leaves the question "why?"

If Dr. Dowd is correct that this thing hasn't been designed to be used as a scientific instrument, then what has it been designed for? I tried very hard to maneuver my way around the Wicked Lasers site and discover a potential use for something that surely has the potential to be mistaken for a toy. I couldn't find anything that seemed to explain the uses for this particular item.

And then Sky News scoured some social-networking sites and discovered a number of people, who didn't, at first glance, sound like scientists, offer posts about this laser.

One reportedly read: ""I must have this. Birthday present anyone? I will KILL things, with FIRE."

Another reportedly offered: "Real lasers that resemble Star Wars lightsabres, that can burn skin, cut through plastic and ignite matches--yes please."

There is something curious about a manufacturer who appears to be suggesting there is something vaguely exciting about how dangerous its product might be. Perhaps I missed something. Or perhaps not.

McAfee is tapping into the cloud for a new service designed to offer companies real-time malware protection without the need for any local resources.

McAfee said its new SaaS Web Protection, which launched Tuesday, combines the reporting capabilities from its other products with the same cloud-based platform found in its MX Logic service, which the companyacquired almost a year ago.

Relying on its own Global Threat Intelligence network, automated sensors, and a group of more than 350 security experts, McAfee said the new service will be able to detect and predict security threats to customers in real time.

SaaS Web Protection provides a number of specific features, according to McAfee. Using its own TrustedSource technology, the service can detect and block any threats before they hit the customer. The product's reporting service lets IT administrators analyze their Web traffic to identify any trends in malware. And the policy controls allow IT to enforce corporate guidelines on data use and security.

Since SaaS Web Protection is a cloud-based service, McAfee said it can be deployed anywhere in the world and scaled up or down based on the ongoing needs of its customers. The service can also provide security for remote offices and mobile users, noted McAfee, even those outside a company's own firewall.

"Web filtering solutions have evolved from website monitoring to serious malware defense," Marc Olesen, senior vice president and general manager of Content and Cloud Security for McAfee, said in a statement. "McAfee SaaS Web Protection incorporates all of the knowledge and experience we've gathered through the years, as well as the unique expertise and technologies gained from our recent acquisitions."

More companies have been gravitating toward the cloud as a way to save money and reduce the need for internal resources. But concerns remain, especially among IT professionals, over the safety and reliability of porting essential services to the cloud.

People's enthusiasm for technology can sometimes overpower their enthusiasm for common sense.

According to the Telegraph, a 54-year-old man was seated on a train in Hamburg, Germany, when his Nokia cell phone rang.

Its tune disturbed many in the carriage because instead of a cheery Europop ditty, it was a speech given by Adolf Hitler in which he pledged "the destruction of world Jewry."

This, according to the photographer, is the parking space beneath which was Hitler's bunker in Berlin.

What possessed this man to be so spectacularly mindless as to display his Naziness for all to hear might be beyond all psychology. However, when police arrested him, he reportedly not only possessed swastika stickers, but also had a photograph of Hitler on his cell phone, with the motto "the greatest commander of all time."

Because Germany has laws against public displays of Nazism, the man will reportedly face up to six months in jail.

While some might feel that this is a peculiarly German tale, there is quite a spectrum of anti-Semitic, racist, and other disturbing ringtone content to be purloined on the Web. (The lyrics--and the titles themselves--are not suitable for anywhere.)

And when Cingular was still around, it removed from its own site a ringtone that celebrated the deportation of Latin-American immigrants.

There seems to be no limit to the extent to which some people wish to use technology to publicly celebrate their less lovable sides.

A killer Microsoft smartphone may always be out of reach. And Microsoft should understand this better than anyone.

Toshiba's TG01 Phone is slick, but it runs Windows, not Android, and that's a problem.

Manufacturers and consumers of highly interactive computing devices--be they PCs or smartphones--naturally congregate around a common, widely supported operating system. Of course, that has been Windows or Apple software in the personal computing--i.e., laptop/desktop--world. Now it's Google's Android and Apple's iPhone OS in the smartphone space.

The instant demise of Microsoft's Kin phone is one facet of the challenge Microsoft faces. The broader issue is that Redmond is up against the same kind of juggernaut in smartphones that it created (and still maintains) in PCs.

