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We in no way condone robbery, but if you’re going to go through the effort of crawling through a Walmart ceiling to steal from the store’s cash room, you should at least make sure that room is empty when you saw through the ceiling.

FOX2 in St. Louis reports that a man walked into a Collinsville, IL, Walmart in the wee hours of the morning yesterday. He then managed to sneak into the store’s drop ceiling and, like Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club, make his way to the space just above a room where the store holds its cash.

This room has a drywalled ceiling, so the man had so use a saw to cut a hole.

“He tried to cut in there with a saw,” a the Collinsville police officer tells FOX2. “He was sawing through the ceiling, apparently to drop down into the offices. One of the cashiers went in there to make change or whatever.”

Because it’s not exactly easy to saw drywall without making a sound (and presumably kicking up some debris), the employee in the room below noticed. That employee told the manager, who called the police.

Realizing he had been caught mid-burglary, the man abandoned his unasked-for renovation work and fled.

“They heard him scampering through there like a rat and he got out,” says the officer. “He crawled into the ceiling and through there with people working. So he`s pretty bold.”

He did manage to keep his cool, walking back out the front door like someone who hadn’t just bungled an ill-conceived robbery attempt.

Given the ease with which the suspect got into the ceiling and located the cash room, the police believe that he had inside information about the store.

“We believe he has some type of knowledge of the set up,” says the officer. “Either he has worked there; he knows someone who works there or something to that effect. He`s got some kind of intricate knowledge that there`s money in that area.”

Have you ever been compelled to make an insincere apology just because you knew it would get you out of trouble? The much-loathed Recording Industry Association of America made that sort of offer to file-sharer Jammie Thomas-Rasset, offering to reduce her $222,000 penalty if she just went on the record to say some kind words about the RIAA’s anti-piracy platform.

For those coming late to Jammie’s case, she was first found liable in 2007 for illegally downloading and sharing 24 songs on Kazaa. The jury awarded the plaintiffs $222,000, or $9,250 per song.

The court later vacated that judgement and a second trial convened in 2009. This time, she was hit with whopping $1.92 million verdict, or $80,000 per song.

Thomas-Rasset argued that this penalty was completely out of proportion to any damage that may have been done by the alleged piracy. The judge in the case ultimately reduced the amount to $54,000 but the defendant rejected even this significantly smaller penalty.

Then there was a third trial to hammer out the damages. This time, the verdict came out to $1.5 million ($62,500/song).

Once again, the court reduced the amount to $54,000. This time, the plaintiffs appealed. In 2012, a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the original $222,000 penalty was correct and should not have been reduced.

Thomas-Rasset had hoped her case would be heard by the Supreme Court, but in March of this year, the nation’s highest court declined to hear the case.

Now, Wired reports that the RIAA has made Thomas-Rasset a vague offer to reduce the amount of the penalty if she’d say something nice for a change.

Her attorney tells Wired, “the record industry was offering a kind of a public statement as a possible supplement so she wouldn’t have to pay the full amount,” but says that no specific amount of relief was discussed.

“It was kind of a general idea, nothing concrete,” said her attorney. “I would assume it would be something along those lines: anti-piracy and culpability.”

But Thomas-Rasset says she’d rather go bankrupt than agree to speak on behalf of the RIAA.

“I’m not doing it,” she told Wired.

A rep for the RIAA says the group has made multiple offers to reduce Thomas-Rasset’s penalty:

We continue to try to resolve this case in a reasonable way. In the past, for example, we have reached out to Ms. Thomas to settle the case in exchange for a contribution to a local music charity. We have communicated to Ms. Thomas that we would consider a variety of non-monetary settlement options, which is up to her to offer. We think this is a gesture of a good will and we’re doing what we can to resolve this case in a manner that works for everyone.

RIAA Wants Infamous File-Sharer to Campaign Against Piracy [Wired]

KY Intense Arousal gel is relatively new to the market. It’s billed as a product that can “heighten sensitivity and satisfaction.” Unfortunately, when some of the product spilled in an Alabama post office on Tuesday morning, employees didn’t know what the substance was. All it heightened was a safety alert. The building was evacuated and a hazardous materials team came in to dispose of the mysterious liquid.

Initially, employees thought that the mystery substance contained the solvent methanol, which is poisonous and highly flammable. The package had more than a dozen containers of the mystery substance inside, but it wasn’t identified until the following day.

The post office told news outlets that they plan to contact the sender and explain how to better package liquids for mailing. They didn’t identify the sender or recipient, but said that the package was on its way to someone in the “entertainment industry.”

Officials: KY gel causes post office evacuation [WAFF]

I ordered and received my Bug-a-salt gun late last fall, pretty late in the fly season to really get to put it to serious use. Well, early spring in Western Washington and they are coming back. Over the years I became very proficient with rubber bands, hunting flies and yellow jackets – this takes it to a whole new level.

