ratajik asks: "In my continuing quest to generate revenue from my open source project, I've been attempting to use on-line ads. What are other Slashdot users' experiences with on-line ads? Which are the best methods (presentation, click-through, purchase, etc.), and which are the best companies that you've deal with?"

MolecularBear asks: "I grew up on Windows machines, using the ol' ctrl-c to copy and ctrl-v to paste. For the past few years I've been a hardcore Linux user, running it almost exclusively at home and at work. As I am sure you are all aware, highlighting text in Linux automatically performs a copy while the middle mouse button performs a paste. The Ctrl-c, Ctrl-v standard works in many applications, but not all. Lately I have begun to find the automatic highlight-copy to be annoying. As in, I'll highlight text to copy it, then realize I want to highlight a block of text for the purpose of deleting it. Of course, the second highlighting overwrites the first highlighting. I am curious about how other people accomplish their copy/paste needs. Any special setups, applications, or words of wisdom?"

JessLeah asks: "I've been having trouble finding decent, 3D-accelerated drivers for video cards (of late-90s/early-2000s vintage) under Linux. I'd just get a newer card, but it seems like the situation for newer cards is even worse. The market at present seems to be little more than an nVidia/ATI duopoly, and neither nVidia nor ATI have open specifications available for their chipsets. As a result, both of them presently have binary-only, x86-only, Linux-only XFree86 drivers as their sole alternative to Windows. Are there any modern chipsets (with a reasonable cost) that actually have open specifications available online -- or, at a minimum, open-source drivers that can actually compile on things other than Linux/x86" What was the last video card with open specifications that you can remember?

mrn121 asks: "Some relatives of mine are preparing their beach house for rental, and they have asked me to assist in setting up some of the on-site technology. One of my ideas was to add a computer with high-speed internet access to the house, but security issues may be overwhelming. I have administered campus computing labs in the past, so I am familiar with locking systems down, but I am curious about what level of security readers might suggest, and how to go about achieving an appropriate balance between security and usability for such an application. On one hand, I don't want renters to clutter the computer with software and useless bookmarks, but on the other hand, I don't want the system to be utterly useless. One major difference between this computer and a lab computer is that I will not have access to the machine for the entire summer, while the house is being rented."

ArghBlarg asks: "Imagine the following scenario: you're the volunteer admin for a small, non-profit site for a few local artists and musicians. You run your web site and SMTP server out of your laundry room, via cable broadband. The broadband provider doesn't mind, as you only get a few hits a day; you keep your system secure and were only rooted once, over 4 years ago (hey, it happens). Your site has never, ever (to your knowledge) relayed spam. On the whole you've been an exemplary netizen. One day, some email you send bounces because your ISP's entire netblock has been placed on the MAPS DUL. True, your server's IP isn't technically static (though it hasn't changed in 12 months); because your domain is embedded within the broadband provider's larger IP block, reverse lookups don't give your domain name, rather that of the provider (with a huge number prefixed as the hostname). Hence you're considered a rogue SMTP node and blocked by MAPS. I've emailed MAPS but they won't agree to whitelist me. I have a proper MX record for my SMTP server, under my domain name. What can I do? Is there any way to make my legitimate domain take precedence in reverse-lookups, so I don't show up as being part of a spam-friendly network?"

eric76 asks: "It finally happened. DSL has come to the town where I work in Texas. While most would see that as a plus, the problem is that I work for a small ISP offering dialup and fixed wireless. The $26.95 / month DSL could drive us out of business. So I'm looking at what it takes to become a CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier). That is, we'd become a local telephone company purchasing telephone service, particularly DSL, at wholesale from the ILEC (SBC) and reselling it at retail prices. Has anyone else gone through this? What did it cost? How long did it take? Is there a minimum size to make it worthwhile?"

Pepebuho asks: "Given that LOTR 3 is out, how many of you have staged Home LOTR Marathons? How long did they take? Was it fun or did everybody fell asleep by the middle of the Return of the King?"