The fear is that Android (or analogous software like the Chrome OS) and Apple software eventually become the de facto operating environments for more smart devices like tablets or tweener products like large-screen smartphones (the Dell Streak, for instance, is Android based). And that these new-fangled "PCs" begin to erode sales of more traditional PCs. Apple, some would say, sees the writing on the wall and is now putting most of its eggs in the iPhone/iPad basket.

But Apple is not necessarily the enemy for Microsoft. It's Google and Android and the host of phone makers that are adopting Android.

Put simply, the Motorola Droid X is a perfect symbol of what Microsoft can't do--build an attractive high-end smartphone that runs Android.

That doesn't mean Microsoft is in its death throes: laptops and servers will be popular for a long time. But it does mean the company may face a future where it's not the big player in one of the most innovative and exciting personal computing categories for many years to come.

MOSCOW/WASHINGTON--His face wracked by age and his voice rasping after decades of chain-smoking coarse tobacco, the former longtime Russian minister of nuclear energy and veteran Soviet physicist Viktor Mikhailov knows just how to fix BP's oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

"A nuclear explosion over the leak," he says, nonchalantly puffing a cigarette as he sits in a conference room at the Institute of Strategic Stability, where he is a director. "I don't know what BP is waiting for, they are wasting their time. Only about 10 kilotons of nuclear explosion capacity and the problem is solved."

A nuclear fix to the leaking well has been touted online and in the occasional newspaper op-ed for weeks now. Washington has repeatedly dismissed the idea, and BP executives say they are not considering an explosion--nuclear or otherwise. But as a series of efforts to plug the 60,000 barrels of oil a day gushing from the sea floor have failed, talk of an extreme solution refuses to die.

For some, blasting the problem seems the most logical answer in the world. Mikhailov has had a distinguished career in the nuclear field, helping to close a Soviet Union program that used nuclear explosions to seal gas leaks. Ordinarily he's an opponent of nuclear blasts, but he says an underwater explosion in the Gulf of Mexico would not be harmful and could cost no more than $10 million. That compares with the $2.35 billion BP has paid out in cleanup and compensation costs so far. "This option is worth the money," he says.

And it's not just Soviet boffins. Milo Nordyke, one of the masterminds behind U.S. research into peaceful nuclear energy in the 1960s and '70s says a nuclear explosion is a logical last-resort solution for BP and the government. Matthew Simmons, a former energy adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush and the founder of energy investment-banking firm Simmons & Company International, is another calling for the nuclear option.

Even former U.S. President Bill Clinton has voiced support for the idea of an explosion to stem the flow of oil, albeit one using conventional materials rather than nukes. "Unless we send the Navy down deep to blow up the well and cover the leak with piles and piles and piles of rock and debris, which may become necessary...unless we are going to do that, we are dependent on the technical expertise of these people from BP," Clinton told the Fortune/Time/CNN Global Forum in South Africa on June 29.

Clinton was picking up on an idea mooted by Christopher Brownfield in June. Brownfield is a one-time nuclear submarine officer, a veteran of the Iraq war (he volunteered in 2006), and now a nuclear policy researcher at Columbia University. He is also one of a number of scientists whose theories rely not on nuclear bombs--he did toy with that thought for a while--but on conventional explosives that would implode the well and, if not completely plug it with crushed rock, at least bring the flow of oil under control. "It's kind of like stepping on a garden hose to kink it," Brownfield says. "You may not cut off the flow entirely, but it would greatly reduce the flow."

Blasts from the past
Using nuclear blasts for peaceful ends was a key plank of Cold War policy in both the United States and the Soviet Union. In the middle of last century, both countries were motivated by a desire to soften the image of the era's weapon of choice.

Washington had big plans to use peaceful nuclear explosions to build an additional Panama Canal, carve a path for an interstate highway through mountains in the Mojave Desert, and connect underwater aquifers in Arizona. But the experimental plans were dropped as authorities learned more about the ecological dangers of surface explosions.

The Soviet program, known as Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy, was launched in 1958. The project saw 124 nuclear explosions for such tasks as digging canals and reservoirs, creating underground storage caverns for natural gas and toxic waste, exploiting oil and gas deposits, and sealing gas leaks. It was finally mothballed by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989.

The Soviets first used a nuclear blast to seal a gas leak in 1966. Urtabulak, one of its prized gas fields in Uzbekistan, had caught fire and raged for three years. Desperate to save the cherished reserves, Yefim Slavsky, then Minister of Light Industry, ordered nuclear engineers to use the most powerful weapon in their arsenal.

