Pray_4_Mojo asks: "I'm an engineering student at the University of Pittsburgh, and I'm currently taking a required class known as 'Computer Interfacing'. While I enjoy the instructor, I find most of the material to be severely dated. We will spend the majority of the class covering RS232/XMODEM/Token Ring means of computer-to-computer communication. Almost no mention of USB, Firewire, or IRDa is made within the class. I am trying to convince my professor that this material is relevant, as these types of interfaces will be dominate in the world we future grads will be working in. As an example, I demonstrated that the keycard access system to gain access to the Interfacing Lab has a USB port for data download/firmware programming. The professor seems interested, but it seems that I need to convince the department to revise the course requirements. Has anyone attempted to modernize their CS/Engineering program and met with success?"

X-Nc asks: "I have an old 486 Laptop that does not have a CD drive and , if I remember right, a very small hard disk (a few megs), and maybe 4 megs of RAM. I would like to let my 6 year old son use this for him to play and learn on. What I'd -really- like to do is install Linux or one of the BSD's on it with enough apps to run a simple editor and a few other things. I have other systems that are able to run learning software and games. This would be for him to learn computer fundimentals. I remember in the old days that you could run X11 on this kind of system (my first Linux box was a 386DX-30 with 2meg RAM and a 20 meg HD). I have been digging around in some of the lists of distros to try and find something to load on the system but I can't seem to find one that's right. So, does anyone know of a Free Software (or even commercial) OS that can be installed on such a system that can do more than be just a terminal?"

szyzyg asks: "I'm getting married and my girlfriend and I have been looking around at rings and not really getting anywhere. I have all sorts of high concepts about what this should represent and I keep coming back to the thought 'nothing which is useless can be truly beautiful'. So I've been fighting with the idea of how to make a ring which has some use beyond simple symbolism... concepts like using magnetic minerals to turn it into a compass, or engraving some sort of measuring mechanism into it. So here's the challenge I'm putting to the Slashdot bright idea machine: How do I make a simple piece of jewelry useful? Someone out there must have better ideas."

spookymonster asks: "I'm a mainframe sysadmin for a Fortune 50 company. I'm also a Linux hobbyist. About 18 months ago, my request for a proof-of-concept z/Series testbed was granted, and the results have been encouraging. Despite this, senior management keeps saying that Linux isn't ready for prime time. Today, I was finally able to corner one of them and ask him what exactly his issue was with Linux. His answer: Indemnity. All our other software vendors provide protection against someone suing us for using their product. Who protects us if a third party sues us, claiming Linux infringes on their copyrights? Sadly, I was at a loss for words. I've done some digging on Google, but haven't really found anything on the subject. With the SCO/IBM lawsuit heavy in the headlines of late, I figured I'd turn to the Slashdot community for answers. How do I respond to questions about Linux and indemnification protection?"

campusNetworkWatcher asks: "I work for a large University that allows wide open access to most of its networks. There is no firewall of any type, and this is not likely to change in the future. A problem spot I see are the residential networks. For the most part, it is filled with un-patched Windows machines run by non-security-centric users just waiting for the newest virus/worm/trojan. Recent events, and an onslaught of DMCA violations have caught the attention of my superiors (as well as his superiors), but there is little we can do once we track down a compromised machine. With a couple of exceptions, in a couple of departments, there is no group will to do desktop support of student machines. We can tell a user he or she is compromised, but lack the enforcement to make the user fix the problem. My group strongly advocates an open academic environment, but if the network is too open it may negatively affect the people we are running it for. I feel like this must be a problem for many other universities and was wondering how others have handled it (blanket port blocking of NetBIOS, established only traffic, or other options). I am looking for non-intrusive suggestions for protecting the network, while allowing as much access as possible to the students. Any suggestions?"

