Data Storage

Authentication Tokens for Password-less Access? 28

Posted by Cliff from the lose-your-keys-AND-your-passwords-at-the-same-time dept.
A not-so anonymous Anonymous Coward puts forth this query: "As someone who tires of constantly remembering and re-entering many passwords in possibly hundreds of uses, it strikes me that something as simple as a USB memory-stick device containing security tokens cannot be simply used in favour of passwords. Kernel messages could be monitored for tokens and update local access as needed (such as opening kwallet or disabling the screensaver). Is this really any less secure than say, using a key in the front door? It would be great to hear what the Slashdot community have found useful in reducing the number of passwords that need to be remembered, and what progress (if any) is being taken to increase security while providing ease of access?"
Technology

Web Accessibility? 21

Posted by Cliff from the 508--ain't-it-great dept.
conJunk asks: "With Slashdot recently becoming HTML 4.01 compliant, my thoughts now drift to the subject of web accessibility. We all know that the Section 508 requirements are legally binding to those who work for or with the U.S. government, but it's still unclear whether or not U.S. companies are required to have accessible sites (unlike England, where it's very clear). How important are web accessibility and the W3C Accessibility Guidelines to you and/or your company? Where do you see this issue going in the next 10 years?"
Power

Running a Home-Office Through a UPS 141

Posted by Cliff from the something-an-electrician-should-do dept.
mwagner_00 asks: "After spending lots of money and time, I now have an office in my home. My wife and I both have computers (mine is a high powered gaming rig), and I also have a workbench where I work on other people's PCs. I have a web/email server as well. I would like to protect the investment by running the room's power through a UPS. I have a APC 3000NET that my workplace was going to throw out. The only thing it needs is a good set of batteries. Has anyone tried something like this before? Basically I want to find the breaker for the room, and after the breaker, run the power through the UPS and back out to the room. Is the UPS that I have sufficient to run a whole small office?"
Education

Building an Open Source "Clicker"? 347

Posted by Cliff from the clicky-here-clicky-there-clicky-everywhere dept.
fieldtest asks: "Most Slashdot readers have read about "clickers", remote control style devices that students use to wirelessly answer a teacher's questions. Unfortunately, as a college student, I have had less than stellar experiences with these clickers. I hear complaints from my professors and fellow students often as well. So, I want to build an open source clicker system for all universities to use. I believe that this is a prime opportunity to show how powerful free software can be. So, what do the talented people of Slashdot recommend?"
Communications

Generating API Documentation? 54

Posted by Cliff from the ease-the-trials-of-documentation dept.
Preda asks: "I have been recently tasked with generating API documentation for new and legacy code. Given the amount of legacy code (in C, VB6, VB.NET, PHP, and other languages) and new code that needs to be documented, are there any easy auto generating API programs out there. I have done a few searches but nothing that I have found stood out as a 'use me' solution. Does anyone have any advice?"
Businesses

Software Sales & Marketing Deal Structures? 23

Posted by Cliff from the a-fair-cut dept.
Entrepreneurs asks: "My business partner and I run a small but growing software company. For approximately the past two years, we have been collaborating with some outstanding overseas developers, have established a strong relationship with this group, and plan on continuing our collaboration with them in the future. As a means of jump-starting our business, we have entered into discussions with this same group regarding some would-be sales and marketing deals in which they would develop and support some products while we would be solely responsible for sales, marketing and would bear all costs associated with these activities. Both parties are in essentially in agreement as to the overarching roles that would be played, but we are as yet far apart in regards to our respective perception as to what represents a fair deal structure (% revenues) for the developer as opposed to the sales/marketing partner. What wisdom can Slashdot readers offer regarding the typical structure of software sales and marketing agreements?"
Security

How to Approach Customers with Security Issues? 73

Posted by Cliff from the break-it-to-them-gently dept.
stuntshell asks: "We're a group of IT Professionals and we're starting our own consulting firm. We're most systems administrators, and not business admin, nor lawyers, and we're all have worked on big companies and most of the time the job to be performed was just passed on to us. The scope of the work we're about to perform will be security related, so how do you approach a customer in this kind of business? Do you wait for them to come and ask you to test their firewall? Or do you go scanning and discovering holes on other's network for you to offer them your solution? Do write a letter/email or do you propose a meeting? What works?"
The Almighty Buck

Pre-Selling Domain Names? 104

Posted by Cliff from the don't-let-yours-get-swiped dept.
Allnighterking asks: "Within the last 24 hours I've been the unwitting victim of a new practice by any number of domain registrars. The concept of pre-selling domain names before they expire. Go to any of the more popular domain registrars and start searching for domain names. You will find dozens of them for sale -with the date they will expire clearly listed-. In my case yes, I was negligent in not renewing. I also did not receive notice that it was to expire either. The day after it expired (or more like 8 hours after). I found out that I was no longer the owner of a domain I've owned for over 3 years, that this domain is now the 'property' of a domain squatter selling google adds on my hard earned search engine status. What can be done? Do we have any recourse?"
Businesses

Searching for a Directory Service Solution? 367

Posted by Cliff from the active-directory-or.... dept.
kumulan wonders: "I've got the responsibility to set up directory services as well as a messaging/groupware system for my organization of app. 100 employees spread out over three locations. We are a startup that is merging three existing smaller companies and, given the state of existing IS infrastructure at each of these locations, the decision has already been made that we are better off starting from scratch. It would be great to hear from Slashdot readers concerning which option is 'better' and why."
Software

