Bruha writes "Almost all of the bills I receive today have the option to go paperless. I already pay all utilities and creditcards online but have yet to tell them to stop sending me a physical bill even though they heavily advertise the advantages of it. My concern are mistakes they could audit out and claim were not there. Has anyone experienced any problems with paperless billing or are my worries without merit?"

seigniory asks: "I'm looking to put about 20 touchscreen displays into operation as information kiosks in low-traffic areas (i.e. private waiting rooms, not malls). The application is written, but is mouse-driven, so a conversion to touch screen is necessary. At present, I'm imagining a 12-15" LDC with active-matrix, but will entertain other suggestions. Without much experience with the quality and durability of most touchscreen solutions, or the 'gotcha's' of converting an existing app to touchscreen, I'm at a loss as to where I should begin. I can't start the touchscreen w/o the actual screen, and I don't have a ton of money to play with yet, so I can't afford to waste money trying to find my ideal solution. Searches for 'LCD Touchscreen Display Reviews' has turned up not much more than ads. What experiences or advice can Slashdot offer?"

An anonymous reader asks: "I'll have to quote a fellow cypherpunk to give my question the correct framing: '...this is a time when the world needs these services more than ever. In crises there is a tendency for repressive governments to crack down on communications and free access to information. Lately the fear of terrorism has eroded many rights we took for granted. One of those rights, financial privacy and anonymity is disappearing fast, as the US takes steps to stop the movement of terrorist funds. There is a system out there that might help slow the erosion of rights: DMT. Might it be a solution to the erosion of financial privacy and anonymity?"

gooshy1 writes "Ok it's getting near the end of the year and people are beginning to wind down for the holidays. What I want to know is are there any decent multiplayer games that an office of about 4-7 can play, preferably action. The machines that we use are not all that great, P4 1.7Ghz with 2 year old NVidia graphics cards, so Quake and the likes are out of the question. A favorite is BZFlag due to its playability and nice tunable graphics. All thoughts welcome, and Merry Chistmas/Happy Holidays :-)"

JazzyJ asks: "I need some ideas on some fire/electrical code compliant ways to get power into some bare bones rack mount enclosures I have. The racks are essentially in the center of a room with 3 ft around all sides. There's a 4 outlet box on each wall. Other than getting building maintenance to drop me a circuit along the floor or out of the ceiling, what options for getting power into these monsters do I have? Extension cords are right out, that is against fire/electrical code. Help!?"

Veeru writes "As mentioned on Nova, my great-great-grandfather Amos Ives Root published the first eye witness account of the Wright Brothers flight almost 100 years ago. Scientific American had rejected his article as 'unbelievable' and 'having no practical application'. The secretive Wright Brothers allowed Amos to publish the article in his own Gleanings Bee magazine instead. Because of his objective account, other experimenters may not have received the credit they deserved. I recently realized that Amos was intent on investigating the highest tech advances of the day and that the airplane was the most advanced phenomenon he could find. If Amos were alive today, what obscure technology would he be pursuing?"

Timothy M. Schumann asks: "I am trying to build a small rack mount cabinet for my family to help with the clutter of our home network. I don't want to purchase a rack or cabinet pre-manufactured; I would like to build my own. However, I have been unable to find a list of physical specifications that racks and cabinets must conform to when built, so I was wondering if any Slashdot readers could help me find such information? Just for a frame of reference, I'm looking for something along the same detail level as the BTX form factor specs that can be found here. Any input on cost effective hardware choices for rack mountable UPSs, switches and/or cases is also welcome." This topic was originally discussed some two years ago, and while there was some useful information was presented, the basic question wasn't really answered. If you were going to try and build a custom rackmount enclosure for yourself (or someone else), how would you go about doing it?

