whois asks: "I just purchased a new Compaq laptop and noticed a feature in the BIOS called 'DriveLock'. It locks the drive so a password has to be entered on startup. If you take the drive out and put it in a system without a drivelock BIOS, the system can't boot from the drive. There is very little information on the web about this feature. Most people talk about what happens if you lose your password (buy a new drive) and what happens if you want to reuse the drive in other machines (you can't). What I want to know is the tech specs on this. Is it security through obscurity, and just sets a password in the drive BIOS, or is it doing encryption in hardware? My guess is it's the former, but I'm submitting to find out if anyone knows the real story. Here is an HP doc that mentions it in passing." According to information provided by the included links, this "feature" isn't something you can disable, either. Are we likely to see more manufacturers tie hardware together like this, in the future?

TibbonZero asks: "I've been thinking of getting into photography, but want to stay with 35mm film instead of going digital. Used 35mm SLRs seem to be the best bet, but which ones should I seriously consider? I would like to spend less than $200 on the camera itself, and start off with some cheaper lenses. It seems to me like there's still a lot more bang for your buck in film vs digital cameras at this point, even with film processing costs (I have almost a whole darkroom setup that my father used to use). I think I want a manual focus camera." Don't forget, a 35mm camera (film or digital) would make a nice Christmas Gift for that budding photographer in your life!

An anonymous reader asks: "Somehow, I got volunteered to take care of activities for the adults at my company's holiday party. For those of you who actually go to parties, what games have you played that were a lot of fun both for the geek and just the average person?"

Odkin asks: "Some friends and I are struggling with a hardware project which is stalled due to costly consumer market approvals (which is alright I guess). But it struck me, why are there only market approvals for hardware and not software? The hardware approvals include functionality tests that ensure that the product works as intended in any way the user would handle it (even unsuitable use). Would such approvals for commercial software improve the quality of the products, including minimizing the risk of data loss and heightening the security? In other words, would it facilitate or inhibit the creation of good software?"

noackjr asks: "Everyone wants a great job, but writing a quality resume requires creativity and a fair bit of work (we won't go into actually having the proper skills, qualifications, or experiences -- let's not cloud the issue). Alternatively, sprucing up your resume with a few choice pieces of quasi-truth might set you apart from other 'qualified' candidates (the HR person will never figure it out, right?). A friend from college included knowledge of 'C, C+, and C++' on his resume. He had worked in C and C++ and just figured there had to be a C+ as well (too bad he didn't list C+-). He ended up getting a $50,000+/yr job with a major US tech firm using that resume. Anyone else come across funny/pathetic attempts to improve a resume?"

Jim Carroll asks: "I awoke this morning to a gas furnace that conked out. The house was 60F. We had to turn the switch off and on to get it working again. Fair enough -- but I'm worried about it going off when I'm travelling and having the pipes freeze. I'm looking for an inexpensive, simple to use temperature monitor/sensor that would plug into a USB port, that would then log household temperature to a server, so that I can view it through my broadband connection while travelling. Sure, there are all kinds of complex X10 solutions; there seems to be a few kits out there; and some high end industrial applications, but these all involve spending a few hundred dollars. I want simple, straightforward, cheap -- plug it in, and it dumps the temp every few minutes to a file. But there doesn't seem to be anything that is simple, $10-20, that is consumer oriented? And if not, why aren't companies yet making this type of device?"

dnotj asks: "I'm involved in a project that is growing fast and is going to soon outgrow it's current hosting location. I've had a couple of offers for donating bandwidth (and servers in one case). Basically free colocation or dedicated servers. Since this isn't a revenue generating project, it's going to be necessary to migrate this project and it's related website to a location with adequate bandwidth. What kinds of questions should I be asking these generous organizations that make these offers? I just want to make sure I cover all my bases before jumping on one of these offers."

phutureboy asks: "Between providing hosting for several dozen web sites and consulting for a number of clients who run their own servers, lately I find myself overwhelmed with keeping track of domain expirations. Although the domains which I've personally registered are consolidated under one Register.com account, there are many others spread among multiple registrars, to which I may or may not have administrative access. It would take days or weeks of frustration to audit them all and make sure my clients' contact information is up to date. Does anyone have any tips for dealing with this mess?"

ngoy asks: "I download gigabytes of stuff from Usenet and burn it onto CD's (and soon DVD's). I have countless numbers of spindles filled with apps, games, MP3's, and so forth. Does anyone know of a cheap (sub $400) storage library that can hold 300 CD's or more and is smaller than the refrigerator sized libraries of day's old? I know Pioneer used to make a 6 disc CD-ROM changer, based on their car stereo, but that is the largest I have seen for quite a while. Googling for jukeboxes gives me a range of prices starting at $2000 to $6000 on up. Sony makes consumer DVD players that have 300 and 400 disc capacities for $500 and $400, why is there not something similar for computers? If you stripped out the A/V stuff from the Sony, you should save another $50 to $100, so theoretically I should be able to buy a changer for around $300. Isn't there a market for such devices?"