The Bug-a-salt doesn’t “cream” the flies, leaves them pretty well intact, but it is quite effective. Non-toxic, environmentally friendly, it is spring powered and doesn’t eat batteries. Just table salt.

The gun has sights, but due to the shot pattern and the height of the sights above the bore for me it is a “point and shoot” proposition. A sheet of aluminum foil taped to the wall works well to pattern the shot, like a patterning board for a shotgun. It lets you see the spread of the salt, and calculate your effective range. I am definitely getting better. It is possible to shoot flies out of the air. There is nothing else like it.

The invention and marketing of this product are a story unto itself. I ordered mine early, when they were setting up for manufacture and was able to follow the trials and tribulations of getting this to market. The exportation to some of the countries they had orders from were amazingly complicated.

This year I switched to Morton Kosher salt and find it works better on flies than the table salt. Last year’s tests on yellow jackets were exciting, but not effective. Maybe with the kosher salt…

-- Norm Bolser

[This is a Cool Tools Favorite from 2013]

Bug-a-Salt

Available from Amazon

In the quest for the ultimate Android device, [白い熊] on the XDA developers forum created an awe-inspiring monstrosity that gives his Galaxy Note II 288 Gigs of storage and enough battery to theoretically last three and a half months.

First, the storage: the phone can now store movies, videos, apps, and music on an incredibly capacious 256 Gig SD card. Yes, this card currently sells for about $500, but having that much storage space effectively turns the Note into a portable hard drive running Android.

The battery comes direct from an eBay listing that advertises 8500 mAh inside a huge Li-ion battery. It’s extremely doubtful this battery will live up to the stated rating, but even if the new battery has twice the capacity as the stock battery [白い熊] is looking at about 10 weeks of standby time.

Yes, it’s just parts bought online and thrown together, but you really have to admire the sheer ostentatiousness of this phone.

Filed under: Android Hacks

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I love how big and intimidating that one tit is. The always amazing Hitomi Tanaka.

Normally, images of beautiful things are going through camera lenses, but you can't deny that there's something uniquely beautiful about the lenses themselves. The contrast of the colors on black, the sharp-yet-simple linear designs. It should be no surprise they make super slick bracelets.

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Some songs just ooze jubilance, and back in 1999 Fatboy Slim put one of those suckers out. You know "Praise You," and I'm willing to bet you're a fan too. But have you listened to it recently enough. No. No, you haven't.

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From New Year's Eve 2012 to New Year's Day 2013, Facebook users uploaded 1.1 billion photos. Which is something absurd like two photos per active user. But don't think that people haven't always been people. Even before smartphones and digital cameras, consumers were out there taking a lot of stupid photos just for fun. And given how relatively resource intensive it was for people to own cameras, buy film, and develop photos it's pretty amazing to see how many prints came out of "the old days." Enter The Photo Man.

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Pretty much anyone who walks into a bar or diner in a group is scanning for a booth. It's just nicer to eat five plates of cheese fries in your own space. And the architects at Australian firm Techne clearly agree because they used concrete pipes to create seating spaces in the redesigned bar at Melbourne's Prahran Hotel. Finally some privacy.

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Peter Sunde, co-founder of The Pirate Bay, is planning to create an encrypted messaging app that's so secure that even its creators won't be able to read the messages that get sent.

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Amazon—more than Wikipedia, more than Google, more than porn (okay maybe not more than porn)—might be the reason why the Internet exists. It makes your life easier, it makes you go out less, it makes you spend more money, it makes you waste time, it makes you trust random people's reviews on the Internet. And it sometimes makes you laugh your head off when you see hilarious fake Amazon reviews.

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If your computer system gets infected by a virus, a lot of things can happen depending on how the malicious piece of code works. It may turn your PC into a zombie bot that is under full control of its master, steal data like documents or images, load additional programs, encrypt data to hold it for ransom, or modify various system features to decrease the chance of detection and disinfection.

Malware may disable the system's Task Manager for example, the Command Line, search, or the option to run programs from the start menu.

Quick Disaster Recovery has been designed to restore functionality that gets commonly targeted by malicious software. After you have downloaded and extracted the program to your system, you can launch it right away without installation. This makes it an excellent tool to put on a USB Flash drive or repair DVD.

The fixes section displays the items that the program can re-enable if they have been disabled. They are grayed out if they are working just fine.

• Task Manager
• Registry Editor
• Command Line
• Windows Search
• Start > Run
• Folder options
• Show hidden files
• Fix logon - logoff loop

To use it simply click on the active field and the program will reactivate the feature or fix the issue at hand so that you can use the system tools again on the PC.

