drewhearle writes "I'm sure lots of Slashdot readers act as technical support to friends and family. I do a lot of this myself and have collected all sorts of miscellaneous computer hardware over the years, such as cases, power supplies, older memory, hard drives, cables and the like. If you're like me, you have to dig through everything and look in various closets, drawers and boxes whenever you need something. What do you use for keeping track of your inventory? Is there a full-featured open-source or freeware package out there that actually works?" Read more for what he's looking for -- sounds like a useful niche.

ear1grey writes "With summer fast approaching in the northern hemisphere, do any readers have experience of taking their 'working from home' one stage further and 'working from the garden'? Any tips for making the screen more visible in the bright sunshine? Any problems with direct sunlight and overheating components? Are there other issues that we should be aware of before we venture, blinking, into the great outdoors?"

An anonymous reader writes "I've just been asked to digitize several dozen sets of lecture outlines at the university where I work. Basically, professors want to hand me a big (often 100+ page) stack of their handwritten lecture notes (with messy text, equations, and diagrams; sometimes double-sided) and expect me to post a PDF-or-something-similar to their course's web page. However, every desktop scanner I've ever used takes 1-2 minutes of user-attention per page and the resulting files end up Huge, impossible-to-read, or both. All I have at my disposal is my PowerBook, Acrobat, a couple hundred dollars of department funds for a new scanner (this maybe?), and, if I ask nicely, overnight use of the secretary's Win2k box. Any ideas? Sheet-fed scanner recommendations? Better file formats than PDF (or better PDF settings)? Do any of you students have usability advice?"

Meeper writes "I've been commissioned to build a Home Theater Computer system, but there is a distinct lack of keyboards that are suitable. The keyboard needs to be equipped with Bluetooth connectivity, compact, and include a built-in mouse or touchpad. The keyboard will be used on couches, so a solution such as the Logitech diNovo Media Desktop is unsuitable due to the normal freestanding mouse. Have any Slashdot readers used a keyboard which fufills my requirements?" Or, on the other hand, what best-compromise solutions have you come up with for melding ease of use with sufficient control?

GhostCypher asks: "I've been a Mac user for nigh on 12 years, and recently made the reverse-switch (yes, Mac to PC) due to an unfortunate accident to my PowerBook. Now that I have this spiffy new HP laptop, I want to run Linux or Unix of some flavor on it, but I don't know the best one to run. I've been considering FreeBSD and OpenBSD, as well as SuSE Linux, Fedora, and Mandrake. Could the wisened Linux gurus here offer some insight as to the best package for a former Mac user to introduce him to the greater world of Linux without major headaches in setting it all up?"

Jagercola asks: "My sister was recently diagnosed with Schizophrenia. It's a chronic, severe, and disabling brain disease that we don't know a lot about. The movie, A Beautiful Mind, paints an accurate picture of how the disease affects someone in a best case scenario. I would like the vast audience here to help me understand the disease through experiences and that it might help me aid my sister. If you know someone how has the disease, how has it affected your and their life? How have you been able to cope with it? What are the long term implications for quality of life?"

H0NGK0NGPH00EY asks: "I hate cars. -- Why in the heck am I lugging a giant steel box with me everywhere I go, and paying through the nose to make it go? Well, the main reason is because there aren't any affordable, viable alternatives. Are there?"

dacarr asks: "An associate on a mailing list I am on recalled an article (which he, in turn, does not recall), in which the author managed to reduce his spam some 80% by, of all things, using the provided 'unsubscribe' mechanism in the messages. This is totally counterintuitive to what most of us have learned (doing so was a spectacularly good way to actually *confirm* your address) - but perhaps this isn't the case anymore, based on this. Has anyone else had any luck as far as this goes? By following the aforementioned unsub links, said associate found a number of broken links and dead addresses (and one link that tried to create an attachment and email it out (which he stopped)), but after three days and 400 unsub links, he trimmed his spam levels 'from an average of 250 a day to just 40 today' - that's just around 17% of what he was getting. Maybe spammers are getting their act together and listening for a change." Do any of you have any anecdotal evidence to provide to confirm or contradict this? Have you been able to lower your spam volume by "unsubscribing"?

Chibi Merrow asks: "Matt Hartley in his latest GnomeReport speaks of supposed browser hijacker programs that are now targeting Mozilla FireFox instead of IE. While this is in a way cool (since that means the browser's now considered mainstream), it's also hard to believe. It doesn't help that his article is very light on details. Now there have been some discussion about spyware masquerading as valid extensions; but they require user intervention to install. Most people think of a browser hijack as something that automatically installs itself. Has anyone ever encountered an actual self installing browser hijacker/spyware program that has targeted Mozilla Firefox, or is this a bunch of FUD?"

