reidhellyer writes "From California Litigation Attorney Blog: 'While many victims of the so-called "Nigerian e-mail scam" would be too embarrassed to trumpet that fact, others end up infamous for their victimhood like the appellant in a published opinion of the California Court of Appeal in Riverside. In March 2009, Charles Peters received an email from someone purporting to be a citizen of Malaysia. The e-mail informed Peters that certain third parties in the United States and Canada owed the Malaysian money, but that “they can not transfer the funds to any bank account outside America continent due to their new company policy [sic].” He asked Peters to “assist me in receiving the funds and forward to me.” He offered to pay Peters 12 percent of the money. Peters agreed after apparently negotiating an increase of his fee to 15 percent.'"

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destinyland writes "The US Army is seriously considering the idea of issuing a smartphone to every soldier, and they're already modernizing one Texas brigade 'through a range of electronic devices that will include not just smartphones but tablet devices, e-reader and mini-projectors.' The company that developed Patriot missiles has already created several dedicated military apps for both iPhone and Android phones, including one that allows soldiers to track colleague's locations on the battlefield. Interestingly, the army is likely to use an off-the-shelf model, heightening the war between Apple and Android phones. Apple's non-replaceable batteries may become an issue in the field, since 'plugging the phone in to recharge isn't always a viable option in the middle of combat.'"

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An anonymous reader writes "I'm looking to build a family tree for a holiday gift. Do the Slashdotters of the world have any recommendations on open source genealogy software? I did try a 14-day free trial of Ancestry.com. What a scam! I submitted the personal information for my parents, grandparents, and me. Then, I received a pop-up telling me that if I would like to get information on my family, I would have to upgrade my subscription for $29.95 U.S. So, I took the chance. Turns out that the only information they had was my previous addresses for the past 20 years." The venerable GRAMPS is still actively developed, and its site lists several other possibilities, too. Any favorites, or anti-favorites, out there?

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An anonymous reader writes "The US Postal Service may face insolvency by 2011 (it lost $8.5 billion last year). An op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Times proposes an interesting business idea for the Postal Service: use postal trucks as a giant fleet of mobile sensor platforms. [Registration-required link; this no-reg summary encapsulates the idea, as does this paper by the same author.] (Think Google Streetview on steroids.) The trucks could be outfitted with a variety of sensors (security, environmental, RF ...) and paid for by businesses. The article's author addresses some of the obvious privacy concerns that arise."

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Pickens writes "Jacques Steinberg writes in the NY Times that the sluggish economy and rising costs of college have only intensified questions about whether expensive, prestigious colleges make any difference. Researchers say that alumni of the most selective colleges earn, on average, 40 percent more a year than those who graduated from the least selective public universities, as calculated 10 years after they graduated from and found that 'attendance at an elite private college significantly increases the probability of attending graduate school, and more specifically graduate school at a major research university.' But other researchers say the extent to which one takes advantage of the educational offerings of an institution may be more important, in the long run, than how prominently and proudly that institution's name is being displayed on the back windows of cars in the nation's wealthiest enclaves."

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An anonymous reader writes "Cablegate: The Game is a game where players can read, tag and summarize the recently released US Embassy Cables. Points are awarded for finding the most tags in a cable." I wish this game were extended to more news sources generally — automated scans are nice, but can't (yet) make all the connections humans can.

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nateman1352 writes with a bit from TechSpot: "Intel has been trying to cut itself a slice of the mobile market for years, and it seems the company is finally making some headway. During a conference yesterday, Intel CEO Paul Otellini revealed that the company's Atom platform will ship in over 35 tablets starting early next year. The chipmaker has partnered with more than a dozen manufacturers who will launch slates running Windows [or] Android as well as Intel's own MeeGo operating system." The article lists Toshiba, Dell, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Asus, AT&T, Cisco, and Acer as developing Atom-based tablets.

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Greg writes with this excerpt from Ars Techica: "Following a four-month beta program, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) 2.0 has been released. The new version significantly revamps the heuristic scanning engine, adds Windows Firewall integration as well as network traffic inspection. The update unquestionably makes MSE, which has already become very popular due to its quiet but effective ways, even more of a must-have for Windows users. MSE has always been very good at finding and removing malware, but it has relied mainly on antimalware definitions. The improved heuristic engine makes it even better at detecting threats; at the same time, we expect the number of false positives to slightly increase as well. The new Windows Firewall integration is a minor improvement: it lets you tweak Microsoft's firewall from inside MSE."

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An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at McGill University in Montreal have uncovered strong new evidence that that wildly-accepted mitochondrial free radical theory of aging (MFRTA) is wrong. MFRTA suggests that free radicals cause oxidative damage, which in turn leads to the aging process. This new evidence shows that high levels of Reactive Oxidative species are rather a biological signal used to combat aging then the process itself. This goes against claims of major health benefits from consuming foods and particularly supplements that contain antioxidants."

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airfoobar writes "Yet another country wants to 'protect the children' by blocking all internet porn — not just child porn, all porn. The British gov will talk with ISPs next month to ask them to make porn blocking mandatory (and they appear more than happy to comply). As an effect, adults who want to access pornography through their internet connections will have to 'opt in.' Their rationale is that if ISPs have managed to block all child porn, they'll also be able to block all other porn as well."

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An anonymous reader writes "Great news for Alien franchise purists, as conceptual artist H.R. Giger has been confirmed as a contributor to the prequel that Ridley Scott is set to begin shooting in February. The originator of the 'xenomorph' design, Giger was left out of James Cameron's Aliens (1986), since Cameron only needed a new 'Alien queen' design, and had come up with that himself. This article features the Swiss TV broadcast where Giger's wife broke the news, and a full gallery of Giger's conceptual work for Alien."

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An anonymous reader writes "The San Francisco-based founder of PayPal and co-founder of Facebook is offering two-year fellowships of up to $100,000 (£63,800) to 20 entrepreneurs or teams of entrepreneurs aged under 20 in a worldwide competition that closes this week. With the money, the recipients are expected to drop out of university — Thiel calls it 'stopping out' — and work full time on their ideas. 'Some of the world's most transformational technologies were created by people who stopped out of school because they had ideas that couldn't wait until graduation,' Thiel says. 'This fellowship will encourage the most brilliant and promising young people not to wait on their ideas either.' Thiel says the huge cost of higher education, and the resulting burden of debt, makes students less willing to take risks. 'And we think you're going to have to take a lot of risks to build the next generation of companies.'"

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An anonymous reader writes "This guy put together what most law-abiding Slashdotters have always wanted for Christmas: a stylish, wall-mounted homeland security threat level display. A perfect accent for the living room."

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Zack writes "Dropbox has finally released version 1.0. The new version comes with hundreds of bug fixes, including invalid file names on Windows, weird Unicode normalizations, Word and Excel file locking, abnormal symlinks hierarchies, and case sensitive file systems on Mac. It also adds TrueCrypt support, a Rainbow Shell that offers support for extended attributes, selective sync, a new installation wizard, and reduces resource usage."

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An anonymous reader writes "A pipefitter knows how to make an exact cut on a metal rod. But it's far harder to imagine getting a precise cut on a carbon nanotube, with a diameter 1/50,000th the thickness of a human hair. In a paper published this month in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A, researchers at Brown University and in Korea document for the first time how single-walled carbon nanotubes are cut, a finding that could lead to producing more precise, higher-quality nanotubes. Such manufacturing improvements likely would make the nanotubes more attractive for use in automotive, biomedicine, electronics, energy, optics and many other fields."

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