Night0wl writes "With the recently ended beta of Earth and Beyond I'm left wondering where can one find beta test accepting applications? I heard of the EnB Beta from Tech TV, but not all beta's are publisizing on tv. Where do you geeks find your hopefull prospects? Are we really left to hovering over a game we love, or random picks from a google search?"

jbwiv asks: "I've seen many articles/posts/opinions stating that Microsoft's Palladium could put an end to Open Source as we know it, thereby stealing away most of what I enjoy and appreciate about computers. With the big two (Intel, AMD) actively developing Palladium architectures, I'd like to get involved in the effort to combat it. However, I haven't found any person or group actively working to stop Palladium; plenty people are bitching, but no one seems to be doing much about it. Who can one contact regarding this, and are there any groups already involved? What other steps might be taken? It would seem that such an affront to our way of life would be met with more vocal and mobile opposition."

Renraku asks: "I know that I am considering joining the U.S. Air Force and going with their networking course. I saw in a story the other day how several people answered with comments about their own life in the Air Force, in the line of work I would be doing. Does anyone have any stories, or tips for surviving basic / tech school / Air Force life in general?"

DonJefe68 asks: "I'm planning to create a website which lists the political positions that US House and Senate candidates here in North Carolina have on issues of concern to the tech community. There are obvious issues like the DMCA and Fritz Hollings' CBDTPA as well as issues such as the effect of the economy on the tech sector and the USA PATRIOT Act's privacy concerns. What national issues other than intellectual property, privacy and jobs are we interested in?" Are there other sites that track politician votes, on technical issues, for other US States or on a national level? For those readers who do not live in the US, please feel free to speak your mind on this topic or on political issues that affect you as well.

Mitch Wagner asks: "Are you aware of any studies that research the BENEFICIAL effects of computer gaming? Here's why I ask: I volunteer at the St. Vincent de Paul Village homeless shelter computer lab here in San Diego. Homeless men and women come into the lab to search the Internet for jobs, communicate by e-mail, and learn to use computers and the Internet. Recently, the lab installed computer games on several of the machines. From what I've observed, contrary to popular wisdom, computer gaming is a wholesome activity. It teaches people to use computers, learn problem-solving skills, think and - because the players frequently play in teams, or against each other, or looking over each other's shoulders - the players learn how to solve problems and interact in groups. These lessons are especially valuable because many of the clients are emotionally underdeveloped, lack problem-solving skills,and have difficulty working and playing with others. My observation is that time spent in the computer lab is time that the homeless clients are NOT taking drugs, NOT drinking, NOT being violent and ARE using their minds. We'd like to find some kind of studies to test our observations. Are you aware of any? I did some Googling and found two, but I'd like to find some studies that are more conclusive."

NeuroManson asks: "With the growing hype surrounding HDTV and copy protection, and as further corporate control of the FCC becomes more commonplace with the inevitable arrival of the technology thanks to Hollywood, you will have no choice in the future of watching anything else, since your TV, VCR, etc, will be forced into obsolescence. There are two things that this brings to mind that should be addressed: who will be paying for the retrofit to the thousands of CRT and TV manufacturing plants around the world to make this possible; and assuming that this is going to be a US only problem in the short term (approx 3 years), how do they propose to safely dispose of all those outmoded TVs?" About the only way that this can happen by the recently proposed deadline of July 1st, 2007, without trashing and replacing the majority of our current televisions, American television owners would have to have their TVs "serviced" by a qualified technician to continue to receive broadcast signals. Having a secondary tuner would not work as that would break the "trusted" display chain that Hollywood is seeking to establish.

TeachingMachines asks: "They say that if you can't do, you teach, and if you can't teach, you teach P.E. Well, what happens when P.E. teachers become interested in programming? Wimpy educators like myself need very high-level Rapid Application Development or similar authoring environments for Computer-Based Training (CBT) so that we can call ourselves '3133t HackerZ'. Throughout my graduate training students typically used one of the two most popular authoring environments: Macromedia's popular Authorware (for Mac and MS) and Click2Learn's infinitely more powerful ToolBook (for MS only, ugh). Are there any really good authoring environments for CBT that are truly cross-platform compatible (i.e. support Linux/Solaris/Mac9/MacOSX/MS)? I ask that because a new kid showed up on the block called Norpath Elements Studio that looks to be highly integrated with Java and deploys multimedia applications cross platform. Is anyone aware of similar tools, proprietary or not?"

