cmstar asks: "It's been several years since my High School Spanish courses and I'm finding myself quite a bit rusty. Add to that a new found desire to learn Japanese, and I find myself on a quest to find a good cheap set of language learning/teaching software. There are plenty of commercial packages available, but I'm poor. A quick check of Google and Sourceforge didn't produce any immediate results. I know speaking with a native is usually the best way to go about this, but with little time or money, and something portable that I could use at home and work, in my spare time, would be handy to freshen up on my skills and learn something new. Any suggestions?"

Saqib Ali asks: "These days, it seems almost any application can be served on a Citrix Farm . However, not all application are best fit for a Citrix environment, and I am sure most IT admins are faced with the tough decision of whether to host an application on Citrix or not. What questions should an IT administrator ask before deciding whether to serve an application over Citrix or just plainly install the application on each desktop? I am NOT looking for the benefits of using Citrix, as I'm very well aware of them. What I want to know is, what criteria should be used in determining whether to use Citrix for an application or not. I just don't want to use technology for the sake of using technology. There should be a methodical way (like a checklist or questionnaire) for determining the feasibility (NOT PROs and CONs) of serving an (any) application on Citrix. Here is a Checklist/Questionnaire that I have come up with. Any more suggestions to add to the checklist?"

AciDive asks: "I am currently working on developing a game and I want to use OpenAL for the sound. I have downloaded the SDK and currently have it working with Dev-C++. The reference documentation that comes with the SDK is good but it leaves something to be desired. What I would like to know is has anyone here on Slashdot ever done any sound programming with OpenAL and if so what resources did you use to get yourself started?"

Ace905 asks: "Document and Information Management are huge money-making courses for Colleges and Universities. A lot of web sites are dedicated to the concept of 'Records Management' - but they seem to receive relatively little traffic. Wordtracker's results for the term 'records Management' seem to show people search mostly for public records - looking to find information on themselves and celebrities. Two of the only Usenet newsgroups to discuss records management (comp.doc.management and misc.business.records-mgmt) are either incredibly under-read or filled almost entirely by spammers. How can this industry have so many resources dedicated to it, and yet be virtually ignored by almost every professional out there? What are your experiences in the field of records and information management? What are your views on this industry?"

Chris Vaughan asks: "Me and my Co-Workers at the Advanced Computing Research Lab are just about ready to release our first Open Source package on SourceForge.net I ask the Slashdot community what hurdles they had to overcome and how much involvement do they still have in their project years later. Also what types of licensing did you pick and why did it suit your project best? Our project, MyPBS is a PHP/MySQL/Perl frontend accounting package for the Portable Batch System (PBS). Which is used to account for super computing usage. I appreciate any comments you may have."

BrynM asks: "I have a good portion of my deceased father's artwork scanned and up on a personal website (294 images with everything from sketches to finished work). I have been adding more in batches and should end up with around 1,000 images when done. My sister and I have released the art under the Free Media License, which is much like a GPL for art. We have also set a date on paper that the art falls into the public domain regardless of what laws may change in between (avoiding the eternal copyright stuff). My hope is that people will utilize the art, since the only gain I desire is to share the pride in the work my father did. Where can I announce that the site is open to the graphics and stock art geeks out there? Since the server can't take a full slashdotting (DSL), that's out. Are there any sites that specialize in public domain or commons type art sites without having to submit every piece to an unknown body?"

Best ID Ever! asks: "Poker, a fascinating intersection of math, game theory, and observation of human behavior, is currently exploding in popularity due to televised high-stakes tournaments such as the World Poker Tour and Binion's 2003 World Series of Poker. Many of today's top professional players have nerdly roots such as Mathematicians, chess prodigies, or backgammon champions. A few pros, including 2000 champion Chris Ferguson, even used to play poker in the IRC poker community. This year's World Series final event, which began Saturday and lasts through the week, drew 2600 participants, more than three times the number of participants in 2003. How many Slashdot readers play poker, and what do you think of Poker's upswing?"

MrClever asks: "After a disaster involving my cat, a pot of coffee and my workstation, I am now in the market for a new machine. I thought I'd jump on the AMD64 wagon and keep running Linux. After some initial investigation, it became clear that ATi, Promise and other manufacturers don't have 64bit drivers for Linux, which rules out most motherboards with onboard P/SATA RAID, thus limiting my available choices. I know you can run 32bit on AMD64, but if I wanted that I'd get an AthlonXP. So, what AMD64 hardware is the best supported in 64bit mode under Linux? Seems NVidia have 64bit drivers, does anyone else?"

podo asks: "I've spent the past two months of my life working almost full time on a PHP/MySQL based web site for a client. Today I received an e-mail from the client point me to a similar web site set up by a competitor. 'Doing exactly what we are doing.' The site in question is not doing what we are doing, they have no dynamic content, no web forms, just e-mail addresses. They scarcely have any content (I counted only four HTML pages) at all. The client is chastising me for taking a long time and because the other site is 'much more impressive visually' than ours. Has anyone else found themselves in a situation where their painstaking work is compared to work which is a showcase for mediocrity? How have you dealt with such clients who fail to see the difference between a shoddy rush job and real quality?"

christian_thoma asks: "My company is currently in the preparation phase for building a huge new manufacturing facility. While reviewing the site plan, I've discovered that there is both a cell phone tower and high voltage lines within 100-150 meters of where the server room is going to be placed. Do I need to be concerned? Are there any special considerations when designing my server room that I need to be aware of? Has anyone else had to deal with a similar situation?"

