Anonymous Coward asks: "Nowadays no matter where you look, most motherboards have built in everything. Built-in sound, video, LAN, and so on. Are there any reliable manufacturers that still make motherboards without the extras? One example: I want to build a high-end workstation for video processing. Often with on-board audio there are timing issues. Disabling the on-board features doesn't always work. When your on-board NIC fails, a piece of your motherboard is no longer working, not just a replaceable expansion card. What manufacturers are still making 'barebones' motherboards (and what models) without having to buy a server backplane?"

Webbsurfer asks: "I recently returned home from school from winter break, and discovered a good chunk of spyware on my parent's computer. I've ran ad-aware and cleared out the obvious P2P programs, but there's one I can't seem to get rid of. It generates pop-up ads, which come from the burstabit.com domain. Any ideas who these guys are and how to get rid of their junk?"

SlashChick asks: "My mother saw a TV commercial the other night about a new form of broadband access which works via a digital TV signal. You place a digital TV antenna on your desk and it receives broadband data at up to 768K/sec. Uploading is accomplished via a dial-up modem. The company mentioned on the TV spot is Web Hopper, which is available in Cincinnati, OH. Are any Slashdot readers familiar with this service or other similar ones? Is this a good option for those who still can't get DSL or a cable modem?"

rrwood asks: "I'm starting work on what is more or less an open-source 3D modeling application, and I'd like to make it as cross-platform as possible (Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, MacOS, etc.). OpenGL takes care of the 3D rendering I'm going to need, but I also need some sort of widget set, and I'm looking for advice as to what to use in that regard. I've done my Google homework and have come up with the following, but would like feedback from anyone who has already used any of these, or has recommendations about anything I may have missed. Yes, I know about Blender, and be reassured I am not planning on reinventing that wheel, okay? :-) So, here's what I've found so far. As I said, if anyone can add to this list or share his/her experiences actually working with any of these, that would be greatly appreciated."

Splynn asks: "I was wondering about what the very first man made object to leave Earth's atmosphere was. We all know that Sputnik was the first man made satellite, but there must have been something that actually made it out there befor Sputnik." For those who are curious, Sputnik was launched on October 4, 1957. Sputnik may have been the first satellite to orbit the earth, but was it really the first successful launch into space?

suwalski asks: "Often when I go over to someone's house to help them with 'computer stuff' (translation: free support), I notice that many people who don't know better still use 60Hz as their refresh rate. XP seems to automatically tune higher, but for the others, I immediately bump it up, because it hurts my eyes. They say they don't see the difference. Am I right to assume that low refresh rates that make my eyes water are not healthy? If people don't notice the low refresh rate, does it still damage their eyes? Anyone know of any studies or papers?"

clutch110 asks: "I have been tasked with coming up with a name for our soon-to-be server room. Our president is renowned for these small tasks. I was told to create something funny and not nearly as obvious as 'Company Server Room'. So I come in hope that your everlasting humor can help me complete my quest for the most unique server room name in existance."

smallstepforman asks: "Christmas is almost here, and most companies will be running a skeleton staff during the holiday period. Since there will only be 8 people in the entire building where I work, you can guess what we'll all be doing - multiplayer LAN gaming. The team leader (who will be the acting manager for the holiday period) is asking about good games to play during this period. Most of the machines on the LAN are P3@733 with integrated i810 video cards, while some older machines (P2@45) have a Voodoo 3. Which multiplayer games can Slashdot readers recommend? The games need to be easy to pick up, and not require a lot of hard disk space. Free/shareware games or demos should be considered due to legal issues."

rtgree01 asks: "Do Slashdot readers know of any wireless ethernet devices that are not 900 MHz, 2.4GHz, or 5GHz. This is for a project that will be in an extremely harsh EMI area (thousands of V/m at those frequencies). Also, to make things even more impossible, line of sight is not available, even though the range for this system should be 30 feet max. Some of you might suggest to stick with a standard wired solution, but that is not optimal at all. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated."

Phactorial asks: "At it's current state, most UNIX consoles (not graphical terminal emulators, mlterm is out for this) I have dealt with do not handle unicode properly. This is essential when it comes to dealing with languages that require characters that are not in the current ASCII set. I was wondering if anyone out there is developing a solution for non-Linux platforms. I know the Arabeyes project is currently working on a project called 'Akka' which provides UTF-8 (kinda) support and even shaping and bidirectional code (essential for many languages in the East, the program works fine and I am working on getting a FreeBSD port out). However, I was pondering, how are other UNIX consoles doing? Do any of them fully support unicode, even bidirectional characters? shaping? (a great many of today's UNIX applications lack many if not all of these ;(). If you know of such applications or are working on support for a platform, could you give feedback as to your experiences and thoughts on the current state of the UNIX console?"

joesklein asks: "From CNET, there is an article about the new Microsoft Office 11. In summary 'Microsoft says it's opening its Office desktop software by adding support for XML--a move that should help companies free up access to shared information. But there's a catch: It has yet to disclose the underlying XML dialect.' Could this be grounds for another anti-trust suit against Microsoft?"

