An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Recently their company has decided to move the IT staff out of their offices to make room for the Service Department. The move has placed the IT staff in cubicles that all face inward and lack, obviously, the ability to lock their doors at night. This is, to them, an obvious breach in security and privacy for what may be sensitive network information. Have any other Slashdot readers dealt with this sort of problem before? If so, what specific information was best suited to rectify these security concerns?

blueZ3 asks: "I am thinking about purchasing a CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) milling machine to build small parts to support my hobbies. I'm looking at a machine from Tormach or CNC Masters. These are small, hobby-class CNC mills. Even though I've picked low-cost machines that look interesting, they all require software that adds significantly to the cost of the machine. I've worked with proprietary CAD software before (TurboCAD, AutoCAD) so drawing parts isn't a big deal. But I'd like to avoid spending huge amounts of money on software, when I'm already breaking the bank for the mill. Does anyone out there have experience using Open Source software for CAD that has a relatively 'normal' GUI/interface? Is there a 'mature' CAM conversion software for same? Does anyone want to comment on the intersection of Open Source and CNC?"

Justin Rainbow asks: "As a computer science student, avid internet user and full-time programmer I find it very appealing to finish my CS degree online. Finishing at least a year early and studying whenever I want are just a couple of the draws to the online campus. However, are these internet degrees even worth the paper their printed on? Is an online degree just a waste of money? Can an online degree give you just as many opportunities as a traditional university? Has anyone in the Slashdot community graduated from one of these online schools? Did it help or hurt your career? What about graduate school admissions? Does an online degree hurt your chances to get into a great graduate school?"

gmezero asks: "Over the last year I have been listening to the trumpet of MPEG-4 being sounded, and I am eager to take up the charge and implement it within my company for our corporate communications. In the past we have used MPEG-1 because to it's commonality. However, due primarily to size limitations (among many other issues that have evolved over the last year), I am getting pressure to move us to WMV for it's perceived 'compatibility' as all of our staff have Media Player on their systems. Unfortunately, nobody seems to realize the fact that WMVs may be Media Player version dependent as well and lock us into future upgrade issues. I can not demand for our GIS group to roll out a stand alone player (eg: DIVX), and I am getting down to a deadline of next week to finalize this platform selection. My pitch to sell MPEG-4 within my company boils down to one major issue, and that brings me to my question. How do I create a MPEG-4 file that will be player independent, short of the player pulling down a new codec for their existing installed media player (QT, WMP, Real)?"

sane? writes "Following on from the music industry attempting to push up the cost of iTunes music downloads comes word that Sony is looking take robust control of the pricing for legal movie downloads - to the tune of $8 a movie. What is the maximum acceptable price that slashdot readers would give to different types of downloadable product, taking into account their perception of its true value to them? How can sensible pricing and workable business models be reconciled?"

theodp asks: "It was the best of languages, it was the worst of languages. SQL's handy, but it can also drive you nuts. For example, if you want all 100 columns from a table, 'SELECT *' works quite nicely. However, if you want all but 1 of the 100 columns, be prepared to spell out 99 column names. Wouldn't it not make sense to provide a Google-like shorthand notation like 'SELECT * -ColumnName' (or DROP=syntax like SAS)? So how would you improve SQL?"

uctpjac asks: "A friend of mine, a deputy editor of a 1/2 million plus circulation serious news magazine, is responsible for determining what they should be doing online. They already do the usual - selected free articles, subscriber only articles, archive search, some online-only material that is regularly updated. She asked me to think about what more they should do. My first simple suggestion would be to improve their RSS feeds (longer, better article summaries): I imagine the newsreader is the application through which most of us will be reading bitty things like weblogs and news stories, and competing for attention there needs a nice juicy inducement to click-through. I actually think that a traditional news magazine like this should also be using its reader-community more extensively. Again, Slashdot is my model for this: the readers, as long as their comments are well organized, are often at least as interesting as the writers. Are there any examples of old-fashioned papers/magazines making good reader fora? What else will the magazine be doing online? What should it be doing in 3 years, when we all have our low power, high quality, ePaper editions?"

duncan bayne asks: "I've been using the Hacker's Diet to lose weight. What's interesting to me is how hard it is to focus on a complicated task when my body is busy running out of energy. I'm having to pay careful attention to snacking - eating enough that I don't 'fade out' in the afternoon, yet not so much that I exceed my daily kilojoule allowance. This got me to thinking about energy levels of those who aren't dieting. Do you find yourself correcting 'fade' by snacking (careful or otherwise) as you work?"

HesAnIndieRocker asks: "So what will it take to make open source technology a mainstream alternative on the PC desktop? It feels like we've been on the cusp for many years now and the applications available for most common tasks are certainly competitive, but we still hover around a 5% market share by most accounts. I've recently written an article in my weblog about some possibilities, but I'd love to hear what others think."

revco_38 asks: "My wife and I are looking into purchasing a game based learning console for our 4 year old boy this Christmas. The two front runners are the VSmile from VTech and the Leapster from Leapfrog. Does the Slashdot community have any experience with either of these products? Are there any other products similar that should be considered? We also have a 2 year old boy so something that lasts would be nice."

scienceListener asks: "As an avid radio listener with an interest in science and technology communication, I'm really excited about podcasts. I've found many that I like, and many more that are just terrible. One of the areas I find very lacking is science news podcasting. Aside from some very good podcasts that are really repackaged radio shows (NPR's Science Friday and their aggregated Health and Science, Canada's Quirks and Quarks, Australia's The Science Show, and a few others), and a couple produced by science centers (the Current Science & Technology Podcast from Boston's Museum of Science and the Redshift Report from the Ontario Science Centre -- which is good but isn't really about science news), I haven't found any independently-produced science podcasts worth listening to. Is anyone doing science news without the help of a major organization and doing it well?"

