Who Man asks: "There are many options when buying a display today: Direct-View CRT, CRT-Based Rear Projection, CRT-Based Front Projection, Direct-View LCD, LCD-Based Rear Projection, LCD-based Front Projection, DLP-based Rear Projection, DLP-based Front Projection, Plasma, lcos-based front projection, and lcos-based rear projection. Did I leave anything out? Each of these seems to have a distinct trade-off, and it gets especially confusing when the display is intended for multiple purposes--watching analog 4:3 video, watching hi-def 16:9 video, watching DVDs (in several different aspect ratios), playing PC games, and playing console games. A particularly sticky area seems to be getting a display that handles analog and digital signals equally well. Seems that the newer digital displays are great at displaying hi-def signals but make an analog TV show look horrible. Is there a display that's adept at handling multiple inputs? Has anyone had specific experience, good or bad, with any particular displays? What about using an external processor with a digital display?"

krahd asks: "We, at the CS department of our University, in Uruguay, are evaluating different ways of securing the access to our floor. Until now we have used just a traditional door lock, but its's time to delpoy a new, more geeky solution. So, after reading this Ask Slashdot, I figured I'd pose this question as a follow-up. What would be the best way to do it? We've already evaluated biometric technologies like iris-scanning and fingerprint-scanning, and more traditional ways like intelligent cards but, what others possibilities exist, and which would you choose? Yes, price does matter."

spacemonkey asks: "I am a professional developer, but in my spare time I have been developing games for the Microsoft Smartphone platform. Included in this work is a port of gnuboy a GPL gameboy colour emulator. Where does the GPL stand on the question of codesigning applications where required? Basically gnuboy is available, with full source for smartphone, however there are a large number of users out there who are unable/unwilling to remove the certification requirements from their smartphone devices, so to allow for these users, I need to sign the code. To enter into the code signing program will cost me approximately £500. I am interested in signing the application to make it available to a wider audience, however since I am not running a charity I was wondering whether charging some nominal fee for the code signed version was compatible with the GPL or not. So users would have an option on a signed version for less than £5, or an unsigned version free, which will include the full source code. Am I allowed to charge for GPL software in this way, where the charge is to cover the packaging of the application into a signed form?"

An anonymous reader asks: "Thanks to Walmart, TigerDirect, and Gnu/Linux, I can get computers at about $200 now. Thanks to Matrox, I have several multi-head video cards. Thanks to a hacker's convention last year, I have a truckload of monitors that haven't been put to use yet. I've been out of the financial markets since 1996. I'm itching to get back in now, especially since conditions will be very favorable shortly. Since I've lost my shirt in the markets already (most investors/traders loose their shirts at least once before striking it rich, and my beating was especially instructive), I'm now ready for better returns. Gnu/Linux is well known to support multiple monitor setups. I've seen 4 monitor setups per box in some financial firms, and I recently read a story on the National Weather Service using 3 monitor setups on another OSDN channel. I've also used a Quotrek trading monitor in the past, for monitoring stocks and other financials in real-time. This was before I was a penguinista. Now that I know a bit about Linux systems, I'd like to know the following: What Gnu/Linux applications can I use to monitor and/or process stocks, options, bonds, financial news, and other related information via low cost Gnu/Linux computing solutions, broadband, and multi-head video cards? Free software only, please"

tjjuggle asks: "Why is so hard to do local communication on the internet? Suppose I want to find a group of random people to play soccer with tomorrow. Given that I live in a town of 50,000+ people, many of whom are online, there should be a way. For major metropolitan regions, Craigslist.org fills this gap, but it is no use to those of us who live outside of the San Francisco Bay Area. Has anyone developed a service like Craigslist which can be used throughout the country? I imagine a site that, given a zipcode, it could then tell you which users are signed up who live within 10-20miles of you. Does anyone know of other local communication mechanisms?" Even now, one of the best ways for local communications remains Instant Messaging, but you usually have to meet the person, first. Are there other community-oriented websites out there that can assist users in meeting other users who live nearby?

