cK-Gunslinger asks: "I'm looking for some definitive, legitimate studies/research that show that using a multiple-monitor setup yields increased productivity for code development. (or disproves, as the case may be.) I've seen many online 'articles' that praise the virtues of multi-monitor setups for content creation and HTML editing, but my interest lies more in the OO design, coding, and test realm. Sites such as RealTime offer some good info, albeit not completely unbiased. And who doesn't drool over X-Top systems. I'd like to submit a proposal to our IT and Process groups recommending a "trial run" on some small project, but am having a difficult time finding enough empirical evidence to crack the budget-clench. I'd also be interested in user comments on how multi-mon setups have helped your productivity as well as how you typically use your setup (what apps, how many monitors, CRT vs LCD, etc.)"

mingthemerciless asks: "The company I work for is developing accessible solutions for the visually impaired. Right now we are working on (yet another?)a screen reader for windows, but a linux version is on the drawing board...Linux screen readers like Speakup and Emacspeak either are console only or create virtual desktops. Is it viable to have a 'what you hear is what is on the screen' screenreader like JAWS on the current Linux desktop environments Like GNOME 2.0 or KDE 3.0?"

drshannon asks: "I have recently been placed in charge of our small Customer Support part of the company (just 2 people right now). I have never done any customer support before, and would like to ask the community about tools, policies, resources or ideas that work well for them. I'm sure there are a ton of resources, and most Google searches turn up specific help desks for companies, not ideas about supporting customers! What is a good CRM for a small business? How do you handle documentation to easily publish documents for User Guides, and for the web? What are common tools for a good customer support desk. We try and pride ourselves on good support, but we do need to improve, and can with your suggestions."

Michael Fourdraine asks: "I'd like to hear the Slashdot community view on if there is any merit in trying to develop a Windows compatible software and trying to make it compatible with WINE. Personally I have had no experience in Win32 or Linux software Development, but I still wonder if it is possible to develop a game to run under Windows and optimize it for WINE at the same time. If so, why don't developers take advantage of that option? Or does it simply make more sense to stick to developing one product and then port it to multiple platforms? Finally if there is anyone developing any software in this form what do developers keep in mind during development in order to ensure smooth usage under WINE?"

Jacob asks: " I have recently left a consulting/training firm to work in the public sector as a contractor. Part of my job functionality includes analyzing network traffic and security. This of course includes using products such as ethereal, snort, ntop and other network sniffers/analyzers. While working as a consultant I was legally covered by the company in which I worked for. Since I am no longer working for that company I do not have that same protection and I am worried about the possibility of being accused of 'sniffing passwords' or 'viewing confidential data' as a result of a normal network analysis. What is your experience in creating a legally binding contract or permission forms to perform network analysis and/or security audits?"

Izzard asks: "As a network engineer, I sometimes have to spend many hours in other people's server rooms. One in particular has a good few servers, DVD jukebox, plenty of monitors and switches etc. It's a thick, stone-walled room with a big door. It would get very, very warm were it not for the two huge air conditioning units in there. Someone has decided that these units will be set to maintain a constant air temperature of 17-18 deg. C (62-64F). After an hour or so of sitting in the air stream from these units my legs go numb and fall off and I can't type. Now my guess is that it would be fine to set the units to maintain, say, 21-22 deg. C (70-71F) to make it more comfortable for those of us who have to work in there. This argument comes up a lot, and my position is that the room doesn't need to be refrigerated, *per se*...it only needs to be prevented from overheating. Consequently I maintain that a *consistent* temperature of 'pleasant' for the room is almost as good a consistent temperature of 'a bit nippy'. Is there a definitive answer to this?"

jukal asks: "I am in the process of writing a proposal for co-operation between Openchallenge and UNITeS (United Nations Information Technology Service) which is 'creating a global volunteer programme aimed at bridging the digital divide between industrialized and developing countries'. Currently & traditionally contributing as a volunteer means relocating yourself to the developing country to take part as a project developer/manager/specialist. My proposal to UNITeS is, in short, will be that people could participate in such software projects via Openchallenge - while staying in their home country, on their spare-time and while keeping their jobs. The local team in the developing country would, after defining and creating requirements specifications post sub-projects as tasks to Openchallenge. All the contributions submitted to Openchallenge are published under an open source license. My question is: would you for example consider donating some hours to help a goodwill project - if you could do that from home. This is of interest to me, as I would like to be sure that the time we put into building co-operating with a big organization like UNITeS and others in the future. Is not wasted. There is this thread about 'Volunteer Work Abroad' - which is good reading related to the subject. But it did not quite provide me with the answer."

