Data Storage

Portable Storage? 479

Posted by Cliff from the movable-data dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "I need a portable storage solution, as I strongly desire to keep my personal stuff separate from my work stuff. In the past I have used some types of portable external hard drive (via USB connection), but I wasn't too pleased with the quality of the barebones models I found at Fry's. With so many new types of portable storage out (USB keys, 2.5" drives, full drives with enclosures, etc) I would appreciate some feedback from others using this type of device regarding what their favorite brand or model is. Remember: bigger storage is better, as is smaller size."
Communications

Broadband-over-Powerline Experiences? 56

Posted by Cliff from the better-broadband-than-no-band dept.
tarp asks: "I'm moving to the City of Manassas, Virginia, where ZPlug offers BPL (Broadband over Power Lines). The city was the first in the nation to offer BPL as an alternative to DSL or Cable. They claim a 300 to 500 kilobit per second connection speed, and rock-solid performance since the only downtime would be when the power grid goes down. BPL is also rolling out in other locations, despite campaigns by amateur radio enthusiasts to stop it due to interference. Anyway, have any of you used BPL, and is it something I should try rather than getting a DSL or Cable connection?"
Utilities (Apple)

Accurate ANSI Emulation in Mac OS X? 105

Posted by pudge from the all-terminals-suck dept.
bedouin writes "I occasionally telnet to some BBSs that are very rich in ANSI graphics. While I can usually navigate fine through message areas and file boards, playing classic door games like Food Fight is almost unbearable. For about a year I've been searching for a Mac OS X terminal emulator that can accurately draw ANSI graphics just as they would appear on DOS systems with ansi.sys, but haven't found anything yet. Any suggestions? A native (and free or shareware) Mac OS X app would be prefered, but I'm willing to use an X11 or maybe even classic alternative as well. So far I've experimented with iTerm, GLterm, and aterm with unimpressive results."
Data Storage

Information Preservation and Data Havens? 413

Posted by Cliff from the diving-in-the-denver-deep dept.
tiltowait asks: "An interesting story on LISNews.com this morning about savvy U.S. students photocopying textbooks in Mexico then returning them for refunds got me thinking about data havens. There's already few places on the web where you can exploit countries having different copyright durations and eligibility. On the flip side, there's restrictions such as broadcast blackouts and country-wide firewalls. But just as the rich can use of international tax loopholes and in light of the recent file-sharing victory, are there any projects out there, beyond the P2P networks, to distribute possibly-protected information by any means necessary? For example, your company may already outsource labor, but what about an off-site backup in case of an FBI raid?"
Programming

USB Development Tools for Embedded Devices? 31

Posted by Cliff
engywook asks: "I am thinking about putting a USB interface onto a real-time (home-brew kernel) embedded device, (naturally) with the intent that it talk to another device. I am thinking that it would be very useful to be able to monitor the USB traffic between my device and the other device, and between that other device and (say) a PC that already knows how to talk to it. Looking around, it seems that this capability is available, but at prices in the US$10K and up realm, which is a lot more than I can afford. I am looking for pointers to tools that would accomplish this for much less money. Any ideas would be appreciated! Thanks!"
Windows

Unix TCP Equivalent Settings in Windows 2000? 65

Posted by Cliff from the RWIN-SWIN-and-MTU dept.
sameerdesai asks: "While working on a project that required client-server functionality I was running into processes that wouldn't finish and eventually hang. While running packet tracing, I found out the tcp_fin_wait_2_timeout setting on the server side (UNIX) was too low for the Windows client, and after increasing that value it worked great. I am trying to apply a similar technique for a Windows server and was wondering what the equivalent registry key is for UNIX's tcp_fin_wait_2_timeout setting? Also, is there a guide out there that compares TCP setting in UNIX with Windows?"
Hardware Hacking

Simulating Network Latency? 76

Posted by Cliff from the network-testbed-technology dept.
ixmo asks: "I've just come around an interesting problem: to simulate low-bandwidth network links without buying expensive WAN simulators, I can connect two old Cisco routers back to back with serial cables, and control the bandwidth via the 'clock rate' IOS command, but how can I simulate network latency? Is there some OS tool or patch (for Linux/OpenBSD) that allows for tuning of network delay? Any hints?"
Portables

