Programming

Sophistication in Web Applications? 197

Posted by Cliff from the what's-really-under-the-hood dept.
whit537 asks: "Anyone who uses Gmail for 5 minutes can see that it's a pretty dern sophisticated web application. But just how sophisticated? Well, first of all, the UI is composed of no less than nine iframes (try turning off the page styles in Firefox with View > Page Style). But then consider that these iframes are generated and controlled by a 1149 line javascript. This script includes no less than 1001 functions, and 998 of these functions have one- or two-letter names! They're obviously not maintaining this script by hand in that form. So do they write human-readable javascripts and then run them all together, or have they developed some sort of web app UI toolkit in Python? Does Gmail need to be this complex or is the obfuscation a deliberate attempt to prevent reverse-engineering? And are there any other web apps that are this sophisticated?"
The Internet

Metered HTTP Proxy? 138

Posted by Cliff from the internet-traffic-cop-(and-parent) dept.
Jon asks: "My brother-in-law has three teenage daughters. The only thing that he has to hold over their head is being online. I am trying to find him an HTTP proxy server that has metering built in. I started with Squid which has the authentication stuff in it but we would like something where we could allocate minutes, like some of the WiFi stuff you encounter at a hot spot."
Software

Becoming an Open Source Lobbyist? 30

Posted by Cliff from the better-software-for-local-government dept.
Random Guru 42 asks: "With the recent MFP scandal in Toronto, with we taxpayers having to take the brunt of the cost of licensing and leasing software the city doesn't need, I'm wondering what it would take to lobby the city to start switching over to open source software. Has anyone ever tried to lobby your local council to make the jump away from expensive, closed software?"
Graphics

GPS/Direction Overlay on Video? 20

Posted by Cliff from the layering-video dept.
doormat asks: "I've come up with a solution where I would need to overlay the current GPS location (Lat/Long) as well as the current direction onto a video stream. I've seen it on still cameras but not on video cameras. I've got the equipment for survey-grade GPS, I just need to put in onto the video frames, either in real-time or somehow in post-processing."
Hardware Hacking

USB Key Multitool? 34

Posted by Cliff from the booting-from-multiple-images dept.
srhuston asks: "I've got a USB key that I use for booting and installing machines (GRUB boots and pulls the rest from the network). This got me thinking, all the floppy disks and CDs that I use for various tasks, such as memtest86, SuperRescue, Plan-B, tomsrtbt and others with which I'd like to experiment, I could probably get a larger key and put a few of them on there. The problem is booting them all - it seems that unless I copy the contents of the CD to the key, I wouldn't be able to boot it properly, and doing that means I can only use one of them at a time and have to copy another to the key when I want to use it. Ideally I'd love to be able to have my GRUB menu (or something similar) pop up, and select which of the items I want to boot. Any ideas how I might accomplish this? GRUB doesn't seem to support booting an image (floppy or ISO), and ISOLINUX seems to want to boot just one image and not give options for multiple ones. Oh, and yes, I did look first and found more questions than answers."
Technology

Truth in Advertising? 393

Posted by Cliff from the devils-in-the-details dept.
PerformanceEng wonders: "I work as an engineer for a large technology company in the U.S., and have been privy to what I find a interesting practice. It's well known that marketing data sheets often paint the best picture of a product while leaving the devil in the details. I've come to expect this, and when I am evaluating technology, I always have a skeptic's eye for claims made by the sales and marketing folks. However, I've also witnessed our product go into test labs (usually for the purposes of running a series of tests for a 'bake off' in a trade publication). Not uncommon is the attempt to 'tune' the configuration of the device under test to perform in the best light (not unlike tuning your car to pass emissions tests). I have seen it go as far as exploiting weaknesses in the test that, if the test operator discovered, would be considered bad faith. To the other engineers: Are you aware of this kind of practice at your company? To the IT professionals: How much faith do you put in these sorts of publications and their 'bake offs'? To everyone: When does spin doctoring cross the line and become false advertising?"
Handhelds

Recommended Programmable Remote Controls? 59

Posted by Cliff from the consolidation-of-the-table-ornaments dept.
Slashdot Junky asks: "I am fed up with having several different remote controls for my living room A/V gear and have decided to buy a high-end programmable remote to replace them. I have a TWC SciAtl Explorer 8000 DVR box, DVD player, Onkyo HT receiver, TV, and a home brew PC media server connected. I am looking for one that is comfortable to hold and more importantly, capable of DOING EVERYTHING that each of my existing remotes do. So, what remotes are you all using? Why did you select the one you have? What should I look for in my search? What don't you like about it? What do you like? What else should I be asking?"
Education

