Former Lockheed Skunkworks Engineer Auctioning a Prototype "Spy Rock" 119
ilikenwf writes "For a cool $10,000,000.00, the prototype of a surveillance rock full of spy gadgets could be yours! More importantly, server backups from the gentleman's time at Lockheed are included, being the real valuable in this auction, as it contains schematics and such. The seller seems to think that the current xBee radio products are actually based on his work with Lockheed. The proceeds will go towards legal action the seller is apparently taking against his former employer." This may be the most unusual eBay product description I've ever encountered, and one of the most interesting, too.
He isn't selling the rock :( (Score:5, Informative)
It is a pity that the poster has never actually read the description of the auction, otherwise they would have found that:
"The pictures depicted from this auction show some of the early prototypes from the project; however, it should be noted that none of that hardware will be included in this auction as I had a non-intentionally set fire :) that transpired at my house in the storage area where my prototypes were, that destroyed most if not all of the prototype hardware from the initial project development with Lockheed. Those pictures were taken during the development process at one of Lockheed's SCIFs located in Northern Virgina, as is evidenced by the yellow caution tape you see on the floor there in the first few pictures. The last picture was one of the sample images generated from a RockCam installed across the street from one of the engineer's house."
and
" 1) Microhard Spectra 910 900MHz serial line radio with power supply (this was a prototype 900MHz radio that I believe went on to become the current generation of ZigBee-based XBee radios; 2) A collection of PC104-based enclosures and motherboards, with various interfacing such as serial ports, USB ports, etc; 3) A Mobile Wireless Technologies RM1000g AVS vehicle transponder with WWAN and GPS tracking support; 4) Novate wireless prototyping board; 5) GNU X-Tools cross compilation software; and 6) A CD filled with backup materials during several years of the company (the most valuable part of this auction obviously)"
So still some nice hw and docs, but certainly no "spy rocks" included. RTFA, guys!
Re:IP Rights (Score:5, Informative)
"In 2002-2003, I was the Chief Technology Officer for a Boston-based hardware research and development firm, Advanced Wireless Automation (AWA)."
"Based upon my equity ownership in the company and the fact that all AWA computing resources were conducted on my own personal equipment using my own datacenter and my Internet connection, it is well within my right to auction off the backups related to the now-defunct AWA."
Re:Free shipping eh? (Score:4, Informative)
They apparently delivered at least one of them to Russia free of charge already. Some years ago, there was a purportedly documental story on Russian TV where an employee of the British embassy was shown using a "spy rock" clandestinely in Moscow. The veracity of that was widely dismissed because of the ridiculousness of the idea. Some of these spy operations sound like gratuitous toying with cloak-and-dagger stuff.
Re:IP Rights (Score:4, Informative)