UnrefinedLayman asks: "In the quest for a silent PC, one item that seems to be consistently overlooked is the mouse: it's one of the more noisy computer components if only by virtue of the fact that it is a staccato noise. I don't notice my fans or hard drives very often, given that they are constant background sounds whose levels don't noticeably change. My mouse, on the other hand, makes a very audible *click* each time I use it, and while providing a pleasant tactile feedback, it keeps my girlfriend awake during my late-night work sessions. So I turn to the Ask Slashdot community: have you found a silent mouse for your silent PC? Numerous Google searches have yielded little. It's not as though it's impossible, as touch pads for laptops have been around for quite some time, and the iPod makes great use of the technology. ThinkGeek also sells a force-free keyboard with a "mouse replacement" built into it, but while the keyboard technology looks very promising, I prefer to stick with a mouse (not to mention something a bit cheaper). Mouse manufacturers have long touted optical mice as being superior to their trackball cousins for having no moving, mechanical parts, but it seems like they're overlooking the most obvious and still mechanical function: the buttons themselves! So what say you Slashdot? Are there force-free, truly non-mechanical and silent mice out there to be had?"

xrepete asks: "I have been getting spammed by a legitimate company for the last five months. I have gone to their site to ask to be removed, and sent several e-mails to various address asking to be removed from their mailing list. I have been totally ignored. We all get spam from individuals we can't identify, but what recourse do we have if we actually _can_ identify them. I've heard that it is illegal for a company to not allow you to opt-out of marketing spam, but I can find any information about how to go about it." This was last touched on over three years ago, but recent events have shown that the new spam laws may have better teeth. Are there other things we can do to curb the e-mail abuses of the companies we do business with?

kolchak asks: "As the Australian summer heats up, we are looking at a cooling solution for our computer room. We have 4 racks (almost all full) with around 40 machines, switches, routers, 2 UPSs and 2 monitors. Unfortunately, its located in the middle of the office with no windows available for ventilation. We can vent the exhaust into the ceiling space which in turn is vented outside. Also, since the room is so small, we need to install any cooling device outside the room (a store room backs on which will house the cooling unit and potentially pipe hot / cold air through the wall). All the units we've seen so far need to be in the room, we just don't have the space. Anyone come across and solved this? Any ideas on good cooling units we can install easily and cheaply?"

masonbrown asks: "I find myself confronted with a profound decision that could significantly affect the next couple of years of my life. As an excited owner of a new Aluminum Powerbook 15-inch, I'm shopping for a Bluetooth enabled cell phone. I've checked Apple's Bluetooth Compatible Device List as a reference, and had some great initial impressions of the Sony-Ericsson T-616/T-610 phone (direct link unavailable), until I read the Amazon reviews that said the display fades in sunlight and the buttons are impossible to maneuver with human fingers. Can Slashdot readers give some feedback on what Bluetooth phones you have, how well they work with iSync, and how happy you are with your phone?"

eschasi asks: "eschasi recently got a new job, which includes a new PC on which to run UNIX and X. After much grovelling through the vendor catalog and the used equipment boxes for a simple 3-button mouse, he finally had to bring one from home. Shortly thereafter he was browsing the local CompUSAs and BestBuys, and saw not a single actual 3-button mouse. Oh yes, there were things which masqueraded as 3-button mice, but they weren't. They were scroll mice where you had to depress the scroll to get a middle click, or where the third button was under the thumb, or where the third button was unreachable because of the scroll. Sun's still come with 3-button mice, so there must be some being made. Are these still in the retail market anywhere? Frankly, they're too small for eschasi's big hands. The only place a basic 3-button mouse was found for sale was eBay, and they guy selling it called it 'rare.' Is the classic 3-button mouse largely dead? If so, what are you folks moving toward?"

Jonathan Hamilton asks: "I work at the School of Communications for a major state University. The IT Department for the University (the same people that won't let us have a firewall, and use IIS and Exchange) is trying to talk my boss into switching from using SQL for teaching database concepts to MS Access. My coworkers and I think they are nuts. I have googled for pages comparing the two and can't come up with anything. I know some of the reasons why it is a bad idea, but I can't find any references. Help!" The mantra here is: the best tool for the best job. Is Access a suitable tool for teaching database concepts to students? If not, what would you use instead, and why?