Silicon Mike asks: "A nice sized group of us here at work recently picked up City of Heroes, and started playing together. While all of us were gamers to some extent, now we're all pretty addicted and want to play together online all the time. The problem some of us are running into is that our significant others aren't too happy with us gaming all the time. Other then the two obvious solutions (quit playing or dump the significant other) I'm wondering how other people have deal with it? I tried installing Zoo Tycoon on my other computer and saying 'Look honey, cute bears' but she just didn't bite."

An anonymous reader asks: "I am a geek that bicycles in an urban center. After seeing this commercial product, I was interested in the possibility of building a homebrew HUD for a bicycle helmet. I searched the usual places and couldn't find much so I thought I'd ask the readers of Slashdot. A HUD that displays speed, distance, and cadence seems very feasible as many bike computers collect that data. A great longshot would be a range-finder that told you the distance to the object you were turned toward, but I'm not crossing my fingers for that. So what components would be needed to make such a cool device?"

Maidjeurtam asks: "I'm a multi-OS user. Although Linux is what I use the most these days (I run it on my primary P4 box and on my iBook), I also run Mac OS X and a Windows XP on other machines. Of course, those boxes are networked, but sometimes, I just prefer to plug one machine's hard disk into another. I often work with big DV files (> 4GiB) and it looks like I have no other choice than having a different filesystem on each of my boxes. Granted, Linux can read NTFS (Macs can too) and even write to NTFS partitions thanks to tools like Captive, but I don't like the idea of running Windows code on my Linux box. In fact, I don't want my data stored on a proprietary, closed filesystem. I've googled a bit and it seems there's no modern (free-as-in-speech) filesystem I can install on Windows. I'd love to have ReiserFS running on my XP box, for example. Am I condemned to stay with NTFS, or do you guys know of a Windows-compatible, open filesystem that I can use?"

Anon! A Mouse Cowered! asks: "I work in a 10 x 10 ft. cubicle that's about as low-end as it can be (my back wall is made of my filing cabinets). I have a cheap set of speakers on my desktop for internet radio, but if I play anything other than light jazz or classical at anything above a squeak, it's annoying to my coworkers. Are there any other Dilberts (or Wallys, even), who can offer ideas on making a workspace more livable so that I can enjoy my Primus albums at an audible volume while working?"

Jailbrekr asks: "I am the I/T manager for a large horticultural firm, and will soon be a victim of aggressive downsizing. The downsizing is so aggressive that my position, the only I/T related position, will be eliminated. Being the lone gun has meant that I have held a significant amount of power within this organization, and until now, have refrained from abusing it. Seeing as I will soon be out of work, I have begun my (tongue in cheek) 'reign of terror'. To start, this week is 'Gummi Bear Week', where everyones wallpapers now have a (worksafe) gummi bear theme.What I need are suggestions. What can I possibly do that is work safe, humorous, and not something which will get me fired prematurely? During the dot bust, when downsizing was all the rage, what did the tech geeks do to abuse their power, and keep the workforce entertained during those especially stressful periods?"

makeitreal writes "My mom is getting bored with learning the basics of email and has mastered Solitaire. She asked me what I do on my computer and I told her that I was teaching myself programming in Scheme. She expressed an interest in learning what I was doing, but I tried to teach it to her with the HtDP and we didn't even get past the introductory chapter. Everything I've looked at so far seems too complicated (Scheme, Python, VB) or too childish (Logo, Squeak, Lego Mindstorms). Is there anything in the middle that is also cheap/free and suitable for adults? Or should I give up the whole idea?"

CGP314 writes "I live in London and whenever I travel around, I feel like a huge target for muggers. Usually I take my laptop, iPod, cell phone and occasionally a PDA around with me. As with many geeks, these items hold within them far more value to me than anything I leave behind in my apartment. So I would like to know what my fellow urban geeks do to try and keep their valuables safe while traveling with them. I've switched my iPod headphones from the distinctive white to a boring black as a means of camouflage; are there any other suggestions?"

