AccUser asks: "There are many articles discussing methods of UI prototyping. Having been involved in the design and implementation of a number of commercial applications (both desktop and embedded), I know the value of producing early prototypes of the UI. In the past I have used visual programming tools, such as Visual Basic, but there is always that request: 'Can't you just complete the prototype and release it?' One project I was involved with, the UI prototype employed hand drawn graphics (including hand written text labels, etc) in order to be explicit about the fact that it was a prototype. What I would like to know is what tools and techniques do you use for UI prototyping, and how do you manage your client's expectations?"

icepick72 asks: "I have recently purchased a collection of music (on CDs) for a music group that had their final tour last month. Without getting into copyright issues (I'm writing from Canada -- not that it necessarily makes a difference) I would like to know if any CD-R media on the market supports longevity. In the past Slashdot has discussed the degradation of CD/DVD media. How do I go about knowing what the good media is nowadays, and how to get a decent price on it? One company uses this foil or that foil while another uses polywatchmacallit. Looking for good suggestions, and an archived discussion on Slashdot for future reference."

A Nigerian asks: "As honest Nigerians, it is painful to us that everyone assumes that we are all scammers. We can't use e-payment services like Paypal, 2Checkout.com or make payments online without having the transactions flagged as scams, denied, or our account and funds arbitrarily locked for months or years. We want to make the scams from our country stop so we can be trusted again. We don't want to be left out of the Internet revolution taking place all over the world. What can we as ordinary and honest Nigerian citizens do to fight Nigerian E-mail Scams?"

drizzle writes "There's an interesting story on the Apache Marketing blog about whether or not Apache projects come with too much overhead, especially compared with other services or a roll-your-own approach. The article states, 'It's true that compared with SourceForge, Apache has a more rigorous management structure. The ASF has formalized processes and procedures that we believe represent best practices governance. All new projects must pass through an incubation period to ensure that all of the project's members have internalized these processes. However, each project's leadership has a tremendous amount of discretion in managing within this framework.' There is also a follow up article written by one of the httpd developers about 'What Apache brings to the table.' The article cites community, experience, legal framework, diversity, brand strength, and networking as reasons why developers and companies should consider bringing their projects over to Apache."

bturnip writes "I just cancelled my account with the game A Tale in the Desert. I really liked the game- it had a fresh interesting approach, a Linux client, a non-linear style of game play, and was just fun to play. The graphics were pretty good, the sheer amount of stuff to see and do was impressive, and the online community was extremely helpful and friendly. My problem? I didn't play often enough to justify paying $13.95 each and every month. Is isn't that the price is outrageous, I'm not having any problems paying the bills, I just didn't play enough to make it worth my while. Where is the metered pay model for the casual gamer? If a certain game has a monthly fee of $15, and the average player plays 40 hours a month, a metered model might offer 40 metered hours for $25. Hours could be set to expire after a set time, say 4-6 months. Some months I might pay more than a monthly subscriber, some months less. This is a win/win situation. I can have more fun playing my character at my own pace without feeling I need to play more often to justify the montly cost. The game gets money that it would not get otherwise. If I end up playing often, maybe I end up as a monthly subscriber. The downside I can see for game makers is the overhead of running two billing models, extra work in tracking hours spent, etc. What are the other downsides? Is the potential market for this type of billing not worth the effort?" Along these lines, I think that Planetside would have been a huge success if it had launched with a different subscription model.

smanuel asks: "I'm in the process of helping my non-geek friend get his Linux box set up with a PCI wireless card. 2006 is fast approaching and Linux *still* has spotty support for 802.11a/b/g PCI and PCMCIA cards. Ask the The Oracle about wireless for Linux and the results aren't much better. There are a ton of cards to choose from but support is either spotty or requires such contortions that I'm wary of spending the time. What PCI/PCMCIA cards do fellow Slashdot readers recommend? I'm looking for both PCI and PCMCIA cards; preferably ones with native support in Linux (I'm trying to avoid ndis{c,w}rapper if I can). Is the fact that card manufacturers change chipsets more often than they underpants make this a never ending problem?"