LordByronStyrofoam asks: "In the body of the article linked in the recent Silicon Valley Has Learned to Love the Bust, Salesforce.com and IBM were said to be planning to lease or rent software. IBM did this for many years back when they controlled the big iron market. It reveals a bottom layer in the cultural strata of software users: those who use Free Software; those who click through EULA's and the associated closed-source licenses; and the lowly renters. Do renters of GPL software have no rights under the GPL? Is this situation similar to the one where the makers of DSL/cable routers don't have to provide the source, even though the devices are based on embedded Linux?"

a-freeman asks: "Faced with the prospect of doing automated weekly backups for several servers with some 200 GB of files each, I have been looking for a remote backup solution. A couple of recent articles consider backup to hard drives, although I feel this still fails the 'separate snapshot in time' aspect of good backup policy, since with many of the solutions that I have seen, you will likely lose all your backups if your array gets corrupted. However, CD-Rs and DVDs are just too damn small. Can anyone recommend a remote backup service or interesting combination of hosting service + FTP/RSync/etc., or am I stuck buying a tape drive?"

Adam Weiss asks: "With Web Interfaces and GUIs being all the rage these days, it seems hard to find much about console application development. Web Interfaces and GUIs look pretty and impress people, but I've noticed that it's awfully hard to beat the speed of a well trained operator on a well designed console interface. Some of the HR folks at work use a console app to access employee records while others use a Windows GUI. The console folk can lookup and update three records in the time it takes the the GUI folk to clicky-clicky through one. So, are there any mature Open Source toolkits that would enable rapid development of console applications. Sure, there's curses, but that's low level pain in the arse. I'm talking like something that is specifically designed for building database applications- kinda like an extensible version of Microsoft Access Forms for the green screen. Something that's pretty easy for the simple stuff, but lets you break out and get complicated if you need to. (unlike Access) I know there's gotta be plenty of obsolete commercial stuff that makes these kinds of projects easy. I just want to know if there are any Open Source alternatives that are somewhat modern and well maintained."

terradyn asks: "Recently, I've been looking for a cheap external storage subsystem solution. Aside from the fibre channel high end solutions out there (IBM FastT, HP EVA, etc.), I haven't been able to find much for the SOHO type market. My current best possibility is this. It provides the capacity and interface type I was looking for (8 bay, ATA6, 1394) but lacks features like RAID5 or NAS type abilities. Has anyone found a better solution with at least RAID5 in a similar or smaller form factor for use in the home (I need the space/speed/reliability for video work)?"

An anonymous reader asks: "I work for a medium-sized university (25K students), and have been asked to come up with ideas on how to reduce our exposure to the RIAA. Our head of IT gets 50 to 100 emails from the RIAA every week, complaining about IP addresses where P2P applications offer copyrighted songs for download. We don't want to firewall off P2P applications completely, we just want to get the RIAA off our backs. How do other university IT departments educate students to stop attracting the RIAA's attention? Thanks for any war stories you might be able to share !"

Anonymous Coward asks: "Has anyone at Slashdot has heard of or used the Quill Mouse? It's an odd shaped mouse that's supposed to reduce repetitive stress injuries like Carpal Tunnel Syndrome." Rather than grabbing and moving the Quill mouse with your hands, you rest your hand in the Quill's "nook" and move the entire assembly with your arms. Since the palm of your hand is facing inward, you can then click the buttons which have been rotated to match the "nook". The web page says this hand position is less likely to cause RSI than the position a standard mouse requires. Anyone with (or who have used) a Quill Mouse care to comment?

Condo-Netwerk asks: "I'm trying to prepare a proposal for my condo building to be our own DSL provider. With 160 units, we should be able to get a T1 and keep the price fairly low. But what's the up-front cost? Which hardware should we use? What do we need to know about Copper Mountain, Avidia, etc. to do our due diligence prior to selecting hardware? I'm also helping a friend spec cabling for a new 30-unit condo building he's putting up; he wants to pull cat5 and split a DSL line from the phone room to each unit. Caveats? Experiences? Is it better to use cat6 or fiber?"