AsparagusChallenge asks: "Let's say that I do have an open source project. I've setup a CVS on SourceForge, made release announcements on freshmeat, placed a nice webpage and a message board to discuss CVS commits. That said, what's the best way to attract talented people to help with development? I'd like to hear comments from people that have started their own projects and have got more people to work with them. What are the best channels to find volunteers, how to ask for testers, forming a team and so on. Note that I'm not advertising my project; what I'm asking for are general hints."

BreadWinner asks: "My wife and I are adopting a baby in 2003 and it's very expensive. I work for a non-profit that can't pay me what I feel I'm worth. However, I really like my job, my boss, the time off, and my co-workers. So I'm considering moonlighting. I've done private contracting, but I don't think I can do my private clients justice when I'm working full-time. So what kind of job can I find that: I can leave at the job; maximize my $/hour? Anybody done commission-based electronics sales? I'm not an uber-geek, but I'm interested in whatever you folks at Slashdot can suggest."

SerialHistorian asks: "The commmunity college newspaper that I was once a staff member and webmaster of had its domain name expire recently without realizing it, and it was snatched up by a porn merchant from the Dominican Republic. Unfortunately, we found that the ICANN dispute fees -start- at $1500. For a college paper whose full annual budget is $10,000, that's not a realistic price... so is there any alternative to the ICANN dispute method so that they can get their domain name back?" According to ICANN's website, there are a limited number of approved UDRP providers, none of which will arbitrate for anything less than US$1100. Are there cheaper methods that one can use to challenge a domain name reassignment? Is it possible to challenge domain name transfers without invoking the UDRP? Why does the handling of such disputes cost so much?

n1ywb asks: "I recently cajoled myself into buying a Dell Axim. Since the compact flash slot is obviously taken up by my 802.11b card, that leaves me with the OTHER slot for adding additional storage. This other slot is billed as a 'Secure Digital Card' slot, although I understand it is backwards compatable with the 'Multimedia Card' standard. The name 'Secure Digital' is somewhat misleading it seems. It has some kind of digital rights management technology onboard, which nobody seems to want to elaborate on. It has hardware encryption, which sandisk.com touts as 'Cryptographic security for copyrighted data based on proven security concepts from DVD audio.' Hah! DeCSS anyone? Magic markers? There isn't a lot of REAL information about SD cards out there. I like cheap and fast storage, but I'm paranoid of DRM. _I_ am god here; my hardware is slave to me. I don't want my PDA telling me I can't play my Grateful Dead bootlegs because they aren't digitally signed. Should I buy MMC or SD? Where can I find more info? Any real world experiences? What do you think is the bottom line?"

An anonymous reader asks: "I've been asked by my employer to come up with a business plan to sell a software product of ours overseas. We are a fairly well-known Korean telecom operator, but have little presence overseas, and this is our first internally developed software product -- an e-learning management system. We believe South Asia and the U.S. will be strong markets, and that the product itself is competitive feature-wise. What is the best strategy to use to break into overseas markets? How should we go about finding distributors, and what sorts of partnership models should we expect?"

jolchefske asks: "I'm a small time guy running a small time parody website of a medium sized school district. My site lampoons the real website of the Seattle School District -- a district currently over 30 million dollars in the hole due to accounting "irregularities." My question is, what protections (if any) do parody websites have against copyright litigation? The district is 30+ mil in the red but they've got the lawyers knocking on my door."

coloth asks: "We've all been told for many years that monitor burn-in is a thing of the past, that CRTs use a different kind of phosphor now, and that screensavers are more toys than practical safeguards. After a few minutes with Google, nearly every PC advice site I found said as much. Well, I just realized tonight that I've got burn-in from the Seti@Home screensaver on my Dell P991. I took a picture with my digital camera. (disregard the bar of interference) I added the arrows with PhotoShop and enhanced the image a bit, but the burn in is clear. Here is the image of the "screensaver" to compare the pattern. Is my monitor sub-par? Is the conventional wisdom about burn-in untrue? Are most people doing anything specific to avoid burn-in?"

Creighti asks: "When I first got my new cellphone I immediately received several automated Text Message 'Alerts' from Yahoo and MSN which recurred on a daily basis. My guess was (is) that the previous owner of my cell phone number signed up for these things. Six months later I'm still getting unwanted text messages from Yahoo! Alerts. I managed to get rid of the MSN messages by signing up with MSN (gack), registering the phone number as mine, and de-selecting all text messages. I've tried the same trick with Yahoo. I've tried filling out the Yahoo! Help form that appeared to apply (interestingly enough, the Yahoo Help entry I've used several times to request they stop sending the unwanted alert appears to have been removed, but clicking the 'No' button on this page would work). I've even tried emailing abuse@yahoo.com. Anyone else getting text-message spammed by Yahoo! (or any other service)? Any suggestions for what I should do next to try and get Yahoo! to stop sending these unwanted messages?" Why aren't the text message preferences deleted when the cancellation notices comes thru?

strider3700 asks: "One of my favorite shows was cancelled today and it's left me feeling rather bitter towards the mainstream. I tend to like shows more intelligent then 'Survivor' but I'm in the minority so shows won't be made to pick up that small percentage. However now and again I find great video clips on the net. They appear to be homemade and are in some cases very well done. Is it possible to do something like this for a continuing series and place it on the net to share? how would someone go about doing something like this? And I know not to quit my day job."