KrispyDroid writes "The world's second Google Android phone has been unveiled — by an Australian-based electronics company called Kogan. It will ship worldwide on Jan 29. It looks like a surprisingly nice form factor, not unlike a Blackberry Bold. The phones will be sold without a contract at low prices — $A299 ($US192)."

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the Hartford Courant: "Almost 18 months after a pornography conviction that could have sent her to jail for 40 years was thrown out, former Norwich substitute teacher Julie Amero plead guilty to a single charge of disorderly conduct Friday afternoon. The plea deal before Superior Court Judge Robert E. Young in Norwich ends a long-running drama that attracted attention from around the world. ... She had originally been charged with 10 counts of risk of injury to a minor and later convicted on four of them. ... In June of 2007, Judge Hillary B. Strackbein tossed out Amero's conviction on charges that she intentionally caused a stream of 'pop-up' pornography on the computer in her classroom and allowed students to view it. Confronted with evidence compiled by forensic computer experts, Strackbein ordered a new trial, saying the conviction was based on 'erroneous' and 'false information.'"

An anonymous reader writes "I'm a Project Manager (hold the remarks) who recently decided that I want/need to get my dev skills more up-to-date, as more projects are looking for their PM's to be hands-on with the development. Looking around my house, I have quite the collection of older (read: real old — it's been a while) PCs — it's pretty much a PC graveyard. Nothing that would really help me set up a nice dev infrastructure for developing web/database apps. So, my question is as follows: Should I buy a number of cheaper PC's, or should I buy one monster machine and leverage (pick your favorite) virtual machine technology?"

A test on civic knowledge given to elected officials proved that they are slightly less knowledgeable than the uninformed people who voted them into office. Elected officials scored a 44 percent while ordinary citizens managed an amazing 49 percent on the 33 questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. "It is disturbing enough that the general public failed ISI's civic literacy test, but when you consider the even more dismal scores of elected officials, you have to be concerned," said Josiah Bunting, chairman of the National Civic Literacy Board at ISI. The three branches of government aren't the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria?

armorer writes "I'm a programmer engaged to an inner-city public school teacher. I've been thinking for a long time now about what I can do to help close the technology gap, and I finally did something (very small) about it. I convinced my company to give me a few old computers they were replacing, refurbished them, installed Edubuntu on them, and donated them to her classroom. I also took some vacation time to go in, install everything, and give a lesson on computers to the kids. It was a great experience, but now I know first-hand how little technology these schools have. I only helped one classroom. The school needs more. (Really the whole district needs more!) And while I want to help them, I don't really know how. With Thanksgiving a week away and more holidays approaching, I suspect I'm not the only one thinking about this sort of thing. I know it's a hard problem, so I'm not looking for any silver bullets. What do Slashdot readers do? What should I be doing so that I'm more effective? How do you find resources and time to give back?"

djupedal notes a story up at the BBC about the Associated Press's suspension of the use of Department of Defense photos after a photo of General Ann Dunwoody was found to have been altered (before and after comparison). "The Pentagon has become embroiled in a row after the US Army released a photo of a general to the media which was found to have been digitally altered. Ann Dunwoody was shown in front of the US flag but it later emerged that this background had been added. The Associated Press news agency subsequently suspended the use of US Department of Defense photos. 'For us, there's a zero-tolerance policy of adding or subtracting actual content from an image,' said Santiago Lyon, AP's director of photography."

Garabito writes "A spider that had been sent to the International Space Station for a school science program was lost. Two arachnids were sent in order to know if spiders can survive and make webs in space, but now only one spider can be seen in the container. NASA isn't sure where the other spider could have gone. I, for one, welcome our new arachnid overlords."