"The minister said, 'Do it. Put it out. Explode it,'" recalls Albert Vasilyev, a young engineer and a rising star in the project who now teaches at the Lenin Technical Institute in Moscow.

Vasilyev remembers the technology behind the program with obvious pride. "The explosion takes place deep underground," he says. "We pinch the pipe, break it, and the pipe collapses." According to Vasilyev, the blast at Urtabulak sealed the well shut, leaving only an empty crater.

Just doing a job
In all, the Soviets detonated five nuclear devices to seal off runaway gas wells--succeeding three or four times, depending on whom you talk to. "It worked quite well for them," says Nordyke, who authored a detailed account of Soviet explosions in a 2000 paper. "There is no reason to think it wouldn't be fine (for the United States)."

But not everything went smoothly. Vasilyev admits the program "had two misfires." The final blast in 1979 was conducted near the Ukrainian city of Kharkov. "The closest houses were just about 400 meters away," Vasilyev recalls. "So this was ordered to be the weakest of the explosions. Even the buildings and the street lamps survived." Unfortunately, the low capacity of the device failed to seal the well, and the gas resurfaced.

Alexander Koldobsky, a fellow nuclear physicist from the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute, insists the peaceful nuclear explosions were safe. The people who worked on the program "were brilliant professionals," he says. "They had a culture of safety, which did not accept the word 'maybe' but only accepted the words 'obligation' and 'instruction.' Any derivation from these in nuclear technologies is a crime."

Still, he concedes, "there were different scenarios of what happened after an explosion." At his first blast in a Turkmen gas field in 1972, "the stench was unbearable," he says. "And the wind was blowing toward a nearby town." He closes his narrow lips into a smile as if refusing to say more.

Koldobsky shrugs off any suggestion of fear or emotion when the bomb exploded. "I felt nothing. I was just doing my job."

Unanswered questions
Not everybody is so sanguine about the Soviet experience. Speaking on condition of anonymity, an expert from Russia's largest oil exporter, Rosneft, urges the United States to ignore calls for the atomic option. "That would bring Chernobyl to America," he says.

Vladimir Chuprov from Greenpeace's Moscow office is even more insistent that BP not heed the advice of the veteran Soviet physicists. Chuprov disputes the veterans' accounts of the peaceful explosions and says several of the gas leaks reappeared later. "What was praised as a success and a breakthrough by the Soviet Union is in essence a lie," he says. "I would recommend that the international community not listen to the Russians. Especially those of them that offer crazy ideas. Russians are keen on offering things, especially insane things."

Former Minister Mikhailov agrees that the USSR had to give up its program because of problems it presented. "I ended the program because I knew how worthless this all was," he says with a sigh. "Radioactive material was still seeping through cracks in the ground and spreading into the air. It wasn't worth it."

"Still," he says, momentarily hard to see through a cloud of smoke from his cigarettes, "I see no other solution for sealing leaks like the one in the Gulf of Mexico."

The problem, he goes on, is that "Americans just don't know enough about nuclear explosions to solve this problem...But they should ask us--we have institutes, we have professionals who can help them solve this. Otherwise BP are just torturing the people and themselves."

Radiation risks
Nordyke too believes the nuclear option should be on the table. After seeing nine U.S. nuclear explosions and standing behind the control board of one, he estimates that a nuclear bomb would have roughly an 80 percent to 90 percent chance of successfully blocking the oil. According to his estimates, it would have to be an explosion of about 30 kilotons, equivalent to roughly two Hiroshima bombs or three times as big as Mikhailov's estimate. The explosion would also need to remain at least 3 to 4 miles away from other offshore wells in the area.

The bomb, says Nordyke, would be dropped in a secondary well approximately 60 to 70 feet away from the leaking shaft. There it would create a large cavity filled with gas. The gas would melt the surrounding rock, crush it and press it into the leaking well to close it shut.

Although the BP well is thousands of feet deeper than those closed in the Soviet Union, Nordyke says the extra depth shouldn't make a difference. He also says that so far below the ground, not much difference exists in onshore or underwater explosions--even though the latter have never been tried.

Nordyke says fears that radiation could escape after the explosion are unfounded. The hole would be about 8 inches in diameter and, despite the shockwave, the radiation should remain captured. Even in the case of radiation escape, he says, its dispersed effect would be less than that of floating oil patches.