WAN/LAN/VoIP Training Other than Cisco? 106

Posted by Cliff from the budget-safe-educational-options dept.
skeezix-the-cat asks: "After 9/11, the economy tanked, and a lot of state budgets shrank drastically, especially IT budgets. I work for a NOC for a western state with a population as sparse as Wyoming, but not nearly as well connected that was particularly hard hit by the recession. Training money at our agency has been scant, almost non-existent since 2001. Security has seen some bucks, and Windows/Microsoft training of course for the LAN team but general WAN training has suffered. Cisco VoIP training would be swell, and it's everywhere (but in our state). I have one shot at top-shelf training, a week, maybe two. What else is out there as far as LAN/WAN/VoIP training that would cover VoIP and related in a non-Cisco format that still would translate into my Cisco environment?"
Education

New Technologies for Colleges? 86

Posted by Cliff from the new-ways-to-help-students dept.
sinco asks: "I'm on my university's Student Government Association as the position of Vice President of Technology. Our school has currently provided wireless internet, course management software (Blackboard), personal web space for students, the ability to register classes online, and some more tech features. What type of solutions is out there that might enhance the university's technology for students? What type of cool things is your school doing tech wise for its students?"
Businesses

Redundant Credit Card Processing Solution? 86

Posted by Cliff from the backups-for-everything dept.
RokaMoka asks: "As I type this, I'm on hold with Verisign Payment Services, our (only) merchant services provider. I run several e-commerce sites, and how shall I say... 'tis the season. At the moment, VPS is totally down, and I am losing thousands of dollars per hour. Does anyone have any experience in designing and supporting e-commerce solutions with multiple vendors for CC processing? What other networks are out there, and what has been the customer experience with them? What should the strategy be, load-balance or fail-over?"
Software

Easy Way for Sharing OpenOffice.org Documents? 83

Posted by Cliff from the lite-and-simple-viewing dept.
rekrutacja asks: "I'm trying to find easy way for reading OpenOffice.org documents in places where you can't (or don't want to) install the full OOo suite. I found an on-line reader, but I would like something for offline viewing. There is a Java-based standalone program that you can download from here, but I can't seem to get it running to my liking. OOo Lite/Reader/Viewer should be easy to install (especially for Windows) and I'd like it to be small enough to fit my 16MB pen-drive. Even a Firefox/IE plugin is better than nothing. Does anyone know of such a beast?"
Graphics

Professional Photographers Using Linux? 724

Posted by Cliff from the new-developments-in-a-specific-area dept.
thesun asks: "I'm a freelance writer and photographer and I'm wondering what Pro Photographers have done in regards to color matching and scanning under Linux, especially when going from slides to digital. I just can't get anything close to a good image when I scan a slide. They're blurry and the colors are so off that doing anything with my thousands of slides is proving to be prohibitively time-consuming. Are other Pros (or talented amateurs) having similar problems? Are there solutions out there I haven't found? (Sorry, I can't dump thousands into a piece of hardware---I'm looking for a way to make the most of my Epson Perfection 2400 with transparency adapter)."
Handhelds

Fave All-in-One PDA for Worldwide Connectivity? 31

Posted by Cliff from the world-travellers-with-disdain-for-local-cell-plans dept.
dr-vjk asks: "I just bought a new *unlocked* HP iPaq h6315 PocketPC. This phone/PDA supports quad-band GSM, Bluetooth and Wifi. This is a huge improvement over my old travel kit (Sony P900, h4315 iPaq, and Apple iBook). I needed an unlocked unit as the standard h6315's are locked to the T-Mobile network which charges over a buck a minute to roam outside the U.S. I have tested it in Europe and Africa with pre-paid local SIM cards and it works great. It works out of the box with GSM networks around the world for voice and GPRS for IP Data. I loaded SJPhone in order to access my Vonage account over WiFI (Skype doesn't work on this unit yet). It was great talking as long as I wanted with friends back in the U.S. with no concern for long distance charges. They could also call my Vonage number in the U.S. and my PDA would ring in Europe."
Businesses

