Gldm asks: "I've been working on a video codec as part of a college computer science project, but I've been stuck at an impasse for several months now: I can't figure out how to get video data from the OS to compress or test anything with. All the software applications I have (Premiere, Virtualdub, and AVIcap) want to use Microsoft's Video For Windows API, but I can't find any books on how to get a codec to interface with it. I've tried Microsoft's own docs, but they're not very helpful. The only example source I've found is huffyuv but it's written and commented so poorly, I can't understand it. I've tried emailing the author but he never replied. I thought it would be simple to do this but apparently VFW is some kind of ancient byzantine labyrinth of messages and function calls and data types I don't understand. If anyone knows a book on the VFW API that still exists and maybe something that very clearly explains exactly how you go about building a DLL please let me know. Or if you have experience programming for this API please please email me."

dpbsmith asks: "It seems like a simple engineering problem--construct a device for easily and safely connecting several dozen wires at the same time--but the variety and creativity in their design over the years has been amazing, and, clearly there have been trends, fashions, and styles. In the fifties and sixties, virtually all connectors were roughly similar to the D-Sub design used for RS-232. A stiff, straight pin engaged a springy socket that contacted and bore against it on all sides. There were minor variations in shape and placement; the Amphenol Blue Ribbons (think Centronics), the connectors into which circuit boards engaged, but they were all variations on a theme. I was absolutely astounded the first time I saw a modular RJ-11 connector. Cheap, effective, and utterly unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Who invented these? Western Electric? Recently, we have the USB connector and the Firewire connector, obviously members of the same family (and a cheap-and-cheesy-seeming family it seems); on the other hand, my telephone and my digital camera have connectors that are very small and snap in with a positive lock that must be released with a squeeze, obviously yet another fundamentally different design. What do people know about the design, history, and engineering behind connectors over the years? Is it all hidden away, trade secrets of the connector companies, or is their a story that can be told?"

DangerTenor asks: "The United States Government is standing up a Bridge Certificate Authority to enable PKI Interoperability between different agencies (gov't and non-gov't). The PKI currently relies on the use of either meta-directory products or X.500 DSP Chaining in order to pass certificates and CRLs between directories. OpenLDAP doesn't fit the bill because it doesn't support chaining. Does anyone know of open source projects focused on full X.500 directory implementation, or on meta-directory capabilities?"

upwardlyAndconstantly-Mobile asks: "I'm a systems engineer in the IT department of a bank. My wife is a PhD candidate looking to graduate in 4 years or so. Due to the nature of academia, she may need to move several times for post-docs and professor jobs once she gets her credentials. Her job opportunities may come from any number of cities or towns in the US or around the world. My current skill set ties me to only a handful of major cities, so I am trying to figure out the best path to prepare myself for being uprooted. Besides running something like Slashdot, what are the best tech jobs that are mobile? How many people have jobs that can actually be done from anywhere they can get email and web access? What's the best way to prepare for something like this? I have time to prepare, but what should I be doing? (I write this anonymously because I don't want my current employer reading it!)"

TeachesWithPenguins: "I teach Linux at a private college. We (the instructors) are in the process of selecting new textbooks for our basic Linux course, and have run into a controversy. Some instructors are holding out for the textbook which includes a CD full of practice exams for a Linux Plus certification. The rest of us want to use the book which includes the greatest number of practical exercises -- which the students could use at home or at school. This controversy could be ended if we could find free, downloadable, Linux certification practice exams on the internet. Years ago, when I started getting certifications, free practice tests where readily available on the internet. So far, I have been unable to find anything of the sort for any Linux certification. Do such things still exist -- for Linux?"

lpq asks: "I've recently starting doing some computer repairs and don't feel organized when it comes to tools. I'm wondering what any people who do computer building/repair use for a portable kit? Are any of the toolkits any good? Or are they just cheaper tools than I might already have with a cheap vinyl case? I saw some expensive kits -- but it looked like one of the main difference is rather a driver device with scads of fittings, the more expensive kits seem to go with separate tools. One had 15 socket screwdriver type tools where I get the same in less space with a ratcheting screwdriver and an adaptor for sockets. I noticed many kits with soldering irons -- not something I've had a need for in most computer upgrades / repairs. Ideas? Basics things to have?"

