markov_chain asks: "For a while I've been making coffee using home-ground whole beans and a standard drip maker. I settled on this method for its simplicity and good taste, even after trying numerous other methods (such as the French press, gravity percolators, and pressure percolators), each coupled with either pre-ground or whole beans. So far, the fresh ground beans are the only factor that made a significant difference in taste. However, when I recently spotted a a site that vaguely extols freshness, I began to wonder how much the freshness of the beans themselves affects the quality. Normally I thought the whole beans would retain the quality far longer, due to less surface area exposed to air, but clearly there still must be a decline; worse yet, it is difficult to gauge that decline since the sellers usually do not advertise the age of the beans. I would now like to pose a few questions. What is your preferred coffee-making method, and how does it compare to other methods you've tried? What are your favorite beans?"

bardkerbie asks: "I work as a webmaster and sysadmin for a small computer services shop (4 employees including the owner). We're to a point in the growth of our business where we need a system for tracking work orders as they come in and out of the shop, specifically inventory used and time spent. We use Quickbooks Pro 2006 for our accounting and payroll software. I've played around with a number of issue-tracking and CRM suites, including Bugzilla, Eventum, SugarCRM and vTiger, but all seem like they lack one critical piece to handle the workload we have. What do you use for tracking the work you do? Is it something you wrote yourself? Is there an open-source project that works well, or is there a Quickbooks plug-in we can purchase?"

Zanguinar asks: "I've been a Gallery user for years now. I have a ton of photos, organized by albums, mainly just for use by my family and close friends. However, some of my friends have begun using Flickr. I can't say I blame them, since it's got a great design, and I love the tagging concept. However, I'm not eager to store my photos on somebody else's server, and don't want to pay for the privilege, especially since I already run my own web server. The problem is, I can't find any Flickr-like software to run on my home LAMP setup. All I want is to be able to tag my photos like Flickr and be able to display them by tag, tag intersection, date, and other such fields. Is there an OSS that is doing this?"

TokyoCrusaders92 asks: "Like a lot of other organizations (800 staff, 5000 students) we have a mix of Windows, Novell & Linux (primarily Linux) for our IT infrastructure. We now have a multitude of config files, firewall rule bases, shell scripts, and so forth which are managed by multiple people and groups. Recently, we started using RCS for version control of the firewall rule-base, but this doesn't seem like it would scale up to larger groups of users. While thinking about this, it would seem that the critical features would include: version control; logging; multiple users; secure authentication; and integrity checking. What are other people using to manage their config files?"

kwandar asks: "Our company is a small/medium sized software developer that markets its products around the world. The order/sales system is an outdated DOS-based system, with limited capabilities. We would like to replace this with one that provides new features like: CRM; customer support services; bug reporting; bug tracking; order entry; accounting reporting; and hooks into some form of licensing software. Ideally it would be web based so that all ordering can be done over one system, whether by a customer, our foreign distributors, or ourselves. Have any of my fellow readers been through this and hunted down software, that worked in a software sales environment. Can anyone recommend an all-in-one solution, or several solutions (open source preferred) which can be integrated with minimal effort?"

New Media Blogger asks: "A co-worker of mine recently got burned hard because they used the same password for all of their online accounts. This experience led me to compile a list of easy-to-use password management memory tools (all free, of course), which make it infinitely easier for me to keep track of my dozens of passwords. I am sure many of the Slashdot crowd have memory tools of their own — what are you favourite password memorization tools?"

Tokimasa asks: "I recently thought of an idea for a software project that I want to undertake. I expect it to be mostly a learning experience, but I'm not sure where to begin. I'm familiar with software engineering practices and computer science topics, but I have never started a project on my own. What are the appropriate first steps to starting a new open-source project?"

tgbrittai asks: "According to Paul Boutin they are merely an obstacle to be manipulated or outmaneuvered. According to Steve Wozniak they are pimps. I've known my share of good and bad sysadmins, programmers and every other professional role out there, and I have to wonder: are sysadmins really THAT bad?" Most times sys-admins are overworked and underpaid and have to deal with users who take advantage of their local IT person, tasking them to fix systems that they callously break. Others are truly worth the name "Bastard Operators from Hell". How would you rate your sys-admin and what things did you have to do to make things run smoothly (or not)?

MythMoth wonders: "We've heard all about the pain and discomfort of working with Windows' User Account Control (UAC) switched on, but now Ian Griffiths is explaining that the developers are the problem — they brought it on themselves. In earlier articles we have heard that Microsoft think that everyone should do it like this — Ian does acknowledge that things are better in the Unix world, but is he right? Is the onus now on the developers to help fix a problem that they did not cause?" Rather than ask the user for permission on every operation, what other ways could Microsoft have improved Vista's security?

FredDC asks: "The Daily WTF has a story about a Big Red Button disaster. What Big Red Button disasters have you experienced? Which ones have you caused? Are there any that you've heard about, or do you know of any that can happen any day now?"

Pikoro asks: "I have been working in the IT field for the past 20 years or so, and after getting hired by the largest financial company in the world, I thought I might have finally found a place to retire from. However, after working here for almost a year, I find myself, not exactly burnt out, but longing for a complete career field change. It's not that doing IT related tasks aren't fun anymore, but they have become more 'work' than 'play' over the last few years. Since all of my experience has been IT related, I'm not sure where I could go from here. What would you consider doing for a living, after being in a single field for so long?"

Adroit Ape asks: "The FCC is scheduled to begin auctioning the radio spectrum salvaged from analog television by February 28, 2008. Public interest groups are calling for auction rules that give new entrants a fair shot at the spectrum, which includes 60Mhz in the 700Mhz band. Are we likely to see groundbreaking innovation in wireless broadband? Who do you foresee to be the major players in the auction and subsequent technologies?"

moogoogaipan writes "After a few days thinking about the quickest way to bring my website back to the internet users, I am still stuck at DNS. From experience, even if I set the TTL for my DNS zone file as low as 5 minutes, there are still DNS servers out there won't update until a few days later (Yeah. I'm looking at you, AOL). Here is my situation. Say that I have my web servers and database servers at a remote backup location, ready to serve. If we get hit by an earthquake at our main location, what can I do in a few hours to get everyone to go to our backup location?"

allikat_uk asks: "I'm a DJ for a net radio station (amongst other hobbies). I want to migrate from an XP platform running (SAM Broadcaster) to a Linux based solution. I don't need to host the server, as the station does that, I just need a nice GUI solution to stream the MP3 files to the server. I need to run 2 streams, 64k stereo, and 22k mono in MP3 to a shoutcast clone server. My current software has a nice MySQL database to make quickly finding the tracks I want easy, dual playback 'decks' and easy voiceovers. Is there a Linux equivalent available under GPL?"

olddoc asks: "I am having a growing problem with junk faxes. Unlike email, it costs me money when I get a fax so junk faxes really tick me off. A while ago, I gave my number to a removal number and now I am getting more junk faxes than ever." What options are there for dealing with this? If you've also had this problem, what did you do and how effective was it in stopping unwanted faxes?