Search and Seizure asks: "This week, the local police contacted one of my co-workers and informed him that they had been contacted by the FBI who requested that they investigate his apartment. According to the police, while his apartment repair staff were checking his smoke alarm, they had noticed suspicious looking items in his kitchen and had called the FBI because they suspected that he might be a terrorist. What do you do when your landlord suspects that you might be a terrorist and reports you to the FBI?" If the law comes a-knocking, always remember that you can politely ask for a warrant.

Chilltowner asks: "I'm trying to get local (US) maps together for a community project. I want to able to modify and annotate the maps and provide them free to the public, creating a derivative open work. They also need to be accurate down to the street level and no more than 10 years out of date. I've been searching around for maps available in the public domain or under open licenses, like the Creative Commons licenses allowing derivative works. I've looked at the National Atlas, but the maps, though interesting, aren't detailed enough with street information. The topographical and aerial image maps available through that site are from Terraserver, which are copyrighted to Microsoft. Plus, I really just need simple vector road maps, not USGS rasters. I tried looking at the Census Bureau's TIGER line data, but I can't make heads or tails of it. Are there maps available through other agencies (national or international)? Are there Free/Open-Source Software projects that are making use of public data to build street-level maps for free (as in speech) use?"

Aaron asks: "I write the crossword for the student newspaper at my university (McGill, in Montreal). For the last issue of the year I like to go all-out and do something special. Usually I just make a super-big one, but I had a brainstorm - a crossword is essentially a 2-dimensional matrix where set intersections are judged as valid if they test positive as real words out of a dictionary. Of course, the decision to limit the matrix to 2 dimensions is just pragmatic so if you wanted you could make crosswords of 3 or more dimensions (though a 4-dimension crossword might have to be done in pencil first). Any ideas on how to actually do this?" This would be interesting on a computer, but would be fairly hard to do in print. If you were of a mind to make a 3D crossword puzzle on paper, how would you do it?

stumbler asks: "I just had a lengthy conversation with my boss and co-workers about the value of giving skill set tests (programming ability) and aptitude tests (like reasoning or logical ability) to technical employees before they are hired. (We currently have no such tests.) For those that work in companies that require pre-employment tests, have you seen an impact in the quality of technical employees hired?"

nate1138 asks: "My wife and I recently relocated so that I could take a promising position with a better company. Her job, being the fairly progressive folks that they are, graciously agreed to let her telecommute. Most of the services she needs we already have set up, such as the VPN, and VNC for remote control, etc. Now we only have one thing left to do. Get a phone line. Her office is a long distance call from our new location, and she needs to be able to call customers throughout the southeast as well. Since we need a number with a different area code from our home, it looks like voice over IP is the only solution. I want to know what you folks think about the various VOIP providers, like Packet8, Vonage, and Broadvoice. Or any other that I haven't thought of. Or another way to solve the same problem without shelling out a boatload o' cash. Features are the last priority, while reliability is tops."

lsmft2001 asks: "We're busy implementing a big ERP project with PeopleSoft. We currently run a mixture of Windows 95, 98 and 2000. These machines run most of the time, but all too often they fail for various reasons. Our IT department spends too much time fixing these machines, basically patching them enough so staff can get back to work. It's frustrating for them and for the users. PeopleSoft only requires a browser to run. Has anyone implemented PeopleSoft without Windows machines? What I would really like to see is some kind of plug and play solution. If a PC fails, the maintenance folks replace the whole machine or the hard drive and everyone is back to work. I would like to see this solution for the 'power users' as well, where they could log on to any machine and have all their files and applications available to them. Everything here runs Novell Netware. Has anyone implemented PeopleSoft with minimal client software? Could it be done with Novell and SuSe?"