philipborlin asks: "We are a small publishing company that publishes medical reference books. We are currently doing in office proofs on an injet printer, but have noticed that sometimes the images we send to our print shop have artifacts that don't show up on our cheap setup. We are looking to buy a color laser printer that will hopefully alert us to the fact that these artifacts exist and allow us time to clean up the image before sending it to the print shop. We have googled the Internet, but have not found comprehensive details on print quality (besides the quantifiables like DPI, etc). Any ideas where we should start? What price range should we be looking at?"

Gustavo asks: "My company is climbing the CMM ladder and the need for enterprise grade project management tools is growing. Currently we use a mix of MS-Project schedules and Excel spreadsheets, but this doesn't scale when one has a large pool of resources being used on several projects. Moreover, there being Project and Excel files are now scattered all around making it difficult to keep them up-to-date. One option is to go for the MS-Project Server but I was asked to find out if there is something free that we could use instead. Can you help me?"

ScottBob asks: "Seeing the recent post about the vintage computer festival got me thinking about old hardware I'm still using in my 'modern' computer. I have a 1 ghz Celeryonion machine, but when I bought the mobo I specifically looked for one with an ISA slot so I could still use my old Zoltrix modem I bought in '97 when V.90 was adopted (when it probably would have been cheaper to buy an ISA-less mobo and a PCI modem). I've also moved a '93 model floppy drive from machine to machine, and it still works. Usually, monitors and power supplies survive the ravage Moore's law has on hardware, but what other things does everybody else save when they cruft together a new machine? Anybody ever do things like disguise a 4 GHz P4 in an ancient 8086 machine box? While on the subject, is anybody still running old DOS programs in a DOS box on a Windows machine (e.g. a database) because your company is too poor/cheap to upgrade or doesn't want to bother with any free alternatives?"

attercoppe asks: "I'm looking for opinions and advice from Slashdot readers on a case mod idea. I'd like to install a second (small, low heat, no fan) power supply to run a single CD drive. The idea is to basically integrate a CD player into the case, allowing me to ditch my bookshelf stereo (yay convergence!). But I want to be able to use it without having the computer booted (to avoid waste heat and all the associated fan noise - PS, CPU, and two 4" fans). The question is, can I wire an existing drive, and maybe one of the supplemental fans, into both the existing and the new power supplies? Will one PS get feedback from the other through the drive? Do I need a switch to choose which PS to use? I know I won't be able to use the sound card... that's ok. No, I won't have a tuner for radio - that may come later. Tips, ideas, ridicule?"

somaamos asks: "Face it, you people have thousands of media items: VHS tapes, CDs, DVDs, miniDVs... where are you storing it all? I've been looking for a good storage solution which fits in with normal home furnishings -- something with high storage density, looks nice, consumes little wall space, and makes the media easy to find. Most cabinets and shelving consume lots of wall space and would store only a tenth of my media. The closest thing I've found is from CAN-AM but I'm not sure the metal finish would be suitable for my living room. I don't like the price either, but at this point that is a smaller concern. Any genius ideas out there for this one?"

bcrowell writes "After some legal delays, today is supposed to be the first day that the Do Not Call registry will be enforced. Got my first illegal call just now, and strangely enough, when I said I was on the list and started asking for information, the telemarketer said my signal was breaking up (particularly strange since I wasn't on a cell phone.) Has anyone successfully gotten the necessary info from a telemarketer and then managed to file a complaint? You're supposed to be able to file a complaint at 888-382-1222, but their touch-tone system doesn't give you any way to do it. You're also supposed to be able to do it via the web, but there doesn't seem to be any form, although they say "You can file your complaint on this Web site using the File a Complaint page, which will be available starting October 1, 2003." Remember, it may take up to 3 months after you register until they're required to stop calling you." Tales of success? Tales of failure?

An anonymous reader writes "I am in the process of trying to compile a list of at least 100 anti-Linux FUD statements, preferrably the ones that came from one of the big-shots in the computer industry. I am planning to use it in a multimedia project of mine. I did some searching on the net, including Slashdot, but the information overload has slowed my progress down to a crawl. Could you please assist me in compiling such a list?"

Doesn't_Comment_Code asks: "I am working on a motion capture system, and I plan to implement it with several webcams viewing the same space from different angles. I have looked into some webcams and drivers for Linux, but I'm not sure which are best. Specifically, I need to connect three, four, or five cameras to a single machine. Can any current Linux drivers accommodate this? Also, I'm looking for basic, no-frills cameras, as automatic gain control and other features may amplify dark parts of the image that I need to stay dark."

phoneAlone asks: "Recently a friend has moved into a new home, where his phone number was previously used as a fax-line and receives a frequent amount of faxes all hours of the day and night. Attempts to contact the senders of this "fax-spam" and be removed from these lists are unsuccessful. What is your experience with fax-spams? What actions (legal or otherwise) can be used to combat this?"

bhtooefr asks: "I need a flowcharting program for use in one of my programming classes at Central Ohio Technical College, and I can't afford to spend much money. The instructor recommended that I use Microsoft Visio, but it's way past my budget (and I can't obtain it for free). I've tried a free trial app (SmartDraw), but I didn't like the UI at all. Kivio won't do the job, because the free version is only for KDE, and Kivio MP isn't free. However, if there's a Kivio port to Windows that is free, I'd be rather interested. Any ideas here?"

