Education

What was Your Senior Project? 82

Posted by Cliff from the only-if-you-feel-like-sharing dept.
Caydel asks: "I am a third year CS major. This year I have a two-semester senior project course in which I can spend two semesters on a project of my choosing. I want to write something very cool, which at the same time provides quite a challenge to me, and serves a useful purpose; however, I am having trouble coming up with good ideas. For those of you out there who have done a similar course, what did you do? What would you have done differently? Which languages did you use? How many skills, that came from outside of your CS courses, did you use?"
Power

Low-Powered Personal Servers? 119

Posted by Cliff from the less-noise-less-footprint-less-impact dept.
antifoidulus asks: "Being the proud owner of a PowerBook, I have but one complaint when it comes to my computing experience: the lack of an 'always-on' web/database server that would allow me to work on some personal programming projects, since I don't like having my PowerBook on 24/7. I could just buy an Intel box, but looking at some of the horror stories of how much power P4s consume, and living in Germany where electricity is not cheap, I wanted to see what suggestions the Slashdot community has for low-cost, low-power, headless servers. My only requirements are that it can run Linux and preferably cost less than $500. Is this possible? What architecture should I go with?"
Communications

E-Mail Server Setup Advice? 67

Posted by Cliff from the not-as-easy-as-it-used-to-be dept.
dhammala asks: "I am responsible for setting up and maintaining a mail server for small web-hosting type business. We currently host about 75 domains, around 100 mailboxes and due to the efforts of our sales team, we are wanting to get ready for some great increases in those numbers. I am worried about my current configuration and ease of administration. More importantly (well, at least to the customers) is email deliverability -- it seems that messages delivered to some big players are being marked as SPAM or disappearing altogether. I am asking the Slashdot community for it's insight and advise on 1) if my current choice of software/configuration is a good match for this situation and 2) if there any additional measures I might take to ensure email deliverability?"
Power

Practical Solar Power for Travelers? 34

Posted by Cliff from the roll-up-solar-arrays dept.
kalido asks: "When travelling with gadgets it can be a pain to keep the power flowing, especially in remote locations. Are there any practical methods to recharge batteries and devices when on the go? A bit of googling turns up the PowerFilm, PowerFlex and SolarRoll flexible solar panels. But I haven't seen any reviews anywhere. Have any of you used these or similar devices and how easy is it to use if attached to a pack, bike, jacket, etc.?"
Education

How Can Tech Help Fight Education Costs? 503

Posted by Cliff from the cheaper-AND-better dept.
http101 asks: "With the ever-rising costs of fuel, we seem to forget those that are truly having problems affording it. No, not the homeless, but our own kids. 'Kids,' you ask? Yes, because being driven to school on the 'Yellow Dog' or the 'Edu-Express' better known as a school bus, is costing your state more money than ever before. In my neighborhood, we have a plethora of home connected by fiber and at least high-speed internet. So my question is, how can technology be better-implemented to ensure a student's studies and also lower the costs of fuel for the districts?"
Technology

What Would You Like to See in an Ops Center? 128

Posted by Cliff from the visual-and-functional-improvements dept.
binaryspiral asks: "I work in a network operations center that has a fair amount of tours and escorted customer traffic. We (the ops employees) have been given the option of submitting ideas for a redesign that would upgrade our ops center to something more functional and visually impressive to potential customers who visit. I'm also looking into software applications that monitor our systems and put them on large displays but a lot of it looks ho-hum. Unfortunately, one of the criteria is that this redesign be functional and visually appealing. I would ask the Slashdor crowd to share with me the things you hate or love about your ops center. Any suggestions or ideas from this crowd might actually be what I'm looking for!"
Businesses

Uneducated IT Managers, and How to Deal? 811

Posted by Cliff from the patience-makes-the-perfect-tool dept.
R.Mason asks: "I work in an IT department for a small to medium sized family owned business. The job is great, except for our boss. He simply doesn't know nearly as much as he should. Our team finds ourselves teaching him or explaining remedial things far too often. Even when his own computer is acting up, he doesn't know what to do with it and has us fix it while he sits and watches. He spends hours and hours on the most insignificant tasks as if he has nothing better to do. Is it ignorant to believe an IT manager should be a knowledgeable in technology as a whole? A person you respect and frequently learn from? It creates an extremely frustrating work environment, and our team doesn't know how to approach the problem. It's becoming too much to simply "put up with it." What advice do those of you in the IT field have for this issue?"
Software

