JonToycrafter asks: "I'm a dispatcher for a volunteer ambulance corps. We often get our calls by listening to the police scanner. Unfortunately, it's sometimes difficult to understand the street address that the police dispatcher is saying, or sometimes s/he mentions the address before giving an indication that EMS is needed. Does anyone know of a (preferably Free) Windows (or Linux) program that would allow me to connect my scanner to the mic jack on my PC and be able to pause/rewind the stream, a la Tivo?"

aralin asks: "Recently I got this idea and wrote a little perl script to extract all the second (third in case of co.uk) level domains from my last month's collection of spam (some 4000 messages). I ran that against a nameserver to find the ones with NS record (valid domains) and made a list for my procmail filter. I get about 10 mails a day that escape to SpamAssassin for various reasons and since I began to check them against my list of domains I caught half of these. The idea is that if they want to sell something, or put a working web bug in my email, they need to provide a valid url with valid domain. If we filter domains from a URL in confirmed spam, then its almost certain any other email referencing such domain is spam as well. What I wanted to ask Slashdot is whether you know about some software project that already uses this form of spam detection as an addition to rule matching and Bayes filters?"

mantid asks: "I am about to do a long trip (1 year) in a VW Vanagon, and would like to set up wireless net access from within the vehicle. What is the most effective system for hassle-free, permanent, long-term installation? Note, this is not just for wardriving, many truckstops, netcafes, and coffee shops are now offering legit net access. I just don't want to have to bring laptop inside to do it. Please suggest tried and true antenna types as well as tips/concerns/issues."

An anonymous reader asks: "I have chronic tendonitis in my wrists (I think of it as incipient carpal tunnel syndrome). I shied away from laptops for years, thinking the cramped keyboard would aggravate my condition. About six months ago, circumstances forced me to break down and get a laptop. I didn't have any major problems with the keyboard - it's only now that I've switched back to a wireless mouse and an ergonomic keyboard that I've started to have any pain. Amazingly, the laptop is more comfortable for me to use long term. Has anyone had a similar experience? What's the explanation? Is it the shorter stroke depth on the keys? The fact that you can put your hands closer together than on a standard keyboard?"

whosyourgeekdaddy asks: "A co-worker was showing me some of the usage stats for a clients exchange server: its averaging 630 users, and 300,000 emails per day, for the last 4 days. This made me want to ask how heavy is the workload for your 'average' Exchange server? Is this typical? MyDoom has upped the usage some, but not a lot. This client is a real estate company, so e-mail is frequently used." Of course, Exchange servers aren't the only ones feeling MyDoom. What kind of statistics have you been seeing from MyDoom, both as a user and as an administrator?

Papa Legba asks: "I am in a battle, with a now ex-employer, over the unpaid overtime that I incurred while working in their IT department. I refused to accept the answer 'you are a computer guy, you don't get overtime' and did some looking. My research has turned up these relevant documents: the definition of exempt Computer professional at section 13(a)(17) of the FLSA managed by the Department of Labor, the amendments in the ESA labeled C.F.R.541.3(a)(4) and C.F.R.541.303 , and a site referring to a letter, which I cannot find a copy of. The letter describes a Dept. of Labor ruling from December 4, 1998 that set out who qualifies as a computer professional. Can anyone find this letter, and is there any more documents that I am missing. I have a lawyer but this is a very specific area and I want to do this right. Has anyone else fought this battle?"

Chanc_Gorkon asks: "Just like to ask the Slashdot community if anyone has a set of step-by-step instructions for connecting two computers via IP over Firewire. Mac OS X Panther supports IP over Firewire, as does Windows XP. I would like to hook my PowerBook to a Windows XP machine, and be able to access the Internet and share files over the link. I am shooting for near full functionality, but the closest I came in my initial trials was being able to set static IP's per Firewire port, and do a FTP between the machines. If I can get this working, I figure this will be a good way of getting my PowerBook on the office network, without having to have a drop put in."

azzkicker asks: "I was reading some AP articles on offshoring. It talks about the struggles of out-of-work programmers and the shifting of jobs overseas [in the US]. Part way through one article it says: 'The average programmer commands $60 an hour in the United States, six times the rate in India.' I don't disagree with the Indian rate (USD $80/day, $400/week, $20,800/year gross), but what is with the US rate (USD $480/day, $2400/week, $124,000/year gross)? I know that programmers are billed out at high rates, but most of my programmer friends in Midwest, USA (years of experience and CS degrees) don't even see $50K/year. What is the actual rate most programmers see? Do you see $60/hr? Is the US rate misleading corporations into outsourcing?" Does offshoring really save corporations that much money?

gripdamage asks: "Why are email administrators still sending virus bounce messages, when everyone knows viruses forge the sender? This effectively doubles the amount of email traffic due to the virus (triples in the case that the recipient is also notified). As one of the links says 'any AV software or admins that have it mis-configured [so] that it is continuing to send out notices...to forged senders, deserve to be ridiculed.' I have received 4 times as many erroneous bounce notifications, because of MyDoom , than the actual virus, so the bounce messages are much more of a problem! This is a problem deserving publicity, so that email admins will be shamed into doing the right thing." The problem is that most bounces are automated responses, the simple thing would be to turn them off. Of course, the rational of the automated response is to hopefully notify the infected user of the problem -- what a catch-22! What kind of policy would you recommend when it comes to spam, e-mail and automated responders?

