Coming Now! Invisiblity Cloak

[Blisspath]

What would you do if you couldn't be seen and was in no danger of being caught?
(http://blisspath.livejournal.com/383760.html)

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/03/06/invisibility-cloak.html

[rock_nog]

Holy crap, it's Blisspath, back from the grave. Long time no see, man! As for what I'd do if I had an invisibility cloak? Epic pranks, clearly. Oh sure, the standard reply is "women's locker room," but eh, it's tired, it's cliched, and besides, that's what the Internet is for. Seriously, the prank potential here is damn near limitless.

[Cloral]

OK, so it takes the light from an object and projects it in a different direction, but wouldn't that just make the object black? How would it let you see what's behind the object?

[rock_nog]

It's a two-part process. First, you completely hide the object by ensuring that no light is reflected back from it, making it completely black. The other part of the invisibility cloak is that there is a camera on the other side that projects an image of what's behind the object you're trying to hide. So it's basically like wearing a movie screen. You just have to make sure the screen itself isn't visible, just the image that it shows.

[Saffith]

Nah, that's a different one. The metamaterials actually make light go right around them.

Last I heard, these sorts of things were only useful on a microscopic scale, and probably wouldn't be relevant to invisibility as we normally think of it. I don't know how different this is from that, though.

[MasterSwordUltima]

You would go insane. Hasn't anyone seen either of the two HollowMen movies?

[Modus Ponens]

There were two?! The first was pretty sad. (Like, lousy sad, not tragic sad.)

[Beldaran]

I was going to see Hollow Man, then it occurred to me that it looked like a steaming shitbox, so I didn't.

[Nicholas Steel]

the problem is that the person that was using the invisibility cloak wouldn't be able to see out of the cloak. You could have microscopic cameras or something attached to the outside of the cape invisible to the naked eye though and have the guy in the cloak wear goggles or something showing what the cameras see...

[The_Amaster]

Well, hey, why stop at a "cloak?" Imagine all the awesome stuff you could make invisible. Like cars! and buildings! and other great stuff!

...I'm not thinking this through properly, am I?