Migrating from Mambo to Another CMS? 52

Posted by Cliff
Pikoro asks: "I put up a website a while back for personal use and I have been using Mambo to keep the site in order. One problem though. It seems that Mambo is not all that scalable. The website I started in January now gets almost 20,000 unique users a day and Mambo is very SQL heavy. The database is running on a P4 2.4Ghz machine with 1Gb of RAM, and the database server is on it's knees. Do I need to just upgrade the database server, optimize the MySQL installation, or switch to another CMS system. I would prefer the latter since I have had issues with Mambo and wanted to move to more of a weblog style format. Was considering Slashcode as well. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated."
Security

Building Secure Computers? 628

Posted by Cliff from the even-keyboard-adccess-won't-make-it-easy dept.
maotx asks: "Growing into the job of a system administrator, I've been tasked with something I'm not quite prepared for: purchase or build a computer that meets DoD compliance for classified 'Secret' information. Several vendors, including Dell our primary supplier, offers computers that will work, but being new to the criteria I want to make sure the right computer is purchased. The computer will be used to create secure CAD drawings (Solidworks, OrCAD, etc) and must have, from what I can tell, a removable hard drive and security stickers to prevent tampering. What is you're experience in setting up a secure computer and is it better to have a vendor do it, or yourself?"
Books

Where New Tech Should Libraries Try Next? 152

Posted by Cliff from the new-toys-in-the-public-interest dept.
99bottles asks: "I work for a good sized Public Library. The management folks want to have a sit down to discuss what our next tech. undertakings should be. We already offer free wireless, use Voice-over-IP, have self-checkout machines, have dropped Microsoft Office for OpenOffice.org, and are slowly but surely getting Linux to the desktop. It's not like we need to catch up, this is geared toward being unique and at the forefront. One manager believes that a video reference service would be popular, I've tried to convince him that video-phones have been around for decades and no one really wants them. So, I ask you, what would Slashdot readers want to see at the local library?"
Encryption

Cross-Platform Encryption? 57

Posted by Cliff from the lowered-barriers-for-information-protection dept.
Dr. Sp0ng asks: "I'm sure a lot of Slashdot readers carry around USB keychain drives or other portable media. What cross-platform encryption solutions have you found for these? The ideal solution would be something which can create a true encrypted disk image in a file, along with Windows and OS X (and perhaps even Linux) standalone executables which can mount these without requiring you to install anything. Obviously something like GnuPG could be used, but it won't let you create an actual mountable filesystem. There are plenty of Windows solutions, and Mac OS X users can simply create an encrypted DMG, but are there any cross-platform solutions out there?"
The Media

Wanted - An Online Publishing Business Model? 171

Posted by Cliff
Eric Smalley asks: "Wanted: an online publishing business model that falls somewhere between lone weblogger and corporate media behemoth. Technology Research News (TRN) has been publishing original news stories for over five years, but we have yet to find a way to cover our costs. We are fairly popular and well-woven into the fabric of the Web; we have over 200,000 unique visitors per month, we are well represented in Google, Yahoo and MSN search results, and we are regularly slashdotted and pointed to by Wired News, other media sites and countless weblogs. Our overriding goal has been to keep the news free, including our archive. Is there no place for a small, independent media company founded and run by journalists?"
Businesses

Finding Trustworthy Webhosting Reviews? 89

Posted by Cliff from the reviews-by-people-for-the-people dept.
Nylisk asks: "I've been searching for a new webhost for my site and upcoming sites. While searching for a host I find many webhost review sites that feel fake. They are primitive and limit themselves to a small amount of hosts to examine. They will display any where to around 30 hosts to 'review' but mostly I find sites that review only 5 or 6 hosts. When you look further you find no community on the site to provide further comment on those reviews. The site is done by a single publisher with minimal information, and most of it looks like an advertisement. There are only email links and basic submissions boxes. I was going to post example links, but why give them the publicity? The more I snoop, the more webhosts I find that are connected. I can't say I am surprised, but to be honest its tough not to find these results from search engines. I can't seem to find anything real. Are there any websites run by a community of members who review webhosts?"
Communications

