EdinBear asks: "I've been working as a SysAdmin in an increasingly corporate internet services company, which has been hit hard by the fallout from the .com bust. When I started some years ago, I felt I was helping small and interesting companies get benefit from the burgeoning Internet through useful and attractive web services. However, since the Internet became 'normal', the focus has been purely commercial - and instead of helping an enterprise get exposure in an interesting way, it's all about money and finance. I now feel I want to move into Science to use my skills in a productive, 'big picture' kind of way, rather than just helping a client get more rich through financial services. I'm interested to hear if other people have found themselves in a similar position; is the transfer to Science/Research/Academia difficult? Is the grass greener on the other side? The money is less, but is the job satisfaction more?"

Viqsi writes "Just on a lark, I started a short while back to try to convert my environment totally to UTF-8. One of the big hangups that I've run into so far, however, is my X terminal emulator. I've been very happy with rxvt (I tend to have several $XTERMs open at once, so Low Memory is Good!), but it doesn't seem to support anything Unicode. A bit of searching has turned up nothing that isn't as big as or larger than xterm itself. So, the question -- are there any low-memory terminal emulators that support UTF-8, or any other Unicode encoding? (tabbed-window style terminals Don't Count, and that goes double for Konsole!)"

thebrix asks: "I've acquired a Dell OptiPlex GX150. It's a pleasant machine to use - small, quiet and uses only 145 watts at full tilt with my flat panel - but its Achilles heel is the feeble i815 on-board graphics which steals RAM from main memory and plasters black bars onto my KDE desktop at inconvenient moments. There's a 4xAGP slot, but it's low-profile because of the small chassis and finding a low-profile graphics card is proving difficult because, invariably, manufacturers are more interested in listing whizzo features than how big the card is. So far, the Matrox G550 Dual DVI is the only card I've come across which definitely fits. Does anyone know of others?"

An anonymous reader asks: "A bunch of friends and I have been wondering for a while how to stay fit (and additionally, how to bulk up). While common suggestions include team sports, few of us are able to get together and play something outdoors since the weather here is abysmal. We would like to know how you geeks stay fit individually in your homes, and are there any ways to do so (while building up muscle) that don't involve expensive equipment? Thanks."

oobeleck asks: "With my birthday just around the corner and my 8 mile runs needing music, I am thinking of asking for a portable mp3 player. What is the Slashdot community's experience with MP3 portables. What has the most support, what should I stay away from. I have been eye-balling the Diamond Rio 600/800 model. Any opinions on the Rio? I want something that works good with Linux/OpenBSD. Thanks for your help." Ask Slashdot last ran such an article back in April of 2000, I'm sure bigger and better MP3 players have been made since then. Which of today's players would you all recommend?

zeno_lee asks: "Over the weekend, I spoke to a successful man in his 50s. He works in finance, but has had jobs in construction, trucking, and accounting. All throughout he has had concrete goals and pursued them vigorously. In his 20s he set a goal to be an expert in his field in finance, and achieved it successfully. I'm in my 20s and he advised me to envision what I want to do when I'm in my 50s, set my priorities and goals, and achieve that vision. He mentioned that success (career wise) depends on carefully planned goals with a vision, not a haphazard obstacle course with no end in sight. Beyond receiving a paycheck in the short term and steadily gaining expertise in my field, I have not given my long-term career any concrete thought. I don't have a vision of what I will be doing when I'm 50. Has anyone thought of their long-term career thoroughly and are working towards it? By this I don't mean the usual vague response 'I'll probably be in management one day.' I'm looking to hear from both junior 'careerists' in their 20s who have concrete goals, and the older folks in this field who have established careers and have an opinion about this."

dancedance asks: "I am a high school student who is very involved in the AV at my local church. We use PowerPoint on a weekly basis in our service, and also in our high school program. I would like to be able to control PowerPoint- similar to the way that Slide Show Commander works- from my Zaurus PDA using a WiFi connection. I am working on an open source Java application to do this, but I am struggling on how to get the full text/ view of the slides out of PowerPoint. Any Suggestions on this, or any aspect of my project would be useful."

