AmiChris asks: "At work I need something that can dump sequential entries for several hundred thousand instruments in realtime. It also needs to be able to retrieve data for a single instrument relatively quickly. A standard relational database won't cut it. It has to keep up with 2000+ updates per second, mostly on a subset of a few hundred instruments active at a given time. I've got some ideas of how I would build such a beast, based on flat files and a system of caching entries in memory. I would like to know if: someone has already built something like this; and if not, would someone want to use it if I build it? I'm not sure what other applications there might be. I could see recording massive amounts of network traffic or scientific data with such a library. I'm guessing someone out there has done something like this before. I'm currently working with C++ on Windows. "

digital book worm asks: "I'm a soon-to-be fresh-out with a Masters degree in Computer Science. For the last several years I've had paper after paper shoved in my face, and following some of the major publications (such as Communications of the ACM, IEEE Software, and some of the IEEE Transactions series) and conference proceedings has become second nature. I can't help but wonder though: For those of you outside of academia, do you find that there is any benefit to following the latest research on a regular basis? Clearly there are times when it is appropriate to go back and look for papers that solve a particular problem you're working on, but I'm finding it a little difficult to believe my professors' hype that the latest and greatest is the stuff that goes on in these papers, and that I should make it a life-long goal to keep current on many of the publications listed above."

DocMurphy asks: "I'm working with some dissidents who are looking for ways to use the Internet from within repressive regimes. Many have in-home Internet access, but think it too risky to participate in pro-freedom activities on home PCs. Internet cafés are also available, but although fairly anonymous, every machine may be infected with keystroke loggers that give governments access to and knowledge of 'banned' sites. Dissidents not only want to remain anonymous themselves, but also wish to not compromise the sites they access. Any suggestions for products/procedures/systems out there making anonymous access & publishing a reality under repressive regime run Internet access?"

An anonymous reader asks: "Having been granted a 90-day demo enclosure of new blade servers from a major vendor the question I find myself asking is: On a limited budget, how does one simulate 1000+ attached clients and the activity of those clients? We're a K-12 school district and our current servers don't keep up with all the roaming-profile abuse from our Windows workstations. Are there tools or tricks available to simulate load on Netware/Linux servers? The user groups around here usually answer this question with 'Get some workstations for a test lab!', there's got to be a less expensive option, right? Can we leverage our existing client populous to achieve our goal, without interrupting or changing the quality of service at the desktop, substantially?"

seachnasaigh asks: "I love desktop Linux, but the one stumbling block I have with deploying it in some capacity for my userbase is USB Palm Pilots. Once upon a time I managed to get GPilot working with a serial PalmVx, but despite repeated attempts (SuSE 9.2 pro, Fedora Core 3 and several Palm devices) I can't get a synch to happen with the USB version, either through the native Gnome Pilot app or through Evolution (and yes, Kpilot too!). Our standard deployment is a Palm Tungsten T series; most of our desktops are recent Dells. It's embarrassing to have to boot into Windows to synch the Palms. Does anyone have some suggestions out there?"

Chanc_Gorkon asks: "I am looking for an open source job scheduler that is better than cron. I need a scheduler that has dependency checking, preemption (to stop jobs that access the same resources from running at the same time) and -full- logging. Cron e-mails are nice, but I usually end up cleaning them out with out reading. E-mailing the sysadmin -only- when a job does not get kicked off would be the preferable option. I have scoured Freshmeat and Sourceforge and have found nothing that comes close to what I am looking for. Do you guys have some options for me?"

robotsrule asks: "Having been in the computer industry a while I distinctly remember the pain of making the 16-bit to 32-bit transition, when Windows made the change to 32-bit support. Any developer who remember the joys of thunking and other kludges that were meant to help code conversions also remembers the arcane marathon debug sessions too. I have not been keeping up with the latest Microsoft Longhorn technical news, or the plans that the Linux community has for 64-bit platform support. Does anyone out there have a reliable prediction for the amount of system shock we are facing when either Longhorn or 64-bit Linux comes out? Will I lose all my favorite 32-bit development tools again as I watch the backward compatibility support dry up as the 64-bit O/S platforms are adopted? Or are the O/S manufacturers making happy noises about long-term support for existing development languages and tools?"