R.S.D. asks: "I see all these Ask Slashdot articles about unemployment these days. Why don't a few of you guys get together and start a software company? Out there in the world, there is still a lot of software that needs to be written, and people are still pumping lots of money into software (and biotech). In fact, the software sector is still described as the enduring leader in raising venture capital, though apparently in Silicon Valley more money is going out of the maturing software industry and into things that are still high-tech like biopharm and nano. Is anyone else trying this? If so, how's it going? If not, why not?" This is easier suggested, than implemented. For those who have gone this route, what suggestions would you give to those who may follow?

chadma asks: "I'm developing a program to be used on a Tablet PC; the unit will be used outdoors >80% of the time. I've seen some tablets from ViewSonic and MotionComputing and wondered if anyone had any experience or suggestions in the best screen for high sunlight conditions. Has there been any study or anyone with experience that could suggest the colors we use in the design? Would a white background with black text be most appropriate?"

Work-w/-MCSEs asks: "I work with Microsoft products for a living, as well as for fun. I've been lurking in Slashdot discussions for a while now. I find a lot of the stories interesting, but it is obviously geared more toward Unix people. Stories about MS products are often full of flames. I can see the reasons why Microsoft users aren't accepted as 'true geeks'. I acknowledge that Unix people are more technical (by necessity since they often compile their own software), and I'm not asking or expecting the attitudes here to change. However, I do wish I could find a similar forum for us to talk about our chosen operating system, applications, viruses, and other issues. Usenet is just too full of spam to be useful. Where is a Windows user to go for good discussion?"

Blaine Garrett asks: "I run a small online art community called the Art Attack. A lot of my members that sign up are not getting their welcome emails and newsletters. Most often, I cannot even directly email the members. Services such as hotmail automatically put email from my server in the junk mail folder. A while back someone was using the server to bounce spam. I am not sure if this is the direct cause, or not. Is there away to get off the spammer lists of these big services? Additionally, I have been informed that, since the site contains art depicting nudity, ISPs have been blocking the IP of my server. This is rather annoying since I also provide web hosting for other sites on the server. I'm losing customers and hits. Is there a way around this?" With respect to the Spam lists, this article might be helpful, but it may be harder to get the server removed, considering it has already been marked as an open relay. It will be harder to get your server out of ISP Filters, however. One man's "art" can always become another man's "porn", and convincing them otherwise will be difficult to impossible, especially since there is nudity on the site. What suggestions do you have for Mr. Garret, in terms of helping him get his site off of as many lists as possible?

kedalion asks: "For the past five years, I've had a good job doing perl programming for the same company but I'm starting to worry. With the current trend in the marketplace to send programming jobs overseas, I'm beginning to wonder if my job will be 'exported' in the near future. With the glut of good programmers out of work, hiring salaries will be depressed as well. About a year ago, I started going back to school to finish my computer science degree. Now, I'm starting to wonder if it would be better to abandon the CS path, and go into either computer or electrical engineering. As an older student, this choice is made even more difficult because I would need to drop to part-time to take an engineering track. Also, I'm concerned that I would only qualify for an entry-level position if I took an engineering job. Anyone have thoughts/suggestions?"

Cibressus Lybir asks: "We've had icons, folders and menu's for a long time. I currently use two monitors, both filled to the brim with icons and several drawers on each desktop. My Start Menu, on my Windows machine is never used, because it's flimsy and too hard to navigate around. In movies you always see cool 3D desktops with stuff flying around and some kind of cool gesture or spoken word used to start up applications. The future will only bring more applications, more icons, and more time spent navigating around launching your programs. What are your ideas for the future of desktops? How can we rid our selves of the icon jungles that we call our GUI's?"

Tamor asks: "Zalman, the company behind some extremely high quality PC noise-reducing products are now selling real 5.1 surround sound headphones. The surround effect is achieved by placing 3 drivers in each ear-piece. As a geek-with-young-family this product's pushing all the right buttons for me, it looks cool, and means I can finally achieve surround sound without waking the kids. Or does it? I was sure that to place a sound spatially your brain relies on the delay between hearing the sound in one ear and then the other. If your left ear only hears the left 3 channels, and your right ear only hears the right 3 channels isn't this making it more difficult for spatial placement to happen? Do you know if/how these are achieving surround effect if each ear is only hearing half of the audio field?"

Since moving outside Ann Arbor almost 2 years ago, I've had only a 56k modem to tether my home to the net. Cable, DSL and ISDN are impossible in my location. DirecWay now offers the DW6000, which appears to be an operating system agnostic router for satellite internet access. I already use DirecTV, so this might work well. I'm aware of the game crippling latency, but that's not a huge deal to me. The monthly price seems reasonable, but is there a catch? I'm abusing my power as Slashdot editor to ask for experiences with this (or similiar) services. Does it bog down during the day? Not work with common hardware? Hidden costs? Does it cost a fortune for the required professional installation? Is ssh completely unusable?

An anonymous reader writes "Have you ever been curious about what someone else's computing environment looks like? Would you like to see what tools and products someone like Linus Torvalds, Bill Gates, George Bush, or Steve Jobs uses on a daily basis? What percentage of time is spent browsing the web, working in spreadsheets, programming, debugging, designing, or writing documents? How many monitors or devices do they have attached to their PC? What kind of security or anonymizers do they have in place?" For good or ill, open source developers' desktops at least are often visible in screenshots of their pet projects.

mckeefarley asks: "What is an out-of-work networking guy to do? Almost three years ago I worked for a systems integration company as a Senior Network Technician (with the help of an A+ cert). Two years and many certifications, later: "I am five months away from the expiration of my CCNP/DP and I question whether I should even spend the money to recertify." Would you spend the time and money to recertify, when every cent may count, and all of those pieces of paper still might not get you a job?

N8F8 asks: "I would like to come up with an inexpensive reading assist device for the visually impaired. Something that would give them a close-up view of things without having to stoop over. For under $500. What I would like is a method to connect a USB/Firewire webcam to a CDMA phone or PDA and display the picture in real-time. Or replace the PDA with an inexpensive eyeglass mounted display. Are there better options?"