NewtonsLaw asks: "I'm in the process of building a TiVo-like PC that uses off-the-shelf technology to implement video timeshift, MPEG recording, MP3 recording, etc along with Net-radio functionality. Over the past two months I've effectively replaced VHS video tapes with CDRW disks. Once a program has been captured on the PC in (S)VCD MPEG format, I can either watch it by playing back the recorded file or dump it onto a CDRW and watch it on my DVD player, before blanking the disk and returning it to the 'empty' pile. What I've noticed is that most of the CDRWs I've tried only last about 30-40 rewrites before they start showing significant data dropouts (almost always at the start of a recording). Since disks in (S)VCD format don't carry the same level of error-checking/correction as disks written in regular data format, such dropouts are more noticeable than they would otherwise be (of course the up-side is that you get to store 805MB on a 700MB CDR/RW without overburn). What I want to know is -- how many rewrites do most people expect from their CDRW media? I seem to recall seeing a figure of a thousand rewrite cycles being touted by some manufacturers. Is this realistic? Thirty rewrites makes a $2.50 RW disk an economic medium for this purpose but it seems a hell of a long way short of 1,000."

shaun_gordon asks: "As a long-time geek and first-time home buyer, my wife are planning on a complete kitchen remodel. As part of the remodel, I want to put a computer into the kitchen to use for looking up recipes, controling the stereo, watching movies, etc. My only requirements are that it be Internet connected. My wife's requirements are that it be hidden. I am currently thinking of a flat screen that would fold down from under a cabinet and a keyboard in a drawer that pulls out. Has anyone had any experience installing something like this? Any recomendations on building or buying the integrated display? Anything else that I should consider?" Those looking into doing something like this may find a laptop with an 802.11-based wireless network adapter a better, and possibly cheaper, alternative for this kind of feature. Webpads might be another viable alternative, assuming they ever hit the consumer market at a worthwhile price. What suggestions might you have?

KeggInKenny asks: "I have the opportunity to engage in a research project involving large-scale asynchronous logic circuits. After evaluating possible tools for hardware description, simulation and implementation, I'm finding there's very little targeted toward asynchronous logic. VHDL is little changed from the 1987 standard which is not nearly as suited for large designs as it's name would suggest, and Verilog is too synchronous (or at least it's too easy to fall into the 'synchronous assumption' trap because of Verilog's C-style structure). Specifically: we are designing a low-power microcontroller for portable (read battery-powered) devices, and hoping that through asynchronous logic, we can greatly reduce power consumption. I'd like to see what the hardware gurus from the Slashdot community have to suggest for VLSIC design focusing on asynchronous research. What tools did you use to design the chips, did you run into synthesization problems, and did you find yourselves focusing on many local clocks, as seems to be the current async trend, or true unclocked hardware?"

RyuMaou asks: "I just started a job today and noticed I was the only guy wearing a golf shirt. Everyone else had long-sleeve button-downs on. So, I got home and went right to ThinkGeek to buy some Tux button-down collar shirts. But, horror of horrors, they were gone! Where can I get them, or others like them? I'd settle for the Geek.com propeller-head logo, but I'd really like Linux logo gear of all kinds. Anyone?"

Quicksilver31337 asks: "I have recently been faced with a challenge of getting shell access via a AIM(for mobile access purposes), where Perl would be used to recieve messages (prolly from specified users only) over AIM, and pass them as shell commands, and finally, returning output to the user over AIM again. Its seems to be possible to me (maybe using Net::AIM) and I was wondering if anyone has tried something similar with success. Thanks."

tunari asks: "Here in my neck of the woods (Cochabamba, Bolivia) there are hundreds of Internet cafes and Nintendo salons, where you can rent games by the hour. I would like to open a movie salon. I imagine a central CD/DVD jukebox and either dumb terminals or, if possible, TVs. Users would need basic control over playback, and, if possible, some automated way to request new titles. Cost is a big issue, as we will probably be charging less than a dollar per hour. What are some of the ways we could set this up?"

jamesva asks: "The telecommunications industry is rapidly converging on Windows NT/2000 for all telephony and voice-related needs. Most ACD systems, virtual operators, and voicemail are being ported to Windows if they're not already running on it. In the past, telephony apps have existed most notably on OS/2, SCO, and even DOS. However, free Unix (or unix-like) platforms have absolutely no penetration in this area, with seemingly no chance on the horizon. The Bayonne app server from the GNU folks seems to be the one exception, but even then there doesn't seem to much built around it or anyone using it. It reached a 1.0 release in September and was met with no fanfare. Even the LinuxTelephony doesn't seem to have much news. Can someone prove me wrong? Why is this the case? I'm interested in finding out if anyone is using Linux (or any free OS) in a production environment for something like voicemail or ACD. These types of systems require high availability and reliability and Linux just seems like a natural fit."