BlastM asks: "The Australian Attorney General's Department, as reported recently on Slashdot, is accepting public input in a review of fair use exceptions (or lack thereof) in our copyright laws. Being an Australian citizen, I'll be directly affected by any reforms that are made, and under the Copyright Act in it's current form it's hard to avoid breaking the law nearly every day, whether format shifting music, recording broadcast TV shows or sharing movies via P2P or with friends. The question I pose to the freethinking minds, here: What fair use rights should be defined under copyright law? Is the use of a static, defined set of rights too restrictive? What's right/wrong with the copyright laws where you live?"

BladesP9 asks: "I'm in the process of moving. As such, I have stumbled upon no less than five boxes of wires and various parts. Everything from PS2, SCSI, FireWire, USB and God knows what. Having forgotten all about this stuff I know I will never be needing any of this again as long as I live. Not to mention the roughly 100 boxes of 10 pack 5.25 inch floppy discs. I could just throw all this stuff away, but I am feeling somewhat guilty about that. Is there anywhere I should look to donating this stuff? It doesn't seem like the kind of thing 'Goodwill' would really get use of, but I hate to throw away perfectly good hardware and media if someone could make use of it. I'm looking for suggestions. My wife has given me until the end of the week to find a home for it or I have to take it to the dump."

vertigo72 asks: "What's the best way to find sponsors for an open source project? Is there some people or foundations that give grants for the development of free software? We develop an open source (GPL) box office software: phpMyTicket. At our knowledge at the moment this is the only open source software of this kind. The program is in advanced beta stage and was already used in production environment by us and by other people. The program is rather complex and big: we support online ticket shop, box office with thermal printer and control at doors with barcode scanner. Smarty, PDF and email template engines are used. Paypal and some other gateways are supported. Now we want to continue and to add more professional features, but alas this requires more funding."

mijoe asks: "I have been using various HDDs in my boxes with the exception of Western Digitals since I had some problems with them in the past. My recent issue was with a pair of Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9 120s. I had both drives fail in about a 2 month span. One of them is 14 months old, and is out of warranty. The logic board is bad (I swapped with a good one and recovered my data), but Maxtor was very short with me when I asked where I could buy replacement boards. Since then, I've switched to Seagate drives for the 5 yr warranty and quiet performance. Is there any place I can buy parts? It seems like a huge waste to throw out a 120 gig drive with the mechanical bits in good working order. What can I do when drives break down? Should I just switch to another manufacturer until I suffer a rash of failures again and then move to the next company?"

A frustrated troubleshooter asks: "I've recently been asked to fix a friend's computer, and for once, I'm stumped. There is a piece of malware on his computer that puts up Aurora popup windows. Neither Spybot nor Ad-Aware detect this, so I've had to try to manually clean the system. However, the files re-write themselves, making the malware grow back as fast as you can remove it. The only "solution" is to run an uninstaller written by the people who wrote the Aurora pop-up itself. Has anyone dealt with this particularly painful piece of pop-up programming, and if so, how have you successfully removed it?" What other pieces of Malware have you found that was difficult to remove? Aside from using programs like the afore mentioned Spybot and Ad-Aware (and others of their ilk), what other methods of Malware removal have proven to be the most successful?

emmjayell writes "You've been there, loaded up a new application (think server-based app like Apache or Samba ...), it's working okay for a few days or a few months, then the intermittent problems start. Usually it's the CEO or someone else of relative importance that is the first victim. You can't readily duplicate the problem, so you go to find out where the application put's it's logs - maybe it's in var/log/messages - maybe in it's own directory - sometimes it's right there and available in some administrative GUI. So what makes you happiest when diagnosing the problem? Do you want tools to access it? UI or command line? Do you want it formatted to use tools like cut and sed? Do you have any examples of an app that does a great job with system logging and diag logging? Background: My team is working on an application that is gearing up for a first release. We have a logging framework in place already (we are using Apache: logging.apache.org/) -- so that covers how we are logging, but not what we should log and how it should be laid out for optimal use."