tooTired asks: "At my company the owner is heavily implying that the development staff needs to start working longer hours and weekends to shorten the time-frames on our current projects. The exact quote is 'These 8 hour days have to stop, we need to be working 15 hours a day and weekends, balls to the wall.' We are heavily under-staffed even with my multiple attempts to show the owner that we need more resources. My general feeling is that long hours is generally a symptom of poor project management, and not something to be sought after. I wanted to ask the Slashdot community their opinions on how working long hours during the week and weekends affects the quality of the code they produce, and the overall success of the project." A large reason why many in this industry find themselves working long hours and weekends is that management makes unreasonable expectations and deadlines. Are there ways of communicating to management that long hours to rush a project to completion is not the way to complete a successful project? Update: 08/30 23:11 GMT by C :Grammatical errors in title, corrected. Sorry about that.

seanadams.com asks: "My company is considering the purchase of a small surface-mount assembly line so we can do our manufacturing in-house, and the issue of static control has come up. We've all been told to take ESD precautions when handling electronics, but how much precaution is enough? Obviously we plan to do the easy stuff like making sure that equipment and work surfaces are properly grounded. However, many shops go even further - conductive shoe straps, wrist staps, special flooring, humidity control, etc. The SMT equipment vendor says that it's unnecessary, and I would tend to agree. I've handled tons of electronics over the years and have never been able to attribute a single failure to ESD damage. Granted, Silicon Valley is a fairly humid area so that may be a contributing factor. Has the ESD threat been blown way of proportion by the guys who sell those little grey bags?"

cgh4be asks: "I work for an IBM business partner and each year we host a technology seminar for our customers, most of which have AS/400 backgrounds. I am the 'Linux guy' at work and have been chosen to give a 1 hour presentation to these IBMers about linux. So, my question to the Slashdot community is, what points and information should I touch on in this presentation to make it effective? I'd like to give some history about it of course, but the goal is to get them to start using it in their businesses."

spoier asks: "Like many other hi-tech workers, I spend most of my days in a mostly dark cube, with only the tiniest sliver of daylight visible off in the distance over the rat maze. I would really like to have some plants around me to make this environment a little more habitable, does anyone know of plants that will thrive under these very low-light conditions?"

lawpoop asks: "We have a T1 line for our building with a local ISP. Right now, we're looking for competitive bids from different companies. The local guy is offering a good price, but the larger guys are saying he may be overselling the T1 service through a DS-3. He swears he's not. So, how do I tell? The sales guys say 'There's bandwidth meters on the web,' but they fail to mention exactly how I can tell if I have a true T1. I've tried a half-dozen bandwith meters on various websites, and the results are highly variable. We've gotten 300-900 Kbps. Each site has disclaimers as to internet traffic, time of day, etc. Furthermore, we split the T1 out over a hub with two other tenants in the building. I'm coming through from behind that hub. How can I tell for certain that I'm getting a full T1? A service tech with a line tester? Any dead-on bandwith meters? What would an oversold T1 read out to be as compared to a true T1? If the larger guys are trying to scare me to their service with stories of oversold T1s, I need to know that they aren't doing it also!"

hwyguy2 asks: "Do any Slashdot readers have any insight or pointers on how companies deal with ActiveX in the IE browser? At the company I'm with, they have taken a conservative approach, and have the browser configured to only allow ActiveX to internal corporate servers and disallow it anywhere else. Of course, locking that down also locks things like javascript, which the company choses to prompt. This creates many practical problems and user frustrations. It also makes it a pain for programs that use ActiveX innocously (such as HoTMetal, which seems to like to use an Active X control to get an open file dialog box). Given the number of sites out there that now only work with IE (boo!), this tight configuration is getting harder and harder to support. Are there any good ways to address the ActiveX concerns (maybe filtering servers to block ActiveX or other mobile code concerns)?"