ZeLonewolf asks: "I'm a consultant to a customer who owns two franchises of a fitness gym. The computers they use to keep track of members and inventory run DOS programs written in the early 90's by a company that has long since gone out of business. My customer needs an upgrade badly. Replacement software to keep track of members and handle check-in and membership expirations, as well as inventory and point-of-sale data, costs $5,000 and up, so a free software solution is desirable. Does GnuCash do the job? Have Slashdot readers successfully set a small business up with Free/Open Software? What software have you had success with?"

harlows_monkeys asks: "I just received a spam, at both home and work, both sent through trojaned Windows machines, offering to sell me a credit card database stolen from camcontacts.net. Included was a link to a sample of the database (no, I'm not providing a link!). I downloaded the sample, and it appears legit. There are 13000 numbers. I picked one of the Visa numbers, went to Visa's web site, and entered it in a form to sign up for fraud protection, and it accepted it, and identified the issuing bank. It was accepted. All indications are that this stuff is real. So, the question arises--what is the correct way to deal with this?

An anonymous reader asks: "I'm in college working on an electrical engineering degree, and I've had a few labs so far involving microcontroller setups. I'd now like to start doing some microcontroller projects of my own devising, so I'll need a programmer, the development software, and the MCUs themselves. The problem is that I don't have a wide experience with the different companies selling this sort of equipment. I know about the BASIC Stamps and the PIC offerings, but what other architectures are there? Both of the MCUs I've named have development tools, but they're for Windows. Are there any companies out there that supply their tools for BSD/Linux? What open source projects are there working on this (I've found gputiles). As always, free (as in beer) is good for us college students. :-)"

Disgruntled-with-Tech-Support asks: "Let's face it: At some point or another, we've had to deal with some form of tech support. Quite often, it's a hit-or-miss experience depending on the level of support required. Occasionally, strange, bizarre, or nonsensical explanations result from the problems reported, such as this one: I had just had DSL installed, only to find it much slower than the 56K line I was looking to get rid of. On calling the provider, I was told (by someone who likely reading off cue cards) to visit one of their internal websites for measuring bandwidth. While there, I observed that they had both bytes per second and bits per second listed, and that the number of bytes/sec != bits/sec * 8, rather a factor around 13 or 14. I pointed this out as a possible problem, and the guy's reasoning: 'Uh, it looks like the bytes are getting through to you ok, but the bits are getting stuck someplace.' What was your worst explanation from tech support?"

greywar asks: "Currently I deal with a OEM [name withheld since this is not a trashing, but rather a request for advice] that has literally wasted over $1000 of my company's time just to arrange a repair on a $5 fan on a computer in Malaysia. I mistakenly used this OEM based on a PAST history of good support. What OEM is providing the best international computer warranty repair service these days?"

Rimbo asks: "I work for a small company developing wireless mesh networks to (among other things) give broadband access to large areas where a single access point can't cover the whole place. Since we're small, we made the mesh networking application for Windows, intending to support other platforms later. To our surprise, our first beta site complained: 'Most of our residents use Apples.' Has anyone else experienced anything similar? Is Windows losing its dominance to the point where small shops must consider multiple OS support to get business, either through Java, 'web services,' or cross-platform toolkits like Qt?" With the number of IE vulnerabilities, macro viruses, exploits and other such annoyances over the years, is this really that surprising?

SBECK writes "I've been asked to come up with an estimate of how much it would cost to provide wireless internet service for a small convention being held at a campground. That would entail renting or buying enough wireless access points to give coverage to the area and getting temporary satellite Internet service. Unfortunately, I've never done any of this, so I'm floundering. I'd love to get some pointers from anyone who has any experience setting up something like this. What ISP services provide temporary satellite service for something like this?"

Paul Crowley asks: "Given an HTTP URL for an MP3 file, what's the best way to read its ID3 tags on a GNU/Linux system? It shouldn't be necessary to fetch the whole file: HTTP byteranges should make it possible to fetch only the tiny fraction that's needed, for a big saving in network bandwidth. However, existing ID3v2 libraries are designed to read local files. Extending these libraries for this purpose, or implementing a new one, would be a big job. What's the clean solution - is FUSE the best way, or is there a simpler way that doesn't require root privs? Can I do it using the existing id3lib binary?"

zoglmannk asks: "I've become interested in grid computing. A lot has happened since the last time that I looked at it several years ago during the SETI@home heyday. Now several public supported grid applications are coming to fruit: climate modeling, cancer research, protein folding, smallpox therapies, fighting bioterrorism, mersenne prime search, evolution, SETI, and others. All of these have public interest to make a better world. Is mass adoption of public interest grid computing just around the corner? Is there really a need for a majority of those spare CPU cycles? Or is there more computing power than can reasonably be used for the types of problems that can be distributed to home and educational PCs? What is needed to bring grid computing to the masses? More education, advertisement, prizes, reimbursement?"

Anonymous Coward asks: "I am an autistic high-schooler, who is currently in special education. I am very bright, but I lack the ability to do even very basic math. I am interested in Technology and Computers very much, but after looking at the requirements for a computer science major, there is no way I can do all that. What options, other than college, are available for a good education?"

bigattichouse asks: "I've been working on a business plan lately, sort of a 'If I ever get out of computing' fantasy. Its simple, a bakery. But since I *know* I'm not going to do anything with it, I thought it would be interesting to create a GPL equivalent.. a plan, logos, recipes, methods that anyone could use to start their own bakery/delivery service under a GPL/Copyleft sort of arrangement. I image there are a LOT of potential entreprenuers who might benefit from a 'Free/Open' franchise looking at the market. Has anyone done something like this?"