Note Taking Devices for Students? 144

Posted by Cliff from the save-the-trees dept.
Gavin Scott asks: "I'm looking for solutions for a college student who needs an inexpensive mechanism for note taking in class. She suffers from a condition that makes writing notes out by hand slow and painful. One of the small sexy sub-notebook computers would be ideal, but at $1,500-$2,500 these are completely out of reach budget-wise. She has a perfectly good desktop system at home, so something that simply allowed typing in notes that could then be transferred to the PC would be ideal. I've considered things like a Palm-type device with an external keyboard, but I'm interested in knowing what other options people might suggest. Or any opinions on what kind of lightweight almost-laptop devices are good in, say, the sub-$500 range?"
Hardware

Hardware That Literally Doesn't Stink? 683

Posted by simoniker from the jacksonesque dept.
gtaylor writes "You know that new computer smell? Some people (like me) get sick from it. Can Slashdot readers provide good suggestions for mice or keyboards made from ceramic, unlacquered hardwood, metal, etc, non-plastic headphones and microphones, screens like the new metal-framed cinema display from Apple, etc? (Wood is not necessarily right if it's glued or varnished.) I have a Sharp Plasmacluster air purifier that is very helpful but the fewer volatile organic chemicals released in the first place, the better. I'll also need a chair (leaning to the Herman Miller Mirra chair) and an adjustable metal/hardwood desk. High-density hard synthetics like polypropylene (a popular material at Ikea) or acrylic are also inert enough to be fine if they have no plasticizers - suggestions for a full office set-up welcome."
Software

Sampling Short Sequences From Long MP3 Recordings? 278

Posted by simoniker from the bathroom-breaks-also-recorded dept.
mehl writes "I am a professor for social psychology at the University of Arizona and I am looking for help with finding / developing a special program. In my research, I ask participants to carry around a digital voice recorder while they go about their normal lives. The voice recorder then tracks the ambient sounds in their environments and produces an 'acoustic log' of a person's day. We then use these ambient sound recordings as source data for various person perception studies. For privacy reasons, we are required to sample brief snippets of ambient sounds instead of recording an entire day continuously ('Big Brother is listening to you...'). So far, we have achieved this by modifying the hardware of a digital voice recorder (triggering it with an external microchip). With the high turn-over in player models, however, this strategy has turned out to be short-sighted (every half a year we have to build a new chip). I am thinking about switching strategy, recording continuously in the first place (no problem with the current generation of flash memory) and then sampling (random) snippets after the fact from the continous recordings. Does anybody know of an existing program that can randomly (or pseudo-randomly; e.g., 30 sec every 10 min) and automatically sample short sequences from a day-long (18 hours) mp3 recording? What would it entail to develop such a program (for Windows)?."
Movies

What's the Worst Movie You've Ever Seen? 1675

Posted by Cliff from the trash-of-the-box-office dept.
prostoalex asks: "A recent Ask Yahoo! article talks about the worst movies ever made and points out this IMDB list of the bottom rankings. The Ask Yahoo! article names Manos The Hands of Fate the worst one, but apparently the IMDB table changed since then to include The Wild World of Batwoman at the top of the list. What would you consider the worst movie ever made? Perhaps anything listed here would also make the list?"
Programming

Communication Within Programming Teams? 93

Posted by Cliff from the factors-that-determines-code-quality dept.
aldheorte asks: "If you are a developer you have probably, over your time on various development projects, seen lots of projects with really awful code and some projects with really good code. You may also have observed that sometimes the projects with really awful code have a few excellent developers involved, while projects with only intermediate or mediocre developers are able to maintain a pretty good quality of code overall. The lucky few may have even seen that legendary situation of great developers and great code. I have always been mystified by this apparent discrepancy and I think a recent article on CSS development in a team environment may hit the nail on the head: 'The quality of code generated by a team rarely owes as much to the skill of the individual members as it does to the level of communication between them.' I am interested in the experience of others here on Slashdot. Have you observed this discrepancy between individual talent and a project's quality of code as well? How much of the success or failure of communication is based on the members of the team themselves as opposed to the management of the team, especially with respect to allowed time and deadlines?"
Programming