CBNobi asks: "Most large news distribution sites do not archive news articles after a certain period of time. Being a weblog 'author', I sometimes write editorials in response to the articles. It is difficult for my rants to stay relevant when I end up linking to a dead page. I've read the fair use laws, but is vague on digital storage. So, my question is - how do fair use laws apply to the digital setting, where it is non-profit, but can be seen by others? (Or alternatively - is there a public, digital archive of news stories?) I find it odd that it is [usually] fine to link to news stories, but it becomes copyright infringement once it becomes impossible."

Lukey Boy asks: "A machine in my network is currently a large fileserver, and holds many hard disks full of media (namely my music and what not). Each drive is running a standard EXT3 filesystem with the same layout (/media, /media/mp3, and so on). My problem and question is how do I join these drives to look like a single hierarchy? I would like to, when I check /all/mp3, view the contents of each drive in this combined directory. FreeBSD has a unionfs filesystem type which supports the unioning of two drives - but only two is a fairly bad limitation, especially when I add a new drive. It appears that Al Viro is working on a unionfs for Linux 2.5, with again only two mount points supported. I was also considering using the Linux Volume Manager system, or possibly a software RAID striping arrangement; does anyone have any experiences doing anything similiar? Is there any decent inheritable filesystem (IFS) available for Unix machines?"

ksplatter asks: "I Purchased an X-Box back in January of this year. Everything was working just fine until I bought a game called Outlaw Golf about 2 months ago. I literally had not one problem with the unit before this. So after playing the game a couple of times I went to insert the disc one day and the X-Box told me it was unable to read my disc. I thought it was odd but continued anyway. Ever since then, my console has been more and more picky in deciding which disks (games or DVDs) to actually play. It is to the point where now the unit is completely useless. I called Microsoft and the tech support blamed the problem on rental companies (i.e. blockbuster) putting stickers on the CD that damaged the DVD lens. They told me they can't do anything for free but for 100 BUCKS M$ would replace the drive. I went on the Message board for the game that started this problem and they blamed the issue on some cheap/defective DVD drives that were installed in X-Boxes between last November and January. I was curious if anyone out there ran into this problem and what they did. Is there any sort of action I can take against Microsoft?" I't like to point out that this can be a problem with some Playstation 2 systems as well. I am now on my second PS2 unit (obtained after the price drop) because my original unit could no longer read DVD-based games or movies (however my original Gamecube, purchased at about the same time, is still purring along just fine). Might this be a sign that the early DVD units provided by both companies were just not able to handle the environments in which they were placed (ala hot TV cabinets, dusty living room floors, smoke filled areas and so forth)?

MurderINC asks: "For the past few months, I have been looking into starting up a radio station here. I am a student in a college town. The university here has around 10,000 students, but in my opinion, not a single decent radio station. There are a couple of country stations, a couple of 'today's hit music' stations geared towards the junior high audience and a few talk stations, but that's about it. I would LOVE to start a classic rock / alternative / hard rock station. I'm thinking this could probably be run right off of my Mandrake box (just load up a playlist and go with it). The problem consists of: I know very little about the FCC's regulations, the costs of the equipment, and what equipment I would need, and was hoping someone out there knew a lil' somethin somethin, or has done the same thing."

JoshRoss asks: "I was looking at the televisions on Bestbuy and I noticed that the RCA televions have a new 'feature', the VPORT. I looked around for information about this and just found RCA press releases for their XBOX READY logo. What is the difference between the VPORT and S-Video?" Is it just me or are others disturbed by the fact that the VPORT is touted as an X-box only feature as opposed to a console feature, although I must admit, it does make sense from "product synergy" standpoint as mentioned in this interview. Does anyone have any details on what this type of port this really is. Will other console systems be able to take advantage of it?

