Thanks for the info. Though I still have a few questions, I can google it when and if I want them answered. I don't plan to have a future in electrical engineering and plan to either stay with systems engineer or programming. Either way, while I don't completely understand your answer, it seems that you have demonstrated that you enough that I should accept it. Thanks.

My guess would agree with you because...

1. 1) If this was a police or city camera, it likely wouldn't have been placed that high up since the lower the camera is, the easier it would be to view the license plate. The higher it is, the greater the viewing angle and the slimmer the image of the plate the harder it becomes for a program to correctly distinguish the important features. Well... this applies to police looking at license plates at least. Automated tickets for running red lights and speeders. I suppose there are possible reasons why the city could have placed them up there and in doing so wanted them as high as possible (I can't think of why they would want them at all but I guess it's possible) but see the reasons below for why I don't think the city would have done this either.
2. 2) If this was a police or city camera, it wouldn't have needed to be placed "in the electric space" on the pole for electricity. The electric space doesn't mean it's the only spot for power on the pole. It means it's reserved for transporting massive amounts of electricity and it's reserved at higher place on the pole so that it doesn't become a hazard to less informed telco and cable company workers. It's dangerous and you don't want anyone near it who isn't fully trained in it. Now a camera doesn't even require a wired connection for communication. We have them all over where I live (Miami and Fort Lauderdale area), you see them all of the time on lights, on the highway, etc, and they all have antennae on them for wireless communications. These cameras can receive power and communicate equally at lower levels (when it's this small level of height difference). The police or city would have no reason or want to place them that high for technical purposes. If the cameras are not wireless equipped or they need a faster connection then what the wireless can provide (high def, high fps over long range wireless from many devices simultaneously) then they would still be in the proper zone for cable or telephone links in that zone. They have everything they need in that zone on the poll.
3. 3) If this were a police or city camera, the power company would have already known, would not have dismounted it and would not have brought it to the police.
4. 4) The police and city would both admit that it belongs to them if it did. It would not be a secret. They have so many bureaucratic policies that they are not allowed to go through some move like that and not inform the public when they did. I remember in a town a grew up in when the police started using cruisers marked as taxis to trick drunk drivers into not thinking it was police, making it easier to follow them without being noticed, etc, I don't remember the details but it was in the paper with a statement from the police about it. Government, at least at these basic levels, are not allowed to keep any secrets. They are required to inform the public (if your city has cameras, try it, ask the police and they will tell you it's theirs).
5. 5) The police and city don't install cameras! They don't have a camera installation department. They don't want or need one. They contract this out. This is a one time roll out. They install the cameras and then they are installed. They wouldn't have a pre-existing camera installation department and if they know that they will have no practical use once the cameras are installed then they wouldn't create this department just to have to disband it soon thereafter. They contract this out to qualified individuals who are familiar with these polls and understand what zones it's allowed to be mounted in.
6. 6) A properly done installation will leave details of the installation at the location. What I mean is these boxes that are mounted on the polls will say something like "Property of Comcast Cable, for problems call 1-800-555-7264" or something like that. It serves to notify people on the pole whom is responsible for which equipment and where to call if work has to be done which will affect said equipment. Anyone who works on utility poles is aware of this and knows exactly what it looks like. Your local telephone installers, cable TV installers, etc. They see it all the time and it's likely on the outside of any utility type box connected to your house (phone demarcation point?). The electricity company would have seen the identity information and would have called the responsible company first before removing it even if it was in the wrong zone. They would have most likely removed them all (because they don't want an unlicensed technician in the high voltage area) and charged it to the responsible company but they also would have notified them initially in the event that there was anything they needed to be informed about that could present unknown danger (policies everywhere for government big businesses, especially utility companies).
7. 7) If this was placed there by a criminal then the police would not have said that they returned it to the owner. They would have stated that it was illegally placed and that they are conducting an investigation or that they had arrested someone. If doing an investigation adding "if you have any info, please call us, blah blah blah". The investigation part would be because he'd want his department informed if anyone has seen anything suspicious or know anyone who could have done it. If they had made an arrest, well it makes them look good. Additionally it's informing the public that if you know someone who spends too much time playing with cameras, keep it to yourself, it's not him. Additionally the police can simply say no comment and will if they have no comment to make. Police are trained on how to handle the media, what you can say, what you can't say, that you can walk away, etc. For the chief himself to say we returned it to the owner means pretty much that he did return it to the owner and when asked who the owner was, he said 'no comment'.
8. 8) When Andrew McMahon, the superintendent at Massena Electric Department, said "whoever put it there had taken a chance with electrocution", he was excessively understating that. Dropping a toaster in the bath tub can kill you and were referring to, at most (in North America), 110 volts at 20 amps. That is the most going through you're averager home electrical socket (NEMA 5-20R outlet). Some exceptions can be made such as the home dryer which would be 250 volts at 30 amps (NEMA 14-30R outlet) and the home oven range which would be 250 volts at 50 amps (NEMA 14-50R outlet). Now imagine all of this power summed up for your whole house ...if you want a accurate number for how many amps your house has, sum the amps listed on every switch of your circuit breaker (or fuses if you have em) and then imagine this number multiples to many surrounding neighborhoods. The amount of electricity up there is astoundingly deadly. It's also not protected in all of the same ways your home is. What I mean is you have all of these simple plugs and outlets around your home and you know better then to touch the metal while inserting a plug into an outlet. The equipment in the electrical area of the utility poles is designed for technician access and not resident access. These means it's designed for servicability access for licensed technicians. It's designed to to expose everything easuly so that the properly qualified professional working on it will not be obstructed for the repairs he has to make. If this machine was installed by some local "hacker" who wanted to spy on his neighbors then they would have found his cinder of a corpse laying next to the pole instead of cameras installed everywhere. If he was trying to connect a camera to the power of the lines on the utility pole and he was somehow successful at making the connection without cooking himself on those wires, the camera would have immediately shorted and most likely caught fire from the amount of power being passed through it. If it was installed by a former (or current) electrical engineer for the electrical company, he would have known that they would have been immediately detected and removed. The police and the city (and the contractors they use) know not to go tampering around in the infrastructre level capacity of the electrical company. They know how dangerous it is. The people who installed these cameras are well informed professionals but this was done outside of the scope of the electrical company or at least outside of the scope of the average electrical company workers who had dismounted the camera and returned it to the police. Either one of those options reqiures some big names from the "three-letter-agency".
9. 9) As I mentioned above, we have these cameras all over Miami and Ft. Lauderdale and something else I just realized, when they are installed by the city/police, I have never seen one on a utility pole (and having an inquisitive mind for my own environment, I make a point of looking for out for what others don't notice and aren't interested in). I see these installed along the highway on very high concrete polls. The height is ok for this purpose since the point of the cameras is to guage traffic conditions. The cameras I've seen taking pictures of peoples license plates Miami are also on their own polls. I've noticed cameras in Ft. Lauderdale and the odd spot of Miami that look like video cameras mounted on intersection traffic lights. I haven't thought to look for an answer but what I find strange about these is that they are perfectly positioned to inspect the front of a vehicle as it passes through the intersection but Florida license plates are only one plate mounted on the rear of the vehicle. I'm actually not sure what these intersection lights are looking for. The ones I've seen which look for red light runners are separate ones on their own dedicated poll. There is a bright flash for the camera as it takes the picture. The two camera types are distinctively different from what I've observed and by not being able to even see the license plate that goes through it, still not sure what the traffic light mounted cameras are for.