bangpath asks: "I realize that many of my peers aspire to become managers in their field/respective subfields, but upon visiting Amazon and Barnes & Noble, I noticed a significant lacking in books about IT management. That is, most books that came up under this search were IT project management or IT systems management. Surely, these are important areas that an IT manager deals with frequently, but what about dealing with the people, policy, and responsibilities of IT? One would think that IT workers aren't the same as HR people, or Accountants, or the other types of people you'd find in a typical office. Can anyone recommend any books specifically about managing IT Professionals?"

kill-hup asks: "I know the issue of caching linked pages has been discussed many times here on Slashdot, but the majority of those discussions centered around the 'Slashdot Effect' knocking remote content servers off-line. How does the ethic/legality issue change, if any, when we're talking about information that once was available but now has moved or disappeared from the provider's site?"

const_k asks: "I'm maintaining TightVNC, a popular free software project. As with many other free and open source projects, there is a problem with having comprehensive documentation. Currently, I'm thinking about launching a sort of community-driven documentation project, using Wiki as an engine that would help volunteer contributors to write and improve the documentation. I'd like to know, is it a good idea to use Wiki, and is it possible to achieve decent documentation quality this way? What software and technologies other free or open source software projects use, and what are the results, in terms of completeness and quality of the documentation? Any pointers and suggestions would be greatly appreciated."

An old friend of mine, Todd San Martin, passed on a link to me of a great surplus place in Orlando that has lots of old nasa gear and more, and it made me think that it's probably time to talk about great surplus shops again. Not just the aforementioned skycraft or the well known Weird Stuff , although feel free to dicuss those too, but I thought it would make a cool post as a jumping off point for people to talk about their favorite shops especially those near aerospace facilities, both online and off.

An anonymous reader asks: "My grandfather is the president of a well-known undergraduate-only college of about 7,000 students. He tells me that an alumnus has agreed to donate $2.4 million initially (and up to $800,000 each succeeding year for 10 years) to the school for computer equipment and staff if the school agrees not to renew any contract and to buy no products or services (either directly or through an intermediary like Gateway) from Microsoft. I'm told that this isn't the enormous amount of money that it sounds like and that a change-over to non-Microsoft products would be costly. I think it'd be great for college students to use computers apart from Microsoft, but I'm told that the board will look at the decision in terms of cost, not for benefit to the students. Does the Slashdot community have any points that I can give my grandfather to present to the Board next month?"

miguelk asks: "I'm helping a company (in Brazil) legalize their desktop operating system licenses by migrating to Linux on the desktop. WINE was tried but unfortunately did not work out for this particular case, so the idea is to install a Linux server with Win4Lin Terminal Server for 5 users, since the company has 5 Windows98 licenses to use for this purpose. All of the other 50+ desktops would be running Linux and would access these 5 licenses as needed, whenever they use a legacy Windows application. I have a question about the legal aspect of using the Windows desktop remotely. From all I have researched so far, this is legal since the actual Windows code will be installed on only one computer and will not be loaded in RAM on any other computer. I see it as equivalent to having 5 PCs on a desk and users walking up and using whatever PC happens to be available. I suspect that a direct, unprepared question to Microsoft is not a good idea, so I want to prepare first. Can anybody comment on this solution or share their experiences?"

trmj asks: "I run a hosting company, and today I received an e-mail, claiming to be from an animation firm, about one of my clients hosting pirated information. As usual, before entertaining a claim of this sort, I researched the claim (there was a bit of legitimacy in it) and what the laws are governing this issue. After that, I replied in the appropriate manner, however, found that the original e-mail address was not valid, leading to the discovery that neither was the e-mail. As a hosting provider, how far should I go to protect the rights of my clients while upholding the law, and still verify every claim that comes in?"

dejetal asks: "Does anyone know of a poet who's typical topic is some form of technology? I have been personally interested in this subject for some time now (with disappointing search results), but now I have some new motivation: I will be attending Columbia University fairly soon, and I would like to have an interesting topic to work on for a writing/composition course. Columbia also has some exciting new majors that may appeal to the Slashdot crowd, one of them being Digital Media Technology , the area of study that I wish to enter. Can anybody point me towards some good techno-poets?"