An anonymous reader writes "Looking at the beer gut that's developed over the winter, and the excercise schedule that I haven't kept for more than two days at a time, I realize that I need a new plan. A gym isn't the answer; I can't keep a schedule for working out in my apartment, there's no way I could make it to the gym on any regular basis. I've had multiple people in the last few weeks tell me stories involving weight loss through Dance Dance Revolution, and it sounds like a great idea to me! working out is hard, playing video games is easy, and dancing is fun. But a Google search turned up way too much info, and way too little of it was useful unless I want to spend the next four weeks researching this. Does the Slashdot community have any ideas, suggestions, or personal experience that they cared to relate on any of these topics?"

bwy asks: "I'm building a digital picture frame, inspired by a story here at Slashdot. Currently, I'm using Red Hat 9 with GDM autologin, icewm, and a slideshow program autostarting. I've installed code to hide the mouse pointer and the 'powerswitch' kernel module to allow the frame to run a proper shutdown (instead of a suspend) when the ATX power switch is pressed. The hardware is an EPIA 5000 with a laptop drive. I think this is overkill, however, and I am a purist. Is there a lightweight distribution that is EPIA friendly? Such a distro shouldn't install GCC, so I'll need all the software as binaries. How would I go about booting from a ramdisk? This would make the 'powerwitch' kernel mod not so important since there is no worry of corrupting the file system." Does anyone have distribution suggestions, or pointers to other information that might be helpful for such a project?

polyp2000 asks: "I am working on a project that requires me to generate 3D terrain maps from bitmapped contour files. I need to then be able to apply a texture over the top of the terrain. I've been looking for a utility that will enable me to convert from bitmap to 3D landscape projection that can be imported into Blender (either VRML or DXF). After googling around I haven't really come up with anything useful. Might seasoned Slashdot readers know of a solution?"

ubiquitin asks: "This week at the CDC's PHIN conference there is a lot of buzz about the possibilities of building out an infrastructure for the public health information network with both closed and open source technologies, especially since the work needs to be solidly secure and is typically done under tight budgets. A handful of states are currently involved and more are getting on board, so it may well be a genuine growth opportunity for Linux/Apache/MySQL-based systems. What would really be helpful are stories about how Open Source systems have been put to use in public health departments, labs, or clinics. Does Slashdot have any such anecdotes to share?"

saberint asks: "Recently, I had a good argument with Intel as I had a 3.2G P4 chip die on me within 6 months. I sent the CPU back to Intel only to be told that they will NOT honour the warranty because I did not send the fan back with it. Apparently the fan and the CPU's serial must match or else there is no warranty. This 'policy' is not listed on the warranty card or on their website. So for all you network admin or IT support people out there, keep the fan and the CPU together. Has anyone else experienced this with Intel?"

ageoffri asks: "My 5 year old Pioneer DVD player is starting to act up so I need to replace it soon. A friend of mine mentioned he got a Go Video DVD player. This got me wondering how many more networked DVD players there were and some searches found a few, but almost no reviews on any of them. I'm wondering if any Slashdot readers have used a networked DVD player and if so how well it worked? Is the picture quality the same for playing a DVD in the player or from a PC? I'm only looking for one that either comes with or can accept a wireless connection."

shadfc asks: "I'm starting a new job as the system administrator for a small company in Tampa. They currently have 10 Red Hat servers (they are open to distribution change) that have not been actively maintained for a few months. I'm a Junior in College with a decent amount of Linux experience, but this will be my first job in this kind of position and responsibility. I'm asking for resources that can help fill in the holes in my knowledge and help make me a better administrator. Quality books on the subject would be preferred, but any advice is welcome. Thanks!"

notthere asks: "In Florida, Cox High Speed Internet (the home service) has been having problems with out-of-network emails for almost a week, since that is the date on the latest piece of email in my Inbox. I contacted Cox tech support this morning. The first responder read a statement to the effect that 'there were some problems, and they do not know when the problems will be fixed.' When I complained and demanded some clear explanation of what the problem was and when the service would resume, she said 'Cox HSI is an entertainment service, so we do not guarantee service. If you want to talk to our people in the business division, I'll be glad to give you their phone number.' I then asked to talk to a manager, who was certainly nicer (he apologized), but offered no answer or projection as to what the problem is and when it will be fixed. Interestingly, the Cox support web page reports no outages." If you use Cox's Internet service, have you recently had trouble connecting to your mail servers?

reallocate asks: "When you quit an ISP, do you expect that your personal info and your email accounts will be purged? So did I, but I was wrong. Do you know what your ISP does with your data if you quit them?" At first glance, this would seem to be a reasonable expectation, but these days, businesses are holding your data longer than you'd expect. If someone doesn't know for sure if an old business is holding their personal data, is there any way they can find out?

silicon not in the v writes "Last night I was over at some friends' house. They had cable modem with no firewall and tons of spyware, etc. on their system. They complained about all the popups and how bad it was that they were afraid to let their kids on the computer, so I set them up with ZoneAlarm, Ad Aware, and Firefox to get it cleaned up. In return, the husband, who is a chiropractor, gave my wife and I a free adjustment. What other interesting services or benefits have people been able to get by bartering IT/programming services?"