First off, the cameras are always hooded, to reduce sun glare and reduce the amount of rainwater that gets on them. Rain contains a surprising amount of dirt the drops pick up as they fall through the atmosphere, and you get the same effect on a camera lens as you do on your house windows.

Now hit that with a paintball and the effect is quite a lot worse. A single shot to any part of the lens or hood area is likely to completely coat the entire lens with a thick enough layer of (water-soluable) paint to make 100% of the photos taken with the camera unusable. (can't get a plate)

The rain hood will protect against rain washing the paint away. Although after a few days, the paint will have dried up enough that it will require a little scrubbing action to remove it - ordinary rain won't do the job at that point.

This method has many advantages and few disadvantages compared to other options. Firstly, it's unlikely to cause physical damage to the camera, which will be useful if you get caught. If you and four other citizens start balling the cameras, and you get caught, you will likely be judged responsible for 100% of the cameras. If you're taking them out with .22's instead of paintballs, that could easily be billed at a grand or more per camera. If it's just paint, they'll probably get you for $70'ish each to send out a guy with cotton balls and a long pole. (or a cherry picker)

Ammo is a lot cheaper. Shots can be a lot quieter. Easier to visually identify already "serviced" cameras. And odds are you'd be charged with vandalism rather than destruction of public property, since nothing permanent was done.

"So we wanted to take content from Google and strip off the revenue-generating part of it and pass it off to our customers, but Google wouldn't roll over on our demands. So we're just going to take it anyway. Oh what's this? It looks like Google is going to sue us for violating the TOS that they refused to change just for us. Well, maybe now they'll be willing to roll over and play by our rules!"

Idiots. Don't you know you can't be a bully and get away with it unless you're bigger than the other guy? I hope Google gives them the bloody nose they so desperately deserve.

I disagree that Outlook.com is all that great. If you want your email to be truly secure, you need to encrypt it at the client

THIS. Once it gets off your LAN, there are SO many ways for you to get tapped into. Not counting the illegal ways, look at all the options the govt has and is well known to use, often ignoring or pencil-whipping judicial oversight. They can subpoena your ISP, whoever is doing your email encryption, whoever is providing them with their SSL keys, or their ISP.

If you are serious about protecting your privacy, make darn sure your data is secured before it leaves your property. At least then, if they want to snoop, you're a lot more likely to at least know it's happening. And that will keep out most of your threats, short of spear-phishing, stray bait flash drives left in your parking lot, and internal threats. (malicious employees)

In the short term, get everyone an email certificate, and USE them to sign and encrypt outgoing email. (any decent email client will support signing and encryption) That data could still be subpoenaed from the group you get them from though. You can roll your own if you want to also, but you won't be easily able to revoke if need be.

But so far the response from Amazon has simply been: it was never supposed to work, and we've fixed it.

In the absence of a clear response from Amazon,

That looks pretty clear to me. You just don't like the answer so you're refusing to listen to / accept it as an answer.

This wasn't supposed to work. You found a loophole and were using it in a way they neither intended you to nor wanted you to. They closed the loophole. You need to deal with it from that angle, not "they broke it and it's their responsibility to fix it", because they didn't, and it's not.

The bill also raises wages for H-1B workers to make them more competitive, although the amount wasn't specified.

So they can encourage foreign outsourcing? Doesn't anyone see this as having a negative impact on domestic unemployment? (as well as a trade deficit effect as they ship their US$ off to India)

Why is this necessary???

Mbps != MBps

Please stop doing that in article summaries. When you start getting up into large numbers like that you can't just expect everyone to "read what you meant to say."

What would you class as a robot??

The term "robot" has been around for quite awhile, and due to its broad use, it doesn't have a very clear definition.

About all the agreement you're going to get on it is that a robot is a mechanical device capable of performing automated actions. It generally doesn't have to emulate physical (walking) or cognitive (AI) biological features. My dish washer is technically a robot. It's not very glamorous, but there you have it.

Robots exist in all degrees of "autonomy". It can be a difficult line to draw. If you start with a remote controlled plane, it meets the most basic automation definition of "robot" as soon as it can auto pilot.

I'd tend to call a machine a more "modern" robot when it is able to do more than directly react to stimulus. (which is all that an airplane autopilot does) A "decision maker by necessity". The Mars Curiosity robot for example. It's impractical to operate it purely by remote control. It has to evaluate its circumstances, assess priorities and capabilities, select a high level goal, ("analyze that rock over there") and then execute a series of actions (customized at that time based on current circumstances) to accomplish the goal.

But I suppose I'm thinking more of "automaton" than of robot?

You have a standoff where neither side wants to fight, nor wants to back down so they just flex and hurl words at each other.