It goes without saying that you should remove the virus as soon as possible. If possible, before you run the program but if you need a particular tool, as soon as possible after you ran it and have enabled the system program again on the PC.

The right side links to two replacement tools that you can use in the meantime, and an option to delete temporary Internet files. While I'm not sure why the latter is displayed here, the two other tools may come in really handy.

The Task Manager replacement displays a third party task manager on the screen that you can make use of to terminate running processes or open the folder on the local drive where the process is stored in. Select Display > Show Services to add the processes that are launched by Windows Services to the list.

The File > Run new task option provides you with the means to run a new program on your system which can be quite useful as well, especially if the run box is disabled.

The list of startup items displays all programs that are run on system start.  You cannot remove items directly here but open the corresponding folders or Registry keys to disable them there.

Verdict

Quick Disaster Recovery is a handy portable program for Windows that you can use to restore Windows functionality after a successful malware attack. You still need to remove the malware using a security program though as it does not offer any means to do so.

The post Quick Disaster Recovery restores Windows functionality after attacks appeared first on gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials.

Arizona Public Service Co. will file a request today with the Arizona Corporation Commission to add a surcharge to customers who generate their own electricity with solar panels. The power company's proposal has two possible formulas to use for the extra charge, which are estimated to add between $50 to more than $100 to a solar customer's monthly bill. The reason is to offset the costs of maintaining the power grid.

APS officials said solar customers are not paying enough for the services they get from the power grid, which enables them to get electricity at night when solar panels don’t generate power and balance their household energy needs during the day when their solar-panel output and home demand don’t match up.

The change would only affect new solar customers, not those that already have solar on their homes, and would significantly reduce the savings associated with generating power using rooftop systems.

On the one hand, maintaining the power grid is a necessary service. But then you look at the details of the power company's reasoning. The system in place now allows solar customers who generate more electricity than they need to send electricity to the power company, which pays for it in kind, by crediting customers on their electric bills. For each kilowatt hour a solar customer sends to the grid, they are discounted one kilowatt hour from their bill. Therefore, generating extra power during the daylight hours helps to pay for a household's use of power at night.

APS charges its customers between about 9 cents to 17 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity, with prices increasing the more electricity a customer uses. Solar customers tend to be more affluent, with larger homes that use more electricity, so the average price they pay for a kilowatt-hour is about 15.5 cents, APS officials said. That means that when they get a credit for a kilowatt-hour of electricity from solar, the credit is worth about 15.5 cents.

APS officials said it is unfair to pay those customers a 15.5-cent credit when the utility could contract to buy solar power for 8 to 9 cents per kilowatt-hour from large power plants.

So the more they charge a customer, the higher the reimbursement rate, and that's not fair? The idea behind charging more for higher-use customers is already solved for solar users, because they take less power from the grid. Isn't that what the graduated pricing is supposed to encourage? What do you think? Read more about the case at AZ Central. Link -via Simply Left Behind

(Image credit: Flickr user Dominic Alves)

POLL: Is it okay for a power company to charge household solar customers extra?

• Yes, we have to keep the power company running.
• Yes, maintenance is important, but $100 a month is too high.
• No, this is gouging and will discourage solar use.
• It's complicated. Just show me the poll answers.

Security at the Bay area's major military installation may have been breached multiple times by a ho

IKEA designed improved temporary housing for refugees. Like IKEA’s furniture, the houses are assembled on-site. They are more durable and comfortable than tents and even have a solar panel and insulation. More here and here.

• Hat Tip
• Link

Because Florida was hastily attached to America to be the butt of her jokes, this latest piece of ridiculousness should come as no surprise: Florida might have accidentally banned all computers and smart phones. How? It all stems from a poorly worded bill that banned Internet cafes and slot machines.

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Ah, the Galaxy S4 Active: it's like the regular Galaxy S4 but, you know, more rugged. It's actually not a truly rugged device, since it hasn't been built to meet military specifications, but it's certainly designed to stand up to slightly more abuse than its non-Active namesake. It is able to survive in up to a meter of water for 30 minutes and sensitive areas, like the micro-USB port on the bottom edge, are protected by rubber flaps. The beefed-up build adds some weight, about three-quarters of an ounce, and we actually find it quite welcome. Where many Samsung handsets can often feel cheap, plasticky and are lighter than they look, the S4 Active actually has a pleasant and natural heft to it. The weight makes the phone feel less fragile than the regular S4 and also delivers a better balance in the hand. We grabbed some hands-on time with it at Samsung's London event, so dive past the break for our impressions.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung

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While many board games use colorful little pegs as markers, Monopoly, the game with the unique power to unite and divide a family in the matter of an hour, has those odd tokens you’re no…

The post The Story Behind Each of the Most Popular Monopoly Pieces, Past and Present first appeared on Cool Material.