TheItalianGuy asks: "Many of us that work in the financial sector are bombarded with daily security threats. One of the biggest these days is Identity Theft. My fellow comrades and I have been really grilling each other on differing scenarios on what could be done with what information. However, it all seems to come back the the Social Security Number. Financial companies have other controls in place (customer service verification checking, account passwords, etc) to ensure identification. But in order to be of any use, a bad guy would really need someone's SSN. Absent of that, other information would be useless. Right? That's what I would like to ask Slashdot folks. What could be realistically done with customer information without a SSN? Account numbers, address, maybe a phone or payment amount. Is that really dangerous to the customer if only those get compromised?"

erikred_at_csua asks: "A friend has his film X-rays on loan from the lab but needs to transfer them to digital format so he can take them for a second opinion. What's a reliable (and inexpensive) method of doing this without sacrificing image quality (and thereby rendering the exercise worthless)? Would the old lamp and scanner trick work here, or would there be too many flaws to make it worthwhile? Where could one find a list of places that would do this on the cheap? Since this is to document the progress of arthritis in his back, the level of detail must remain high."

InakaBoyJoe asks: "What do you do when memory with a 'lifetime warranty' fails? You send it back to the dealer of course -- if they're still around. But when I called The Chip Merchant, they refused to honor the warranty, citing a change in ownership. But they also claim on their website to have been doing business since 1985, and are still using the same name, domain, and phone number as before. So it seems the new owners are trying to reap all the benefits of a connection with the old company, while incurring none of the liabilities. How convenient! Instead of an apology for the months of headaches caused by the bad RAM, I got the runaround and was told to contact some guy in San Diego. The policy is also mentioned here. This means that anyone who bought 'lifetime warranty' memory from The Chip Merchant before April 19, 2004 is SOL. Given the popularity of this vendor, I think this is a pretty big deal. And what these guys are doing sounds vaguely illegal. What recourse do we have when companies pull a fast one like this?"

B1-66ER asks: "I'm trying build a team of elite overclockers for HWLogic, and a group of developers for our mulit-platform benchmark CPU-XMark. Now, before you tell me to use SF's Project Help Wanted, just remember: Linus Torvalds didn't have the online community development tools that we use now. I'd like to go beyond the help of SourceForge [which is part of the same company as Slashdot] to ultimately create my own organization in the way that Linus has now. It is my goal to one day get CPU-XMark to be a multi-platform Open Source clone of Futuremark's 3DMark05. Any suggestions?"

Captain Chad wonders: "With the recent news of a 1.5-million node botnet, as well as the AIM rootkit worm, I'm getting a bit concerned about whether my PC may be a zombie. I'm seeing a lot of internet activity, even when nothing is running, and I've checked the process explorer for obvious tasks to no avail. I apply patches as soon as they're released, and my antivirus/spyware programs report nothing. How do I determine if my PC is a zombie, and if it is, how would I de-infect it?"

atti_2410 asks: "As multi-core CPUs are finding their way into more and more computer systems, from servers to corporate desktops to home systems, parallel programming becomes an issue for application programmers outside the High Performance Computing community. Many Parallel Programming Systems have been developed in the past, yet little is known about which are in practical use or even known to a wider audience, and which are just developed, released and forgotten. Or what problems the actual users of parallel programming systems bother the most. There is not even data on the platforms, that parallel programs are developed for. To shed some light on the subject, I have setup a short survey on the topic, and I would also very much like to hear your opinion here on Slashdot!" What Parallel Computing systems and software have you that really made an impression on you, both good and bad?

WormholeFiend writes "You know Halloween is around the corner when websites like Forbes.com releases a story wondering about the supernatural. From the article: 'Maybe the spirits have decided that spooky mansions and creepy battlefields are passé. Maybe they want to cash in on the glamour of corporate life. Maybe they just wanted the sushi.'" Anyone out there have any encounters with a spiritual Milton?

lengau asks: "Has anyone got Linux working with a Novell Network? I'm building a Gentoo system and need to be able to mount a Netware drive. I have IPX compiled into the kernel, already. This is to be a school computer that most students should be able to use like the Windows machines. I'm going to use KDE with OpenOffice and Firefox as the main applications to be used. My ultimate goal is to just have a desktop icon that one can click that goes to one's Netware directory (mounted under $HOME/MyDocuments or something). Any suggestions?"

smooth wombat writes "As a follow-up to a recently posted Slashdot article, Reuters UK has an article which poses the question: is the U.S. becoming hostile to science? From the article: 'Among the most significant forces is the rising tide of anti-science sentiment that seems to have its nucleus in Washington but which extends throughout the nation,' said Stanford's Philip Pizzo in a letter posted on the school Web site on October 3. Cornell acting President Hunter Rawlings, in his state of the university address last week, spoke about the challenge to science represented by intelligent design which holds that the theory of evolution accepted by the vast majority of scientists is fatally flawed. Rawlings said the dispute was widening political, social, religious and philosophical rifts in U.S. society. 'When ideological division replaces informed exchange, dogma is the result and education suffers,' he said." What is your take?