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If you don't mind paying big, think small. Small laptops, camcorders and printers, that is.

Hurricanes, as we've seen, can wreak serious havoc when they strike populated areas. We've never had control over them before, but one researcher thinks they could be broken up with F-4 fighter jets.

In theory, sending in a pair of the jets to do loops around the eye of the hurricane while it's still out over the ocean, creating sonic booms, would break it up before it hits the shore.

Jet fighters flying at supersonic speeds along special trajectories with a hurricane/typhoon at various altitudes would create supersonic booms. In one such embodiment, the trajectories for the supersonic booms of the present invention are counter to the rotational component of the hurricane and/or typhoon being targeted. As such, supersonic booms can be tailored and/or designed to partially and/or fully -negate the basic rotational contribution in a hurricane by slowing down a hurricane's/typhoon's rotation. Additionally, when supersonic booms propagate downward to the surface of the ocean they also destabilize a hurricane's/typhoon's structure by increasing the pressure in the central part of a hurricane's/typhoon's eye.

It's a pretty crazy idea, but I guess it makes sense. It would be pretty amazing to be able to stop any hurricane before it hit shore, saving millions and millions of dollars and who knows how many lives. I can't wait for them to test this out. [Patent via AV Web; Thanks, Jason!]

SAP co-CEO Henning Kagermann allegedly held strong concerns at one point about the legal implications of buying TomorrowNow, the now-shuttered SAP subsidiary tied to a lawsuit filed by rival vendor Oracle.

- In Part 3 of his SOA series Eric Giguere explores how to do SOA when the target device does not support Web Services (JSR 172). Dig in to learn what your options are.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chief executives of the major U.S. auto companies pledged to refocus on higher fuel efficiency and lower production costs as they asked Congress again on Thursday for billions of dollars in emergency cash.