Spamhunter asksL "Everyone has their favorite tools to stop spam at the inbox, whether it's using a scoring tool like SpamAssassin, bayesian filters, or something as extreme as challenge/response whitelists (which creates a few problems itself). What I'd like to know is, what are your tools for actively investigating and shutting down spammers? I've found information sites like SPEWS and Spamhaus to be invaluable in tracking down spam gangs and spam-friendly ISP's in order to put pressure where it belongs. Sometimes just chasing the chain of ownership in WHOIS is helpful. What tools, approaches, and resources do you find helpful?"

Realistic_Dragon writes "The first discussion has been sighted on the Linux kernel mailing list to put together a feature list of things that should go into Linux 2.7 - including hotplug CPU & Ram support, network transparent sound and improvements to Netfilter to bring it up to the the level of OpenBSD's Packet Filter. And all this before most of us have started to run 2.6.0-preX, or even a 2.6 series stable release happening. Perhaps if you have a (sensible) idea now would be a good time to voice it, otherwise you will have to wait for 2.9 to get it included."

GreenCrackBaby asks: "My wife was at a mall about a year ago when she ran across one of those groups who were trying to sign people up for a Visa credit card. Since she didn't yet have a credit card, she decided she'd fill out the form. She had everything filled out and was ready to sign it when she noticed the draconian fine print that essentially promised that they would sell her personal data to anyone they could, so instead of signing the form she said 'no thanks' and tossed it in the garbage. That was a mistake she has been made to regret. Almost immediately SPAM to her university email address went from 0 to 20 a day, and has been slowly increasing since. Soon we started to receive a large number of telemarketing calls to our home (where before we had received almost none). Junk mail addressed to her went through the roof. It wasn't until the Visa card arrived addressed to her that we knew what had happened." It appears that someone fished this woman's application out of the garbage and submitted this anyways, without a signature. How is something like this even close to being legal?

chrisatslashdot asks: "By training and title I am a Mechanical Engineer. I have never been involved with any serious software development although I am competent to develop quality code. Because the company that I work for will not purchase a canned software package, I am developing a web based CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System). I GPLed the project and put it on SourceForge hoping to help other people in my situation. The project is attracting much more attention than I anticipated. I have observed the development of many OSS projects but almost all of these have been by developers, targeted to developers. So what advice can you give a novice software developer on managing an open source project? What dangers and pitfalls await me? How does one foster more developer involvement? What resources should I exploit to keep from screwing this project up?"

lifebouy asks: "I just read a story about a high school that teaches Esperanto. I've noticed the majority of Esperantists I have met are IT professionals, perhaps because it nurtures our need to explore new things. So I was wondering, how many Slashdot readers speak Esperanto? Has anyone else noticed the high rate of IT Esperantists?"

blackcoot asks: "I'm currently T.A.ing for a required senior level class in algorithms. Having just graded the latest set of homework, I'm amused / sickened (can't make up my mind on that one) at the level of cheating. Slashdot has covered automated cheating detection in the past here and here, but I'm hoping to find some (necessarily nontech) ways of encouraging students to be a bit more honest (or at least a little less spectacularly stupid in how they cheat). I've been reporting the cheating as I've found it to the relevant profs, but it doesn't seem to be having much of an effect. Any suggestions?"

Tark asks: "I have been tasked with creating a reliable, portable 802.11b signal strength indicator. I have looked over various PDA's, and have narrowed it down to two: the Sharp's Zaurus 5500 Linux PDA, and the HP iPAQ 2215 Pocket PC. I have chosen these due to the fact they both support cf and sd slots. Which of these 2 PDA's will provide a reliable solution for detecting an 802.11b signal, and which wi-fi card should I use with the PDA? Also, is there a CompactFlash wi-fi card that supports a external antenna connection?"

Feztaa asks: "I've recently purchased a D-Link DI-707P wired router, which comes equipped with a parallel port, so that you can share your printer with all computers on the local network without having to rely on somebody's computer to be on for the printer to work. Unfortunately, the router only ships with print drivers for windows. The D-Link support website basically says 'for Linux printing support, go ask the Open Source community'. I've been googling for the past few days, but most searches that include 'DI-707P' just return sites trying to sell me one. Here's what I know so far: The router's web-based config system provides no configuration for the printer, it just tells me if there's a printer plugged in and turned on or not. I portscanned the router and found that port 515 is open. I know that's LPD, but I don't know how to configure that on my system. I'm using Red Hat 9, and the GUI tools will allow me to configure a networked printer using LPD, but I can't get the thing to actually print (it asks for the IP of the printer and the name queue; I don't know how to find out the name of the queue). The printer I'm using is a BJC-250. I've had absolutely no trouble printing on this printer when it was plugged into my parallel port, so I know the printer works fine. Does anybody have any experience with this router (or similar D-Link routers), and if so, what did you have to do to get your Linux system printing with it?"

RanmaPlex asks: "I've been asked by a university professor to design a network security lab for use by about 15 students. Designing a course was asked earlier, but little info was discussed on equipment. It needs to be vendor independent if possible. I've got ideas on using virtual machines, patches, IDS, firewalls/vpn and sniffers but would like to know what the Slashdot community can come up with."

_Hellfire_ asks: "As the Senior Technician at a small mobile computing service I have just recently wrapped up a rather large networking job. The network includes a Linux Primary Domain Controller, Cisco router, port redirection for VNC, tape backup solution etc. - all in all fairly complex and not the sort of thing that someone not already familiar could easily take over. I therefore want to write good, comprehensive documentation for other technicians in case I'm not specifically available. How have other Slashdotters tackled this issue? Where do you start? How do you make sure that everything is covered, particularly when you've spent the last three weeks looking at the same set of equipment?"