hardDiamond asks: "I'm going to get engaged. I know my 4 C's. I know I'm going to get screwed by the jeweller, but that's okay: after all, a diamond engagement ring is a time-honoured tradition... NOT. Having checked out the goods, looked for the flaws, I found the biggest one of all. Diamond engagement rings are the creation of a well orchestrated advertising campaign for most of the last century - according to this article. Would you buy one for the love of your life? I know my girlfriend would love a diamond, but ethically I have my doubts. Diseased-miners, child slave labour, cartel inflated prices... and as if that wasn't enough, diamonds have no resale value. Naddah. Zilch. They'll sell you the shit, but damn it, they're not taking it back at any price. So what have my fellow slashdotters done with regards to engagement rings? What's a good substitute for diamonds? My girlfriend understands my thoughts regarding diamonds, but deep down, I'm sure she would like a diamond. Even a small one." I've never even thought about questioning such a time honored tradition, but now I'm curious. Have any of you looked at the issues surrounding diamonds and found them wanting? What alternatives have you found and were they acceptable?

An anonymous reader asks: "I'm curious as to what video capture cards are being used successfully by the linux user base. I need to capture screen shots from 4 video sources and collect the images in a manner that makes them easy to present in a web browser. A 4 input card would be nice! But I could always use a matrix switcher to grab frames from each source periodically. Matrix-Vision has a card - the mvDelta - that seems to work, but alas, they don't sell single units. What's out there? Who's using it? Any suggestions?"

Peter DeWeese asks: "For beginners in the field of anatomical robots, it is quite hard to find resources and shops from which to obtain small parts to build joints. Customized ball joints and a few other types are all that should be needed, and I am sure that others out there have built such machines from their own basements. Does anyone have any good resources on how to build/obtain small unarticulated mechanical joints that would be suitable? Please keep in mind that beginners often don't have metal lathes and high temperature welding torches."

AnDarkon asks: "I've recieved a cochlear implant about a year ago and I'm looking for material with which to train my hearing after 33 years of deafness. The material I'm interested in would help develop my speech recognition abilities. My hearing is already 100% at 30 decibels. It's the understanding speech part that is taking more time. I've looked high and low online and offline for literature that would provide information where I could train myself, on my own or with a hearing partner, to recognize general speech. There are some adult literature, but they're generally directed towards adults who have hearing experience and only recently lost their hearing. After 33 years, I'm pretty much starting from scratch, very new to hearing, more than a newborn baby (the baby starts hearing while in the womb.) I've found some aids such as text-to-speech readers and Microsoft Agents very helpful. Any advice my way would greatly benefit and, hopefully, for other cochlear implant users with similar experiences like me."

An Anonymous Coward asks: "Given that entropy is the measure of order or disorder. Given that any force that changes the entropy of any system in a predictable way is an 'intelligent' force. Is it true that the study of HOW entropy changes in any given system is the study of intelligence itself, in that given system? I is it true that producing systems whose sole purpose it is to capture and synthesise changes in entropy is the production of intelligent systems?"

mwillems asks: "I work in the technology industry, as a CTO. What I have increasingly seen in the last year, both in North America and Europe, is that IT has ceased to be a valid way to spend corporate money. IT spending used to be looked at as a way to gain competitive advantages. Since the .com bust, the arguments I hear everywhere is 'IT has now been proven to be a waste of money'. At many companies it is now easier to get a corporate account at a strip club than a new PC. Or a budget to develop a much-needed corporate app. If any spending is done it is on hardware - at least that is 'real'. Do Slashdot readers recognise that? Are there going to be many techies left ten years from now? What can we do to keep the spirit of innovation alive while this 'IT is bad' era lasts, and how can we make it end? And, how do you prove the value of IT? This is not as simple as it seems. Try it with a spreadsheet: as your typical CTO has to do so, every day." How do you feel about the cost benefits of IT? Is it worth what your company spends on it, especially if the advantages can't be reduced to a simple dollars-and-cents figure?

joshua42 asks: "Although having used Linux and FreeBSD for many years, I have yet to come across anyone seriously questioning the traditional UNIX style file system name paradigm. With an Amiga background (It should be the same for people growing up with Windows, or those growing up with no computer at all (God forbid!).) it took me quite a while to get used to 'A' and 'a' being treated as different characters. This is of course fairly easy to accept and to understand if you have a technical background. I do however have a hard time to see how aunt Ginny will ever be able to distinguish between her 'Letter.txt', 'LETTER.TXT' and 'letter.txt' files. In real life, upper and lower case letters represents almost identical information to most people. Has any thoughts been spent on this issue, now that our favorite OS is becoming increasingly mainstream? Does it need to be addressed? Have any attempts been done? What are the implications to parts outside the file systems?" This is an interesting point. As Unix grows more and more popular, the simple things we've taken for granted about the filesystem may stand in the way of general users adopting it. What ways can you think of that will mitigate this problem for new Linux users without actually affecting too much? Special shells for novice users, that can simplify much of the complexity may be the way to go, here.