An anonymous reader asks: "Recently, I've been seeing more and more news stories about how 'geek' has gone mainstream. There have been a slew of articles with titles like Geek Pride and Geek Chic, which discuss how movies like 'The 40-Year Old Virgin' and 'Napoleon Dynamite', as well as television shows like 'Beauty and the Geek' have made it cool to be a geek. Two pinup calendars of geeks have been released this year, taking advantage of the new mainstream interest in all things geeky. These include the Geek Gorgeous Calendar, which features women who work in the hi-tech industry, and the Girls of Geekdom Calendar, which includes geeks like 'Art Geek' and 'Movie Geek'. So if being a geek has really become cool, why has interest in CS as a major dropped among incoming freshmen and women are still a minority in computer and engineering fields? Is it cooler to pretend to be a geek (wear 'Save Pedro' shirts, etc.) than to really be one?"

Shirlockc asks: "A recent Slashdot thread on how NBC is planning to offer on demand movies, and this NPR story on The Changing Face of Television has me asking: How will content (be it TV, movies, old, new) be distributed? I also include books -- content is content, the medium for the content changes but good content will always sell. Has anyone thought to try a pay-on-demand for content ie., subsidize the production costs by getting the audience/fans to pay for new episodes, thus skipping the broadcast networks? I know there was a campaign to raise money, in this way, to save Star Trek Enterprise, and there was an attempt to bittorrent a Star Trek Spoof recently on a pay-for-download basis. For shows with a decent cult following (eg., Firefly, Arrested Development, etc.) isn't it possible to fund the production without network participation (assuming all license agreements can be cleared?"

An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet reported earlier this week that Microsoft was thinking of offering an Ad-Supported version of Windows. A blog post by John Carroll offers some reasons why Ad-Supported Windows makes sense. From the article: '4. More revenue through targeted marketing: The holy grail of marketing is to target an audience with the sort of ads that most appeal to them. Sending a bunch of male programmers advertisements for breast enlargement isn't terribly useful. Sending a bunch of male programmers advertisements for a four hour extended version of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan is useful.' Is there any situation where you can see yourself open to the possibility of using an Ad-Supported operating system?"

robtheauditor asks: "I would love to have my music in all the various rooms of our house. I can't afford the thousands for a turnkey system. What are the possibilities for a poor man's whole house audio system? For example, would it be possible to take my PC external audio connector and feed it to a bunch of powered speakers in different rooms? Could I just bring a bunch of 3.5mm plugs wired together in parallel, or would that not work? I was thinking that even if the signal is weak because it is split to 6 different speaker pairs, because the speakers are powered it wouldn't matter. Or will I risk burning out my sound card?"

audioAuthor asks: "Let's say I have a recorded audio-book (no music, just speech), which I want to share with the world. What format should I use to distribute it? Main requirements would be: 'Everyone is allowed to redistribute it without any restrictions" and "Usable as widely as possible'. I have been thinking of MP3, Ogg Vorbis and Speex. MP3 would be really nice, as it's usable almost everywhere, even without a computer, but it has licensing problems which I don't quite understand. Speex is free and designed for speech, but it's not widely supported at the moment. I think that Ogg Vorbis is currently better supported than Speex, and also free, but not designed for speech and would take more space to achieve same quality. So what do you say? Which one of these should I choose, or are there other formats to consider?"

robpoe asks: "I've been working on a rollout plan for OpenOffice.org 2.0 for a medium sized network. This network runs a number of different MS Office versions, and we absolutely must retain the Microsoft Office 97/2000/2002 file formats (for interoperability with the public and other entities). Getting our versions of Office to 2003 is $65k+, so we're looking closely at OOo. The problem is, since OOo keeps track of changes per user, and we have users that move around (and no, Roaming Profiles are not an option for us), and you cannot expect a user to change those preferences on every computer they log in to. Let's hear some great deployment plans for keeping the default file type, and even general rollout plans. How are you doing it?"