Multilingual Content Management Systems? 43

Posted by Cliff from the can-even-handle-esperanto dept.
Azraael asks: "I need to make a website for a small business. The website must be available in several different languages and allow for easy switching between the different versions (with little flags in each page that has multiple versions, or some scheme of the sort). User logins are not required. I was thinking of using a CMS to accomplish this in an efficient and easily extensible (more languages, more pages, etc) way. What would be the best option? I've tried Wordpress but it seems to lack multilingual support of the type I described, while having too much of a weblog feel. Mambo with Mambel seems spotty at best. Has anyone on Slashdot done this before?"
Databases

Oracle Beginnings - Where to Start? 102

Posted by Cliff from the gotta-start-somewhere dept.
Scalli0n asks: "I'm a programmer with a solid computer science background, but I'd like to know where I should start with the behemoth that is Oracle - my bosses tell me that I need to learn it to store geodatabases (since I work with geospatial intelligence) and I have no clue where to start since nobody can even tell me of a good beginners book - any suggestions?"
Software

Subversion as Automatic Software Upgrade Service? 41

Posted by Cliff from the thinking-out-of-the-box dept.
angel'o'sphere asks: "I'm working on a contract where the customer wants a automated, Internet-based check-for-updates, update and install system. So far we've considered a Subversion based solution. The numbers are: a typical upgrade is about 10MB in size. Usually it's about 30 to 50 new files (which have an average size of about 200kB) and 2 database files (which can be anywhere from 500MB to 2GB) that change regularly. Upgrades are released about every 3 months, and this will probably become more frequent as the system matures. The big files are the problem as we estimate about 100-300 changes in every file. The total user base is currently 2000 users, creeping up to probably 5000 over the next year, and might be finally end up at some 30,000 users. Any suggestions from the crowd about setting up a meaningful test environment? How about calculating the estimated throughput of our server farm? Does anyone know of projects that have tried something similar using an RCS or a configuration management system?"
Communications

Creating an Electronic Data Interchange System? 47

Posted by Cliff from the electronic-dialog-implementation dept.
jgrumbles asks: "I've been in a PC support technician internship for the past 7 months for a polyethylene (plastic) pipe company which has doubled in size the past 4 years. I've been notified that management wants me to head a new initiative within the company. The main goal, in the beginning, is to basically restructure the slipshod EDI system they are using right now. The IT director even admits he should have had some training when implementing the system, but it was at the time of the boom so he had to do it as he went along. Are there any definitive EDI/E-Commerce information conglomerates, websites, listservs, groups, or other sources of information? My main mission will be to recreate the EDI system, which includes an AS/400 in a Windows environment, from scratch. Further down the road I'll be in charge of implementing technology in other areas such as getting RFIDs on every piece of pipe we ship in order to further automate tracking and billing. So, does anyone have suggestions on where to look for information and possible case studies?"
Software

Best Cross-Distro Installation Tools for Linux? 61

Posted by Cliff from the one-installer-to-bind-them dept.
swillden asks: "I need to package up some commercial Linux software for multiple distributions (Red Hat Enterprise 3 and 4, Fedora, Novell Desktop, SuSE Professional and Enterprise, Mandrake and Debian), and I'm wondering what tools others have found useful. The software is closed source and needs to be very easy to install. This has been an ongoing problem for commercial software on Linux for some time. Has there been any progress?"
Entertainment

Space Saving Technologies for the Home? 156

Posted by Cliff from the interior-real-estate-preservation dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "My wife & I are moving from an 1800 square foot apartment to a 900 square foot apartment this weekend. In order to keep our one size extravagance, a 6' x 6' table, we need to make some compromises. What can I do to solve this problem? What other great space-saving solutions with technology are there?"
Programming

Ultimate Software Developer Setup? 757

Posted by Cliff from the coding-heaven dept.
wicked coding asks: "I'm a professional software engineer and I'm planning on building my ultimate setup for longer hours coding and hacking, but I'm kinda stuck when it comes with what to choose. What hardware would you choose to use, if money was no object? Obviously there may be some constraints on space. Leave no stone unturned, I'm looking for suggestions on desks, seating, lighting, keyboard and pointing device, monitors and even the computer system itself. Ideally it needs to be as comfortable and ergonomic as possible. What software would you choose to use, if the intended targets were Java and OO PHP5? Currently I'm using Eclipse on Gentoo. Is there a more suitable IDE that works with most popular OSS (and not so OSS) languages including XML, SQL, CSS, PHP, Perl, Java, and C/C++?"
Businesses

Dealing With Laptops in a Business Network? 106

Posted by Cliff from the portable-intrusion-vectors dept.
lanimreT asks: "Notebooks are a large problem for IT managers. They carry viruses and other malware back into the network and are less reliable than desktop PCs for more than one reason. Yet, every employee MUST have one for his job. How have other IT managers dealt with the various problems that notebooks create?"
Networking

A Simple Tool for Tracking Switch Ports? 84

Posted by Cliff from the a-cheat-sheet-for-the-rat's-nest dept.
jeremy cobert asks: "I work for a large school district in the Computer Networking department. We have several network closets at each school and each switch is set for different equipment on different VLAN's. Sometimes a Tech at a school will call in and need a printer plugged into a switch, and we are currently using maps drawn with PhotoShop to keep track of which ports are set for different equipment. I can look at a map and tell them to use a port that is already setup for printers. I am the only person who knows how to use Photoshop in our department and it is becoming way too time consuming every time someone switches a port. Here is an example of how we currently track our ports. Is there any program that we can use to make changes and diagrams in some similar fashion?"
Communications

A Useful Grammar Checker? 503

Posted by Cliff from the what-set-of-rules-do-you-use dept.
burtdub asks: "With the amount of raw text data available, there seems to be no shortage of ambitious language projects on the horizon, from Universal Language Translators to Junk Email Filtering. However, the mess that is the English language still seems to elude commercial attempts while being relatively ignored by the open source community. What would it take to make a useful, functional grammar checker?"

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