How About This asks: "Typically contractors are considered unsecured creditors, and if a company is having financial problems it is the unsecured creditors that usually lose out the most, or at least that's my understanding. Is it possible for a contractor that did software design and programming work to file a lien against a company for not paying for work performed? My searches have revealed references to mechanic's liens against land and property, but nothing directly with technology/computer related areas. Anyone have any links to sites or pages with this information? Or references to good (CA) lawyers in this field that can explain things (and has a reasonable initial consultation fee since obviously money is in short supply)."

virtualPhoneWire asks: "My office is expanding to include a new facility which is just a few hundred feet just across the parking lot. The building is just far enough away to make running cable a pain in the neck, so to get data over there, we're setting up an 802.11b link, and a couple of simple Linux routers to handle the traffic, no problem. Now, the people in this new building are going to need access to our phone system, a simple Avaya Partner II key system. I would like to think that there is a way that I can patch them into our switch using some kind of VoIP technology. The ideal being that we can issue a couple of IP phones that plug into the Ethernet back-bone, take their queue from my DHCP server, and linkup with a device on the other end that ties them into switch thus giving them access like any other phone. As an after thought, being able to give other people on our network, both inside the building and via our VPN, access to this gateway to make calls would be a real bonus. We're considering an upgrade to a real PBX, but we would like to do this without blowing the pension plan. We would like to having something scaleable, and open source, if possible. Any thoughts?"

NiN3x asks: "I have recently written a sorting algorithm that can be close to four times as fast as quicksort and never much slower. I was wondering if there are lots of sorting algorithms like this out there. I don't think I could be the only one that has thought of something like this. I am only in my second year of computer science, so I don't know a lot about these things. I have tried searching the net and can't find anything. My algorithm is NOT an inplace sorting algorithm. Can anyone point me to some sources for this type of thing?"

Nilatir asks: "Here at the University where I work we're checking out Dell notebooks to the students in the library and our main lab. While this is proven to be good for the students I'm having a hard time managing the batteries for the notebooks. By eliminating the floppy drives and using wireless APs to access network shares we were using two Li-Ion batteries in every Latitude and getting almost 8 hours of life a day from them. But, due to some students undying dependence on floppy disks, we were forced to drop down to one battery which will only last half the day at best. We now have an extra battery for each notebook with no way to charge them (even Dell's docking station has no charging bay). Have any slashdotters run into a problem like this and how you all resolve it? Does anyone know of external battery charging station for notebook batteries?" Will laptop makers ever learn that this is one of those accessories that would sell like hotcakes?

Xi asks: "My cell phone recently died, forcing me to start looking for another cell/provider. I want one which will allow me to do some simple client/server Java programming but I'm perplexed by the array of choices. Some providers let you pay to download Java apps but do they let you create your own? Several providers can utilize phones on which Java runs but do they have to host some sort of software on their side? For instance can I use a Java enabled phone with T-mobile? Nokia, Nextel, Motorola (who shipped a Developer's CD with my October copy of Java Developers Journal) and its recent acquisition, AT&T, Sprint (new pricing), and others are all claiming Java this and Java that but what am I really 'getting' and what are fellow Slashdot-reading Java developers really using?"

skotte asks: "I currently am in a position where I will be moving my whole set of belongings to a new apartment. But I refuse to just buy a bunch of boxes and start throwing things in. Surely there is a good strategy of how to tackle the act of packing. I'm thinking "Relatively" where everything related, such as CDs, go in one box, cables go in another. Or there's 'spatially', where I pack everything in one bookcase in one box. Or there's 'by Priority' in which important things i'll need right away go in one box...and on and on. There appear to indeed be LOTS of ways to go about it -- and there are big pros-and-cons to each. So what does the slashdot community think? Better yet, is there some management software to help with this sort of thing?"