ewilts asks: "I've been actively looking for volunteer management software but am consistently coming up empty. The vast majority (by far) is Windows desktop based and typically layered on top of a Windows database engine like Access or FileMaker. I'm specifically after something web-based (Linux/Apache) since there is no centralized volunteer office and the volunteers have systems including Windows 95, Macintosh, Linux, and everything in between. So far, eBase seems to be best solution, being open-source but it's Windows-centric, not web-centric. Any pointers to low-cost or free software to help manage a couple of hundred volunteers would be greatly appreciated."

eugene ts wong asks: "There have been a quite a few stories lately of governments cutting budgets and seriously examining the use of Linux in their offices. I'm getting the strong impression that the majority of government desktops will become Linux desktops. Is this true? As of right now, how many US state governments and Canadian provincial governments -do not- use Linux for their work stations? As of right now, how many -do not- intend on installing Linux? I think that knowing this is important so that we can direct our attention to the appropriate governments, in hopes of helping them to make the correct choice."

While researching a roadtrip which I'll be taking from St. Paul, Minnesota to Placerville, Ca I did what any geek would do, I checked out the t-mobile hotspots along the route (some), did various searching on wi-finder (some) and other sites and have been doing some googling around on the topic. I know that there must be some 802.11b access points along and inside the towns along I-80, but for the life of me I'm finding it difficult for me to find any of them. I of course have various wireless sniffing apps, but that is hardly an efficient way to find access. I don't mind paying a small fee, so....with that in mind, if you were to take a trip across the country, where would you stop for access? For specifics, Read More...

GRW writes "This past week, I attended a panel discussion sponsored by the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, entitled "Can science journalism be entertaining and responsible?". This was a discussion regarding the role the media could and should play in the dissemination of scientific issues to the general public. Panelists included newspaper, TV and radio journalists. I thought that this might be a good subject for a Slashdot discussion. What do you think about science journalism? How can it better communicate to the general public about science and the scientific method? Can science journalism do a better job of helping people distinguish science from pseudoscience?"

mackman asks: "I was wondering if anyone has ever though about using their DNS servers to provide mirror information? A specially formated TXT-record could easily provide a DNS-cache-friendly mirror listing. A TXT-record would just need a list of servers and paths, or perhaps a more complicated mapping for servers which only mirror a subset of the original site. This would allow for much more flexibility than a basic round-robin A-record scheme. For example, instead of pounding the Red Hat web server to get a mirror listing (or relying on Slashdot posts for that matter), why not do a 'dig -t txt mirrors.redhat.com'? Of course we could build this into download managers like wget."

Komi asks: "I work for a big semiconductor company, and I'm part of a group that is spear heading the Linux movement here. Right now everyone uses Sun machines to design, but you can get a cheaper Linux x86 machine that is four times faster. So it is my job to prove that Linux works. The problem is that I'm an analog circuit designer stuck in the role of sysadmin. So I need some advice on what goes into a network. It won't be that large right now, but it has to be scalable for up to a couple of hundred machines. If this works, then hopefully we'll convince all designers at my company to make the switch."

HBergeron writes "Despite some exhautive searching I have able to find very little about LED based light fixtures for the home. There are some in marine use, and a spare handful of others come up on a Google search but from all I have read on Slashdot I have to believe there are more out there. I am in the final stages of a home remodel and would very much like to use 'the lighting source of the future' (tm) in a number of places. For one, the bedroom, LEDs could make a nice bedside sconce/reading light, and a red/white option could be just the like for those late night stumbling across the room expeditions. A vanity light seems like another good place. Not to mention energy and bulb replacement savings." While these may not be economical for most people, I'm sure there are a few folks out there who have put these new lights to the test. How well did they stack up to the use of traditional filament lights?

drfunch asks: "With the recent 'passing' of Pioneer 10 after over 30 years of service, I wonder what other technologies have far exceeded expectations. One example from my own experience is my trusty HP calculator, which is still going strong after 21 years. What technologies or devices have gone far beyond your expectations?"

jaxle asks: "I wanted to ask the Slashdot crowd what they have in their computer rooms to make it less... dreary. I love having windows, but like me, for many of us I don't think that is an option. I have most of my computer stuff in the basement, and I find that my eyes usually get sore and I can't stand being down there any longer. So far I have a fish tank that I got recently which adds a nice ambiance to the room. I am planning on buying some plants too in the near future. Any body else have ideas or tell us how you decorate your computer room. Also, what kind of lighting most represents real sunlight?"

NetworkCop asks: "Hi, I was recently reading a white paper on a company that helped banks to comply with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Security Act. However, it sounded like it was a simple Nessus/NMAP scan. Does anyone here have experience implementing the requirement of this Act in a *nix platform?"

Steve asks: "I've suffered ongoing problems with my cable access for several months which my cable company has not resolved. Yesterday I discovered that the cause of the problem was probably due to a remote software update applied to my cable modem by the cable company 2 months ago. Their solution is to give me a new rental modem. This is fine, except that I *own* the current modem which is now broken and can not be sold on. The cable company are unwilling to offer compensation. According to my contract, the company can only modify equipment which they own. The question: have they broken the UK's Computer Misuse Act? Should they be liable for damages caused?"

rakolam asks: "I am involved with network management in the hosting department of a fairly large ISP. Constantly we have customers who dispute inbound bandwidth spikes and demand service credits on their burstable connections. Events such as the Slammer Virus literally have everyone knocking on their salesperson's door at the end of the billing cycle. My position is that the internet is a public space, and by placing themselves in that space, one has to realize the consequences (and the implications of burstable billing). I'd like Slashdot's perspective on this. Should ISP's ultimately eat the costs of malicious behavior? Is the customer ultimately responsible for the bandwidth they've generated, regardless if it's desired or not? Is this a new frontier for insurance companies?"