Jason W. asks: "I work for a medium sized company of about 75 employees. A while back I was asked by our CEO to look into a video conferencing solution. I didn't find much information about setting up a system in house except from Real Networks. The problem was, they wanted $10,000 just to start. We even had a sales visit from a consultant who laughed at us when we didn't want to spend $8-10,000. Like I said, we are a medium sized company, but did I mention we are privately owned? $10,000 is WAY to much for us to spend on what would be, new technology for us. I wanted to poll Slashdot readers, and see if they have any experience in this area. As for our needs, I know we would need to talk from Texas to Washington D.C, and to Virginia. Can we do it from our website? Do we have to have hardware 'stations' on each end? What are your thoughts?"

PyTHON71 asks: "I'm working through Schaum's Outlines of College Algebra. So far, in chapter 17 (conic sections), I've found 6 errors! Since I can spot them and correct them, I'm not worried about myself. But without math, you can't hack, and if young hackers are getting hung up on stupid math mistakes made by textbook authors... well, it's obviously a case for FDL textbooks. Are any textbooks being produced under the FDL?"

asn0 asks: "How do large/popular Open Source/Free Software projects manage their needs for hosting, bandwidth and mirrors? What limitations are there to the size/popularity of projects a site like SourceForge can/will support? Where does a project go for hosting and bandwidth once it out-grows SourceForge, and how hard is it to get hosting, bandwidth and mirrors to support a growing open source project?"

MetalShard asks: "While building Pocket War we started using CVS and found it to be the best version control system any of us have ever used. We are also using Code Historian which works with CVS and lets you analyze the changes you have made in you code, and TortoiseCVS which adds an easy to use front end to CVS. It seems like there are a lot of cool add-ons for CVS, but we have not found a good CVS server configuration program. Is there one?"

mbogosian asks: "Recently, my broadened responsibilities have me doing some database design and modeling, and I'm happy for the new knowledge and experience, but I'm a bit frustrated about the tool selection. I know most of us have had plenty of experience with at least a handful of all the wonderful Open Source development tools out there (like GCC, GNU Make, Subversion , and Perl to name a few). My question is this: where are OpenSource design tools? I've tried what I could find on SourceForge, but (as usual?) most of the projects that sounded promising were either still in the planning stages or seemed abandoned. Of course something which allowed be to create nifty class charts and output them to UML and/or SQL would be really cool, but I've yet to find something that works (especially in Linux). What are your favorite Open Source design tools and what do you like about them?"

Randy J. Parker asks: "Why don't cars provide input jacks for devices like MP3 players? My car has spectacular audio quality, but forces me to feed it with a handful of CDs. Unless you have a 'CD Text' supporting CD player and a fairly recent CD from the right company, once the CDs disappear into the changer, they become anonymous numbers: 'Disk 1', 'Disk 2', and so on. Devices like the iPod solve the problem of locating and feeding music, but can't be hitched to the car. Is there an after-market solution that doesn't sacrifice as much fidelity as a crappy cassette emulator or FM near-casting? Are there some cars with input jacks? What mechanisms are available to lobby for audio input jacks? Car manufacturers could even sell detachable storage as part of the car, at a huge margin, just like they do with radios and CD changers. This enables customers to finance the purchase of the portable storage device along with the car, opening up another demographic segment of buyers. I don't really want permanent music storage built into the car, since that would just be another device to synchronize. Ideally, I'd just carry my device, and attach it to speakers at my house, my friend's house, or the car I'm in."

Archon-X asks: "As an avid CaveClanner, I spend my spare time sloshing around underground in drains, and have more than once considered 'mapping' the drains. How would readers approach this problem? Mobile reception and presumably GPS is non-existent, and it's pretty dark and wet down there."

Kai_MH asks: "When I moved up to my high school this year (I'm a Sophomore), I was surprised to find that there was no 'computer' or 'technology' club at the school. Sure, there's A/V, but what fun is carrying TV sets around? So, I'd like to approach my school's administration about starting an after-school computer club. I'd like to educate my peers on the alternatives to Windows (Linux and Open Source), how hardware works and fits together, job offerings in computer-related fields, and anything else that may be of interest. Perhaps we can do fund-raisers to build and upgrade a computer for the club, which could be donated to the school or community? Does anyone have suggestions on this? Has anyone tried this before? I've had a lot of support from my peers, but I'm still not quite sure how to go about it."