I'm not saying it was one of the "three-letter-agency" but I think we've pretty much ruled out police, city, criminal, "hacker" and everything else I can think of. I'm still open to any other suggestions on who else could have done this. P.S.

This is getting ridiculous. I remember back in the day where activists actually stood for legitimate principals and hackers were more concerned with security and knowledge then backing the latest BS hippy political agenda. Ok. I'm sure that still happens but this as well as a lot of things making the news recently isn't a great example. A bunch of pathetic wannabe activists protesting apple for the treatment of employees at Foxconn. WTF is this supposed to mean? Employees at Foxconn are employees at Foxconn. They don't get paid by Apple because they don't work for Apple. How in the hell should Apple be responsible for how a third party treats it's employees? Apple is a customer of Foxconn and that's it. I'm not saying the employee conditions at Foxconn shouldn't be questioned but why aren't other Foxconn customers like Cisco and Acer being held equally responsible by the activists. No Cisco and Acer shouldn't be held responsible either but neither should Apple. If anyone should be held responsible it should be Foxconn and if you feel that for some reason you want to hold some higher party responsible for a lower parties actions then next on the list would be the Taiwanese government for allowing these working conditions but even still how about holding the employees responsible among all else because they continue to work there despite the conditions. Foxconn isn't the only electronics manufacturer in Taiwan and don't quote me but rumor has it there may be a bunch there (this would be the point where I make really wide eyes, raise my eyebrows, have my lips parted without my mouth gaping open and shake my head at you like you're an idiot). OMG WTF RLY??? You're saying people can work for other electronics manufacturers in Taiwan besides Foxconn? Why yes, I most certainly am. Just about everything with an integrated circuit in North America and probably the rest of the world has very high probability of coming from one of the many many many electronics companies in Taiwan so if employees at Foxconn really did feel that abused because of where they worked then they would apply at one of the hundreds of other companies in Taiwan that do the exact same thing. Why don't you all grow up and find something more reasonable to protest and hack?

Well it (probably) means that they will have to search elsewhere for the CDMA firmware through with apps like cyanogenmod, which I use, I imagine they have the current one in archive but any tweaks and future releases of such might be difficult to find. On the other hand, they may just be able to pull a live one from a working phone and use that. On yet another hand, they may run into some licensing issues themselves if they make it publicly available. I'm doing a lot of guessing on this comment so don't take it too literally but I imagine that worst case scenario, something will work out that everyone will be happy with. I mean people can still jailbreak their iPhone no matter how hard Apple tries to stop them and I imagine that Cyanogenmod will have a process much much simple and easier then any Apple fan boy trying to jailbreak their iPhone.