SP2 Community for Windows Developers? 38

Posted by Cliff from the strenght-in-numbers dept.
kwelch007 asks: "As a Windows developer, I've been dreading the release of SP2, and the potential problems it could cause for my apps. So far, I've only run across one Win32 API function that doesn't work anymore. But, I haven't found any sites for developers detailing issues that others have discovered! Are there any sites/forums that developers can consult when attempting to determine why their code doesn't work with SP2, or even a BugZilla or similar to report such problems?"
Security

Dealing with Intruders? 656

Posted by Cliff from the outside-assistance-for-security-issues dept.
drakyri asks: "I've been running a server for a small company for a few months. Recently, the number of attempted intrusions has jumped from about one every week to several per day - and these are only the really obvious attempts, like idiots who try to log in as root from the outside. The problem is that I'm not sure what to do about this. I've got their IP addresses and can usually tracert their ISP's - is there an accepted type of letter to send them without seeming like one of the corporate cease-and-desist gnomes?"
Communications

Formats for Electronic Forms? 38

Posted by Cliff from the fill-in-the-blanks dept.
Bifurcati asks: "I'm a grad student at the University of Queensland, Australia. I am frequently required to submit forms (e.g., annual reports) which are sent as Word or RTF documents and must be filled in electronically. However, these are almost impossible to use under Linux (e.g., StarOffice) because the tables and formatting are just too complicated and get mangled. Even Word for Mac sometimes has problems. Can anyone suggest a better, cross-platform format? Could PDF files with forms do this? What are the costs & learning curve? User friendliness is vital for both admin and student. Alternatively, can anyone suggest ways they could make their Word files more compatible across platforms?"
Windows

Deleting Old Windows Update Uninstall Files? 61

Posted by Cliff from the reclaiming-much-needed-hard-disk-space dept.
Frozen-Solid asks: "With the release of Windows XP SP2, I got to thinking about how all of these windows updates leave their uninstall information 'just in case' you need to uninstall them for some random reason. However, after you've had them up and running for a few weeks/months/years and no longer need that backup information, is it safe to just delete those ugly hidden directories from the Windows directory or is there a 'safer' way to free up that wasted space? My current update backup collection is totaling over half a gig which could easily be better spent elsewhere."
Operating Systems

Cygwin in a Production Environment? 111

Posted by Cliff from the is-it-ready-for-prime-time dept.
not-so-anonymous Anonymous Coward asks: "I'm working for a company that does all of its programming and script development in a Unix environment (90% of our work is either Bash or Perl scripts that communicate with an Oracle database). We've recently gotten a new customer and for reasons beyond our control, the server must be a Windows box. Since we want to reuse our existing scripts that we've spent a considerable amount of time developing, we're looking into Cygwin as an option. Has anyone run Cygwin in a production server environment for any extended period of time? If so, what were your experiences with it?"
Software

Free Software for Cybercafe Management? 30

Posted by Cliff from the serving-up-coffee-chips-dips-and-html dept.
SantiagoRoza asks: "Hello, Slashdot. I am asking for your collaboration because someone I know needs a software to manage his (small) Internet cafe. Ideally, we're looking for software that is free/libre and multilingual (with a Spanish version), but I'd gladly take free/gratis and English-only. Additionally, the software has to work on Windows. After searching the 'net, I've only been able to find CafeTimer, which doesn't impress me. Nothing else out there looks like it will support more than 2-3 computers. Might you all have other suggestions?"
Data Storage

What is the Ideal Low-end NAS Solution? 45

Posted by Cliff from the what's-on-YOUR-network dept.
Mark asks: "As demand for storage continues to grow and prices continue to drop, network attached storage (NAS) devices are popping up everywhere...from large enterprises to restaurants to small offices and homes. Several vendors are now offering low-end NAS solutions targeted at SOHO users, with varying results. Most of them are just standard PC components and standard IDE hard drives running Linux, but the price tag on these often far oustrips what one would expect to pay for the parts. Hence, people all over the world (myself included) are building their own NAS machines at home at a fraction of the cost. Beyond support for RAID, CIFS, NFS, HTTP, and FTP, what would the ideal home NAS operating system include? And more importantly, what should it leave out to avoid conflicts, security vulnerabilities, and instability? Are there any Linux/*BSD/other distributions out there optimized specifically for NAS applications? What does the ideal NAS distribution look like to you?"

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