the_2nd_coming asks: "Back when I moved into my house, the phone system was in need of immediate upgrade. The house was built in 1964, and it still had the original spaghetti phone lines running through the walls. The phone jacks were in odd places, and to top it all off, the line would melt after I would dial up to my ISP. I took immediate and drastic action. I pulled all the phone wires out of the walls, patched over the holes where the jacks use to be, and started drilling. I bought 2000 feet of Cat5 (I was going to be putting in a home network in the future). A day later, I was cursing and bitching because the old phone system used a 3 screw junction box to connect the house to the phone company, making it very difficult to have multiple jacks.What is the best way to rewire my phone system so that adding an extra 2 or 3 jacks would not be such a chore?"

hashbox asks: "I work for a small non-profit (about 100 staff members) and management has decided that they want to use an online data backup system instead of our existing tape backup system. After a meeting with one of the many vendors providing this service, I must admit that I am impressed with the promise of the technology (ease of use etc). However the sysadmin side of me has a few reservations. Has anyone here on Slashdot used an online backup service, and what were your experiences?"

CliffH asks: "Has anyone else noticed a serious decline in 2D quality versus 3D quality in video cards? I routinely work on older systems right beside newer systems on the same monitor (Dell P1110) and it becomes blaringly obvious to me that 2D quality is starting to take a backseat to 3D quality. For example, my main system is a dual-boot Shuttle XPC SS51G with an added GeForce2MX 400 card in for the times I do want to play some games. A little, nasty, ready to be thrown away system I have on my bench at the moment is a K62-500 with my favorite card of all time, a Matrox Millenium II 4MB job in it. The 2D quality between the two is just shocking. Where the Matrox is nice, crisp, extremely easy to read at 1280x1024, the GeForce2 is kind of blurry, not as well defined, and the colors aren't as vibrant. I would be skeptical if this were the only newer card I have seen with the results, but it has gone through the GeForce line (last one I tested was an MSI branded 5900 Ultra) and a small handful of ATI Radeons with similar results. So, the question stands. Am I going nuts or has there been a definate tradeoff between 2D and 3D quality in recent years?"

Shadowfax0 asks: "Recently, when I was attending the International Scout Jamboree in Sattahip, Thailand, I became friends with a fellow Scout from Uganda. One day we decided to both visit one of the small internet cafes that had been set up at the jamboree. I went in, and for only a few baht, was on the internet. My friend from Uganda was amazed, 'How do they do this?' he asked. I told him that in a lot of places in the world these are quite common; he was awe. "'ot in Uganda' he said to me. He told me that at the university he attends there are only three computers; and only one of them has the ability to get on the internet. In the spirit of the jamboree and of scouting, I told him that I would very gladly help him set up something similar at his university. Herein lies my question to the readers of Slashdot: How can I set up a small network for my friend in Uganda where the only fast internet connection may be a DSL line?"

PlainBlack writes "Once upon a time, I was the Chief Engineer at a small TV station, but got out of that line of work about the time that people were talking about replacing video tapes with hard drives. Now I'm looking to build myself a professional grade editing suite using only open source tools so that I can dump as much money as possible into the hardware. My question to Slashdot is, what are the best open source tools for such a suite? I'll need both video and audio editing; a bank of wipes, fades, and other effects; a great paint program; and a titler (text overlays)."

thepuma writes "Since I'm cheap, and don't want to pay monthly fees to Tivo, I am researching building my own low-budget Personal Video Recorder and player. Free software options include Freevo and MythTV. Hardware options are the main cost factor. How would you go about building the perfect low-budget PVR?" We've looked at similar questions before, but the guts of such a system (both hardware and software) have been improving -- MythTV, for instance, now supports Hauppauge's PVR-350 card. How would you build a system like this now?

Dixie_Flatline asks: "I just downloaded some videos from here and there, and I found myself floundering in codec hell. I've got AVIs and MPGs, and none of them play. I've got DivX and 3ivX installed, and I even tried using DivX Doctor on some of the AVIs. The other AVIs refused to be processed, and even the MPGs won't play! When I put them onto a Win2000 box, I found that only SOME of the AVIs played, most of them didn't and the MPGs were STILL broken. Is there a codec pack out there that has everything I need all packaged up neatly? How do I get myself out of this? I just want to watch my media files!" While there probably isn't a be-all-end-all codec pack for your specific OS, what web resources are useful for people who need to find a codec (even an obscure one) before they can play their media files?