Terje Mathisen asks: "Oslo has a pretty good public transportation system, consisting of local trains, subway, metro, trams, buses and ferries (to get across the fjord, and to some of the small islands). Now they want to put screens on all the central stops (about 300), showing the exact time until the next bus/tram will arrive. This will requires GPS units on the buses and trams, radio communication back to the central, some form of comms link back to each stop, and daylight readable screens. On all the remaining stops, they want to use SMS messages, so that you can use your cell phone to query the system. Do you know about similar setups anywhere else? How well do they work? How expensive was it to develop, and what costs were associated with the deployment and maintaintenance?"

An anonymous reader asks: "Well, my web host is down again, so I thought I'd ask the Slashdot faithful if they can recommend any GNU/Linux based hosting sites (preferably virtual servers) running distributions besides Red Hat. I know this has been covered in the past, but it seems everyone uses Red Hat, and I'm a Debian type person. Anyone out there have a host they can recommend?"

qaffle asks: "Being a commuting college student I've been putting many hours on the road recently and have gotten sick of the repetition of regular radio and music in general. I've been trying to listen to talk radio but all that is ever talked about is sports and I can only listen to Bears updates for so long. I'm curious if anyone knows of any sites online where I can find good science, computer related, or physics audio discussions online that I could listen to on the drive. This should give me a good variety and the ability to listen to something interesting during mid-late morning and early afternoon drives."

outOfWork asks: "I've just been recently announced that I was getting laid off from yet another dot-bomb company. I have received my papers and they are simply dragonian! I understand the need not to disclose any information on the company I was with (that's only natural; I have also signed a similar paper when I started working there anyways), however the papers they are requesting me to sign do include such terms as not being to sue (should I require to). I thought suing someone or a company was a fundamental freedom that we enjoyed here in Canada. If I do not sign these papers, they do mention that I will not be entitled to my severence's package. I'm fairly certain that several companies do these sorts of things, however do they have the right to do this? This company has had a bad reputation when it comes to how HR deals with certain issues and I'm wondering if they might be trying to pull a fast one on us. With the market being what it is, I could sure use that severence's package. Your input would be very welcome."

everythingeverything asks: "Recently the IT development company I work for has undergone many changes, mostly focused on the streamlining of the development teams. Three people have recently been laid off, and massive pressure is being exerted on myself and my colleagues to develop more efficiently and delivery bug-free code. This is great - very positive changes. However it's blatantly obvious to many of my workmates that the sales and accounts team are not meeting their end of the bargain. They consistently oversell our services, write incomplete and inaccurate project specifications, set deadlines and budgets without consulting a TA or a developer, and frequently give in to clients when they want to change the spec halfway through. Management have agreed that there are problems and we have given them detailed research and documented solutions, but nothing happens. How have other employees in similar organisations brought about an effective, non-hostile and mutually beneficial resolution to the problem?"

An anonymous reader asks: "I was recently wondering about the state of the commercial Unix world and what their plans are for the coming releases. I know Sun just released Solaris9 and HP is killing Tru64. But what about others like IRIX, HP-UX, SCO, etc? How has the rise of Linux affected these companies plans?"

jmaxlow asks: "It's that time of year again when my university sends out mailers informing students that their personal information will be compiled and released in a student directory unless students register objections in writing by the deadline. This info includes name, address, date of birth, and email address, among other items, and there is nothing to prevent them from selling the information to third parties without vested interests. The Buckley Amendment allows them to do this, so of course it isn't illegal. But my question is: has anyone ever petitioned their university to change to an opt-in policy? I'd like to know what responses schools have given, if any, when challenged, before I bring it up with my own registrar."

shift8key asks: "Last year, a friend asked me whether I would sponsor his NASCAR race car. The sponsorship came cheap and I decided to do it. Since I did not have a commercial message for my business, I had him put 'Linux.org' and a penguin on the hood. He had more inquiries about it than any other message on his car. My community phonebook called me to ask if I would repeat the message there, and I think I will do it. Have any Slashdot readers ever done any voluntary sponsorship of Linux? If so, what experiences did you have?"