Anonymous for the Moment asks: "While working in a grant-paid position in a big University, I had access to massive amounts of administrative health data. I was repeatedly, over the course of months, told to take data and not tell the people who were in charge of it that I had it (which is a big no-no). I informed the people who held the data, but they were mostly non-responsive, and I figured this was because they would get in trouble with the province and the people who's records they were keeping. I finally blew the whistle to the Ethics Committee, but it has been over six months, and they too have not responded. I am wondering how long I should wait before going to the media and letting the people of the province know that their data is not being treated with respect. Has anyone else had an experience where they were told to access other's data without permission? I am aware of others at my University who have been put in similar situations, but is it just my University, or is it more widespread than that?"

Mock asks: "I work for a web services company, and so part of our business process involves setting up web servers for our customers that include a JVM for running our software. Although I've found FreeBSD to be rock-solid for server applications and the quickest to fix security issues, the JVM support has been lagging behind other systems, for some time now. I would like to know if it is wise, or even possible, to run the Linux JVM under BSD? Are there other alternatives I'd be better off considering (besides using a different operating system)?"

IPAQ2000 writes "This past week, I attended a panel discussion sponsored by Microsoft and other major players in the space. One of the ideas brought up by one of the expert panel attendees from a company called Seaside Software claimed that large organizations should rely mainly on Outlook Web Access (OWA) for Exchange 2K access for remote users. He claimed that OWA access with SSL makes it perfect for secure access and saves the hassle of the VPN client support. I can see how avoiding the VPN client and the Outlook client together on desktops around large organizations (like mine) could be a good thing (by saving money), and how moving to OWA for remote users makes sense. In fact, it looks like MS themselves are putting much more emphasis on the browser in Exchange 2003 (OWA and Outlook are almost identical) so that users can run whatever version is appropriate for their needs, according to connectivity speeds, location, etc. There was a discussion regarding mobility and remote solutions in the enterprise. I thought that this might be a good subject for a Slashdot discussion, especially as it relates to Exchange. What do you think about OWA as main way of accessing Exchange, especially as OWA keeps getting richer with each version of Exchange?"

alexkj asks: "Do you remember a situation that made you feel good about your job? There's a lot of moaning and complaining going on about peoples jobs these days. It's probably no wonder with all the downsizing going on, but it still gets me down. So lets turn it around, and find all the good stories. Tell everybody else about a good experience on the job. Try to be specific, and relate an actual story of a situation that made you happy on the job."

Midnight Thunder asks: "There issue of music downloads, and paying for your music, has been discussed many time before here on Slashdot. Generally when you head down to your local music store you are limited to a choice of music adapted to your local market. I tend to find that trying to get hold of non-English music, here in North America, from sources other than P2P file sharing is almost impossible. What do you do if you heard a track on a streaming internet music station, or from a friend with an MP3 version, that is not available in your country, what do you do to get a 'legitimate' copy of the track and reward the artist?"

aetherspoon asks: "Reading the Internship at Microsoft story, I was wondering what paid jobs were actually still out there for CS majors in the industry. Coming from a CS major who has a stack of 'We're sorry, but...' letters sitting on his desk, I know that I have not had much luck in this area. Are there any places left offering good paid internships?"

TwoHeadsAin'tGoodEnough asks: "For our current contract, my company needs to find video splitters which don't just replicate the same signal across all monitors. Googling isn't helping too much, because thousands of people are selling video splitters, but they're all the wrong kind. We need to split a signal onto 4 displays. (Each display is going to be a 52" plasma screen, *drool*). It doesn't matter whether we are splitting analog vga output or dvi output, so long as it works. Any suggestions?" These type of setups are commonly called "videowalls", and there is a library out there called VWLib that can be used to manipulate such systems. Some videowalls are custom affairs, but I'm sure there are commercial entites out there that build complete setups. Have any of you tried to put something like this together? If so, what were your experiences? Update: 03/12 9:15pm EDT by C :After digging thru the Slashdot Archives, this story was found that might also shed some light on the subject.