H310iSe writes "Listening to NPR today and caught a story on All Things Considered about how the FBI has demanded information on borrowing and browsing habits, including computer seizures, from 85 libraries since Sept. 11 (utilizing their new-found powers from the PATRIOT act). Similar stories (which don't require RealAudio) are here and here. The American Librarian Association is providing information for librarians to help deal with this, and it seems heavily tilted towards supporting individuals' rights to privacy. It seems like the Slashdot crowd could come up with a great library computer setup that would protect anonymity (I'm thinking about things like creating a RAM disk and loading the OS onto it). How about ways to enable people to borrow books anonymously without opening the door to large-scale theft? I bet if we offered a packaged, free, easy to install Safe Browsing computer or Anonymous Checkout program, libraries across the U.S. would enthusiastically embrace it." According to the articles, these checks can be made for any reason, not just for suspected terrorism. It seems that if the American people are going to protect their rights, they are going to have to do so actively. Is the idea presented above, feasible? How would you improve upon it?

An anonymous reader asks: "Just for fun... suppose you've made an Earth-shattering discovery that, when revealed, will cause massive social upheaval. Maybe you've discovered a new energy source or weapon, or figured out how to factor large primes in seconds, or learned how to time travel back in time and affect the present. Being a nice guy, you decide to warn the world now and give everybody a few years to prepare before revealing the discovery. How can you absolutely encrypt or otherwise protect your discovery, but guarantee its revealing at a certain future date even if you and everybody you know is long gone? For example, could you bounce an electromagnetic signal describing the discovery off a celestial body several light-years away?"

eclipsemgp asks: "I am breathlessly awaiting the end of August when I can have my PS2 go online and play SOCOM, Madden, etc. I have a wireless DSL router (Linksys BEFW11S4) that I use with my iMac and XP Laptop. Is there anyway way to hook up the PS2 WITHOUT the network adapter? Maybe using the USB port I could use wireless network adapter. I know the network adater is cheap, but I will pay for less clutter and the coolness factor. Plus my wife will kill me if I have to run yet another cable across the room to the router. Any thoughts?" Would it even be this simple. Will out-of-the-box USB 802.11 adaptors even work on the PS/2, or will the Sony network adaptor be the only way to get the hardware online?

spongman asks: "I'm trying to find the best way to connect a computer to a 50" (or larger) plasma display. The display I'm currently looking at is the NEC 50MP2 because its native resolution (1366x768) is high enough to meet my needs and it can display a 16:9 image with square pixels without scaling, but I'm open to suggestions for similarly-capable displays. I also want to use a DVI connection between the computer and the display to reduce interference and noise. The problem I'm having is that I can't work out which video cards support this resolution (or something near it) over a DVI connection. The only card I've found that seems to support this is the PixelPerfect from Imagine Graphics in the UK, but it's based on somewhat old technology (Kyro2) and I'd like a few more choices if possible. Does anyone have experience getting their video card connected to a plasma display over DVI at native resolution?"

An Anonymous Freshman asks: "I, along with many other individuals in my age bracket, will soon be heading off to college. It seems that it would be quite easy to become bombarded by the many changes and potential pressures that are on the horizon. So, as the fall semester/quarter rapidly approaches, I would like to take this opportunity to ask what seems to be an experienced (and, overall, educated) community for any suggestions that would aid myself and the numerous other 'freshman-to-be' in adjusting to college social life (or lack thereof), academics, and the like. I would especially appreciate comments related to the potential necessity of time management in response to increased study requirements (and the desire to have an existence, otherwise)."

tarun asks: "I am creating the next version of my open source UDDI registry and decided to use an XML database backend - if I can find any good ones. The reason to make this choice was that I was impressed by oracle and db2's xml capabilities in my past lives. However, when I tried looking for an open-source alternative it seems there is nothing around except perhaps xindice -which clearly is less then perfect. I am looking for something that can work with more than one existing databases (I will ship my software with MySQL but if a large organization wants to deploy it, it should be able to do it using Oracle, DB2 or whatever they want to use) and xindice currently only works with Berkley-DB. Also, I am looking for something that can create database tables for me given an XML schema (I can tweak it later to create indexes, stored procedures etc) and given an XML document - write it to these tables. If it supports something standard like Xupdate or XQuery, that is even better."