That's not the impression I get from all that's been happening up there in NK lately. They aren't behaving by anyone's definition of "rational". You can't negotiate or reason with someone that's living in their own self-centered world like they are. They simply don't care what the rest of the world does or thinks about them. And that makes them incredibly dangerous, regardless of what their military capabilities are. They could send a company of chickens with slow-fuse grenades across the border and start/re-ignore a war. They don't need nukes.

For all practical purpose, they are 100% unpredictable. You have no way of telling what they're going to do next. Not by looking at what they've already done, not by looking at how the world is responding to them. None of it matters.

So you can't say that any one action by any outside party is going to "be responsible for" or "will lead to." Anonymous is just another side-attraction in this entire spectacle. They won't likely accomplish anything that could be described as a "goal", but at the same time this won't change what NK does in the next 10 minutes let alone the next 10 months.

The software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short written answers, freeing professors for other tasks."

There are probably at least several good jabs to make at this so I'll try to just address the best one.

First thing that comes to my mind is 'free them up to do what?" Education is adding more and more distance between the student and the teacher without throwing this into the mix. In a perfect world, teachers would be there to teach and that's it. But it's become more a problem of time management, lecture halls full of hundreds of students per teacher, and throw in the odd paper publish and grand write here and there. I think what we need to be doing is not looking for ways to further skew the student-to-teacher ratio, but to dial it back down a bit instead. Get me back to the good 'ol days where your prof knew your name.

Well, maybe two. "Artificial Intelligence beats Real Stupidity."

Something doesn't smell right here. Some moron is misinterpreting law again.

The odds are much better than this is actually how the law is being written, and they are "expecting the court to correctly interpret it" because, you know, that' the job of the courts... to interpret the intended meaning of the law. (facepalm)

Writing the law correctly and unambiguously would just be too much of a bother for the congresscritters.

the source code, contract letters, schematics and notes for the creation of the Apple II Disk Operating System (DOS)

I did a good deal of assembly back in 'th day, and I ran Merlin Pro. I had decompiled FaskDiskOne (an optimized version of Dos 3.3) It featured optimized sector reading and interleaving. Nibbles were decoded on the fly, instead of after the sector was read, greatly improving read speed. After getting that fully loaded into merlin I could tweak it any way I liked. Though all I really ever ended up doing was implementing EA's copy protection in my main programming disk. Still, it was nice being able to directly modify your DOS.

You want to search my house? Go to a judge and convince them, get a search warrant. Then c'mon in. Facebook password in a divorce case? Sure. Again, judicial oversight.

But my employer? NO. No, you can't search my house if you have an internal investigation going on me, and NO, you can't ransack my facebook either. If you want into either of those, take it to court like everybody else has to, prove to a judge that you need it.

I don't see a difference here. And neither should the law.

It sounds like Microsoft didn't so much as give up, as go around Apple.

I'm sure someone will rapidly correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't believe they can go around Apple. Software has to be signed to install, and only Apple has the key. That's why you have to jailbreak to run unsigned apps.

The only way "around" that is to either (A) have updates that are "content" (new maps, skins, etc) that are data that does not need to be signed, or you have to run interpreted code and your main app downloads the update code and runs that (or compiles it or something). But Apple has that base covered too, no interpreted languages. That's what's made emulators rare on the iDevices, they're against the rules. (for the wrong reason, the no-emulation reason is to prevent out of appstore apps, not to prevent game emulators, so they're just collateral damage)

But this isn't a purchased app, it's a subscription. So either Apple gave MS a waiver on the no-emulation rule, or gave them a waiver on the no-subscriptions.

Could be just MS throwing lots of money in Apple's face and getting an exception made, or maybe some new policy in the works at Apple. Would be interesting to have more details on it though.

When I was younger I used to climb up trees and try to catch them. Wow, they've got quite a voice. Sounds like you have a fire alarm bell from school going off in your hands when you manage to grab one off a tree!

Anyway, I remember when I watched Red Planet, how much the bugs (cephlopods or whatever they called them) looked like cicadas. VERY similar looking.

And they're interesting to watch fly, sort of like Wyle E Coyote with an Acme Jet Pack. I don't think they even bother navigating as they fly through the air far too fast for their own good, running into walls, cars, houses, PEOPLE, whatever. If they can grab it after smacking it, they call it a "landing".

Neighbor went to Japan for a vacation. They apparently grow them extra large size there, and when they're in full chorus in the parks you can't even hear the person sitting next to you on the bench trying to talk with you.

AAANd one final thought. Another neighbor next door told me one time he got bit by one. I've seen then, they have a mosquito-like straw on their head, and they can tap into trees to drink sap during their 7-10 days alive as an adult, so I suppose it's possible they might confuse you for a tree... has anyone else heard of getting bit by one?