I think I have them but mostly haven't used them so I have to ask, is that good or bad?

Good Thing you added a question mark because this doesn't mean Google is handing anything over to anyone. Google and Carriers are still more then welcome to use CDMA technology all they like and are free to do anything they want with the phones as long as all the licensing requirements of all the software they use are met. Google removing CDMA from the developer pages is not the same thing as Google saying that the android license and therefor anyone using the android software is now restricted from using CDMA and it can no longer be used because that is not what it means. It means Google is having issues complying with certain licenses by posting the CDMA specs online and therefor they have simply taken it out of the open space where anyone in the world is now able to access it but carriers like Verizon and Sprint and Manufacturers like Samsung, HTC, LG, etc, etc will have no problem obtaining the resources and permissions to develop and implement the CDMA functionality and I'm willing to bet that Google will not only make it easy to load this functionality in a modular way which will ease integration but I also bet that will be aiding with the design and development to these companies to make sure it's done. Don't misinterpret Google taking CDMA from the open developer pages as meaning anything even close to saying Google is not going to allow CDMA on Android phones anymore because one example I can think of already is Sprint, a CDMA provider, has the contract to deploy Galaxy Nexus phones as soon as the exclusivity rights for Verizon finish. People shouldn't jump to conclusions so quickly based on a gross over simplification of what is actually being said without taken a moment to read it thoroughly and make an effort to understand the real implications of the actions. Hope this answers your question.

Yep. I'm deaf, in IT and on call. I have an alarm clock now, designed for deaf people of course, that has the giant vibrator that goes under the pillow. The alarm clock also has a port to plug in a lamp so it can flash the lamp (though this won't help your wife) and a phone port that activates the system whenever someone calls. Basically, if either the alarm goes off or someone calls my on call emergency number then the pillow shakes like it's having a seizure, the lamp on the bed side table goes on, off, on, off, etc and also it has a strobe that flashes. As a bonus it has a 24 hour clock option. I used to have a sonic boom alarm clock for deaf people that also had the phone jack but the clock couldn't keep time. Every week I had to re-adjust it to have the proper time again (every week it would be about 7 minutes off). The downside to all of this is it always woke my girlfriend up too (with the old one that didn't have the flashing lights) but the good news is that giant vibrator you stick under you're pillow can be used for all sorts of other things that your girlfriend or wife may enjoy ;-)

I don't know if she looks good. I mean to me she does and sure she's cute but if you look closely at the photo you can see the lines near where the cheeks meet the mouth that says "I'm old". After careful analysis, I wouldn't need to look her up on IMDB to think she looks older then 33 but I can tell she's trying to hide it well.

I agree that any cyanogenmod supported phone is plenty. You can get a phone from the carrier if you want. As long as cyanogenmod says it's supported then you root the phone, install cyanogenmod and can use you phone as a WiFi to 3G/4G hub without requiring any support from your carrier or even for them to understand what it is you are doing. I have used my CM7 powered Evo 4G as a WiFi hotspot for my laptop from time to time without having any contract or support from my carrier to enable this feature.

Dental floss? I got a spool of waxed linen sold just for lacing cables for $3 at the local hardware store.

HTML5 cannot replace webcams to the best of my knowledge. Any site that wants to use your web cam will need flash. I know google is working on doing this with HTML5 but, to the best of my knowledge, it hasn't been released yet and, even when it is, will it be done using pure HTML5? Will it be done with open source code? Maybe but unless it's done in a way that's free and open source (which it very well may be if google does it) and all sites that use web cams adopt this immediately then, unless that's done, then people will still need flash.

I went to Canada in March 2010 and I had an option with AT&T to pay for roaming data. I forget how much but AT&T had the option where I paid them ahead of time for X amount of data to be used from my US AT&T phone while I was in other countries and I would therefor not be billed roaming data rates while I was out of the AT&T network. I went to Canada and used data on my iPhone the whole time and when I got my cell phone bill, I was not charged a dime for roaming aside from the pre-paid cost I agreed to. See if Verizon offers the same thing. I will have to do this as well since I am now on Android with Spring and planning to go back to Canada soon but I have to admit that the AT&T roaming pre-pay was great. I will have to look into this again soon since I am now using Android on Sprint and planning to head up to Canada for a visit. Oh, and of coarse, use an Android or iPhone as a WiFi hotspot (iPhone supports that. right? I think). If you have a custom rom on your android then you don't even need to pay the fee the cell provider charges you to setup a hotspot on your phone.

No you are doing something very wrong. All distros I know of check the disk via fsck every so often. Typically if it has been more then 45 days since the last fsck run then a check is done at boot time.