Amigan asks: "Looking for a gift for my parents who live 1500+ miles away, I came across the Vialta Beamer TV. This device, with its claimed ease of use, would be helpful for my parents to see my son via the phone, but I'm wondering if the glowing WSJ review or Tech TV review are for real. Is 4-15 fps viable for conversation?"

professorhojo asks: "These days on the 'net, it seems like a company can go from being regarded as a Good Citizen to Evildoer in a matter of hours (witness Yahoo!'s willingness to time and time again reinterpret their own privacy policy as it suits them and their advertisers). I am at the helm of a new software company and I want us to stand apart from the rest with rock solid ethics, and policies that put the user first, that won't change or waver at the behest of advertising money. What I want to know from you is simple:what are the essential things a company has to promise and stick to? More importantly, what things have companies done, which have made you do a double-take and totally reconsider doing business with them? Why am I asking this? Well, I believe that in the future, the ethics of a company will greatly impact on their bottom line. What's good for our customers is good for us, and customers will be drawn to us BECAUSE of it." It sounds good, but reality has a tendency of getting in the way of good ethics. What suggestions would you make to keep difficult choices from compromising the ethics you would like your company to embody?

Steve Andre' asks: " Given the approaching season, I'm wondering if many have used and have opinions about the new Ogg Vorbis capable portable players out there. What I'd like to find is at least a CD/MP3/Ogg capable player which sounds good and doesn't do 'odd' things. What's it like out there? Can I finally roast my Ogg files and take them with me for a walk?"

dnxthx asks: "After performing a fairly comprehensive web search (including Slashdot) I came to the (possibly incorrect) conclusion that there were no high-visibility sites that comprehensively reviewed and compared data modeling tools such as ER/Studio, ERWin, DeZign for Databases, System Architect, or Visio for Enterprise Architects. Since some of these tools can be quite expensive (ERWin is about $4K US it seems), I was wondering what the Slashdot community's experiences were with data modeling tools such as these, or some that our group has overlooked."

dorko72 asks: "I have been put in charge of setting up a small computer lab (30 workstations) for a local community. The benefactor is providing the hardware (dell workstations and one server) as well as the operating system for these systems (Windows XP Professional and Windows 2000 Advanced Server) All the equipment is used, but not too old. I would like to find out what some of you guys use to monitor and manage the lab usage (ie provide realtime stats of which station is in use, etc). I would plan to set these machines in a Windows domain using Win2k Advanced Server as the controller via Active Directory. There must be some way to access AD and find out who is logged in to what machine in the domain. Any suggestions or ideas would be much appreciated."

Miss Muis writes "After reading once again that Moore's Law will become obsolete, I amused myself thinking back to all the predictions, absolutes and impossibles in computing that have been surpassed with ease. In the late 80s I remember it being a well regarded popular 'fact' that 100MHz was the absolute limit for the speed of a CPU. Not too many years later I remember much discussion about hard drives for personal computers being physically unable to go much higher than 1GB. Let's not forget "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers" from the chairman of IBM in 1943, and of course 'Apple is dying...' (for the past 25 years). What are your favorite beliefs-turned-on-their-heads in the history of computing?"

An anonymous reader asks: "I am an aerospace engineering student who is engaged in an amateur project. A major hurdle I am having is finding modern airfoil data which can be used for a non-profit project. As most aerospace engineers know, just about all modern airfoil data are guarded industry secrets, so building an amateur project that requires precise airfoil data is difficult, because of the lack of available modern information. There is plenty of dated airfoil data from the 1960s or earlier, but my project requires access to modern data. Note that I do not have access to a wind tunnel to procure this data on my own. Where would one find free modern airfoil data for use in an amateur project?"

Ed Almos asks: "Like many Slashdot Readers, I run a small network at home with a server and a number of desktops. The server holds all our files as NFS shares and doubles as a desktop machine should the need arise. Problems however occur if the server is shut down whilst there are NFS shares in use, the minimum disruption is a crashed desktop and a couple of times I have had to deal with corrupted files. Does anyone know of a way to prevent shutdown of a machine if someone else has drives mounted to its NFS shares ? I have already explored use of the /etc/shutdown.allow file but all this does is determine who can kill the machine. The minimal solution would be something similar to a Microsoft Windows system, where a request to shutdown brings up a warning window that there are users connected to the system, but I am not sure how to achieve this on a Linux system. Ideally I would like to prevent shutdown of a system with active NFS shares altogether, or at least until the user has unmounted and logged off the network."

OldHawk777 asks: "Does anyone know of a source for a lightweight wearable video headset system for vision impaired people? Are there vision degeneration diseases that such a vision system would be specifically useful to the vision impaired person? Would USA Medicare and/or private insurance pay for such a medical device?"

mrsev asks: "I work in a lab and so have lots of strange equipment around me. Recently I found an old 256Mb USB Flash Disk, that I had been looking for 6 months. This would not be amazing but for the fact that it was frozen in a block of ice in one of our -80C freezers (-112F). It must have fallen from my top pocket when I was reaching in. After chiping it out and a quick thaw and dry ... it worked!! All my data was intact and there were no problems. I am now looking for a victim to test in our liquid nitrogen storage facility. My question is what is the strangest hardware survival you have seen."

jptechnical writes "I have an interesting hardware/software development brewing. I have a friend with a computer shop down the way and he has had a rash of nearly a dozen Win2k & XP boxes come through with disabled or missing CD-ROM drives. They work in DOS, and are bootable, but are either disabled, not functioning or simply missing in Windows' device manager. Does anyone know of a virus that may be causing this? I cannot find any common vector from system build to software installed or anything. MS says reformat, but where's the fun in that? What resources aside from MSKB and google searching do slashdot readers use for troubleshooting strange problems?"