Agent_9191 asks: "Recently I've been promoted to what essentially amounts to a project lead role for every project we do, in house. Since my company has run for the past 35+ years with no form of central IT department, there has been no standards put into place for developers to abide by. One of my tasks is to set up standards in how projects will be implemented and produced. Right now I'm more concerned about trying to set up coding standards, so that any developer can jump into any part of a project and be able to figure out what's going on, without wasting a couple hours just to figure out the code. I've come across some documents in this area from a few sources (of course can't remember them off the top of my head). What practices/standards do you use in your workplace?"

shootTheMessenger asks: "My company is porting our C++ Windows app to C in an embedded device and the question of whether to use dynamic memory allocation continues to come up. So far I have resisted malloc/free use but it gets tedious having the same argument with the next set of managers to take an interest in the project. Is there a definitive answer on the subject, especially one to counter the 'we have plenty of RAM - 16MB - so why not use dynamic allocation' argument? A quick google search finds that some sites frown on allocations within embedded applications, while others say it is OK in some contexts and yet others hack around it with pseudo-static allocations. How do you feel about this particular subject?"

pbaumgar asks: "Like many here on Slashdot, I'm a Systems Administrator. I have become responsible for maintaining about 300 laptops that I need to rebuild on a regular basis. I am looking for a solution to image them. I've been looking at Symantec's Ghost Solution Suite and am not too gung-ho on spending all that money for licensing. Can anyone recommend an better solution that would be cheaper?"

ThosLives asks: "It seems to be the case that most open source projects fall into the software development, business, and desktop realms. I have done a bit of unfruitful searching for good FOSS engineering tools. By this I mean: 3D CAD/CAM, FEA, fluids, and math simulation tools. I have been able to find various 'academic quality' FEA, fluids, and math sim tools; those are, however, not sufficient for even hobby-level production work because they: have a lacking interface; don't have a standard file formats; and are not standalone products (i.e., they require Matlab or some other expensive package). If you were going to set up an engineering shop to design and produce mechanical devices, what FOSS software tools, if any, are available and recommended? Commercial options are out of the question for the hobbyist, when even basic 3D CAD functionality typically costs more than $100 (and typically run over $500), and 'consumer-level' analysis packages are practically nonexistent. If there are no free options, what could be done with a budget of $500 or $1000? As an aside, are there any thoughts on why the engineering applications appear to be so overlooked by the open source community?"

An anonymous reader asks: "What would be the best high availability solution for databases? I don't have enough money to afford Oracle RAC or any architecture that require an expensive SAN. What about open source solutions? MySQL cluster seems to be more master/slave and you can lose data when the master dies. What about this Sequoia project that seems good for PostgreSQL and other databases? Has anyone tried it? What HA solution do you use for your database?"

Techmaniac asks: "As a newly minted employee at [insert org name] I have been tasked with creating an RFP to secure a vendor for helpdesk/sysadmin services. Currently, we have a single individual that does all the relevant tasks for a small organization of less than 100 people. My boss has explained that the needs are for onsite helpdesk, backend support, systems admin but that she doesn't know what or how much the current person does on any given day. Having done (using the term loosely) some of this work for a smaller org, it is possible for me to create an RFP for the company. I have been here such a short time that I wouldn't want to miss any of the important tasks, nor would it set my tenure off to a rousing start. Has anyone else been in this situation? Do you have any insight into the mandatory RFP inclusions for a vendor provided sysadmin, helpdesk work? Is it within this document to dictate how many people should be onsite for the task and what can be accomplished remotely?"

trd79 asks: "I am responsible for setting up a system to monitor various parameters on a factory production line (mainly chemical flow rates and temperatures). I am currently using a datalogger from dataTaker and using their software (on a WinXP box) to graph the data in real time and download the data from the logger at the end of a shift. I would like to make the system more robust and reduce the need for user intervention. Does anyone know of open source data acquisition systems which are able to interface to popular datalogger brands? The ability to produce real time plots of the data during logging would be an advantage. Buying a new logger would not be a problem."

arohann asks: "I'm a research assistant in a well-known university in the US. As part of the research work my group is doing, we need access to the logs from a production system of an n-tier web-application. I've been looking around for a while with no result. Most places reply with a flat 'No!'. I was wondering if there anyone who could help/advise with this. Please read about our requirement below and do let me know if you can help?"