A last resort
But don't expect an explosion under the Gulf of Mexico any time soon. Even a conventional blast could backfire and cause more problems. There is a chance any blast could fracture the seabed and cause an underground blowout, according to Andy Radford, petroleum engineer and American Petroleum Institute senior policy adviser on offshore issues. The U.S. Department of Energy has no plans to use explosives "due to the obvious risks involved," according to a DOE representative.

There's also the question of time. Preparations for a nuclear explosion could take up to half a year; BP has said it will have a relief well in place to stop the leak by August. "I think it has to be considered as only the last resort," Nordyke says. But "they ought to be thinking about it."

Would he be willing to work on such an operation? "I'd be happy to help," he says.

WASHINGTON--I'm staring at $38.4 million in cash, and it's hard not to drool.

I'm here at the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which, as is probably best described by its official Web site, is America's "money factory."

More specifically, this is where the U.S. Treasury Department prints its paper money, and as part of Road Trip 2010, I've come here to see how the bureau makes the brand-new, next-generation $100 bill. The bureau's mission is emblazoned in red, white, and blue neon on a wall near where I came in: "We make money the old fashioned way, we PRINT it."

But jumping ahead of that process a little bit, I'll say it again: At the end of my behind-the-scenes tour, I've come face to face with two giant piles, or "skids" of perfect, clean, crisp $100s, all packaged up and ready to be shipped out, exactly 384,000 of them, and I can only shake my head and think, "what if."

That's getting ahead of myself though.

Offset
Although the bureau prints each of America's paper denominations, my tour is of the production process for the new $100, partly because it's the most advanced bill the country has ever printed, and mainly because the bureau is still in publicity mode for it. The new bill was unveiled officially on April 21.

My tour began in what is called "Offset." This, explained Offset supervisor James Sutherland, is where background color is printed on what until then had been blank sheets of the special paper the bureau uses for all our currency. That paper comes delivered with embedded purple anti-counterfeiting strips, and as well as the little colored security fibers that set our money apart, but nothing else. We moved on to what is known as "intaglio," the section where the many elements of the new $100--the lettering, the back, the face, the seals, and more--are added.Once Offset has printed the first rounds of background colors, the future $100 bills--which start as sheets of 32 bills--four across, eight down--are stacked up and set aside to dry for 72 hours. It seems a little weird to me that they dry in these large stacks, but that's how it works. After every stage in the printing process, the sheets must dry for 72 hours. And then it's on to the next stage.

This is also where many of the additional security--read: anti-counterfeiting--features are added. Here, that means specialty inks and color-shifting inks. I was asked not to say more, as a security precaution.

First up is the printing of the back of the bill. This is pretty straightforward, and when I come in, I talk to assistant supervisor Bob Smith, who explains what's going on. One interesting part of the process is the printing and examination of the so-called "smear sheet," which looks like a sheet of 32 $100 backs, dipped entirely in green ink. A smear sheet is printed once every 8,000 sheets or so.

A smear sheet, which is used so that printers can examine a run in order to see if anything is missing from the print.

The smear sheet, said Smith, is used by the printers as a way to see if everything in a run has been printed where it's supposed to be. On every sheet, the note's many authentication patterns are supposed to be in precise places, and by looking at the smear sheet, he added, the printers are able to ensure that that is the case.

But there's also automatic examination going on, Smith said. Built into the printing presses are inspection sensors that scan each sheet as it goes through, looking for defects, in a bid to "reduce spoilage." Those that the machine rejects are automatically separated "from the good work." All told, he added, about 85 percent to 90 percent of the sheets that come off the printer are deemed defect-free.

If, however, a defect is found--perhaps it's missing some print, is over-inked, under-inked, too lightly printed, or has smudges--the sheet isn't destroyed. Instead, if enough of it is salvageable, the good bills will be set aside and used as what are known as "star sheets." But more on that later.

Smith said that the bureau's printing presses have a general capacity of about 10,000 sheets an hour, but that for the new $100 bill, they're producing about 20 percent less, or about 8,000 sheets an hour. And that's because they're still in the earliest stages of the bill's production. Eventually, Smith suggested, the number will rise to normal production levels.

Faces
We've now moved on to faces, and here, too, printers will produce smear sheets, again to determine if the security features are properly positioned on each new print load.

A print load is five piles of 888 sheets, for a total of 4,440 sheets or $14.2 million.

Essentially, though, the process here is the same as in the back-printing section: print the new elements, and then let the loads dry for 72 hours.