LockedDisk asks: I'm looking at an application that will use USB flash devices to distribute information that, while not "top-secret", is sensitive enough that I'd prefer not to distribute it in plaintext. It'll be accessed from multiple platforms by the users who get them. What I'm hoping to find is a tool to build encrypted disk images that can be mounted on Windows, MacOS X, and hopefully Linux as well. What I'd do in distributing these is put the encrypted image on the device, with mounters already on the thumb drive. Users would be able to simply use the right mounter for their platform. For instance, I know PGPdisk would support the multi-platform part, but the mounter doesn't look like it's very well-suited to what I'm looking for. Mac .DMG files can be encrypted, but I know of no way to mount them on any other platform. Any ideas, folks?"

ignipotentis asks: "I have recently been looking into getting a Sony 50" Grand Wega. However, the one thing that deters me is the lack of obvious PC support. I would like to use the TV as a monitor for a living room PC as well as a TV. So I set off to do some investigation. I came across the ATI Component Adapters and then came across the reviews stating their overscan problems. Next I decided to check out the details on DVI (DVI & HDCP) and I've become rather confused. From what I gather, HDTV-DVI is nothing but DVI-D + HDCP. Now, being DVI-D, it can accept a signal from any DVI-I video card as long as a DVI-D male to male cable is used. Where I become confused is in the HDCP protocol. The way I read it, the Host (my computer) in this case, initiates the authenticity check whenever it wants. If it doesn't receive a valid reply, it can stop the stream. However, nothing is stated (that I can see) as to what would happen if no check was ever performed. If the Client (the TV) just continues to display what it receives, then all is good. If it does not, then I guess I'm back to the drawing board looking for other TVs. My question to Slashdot regards that of the protocol. I've emailed info@digital-cp.com only to getan automated response as a reply and I'm hoping that someone a bit more technically savvy than myself can interpret the HDCP protocol better than I have been able to."

dentar asks: "I got into a conversation with a peer today about funny names we've given programs in the past. I have a small program I wrote for a client called omnihurl whose purpose is to get a summary listing of their last 20 omniback backups and display them. I called it that because I couldn't think of a good name when I wrote it.. It never got renamed. That program is still used every day and is about seven years old. The guy I was talking with had written a backup script named shazbot. A few years later a friend and I wrote a program that was going to be a dynamic DNS type of client and server. I couldn't think of a name for those either, so they wound up being whale and plankton. We still laugh about it. So, how's about y'all? What's the funniest thing you ever named a program? The more irrelevant to its purpose, the better."

multiOSfreak asks: "I recently picked up a DVD-R/RW drive on the cheap, and I was wondering which component DVD players have the widest latitude of compatibility with 'burned' DVD media. I have a Toshiba SD-1600, and it's very picky about the media (so far, it will only play Princo and Verbatim DataLife +). I've looked at a ton of sites on DVD players, but none of them gave comments from actual users on how well they worked, firmware upgrades, etc. Epinions is okay, but the level of knowledge of most reviewers is nowhere near that of the Slashdot community." What DVD Players are the least picky about the media they use?

quaxzarron asks: "I had a recent experience where one of our group of programmers wrote backdoors on some web applications we were developing, so that he could gain access to the main hosting server when the application went live. This got me thinking about how we are dependent on the integrity of the coders for the integrity of our applications. Yet in this case a more than casual glance would allow us to identify potentially malicious code. How does this work when the clients are companies who can't perform such checks - either because they don't know how, or because the code is too large or too complex? How often do companies developing code officially sanction backdoors...even if means calling them 'security features'? How often has the Slashdot crowd put a backdoor in the code they were developing either officially or otherwise? How sustainable is the 'trust' between the developer and the client?"

codepunk asks; "I work for a large manufacturing firm in the midwest, working on a migration from Windows to Linux in the data center. We just completed installation of two full Oracle RAC 9i clusters. We are also in the process of configuring two clusters for our manufacturing floor's Linux desktop roll out. The machines that make up our data center are all Compaq Proliant Series machines. In order to facilitate hardware maintenance we are in bad need of a monitoring solution. HP offers Insight Manager as well as the Compaq Health Agents. This solution would seem like a natural but the drivers installed by these solutions are binary only. We have never managed to get these to work correctly and are really concerned about the stability of our systems with these modules loaded. We are not opposed to buying hardware in the future from a vendor that provides a more open solution. We are also not opposed to buying a open third party solution. Slashdot, what do you use for Linux system hardware monitoring?"

fist_187 asks: "i'm working on a semi-portable MP3 player project, and would like to include a CD-ROM drive in my setup, but a full size drive is a little bigger than I'd like. so, I thought about using a drive designed for mini-CDs...but I can't find any! I know that there are several MP3 portables that use mini-CDs, but does someone know where to find the drives themselves (preferably in a USB or IDE variety)? The only thing I've been able to find, after some searching, is the Imation RipGO!, but that's already a player... defeating the purpose of building from scratch in the first place. Does anyone have advice on where to look?"

miasok asks: "Recently I was deemed unfit for a job I was applying to, even before having an interview. A local software development company expressed an interest in my resume, but first wanted me to take an Organizational Analysis Design (OAD) test. The OAD test is a form with approximately 100 personality attributes and you are supposed to identify if they whether they apply to you, and if they are expected of you in your current job. I completed all fo the questions truthfully, and was surprised at the response: '...the results do not fall within our range of acceptance for the programming position'. Has anyone else had experience with such a test, especially as the sole means of determining a candidate suitable for a job? More information about this test can be found at here."