Platypii writes "After seeing many ads on TV and around the Internet for the "smart" credit cards (both major companies now have them I believe), I became curious about them. The Visa website was rather vague about it, and only proclaimed dreams of merging all your cards -- of whatever type -- into one. Anyone know the technical details of these cards? The privacy aspects?"

RedLeg wrote with this poser: "So, looking at the changelog for the 2.4.9 kernel release, I see a few '- Alan Cox: driver merges' entries. Intelligent consumers of (or those of us who modify them for our own uses) RedHat Kernel src.RPMs look at the patches in the RH kernel builds. Alan's (and other persistent RH) patches don't seem to be integrated into Linus' 'mainstream' kernel trees on any kind of a predictable basis, and this frequently causes projects like freeswan to have difficulty merging their patches (not intended for kernel inclusion) with kernels that appear 'in the wild' like the kernel RPMs from RedHat. Often, kernel patches for obviously older kernel versions continue to be applied (in the RPMs) to newer kernel versions. Alan is a RedHat-er, so he obviously has an inside track to RedHat kernel builds, but he's also Linus' Right-Hand man, but his patches are not (apparently) consistently making it into the 'mainstream' kernel. What am I missing?" Who better to answer this question than Alan Cox? Alan was kind enough to write an explanation of the (still complicated) process of merging -- and it's not as simple as who works for what distro maker ;)

Trapped In Windows Hell asks: "I was just at the local game store looking for a new game, and I noticed the absolute lack of ANYTHING other than DirectX games. Where has OpenGL gone, and what does this mean for games on GNU/Linux? If DirectX is so hard to program in, so clunky to use, and limits the game to being sold on only one OS, WHY do so many programmers use it? It seems logical (to me, at least) that programming as portably as possible, as simply as possible, and using standards where possible, leaves a lot more sales options open for the future... and DirectX seems to close all options *but one*." OpenGL use in Windows gaming has decreased dramatically in favor of the use of DirectX which is improving with each release. Will OpenGL continue to mature on the Windows platform (which arguably is the platform that drives most of the mainstream demand for graphics) or will it continue to stagnate as game and driver developers concentrate on the offerings from Microsoft?

hv writes "I reside in a 10' x 10' space better than 12 hours a day... as do a lot of you. How do you make the most of the space? I'm looking for creative ways to add storage and unclutter the stacks of lab notebooks, USB peripherals and the O'Reilly Zoo that also inhabits my space."

The Ape With No Name writes: "I work as a network technician at a major Southern university and we are gearing up for what is lovingly called "Dorm Storm," aka the weekend the students return to their dorm rooms, ethernet connections and BearShare. We'll move in approx. 3500 students, install and configure 1500 or so network cards and troubleshoot hundreds of circuit, switch and routing problems over the course of the next two weeks (with less than 50 people or so). I was wondering if anybody out in the academic computing community had some advice, stories to relate, yarns to spin for the rest of Slashdot with regard to other universities and their networking for students. You might think you have had a hell of a time setting up machines for users, but this becomes a Sisyphean task when you face a wireless, IP only, Novell setup for a grumpy architecture student on a budget Win2K laptop - one after another after another!"

banuaba writes: "I am a Windows user. I've tried a couple of distros of Linux, and a BSD or two, but they aren't what I need in an OS. Sometimes in my job and my personal 'life' I need something with a little more power than Windows can give me, and when that time comes, I use Cygwin and have been wholly satisfied and enamored with the product they put out. My question for all you Slashdotters out there is this: I would like to 'reward' the Cygwin people for giving me a great product that fits my needs, but aside from an 'attaboy' email, I don't see how I could compensate them, preferrably financially. I don't have any coding skills of significance, and am not inclined to learn, I'd just like a way to let them know that I like what they've done. In the non-free (as in beer) software world, I would buy their next release. Is there any way to financially help them along? Should I just mail them a check? Would that be insulting to OSS developers, as a general rule? How or would you slashdotters who work on GPL'd code like to be compensated for your time and effort?"

alen writes "I've been working with NT for a year now, and I'm getting really tired of it. So I finally decided to learn Linux, after a year of putting it off. I've got an old P2 266 that I'm going to use. Now the next question is what distro do I get? What's a good starter version? I'm just looking to get the feel of it and to play around a little. " This question gets asked periodically - it's always good to hear have a lively discussion about it - I love my Debian but have heard that Mandrake is a good starter distro.