Getting an IT Job in Europe as an American 187

Posted by Cliff from the americans-getting-employed-overseas dept.
IvanHo asks: "I'm looking for success stories, hints, tips and tricks from any Slashdot readers with U.S. citizenship that have managed to find gainful employment in Europe. For various reasons, my wife and I would like to spend a couple years working in Europe -- preferably Southern Europe. For the last couple months, I have been applying for IT positions there with no luck. Although, my wife grew up in Rome and her family is there now, she is a U.S. citizen, so that well trodden route to a work permit is unavailable. Any advice? I'm trying to avoid incorporating and transferring myself if possible."
Data Storage

Distributing In-House Engineering Code? 49

Posted by Cliff from the internal-engineering-grapevines dept.
caswelmo asks: "My company has recently moved from Solaris workstations to Windows workstations (Ohhh, the humanity). As an engineering focused company, we use our computers to run many in-house (command line) codes to analyze and design our products. We currently use NAS storage to store everything and use batch files and init scripts to run the correct codes over the network. This makes sure everyone is running the latest version. This also stinks. I know this isn't an original problem, so what are some other solutions for rolling out lots of simple codes like this?"
Businesses

Raising Money for a Tech Venture? 50

Posted by Cliff from the entrepreneurial-necessities dept.
phosphor-boy asks: "Age old story: a friend and I have a fun, part-time technology venture that's actually generating a little cash. To take this to the next level, we need to raise few hundred thousand dollars. There's good reason to believe that it has enormous potential to make money - but since it's a new concept, it's (obviously) extremely speculative, so going to the bank won't work. We've been tentatively offered venture capital funding, but would have to take A LOT more than we need ($millions!), and give up way more control than we'd like - giving up some control is OK, but we've seen firsthand how VC money can run amok, and it's not pretty. However, a few hundred thousand is more than is do-able with friends, family, and second mortgages. So to sum up: too little for VCs, (maybe?) too much for friends and family. Have any others on Slashdot faced this situation? What works here, and what doesn't?"
Hardware

Running a Server at Freezing Temperatures? 196

Posted by Cliff from the brrrrr! dept.
mw13068 asks: "As a part of a backup solution, I'm thinking of running a backup server in my unheated, unattached garage. I live in central New York State, and the temperatures very often drop below zero degrees Celsius. The computer is a Pentium III Celeron running at 733MHz. Has anyone else tried this sort of thing? If you have, please share your experiences."
Bug

Bugzilla on Windows? 111

Posted by Cliff from the a-painful-process dept.
slipandfall asks: "I just started work at a 100% Windows shop (no chance of changing this) and would love to implement Bugzilla for issue tracking but statements like this - 'Making Bugzilla work on Windows is still a painful processes.' in the OS-Specific installation notes don't make it seem reasonable. Since there is no chance of using Linux/UNIX here, can I get people's experiences using Bugzilla on Windows or experience with a tool (open source or not) on Windows with similar notification, discussion and issue tracking features?"
Technology

Reducing RFI at Home From Lighting Fixtures? 126

Posted by Cliff from the less-noise-more-candelas dept.
amper asks: "I'm in the process of building a new home recording studio. When I originally moved into my new (very old) house, I decided that in the interests of conserving energy, I would replace most of the incandescent lighting fixtures or lamps in my home with fluorescent fixtures or compact fluorescent replacement lamps in those fixtures which could not easily be replaced. Unfortunately, these fixtures are creating a massive amount of radio frequency interference in my home. The worst culprits seem to be the dimmable fluorescent fixtures in my living room. Barring replacing all my fixtures and lamps with conventional incandescents, can anyone point me in the direction of alternatives? Is it possible that the decreasing quality of most home goods has led to a decreasing quality in fluorescent ballast systems that are much more noisy from an RFI standpoint? Some of these fluo's are so noisy, they even emit audible sound! It's gotten so bad that I can't even play an electric guitar without turning off all the non-incandescent lighting in my house, which pretty much limits me to playing and recording during daylight hours (when I'm supposed to be out making money)."
Security

PC Setup for Small House with Child? 199

Posted by Cliff from the not-enough-room-for-the-computer-room dept.
nzgeek asks: "I've been managing with a pokey Windows notebook for a couple of years now, and am desperate to get a decent PC for development and gaming. Problem is, our house is tiny and we have a 1-year-old entropy generator running amok. What's the best recommendation for getting a full-power desktop PC installed in our house? My ideal setup would be a mini-tower case hidden in a cupboard, with a remote LCD monitor, mouse, keyboard, and headphones. The keyboard and mouse can be done via bluetooth, and there is no problem with cable length for headphones. The major stumbling block is VGA connection for the monitor. Any suggestions on how to overcome this problem?"

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