SmilingMonk writes "The company I work for is looking to train engineers fresh out of school on embedded software development. It seems to be specialized enough field of interest that it might be helpful for some people to 'get their feet wet' developing embedded solutions on in-expensive SBC ^? s before they are handed off to the product lines. A low cost ($400) full featured solution we recently stumbled across is the eCOG1 Development Environment. Yes, we've been to LinuxDevices, but feel compelled to ask which similarly featured low priced SBCs others have used that we could have our trainees develop embedded Linux applications on?"

kevinvee asks: "I am trying to find a suitable wireless web camera for broadcasting video streams from various sites around the university where I work, including buildings currently under construction which can be far from both network and electrical outlets. Besides the x10 packages, however, my search is coming up rather empty. Things we have to consider are the maximum distance from transmitter to receiver; power source, and if battery-powered, the average battery life; video quality; additional necessary hardware and software; outdoor/indoor capabilities; and weather resistance. I'm sure there are also other things to consider which we haven't thought of yet. Has anyone else tackled similar projects? What hardware did you attempt to use and what experiences did you have with it?"

Chris asks: "Our company deals with medical records in a peripheral sort of way (as they pertain to student loans), and due to new laws we are required to be HIPAA compliant by April. After reading the discussion on here about the new EULA for Win2k SP3, I had a disturbing thought. As far as I can tell, if you use Windows 2000 then you're going to be out of compliance whatever you do. If you install the patch, then theoretically Microsoft could access those medical records (possibly by accident) without 'due cause or need' in the process of updating your machine. If you don't patch your system then you'll fail the security requirements of the law." If Win2k with SP3 is not HIPAA compliant (and I stress the if because no one has made a statement either way, yet) what can non-compliant Medical IT departments do?

Belfont9 asks: "The company I work for operates in a very sunny climate, and our facilities rely almost completely on natural light. The problem for our coders is that all that light makes reading a computer screen for many hours truly painful - even if we use the standard 'anti-glare' screen covers. Dimming the entire rooms (eg through the use of shades) isn't an option. Could the Slashdot community suggest some good computer screens for use in such conditions?"

bcrowell asks: "I teach Physics at a community college, and a lot of the faculty are trying their hands at teaching internet courses. I'm going through the process of getting approval to offer some of our physics courses with online instruction plus lab, as an alternative to lecture plus lab. (My main motivation is to boost enrollment in some of our higher-level courses, which tend to get canceled if not enough people enroll.) The standard software for this kind of thing seems to be WebCT, but I get the impression that it's proprietary straightjacket-ware. I'd rather go with something open-source, especially since proprietary software seems to come and go, but the best open-source code is forever -- who wants to waste their time building a whole course around the flavor-of-the-month software? I'm particularly curious whether something like Slashcode might work. Most online courses include a requirement that people post a certain number of 'substantial' comments, where 'substantial' is a subjective term to be determined by the instructor. I know some teachers who say when they teach a large online course, they just don't have time to read all the posts, so they end up going by length a lot of the time. Wouldn't moderation by one's peers work better?"

Kalon asks: "I am the network manager for a large business park connecting to our countries largest telco/ISP. We've recently negotiated to move our Internet services to another major provider and I'm stuck with a problem: our range of IP addresses (8 Class C's) is half 'owned' and half 'leased' from of our current provider. With some 90 companies relying on our connection for continuous Internet uptime, how can I transition forward and reverse DNS services for those companies with websites/mailservers unlucky enough to be on leased addresses, and route mapping for those whole blocks I own? Considering I don't have APNIC membership, what tips do you have to speed or ease the transition, considering I have to deal with lumbering telcos who won't play nicely together, and 90 different companies all demanding Internet presence?"

gandrews asks: "I'm looking into advanced degrees in education with a focus on computers. Problem is, a lot of the departments I've found look like they're stuck in the early nineties -- they're still hung up on the possibilities of html and BBSes, and aren't paying attention to organic ways kids are already using chat and email, or how kids become autodidacts ^? using computers. It doesn't improve my opinion any that so many of these university websites are broken. Does anyone know if up-to-date dialog on technology and education even exists in academia, and if so, where is it?"

Lost Canadian Abroad asks: "As a software developer I have always found it strange that large companies are willing to spend obscene amounts of money for software development. Until recently I have shrugged it off as 'the cost of doing business', but something happened not long ago that has caused me to start questioning that practice. The more I talk about it with other people, who are business people themselves, the more irritated I get about the whole thing. Why is it that if you're not charging a company tens of thousands of dollars for a development project that you're not taken seriously?" I've always wondered about this, myself. This practice seems to contradict common sense. Is it that higher prices imply a certain degree of quality and/or assurance to managers? Do you think that businesses might be better off if they took a risk and tried the lower end of the costs spectrum?