GSM and Asterisk Integration? 156

Posted by Cliff
MistabewM asks: "Would it be possible to place a GSM transceiver within you home that can be tied into Asterisk in a way that would allow you to place calls from your GSM phone across your VOIP connection or though your local landline? An analogous system is being introduced on airplanes that will allow passengers to use their GSM phones in flight. I feel this would be a fantastic hack and could even be scaled up to provide large areas of free GSM service."
Businesses

Linux Friendly Online Brokerages? 40

Posted by Cliff from the daytrading-for-penguins dept.
freelunch asks: "I need to switch online brokers and, not wanting a dedicated Windows box just to trade, would like to find one that has Linux friendly Level 2 tools. Many of the Java trading platforms are unreliable/incompatible/unsupported under Linux (Scottrader is very unreliable and not L2). Any help?"
Communications

Note-taking Software for Unix? 107

Posted by Cliff from the ditch-the-pencil-and-pad dept.
donniejones18 asks: "I've been trying to find note-taking software for my university classes, work, etc. but all I can seem to discover is Windows-based software, such as OneNote or GoBinder. I would like to know what software Slashdot readers use for note-taking in Linux? If not, would anyone be interested in working together on this project? Ideally the software would support the insertion of PDFs, images, and other documents for handwritten annotation from a tablet PC, PDA or by mouse from a PC."
Education

Keeping Track of All of Your Tasks? 99

Posted by Cliff from the all-about-the-organizational-skillz dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "I work for a Fortune 500 Company as a Unix sysadmin and at any given time I may be working with 10 different project teams, each with their own milestones, tasks/to-dos, notes and reportable status. I'm constantly losing track of tasks that I need to do, notes I've taken and status reports that I've written. I've tried paper solutions, PDAs, Microsoft Project and groupware type stuff and nothing really seems designed to allow me to track mulitple project with mulitple tasks and to-dos as well as keep up with the status and notes that I generate from each of these tasks. How do you keep it all straight?"
Power

Spotlight's Impact on PowerBook Battery Life? 161

Posted by Cliff from the hits-the-juice-pretty-hard dept.
Viltvodlian Deoderan asks: "So, Spotlight for Mac OS X Tiger is very cool. I can now let my innate ability to disorganize things shine through. However, when using my PowerBook unplugged, it seems that my battery lasts a noticeably less time. A close reading of Ars Technica's description of how spotlight works suggests that this is due to keeping the index file up-to-date on disk. Has anyone else noticed the same thing? Does someone have a better explanation for why my battery seems to drain out, prematurely? Is there some way real-time indexing can be turned off to conserve power?"
Businesses

ISPs Known for Defending Their Customer's Rights? 85

Posted by Cliff from the not-rolling-over-for-corporate-interests dept.
lieumorrison asks: "With the recent examples of some US based Internet service providers going overboard in their desire to stay on the good side of the law, I ask Slashdot readers: What ISPs have a reputation of protecting their costumers by not arbitrarily giving in to C&D orders and such, without first contacting their lawyers? (ISPs hosting in the US or abroad; based on reactions in the past)"
Technology

Accessibility for People with Limited Mobility? 36

Posted by Cliff from the hands-free-computing dept.
rscrawford asks: "There's an older woman at my church who suffers from advanced Parkinson's Disease. She's in good spirits but misses being able to communicate with her children who live far away. Because she she has advanced tremors and her muscles have atrophied, she can no longer use a keyboard; and because her voice quavers, she probably wouldn't be able to use voice recognition software. Now, I've seen tools for people who are vision impaired or who have cognitive impairments, but what about people like this woman? Are there any tools that would help her use her computer to e-mail her children?"

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