An anonymous reader writes "I've been working for a small development company for 6 or 7 years. My boss has always been a bit nuts but overall it hasn't been a bad experience. I recently accepted a great job offer for a technology position in a different industry. I gave my boss my notice this week, and while he initially was understanding, he has since starting making accusations of conspiracy, deceit, and has otherwise attempted to make me look bad in front of employees and long-time clients. (who, thankfully, also think he is nuts) I don't like to burn bridges, but I'm pretty sure he's already burned it to the ground, even threatening to withhold my final paycheck if I don't find a replacement before I leave. Is it worth sticking out the few weeks I already told him I worked, or should I just cut my losses and leave early?"

Detritus writes "Many companies have stopped providing hardcopy manuals with their products, electing instead to deliver the manuals in the form of PDF files. This becomes a problem when you have an 800 page reference manual and you need a usable hardcopy that is double-side printed and bound. What is the most cost-effective way of turning a PDF file into a bound document? Cheap ink-jet printers are not designed to do this task at a reasonable speed and cost."

PoochieReds writes "My credit card company has just introduced some pretty foul new rules (shortening grace periods, raising fees, etc.), so I've started shopping around for a new one. I use this card for most of my purchases and pay off my balance at the end of each month. One thing that my old CC company had was the ability to use one-time CC numbers. This was really handy for Internet and over the phone purchases, and I like the safety it provides. The downside was that this co. used a flash-based app for this feature. Does anyone have recommendations of a CC company that can provide one-time CC numbers via a regular browser-based web form?"

basic0 writes "After my Windows box recently lost its life in a puff of awful smelling smoke, I tracked the fault to the motherboard. Now I'm in the market for a replacement board, but all the boards I find seem to be all-in-one models with on-board everything. I already have a good graphics card, NIC, USB audio device, etc. I just need a no-frills motherboard like I used to be able to buy. It seems like a waste to buy a board with all the built-in stuff (and probably pay extra for it) when I'm never going to use it. Has anyone else had similar experiences? Do a lot of people actually use the on-board stuff? Is it still possible to purchase a motherboard that's *just* a motherboard?"

thefluxster asks: "The company I work for considers efficiency and automation two of the most important standards to live/work by while employed for them. To further this cause, several individuals have been employed specifically to design and implement various programs, scripts, and (where APIs aren't available) macros designed in Macro Express 3. Using these methods, the group has been able to shave very significant amounts of man hours off various projects. To the Slashdot community I ask: What, if any, applications, processes, etc. have you or your company put in place to increase productivity?"

captnitro asks: "A particular research project I'm developing right now needs to compare 'potential' (idle/none) and 'load' for various hardware capabilities, and quickly -- maybe up to a several times every minute. For disk space, for RAM, it's relatively easy -- find what's used and what's not and report the ratio. For CPU, I have plenty of time to test 'potential' when the app starts. But for testing CPU load, I need a standard 'ruler' that will be able to compare across varying platforms and processors (e.g., x86, PowerPC, embedded, single and multi-proc) -- so for example, idle percentage won't work. At the same time, I don't have the ability to time 'openssl speed' every 25 seconds without bringing the system to a halt. I'm willing to sacrifice precision of the measurement for generalization of the unit -- that is, the operations that this test is for would be primarily mathematical and not say, text sorts -- but I'd prefer a generic, quick test of the current processor load rather than an average of 25 different tests. Regardless of hardware, the OS distribution is mostly *nix-based -- NetBSD, Linux, and even Mac OS X. Wild ideas are perfectly acceptable -- any thoughts?"

out-of-order asks: "I recently became a member of a large software organization which has placed me in the role of preparing the Unit Test effort for a component of software. Problem is that everything that I've read about Unit Testing pertains to 'test-driven' design, writing test cases first, etc. What if the opposite situation is true? This organization was writing code before I walked in the door and now I need to test it. What methodology is there for writing test cases for code that already exists?"