Then it's on to the examination area. Here, explained assistant acting foreman Ron Perkins, loads of 15,000 sheets arrive and must be inspected to ensure they are defect-free.

This, of course, is not manual work. Instead, the sheets are fed into an examination machine, which scans each 32-bill sheet, one at a time looking for any inconsistency--again, under-inking, over-inking, smudges, and so on. If defects are found, the offending sheets are separated and don't get sent on any further in the production process.

The sheets are fed into the machine, where a stream of air lifts them individually, and a vacuum picks them up so they can be guided along a series of bearings. A camera takes a picture of the front of the sheets, which then hit "the knives," where the tops and bottoms get about half an inch of excess paper trimmed off. Then the sheets execute a nifty maneuver where they are flipped over in a 90-degree turn, without creasing them in any way. Then a second camera takes a picture of the back of the sheets before sending them to a second set of knives, where the sides are trimmed. Here, as well, the sheets are cut in half, down the middle, splitting sheets that were four bills by eight into two sheets of two bills by eight.

And then one more camera, which takes a final picture that is used to ensure that the front side of the bills matches the back, and that they are not off-center to each other.

After passing under the third camera, the sheets are sent to a separation point. The "good work" go up a ramp, and the defects go straight through, ending up in a bin appropriately marked "mutts."

The mutts are not saved. Rather, they are pulled aside, accounted for, and then destroyed.

At this point, Perkins explained, the printing process is basically done, and the sheets of 16 bills are sent to their final area--known as Cope-pack.

Cope-pack
All around the printing sections of the bureau are signs that read, "2 person rule in effect at all times," meaning nobody can be in the area alone. Clearly, they take security very seriously here.

In Cope-pack--which stands for Currency over Printing Equipment and Packaging--the last step in the bills' production is to add the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve seals and the serial numbers.

The hundreds come in, still in 16-bill sheets, and go through one final press, where those seals and the serial numbers are added. Then, they emerge, in stacks of 100 sheets of "16 subject."

t this point, there's still one more set of knives to come. The sheets slide along a belt first that does a set of horizontal cuts, dividing the two bill by eight bill sheets into single two-bill sheets, and then a vertical cut splits them into piles of 100 individual $100 notes (see video above).

This brick contains 4,000 $100 bills, or $400,000.

Those come off the machine, and end up in the hands of an examiner, who manually flips through them, $10,000 at a time, looking for any defects that have escaped the automatic systems. These are the crispest, cleanest bills you can imagine, perfectly aligned, and a pleasure to look at.

If even a single defect is discovered here, the entire stack of a hundred notes is destroyed, and is replaced by pre-printed stacks of a hundred star notes, using the notes that were pulled aside much earlier in the process.

Then, 10 packs of the hundred notes, each with a paper band around it denoting that it amounts to $10,000, are put together in what's known as a bundle, or $100,000. Four of these are combined, making a brick, which equals $400,000.

And then 24 bricks are put together in the "skids." They're put on palettes and readied for shipping.

And here, at the end, is where I find myself face-to-face with 384 bricks. Or $38.4 million.

But no, I didn't get any samples.

Kabul, Afghanistan -- Gen. David Petraeus formally assumed command of NATO's International Security Assistance Force during a ceremony Sunday at the command's headquarters in Kabul.

In a speech, Petraeus said NATO's strategy in Afghanistan had not changed.

"We must help Afghan leaders develop their security forces and governance capacity so that they can, over time, take on the tasks of securing their country and see to the needs of their people," he said. "And, in performing these tasks, we clearly must pursue the insurgents relentlessly."

Petraeus said the war had reached a "critical moment."

"We must demonstrate to the Afghan people, and to the world, that al Qaeda and its network of extremist allies will not be allowed to once again establish sanctuaries in Afghanistan from which they can launch attacks on the Afghan people and on freedom-loving nations around the world," he said.

Petraeus was tapped by President Barack Obama as the new top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan to replace Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

McChrystal was relieved of his duties after the general and his staff were quoted in a Rolling Stone magazine article criticizing and mocking key administration officials.

On Sunday Petraeus praised his predecessor's work in Afghanistan.

"The progress made in recent months, in the face of a determined enemy, is in many respects the result of the vision, energy and leadership he provided," Petraeus said.

The Senate unanimously confirmed Petraeus for the new position in late June. He arrived in Afghanistan on Friday.

Petraeus has said he supports Obama's plan to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan in July 2011 -- but insists it ought to be based on "conditions on the ground."