eadint asks: "I have heard rumors thorough the net that Apple plans to port Darwin to the Power 4, 64 bit chip. Currently I work for a university. We are using Apple computers and are considering the platform for our number crunching capabilities. According to this Motorola has no plans on producing a 64-bit chip. Does anyone know if Darwin can or will be ported to a true 64 bit platform."

WildHunter asks: "While making a foray into a local retailer today I paid using a credit card and was asked to sign a paper receipt on top of a digital pad. Being cautious I asked what it was for and I was assured that it was 'fully secure and safe to use'. Being a typical paranoid Slashdotter I offered to sign off of the pad but refused to sign on the pad. Was I over reacting or can someone back up my paranoia with some facts?" Think about it, some deceitful vendor has one of these, sells you something, gets your signature, and can then ring up loads of charges on your card using a digital copy of said signature over, and over, and over... you get the idea. Do the current crop of signature pads prevent against this and other similar kind of deceit?

AtariDatacenter asks: "Everyone knows that inkjet printers are cheap, but the cartridges cost a bundle. I was trying to find one with the lowest total cost of ownership for a modest twenty or so pages a week. This PC Magazine article kind of takes this on, but with a small sample group. Are there any printers today that should be avoided? Is ink reducing software like inkSaver as good as they claim?" Inkjets have a lot of drawbacks when it comes to laser printers except one thing: the initial price. When it comes to printing lots of text that you intend to keep for an indefinite period of time, which works out better over the short-term and long-term? I've already had Inkjet printers die after a few years of normal usage, are laser printers any better?

Russ Nelson writes "At the July OSI board meeting last week, we approved the Academic Free License (think MIT/BSD/X11/Apache with a patent grant) and we sent four licenses back for reconsideration. Here's the hitch: we were asked to approve a license which includes a requirement for click-wrap. Read more to see why we're asking you about it. The submittor had already been asked if that requirement was a necessity. She said yes, because of various legal precedents. We consulted a few people and yes, it looks like a license without click-wrap is weaker at protecting your rights. So, folks, the lawyers are coming. The time is coming when you won't be able to distribute software unless you have presented the license to the user and their assent is necessary to access the software. Even free software. Our industry is maturing and we need to be more legally careful and rigorous. The question here is whether we should amend the Open Source Definition so that it is clear whether click-wrap licenses are allowable or not. We could go either way, but we want to hear from you first. Your opinions solicited, and engaged!" While I can understand some legal necessities are necessary in the software world, click-thru licenses have never, and will never, make sense to me. Maybe commercial software has soured me on the concept, but I dislike agreeing to something before I even get a chance to use it.

redcliffe asks: "Sometimes it's much easier to create a spreadsheet to do some mathematical calculations for physics than to create a whole new program to do the calculations. It's also handy to be able to easily change one figure and have all your other calculations update. But there a certain types of calculations that normal spreadsheet apps like KSpread don't seem to handle well. Anyone know of a spreadsheet or something similiar designed for scientific computing? I've seen GNU Octave, but that's almost like writing a whole program, and without a GUI it's hard to learn quickly."

darkdepeche asks: "My department is attempting to standardize on a software packaging format for the majority of our clients (which generally use Windows 2000/XP desktops). I've been very impressed with the .deb/apt system that Debian and some other Linux flavours use, I wonder if any other slashdotters use something similar to this on a Windows platform? Using the traditional Installer is a possibility but the tools are cumbersome and quite expensive. We need something that would handle several hundred applications, hotfixes, service packs, and keep history for them all. Has anyone else worked on a project like this?" InstallShield can be more complex than it needs to be and can be very hard to use. Have any of you come across an installer for Windows that is easy to use, can uninstall whatever has been installed, can manage the registry and also (maybe) have versioning controls similar to what is offered by .dpkg/Apt?

jargonCCNA asks: "I've searched high and low across the web, but I can't seem to be able to find any code snippets or even anything that'll help me out here. I'm trying to get a Unicode character code from a data stream in JavaScript and there doesn't seem to be anything out there to help me; JavaScript itself only has onboard support for ISO-Latin_1, or something. I tried hacking my own converter code, but it's rife with errors. Anybody know of some code that I can include in a GPL project?"

Ever seen one of today's garden variety computers running on sea-going vessels? How about in other places where water, or salt water is a large part of the environment? Today's Ask Slashdot deals with 3 questions surrounding the construction of computer systems that can survive in such a harsh environment. What does it take to harden a PC to survive in such a place, and how much more expensive will it cost to make one? Are there other issues to worry about aside from the salt and the humidity?

An anonymous reader asks: "Many local zoning ordinances prohibit big (6~8 ft) satellite dishes. Is it possible to use many smaller dishes to achieve the same effect as one big dish in picking up C-band transmissions? I know that moving large number of dishes, for satellite tracking purposes, would be a pain but are there any other issues?" Obviously building a satellite array is possible, but what are the engineering issues involved in building such a project? How much space is realistically needed? And, of course, the bottom line: how much would doing something like this cost?

David Weekly asks: "I'm programming for a small software company that's got a fair bit of C++ code; we've been using gdb whilst on Linux, but have been a little frustrated by its shortcomings with multithreaded applications and its fumbling multiple inheritance issues. I poked around on the Net and, other than gdb, I was only able to find Etnus' TotalView as a modern, actively-developed Linux debugger. Are there really only two Linux debuggers (that one can take seriously)? How, for instance, do folks who code up Apache modules test them in multithreaded mode? (i.e., not just using '-X'.) I'd love to hear answers more substantive than 'use printf()' and/or 'just use ____, my favorite gdb frontend'."

Full'o'MP3 asks: "Wondering what to do with all those (formerly huge) hard disks on the shelves? Well, so am I. After looking at all sorts of USB enclosures, I remembered that, a long while ago, I saw a description/review/whatever of a small board (around 3" by 4") that essentially had an Ethernet interface on one end, a microcontroller in the middle and an IDE bus on the other end. It was designed only for that purpose, could not even format the hard disks on its own and only supported SMB without any access control, but by golly, I'm looking for about a dozen (or about 1 per 4 disks). Slap them inside old PC cases, fill them with hard disks, and you have a very simple, cheap file server for home or school. I've looked at a lot of embedded Linux and commercial storage stuff, but they are all overkill and require brand new hardware. Anyone have any pointers for this? (Butchering old laptops, iPAQs or similar stuff won't cut it...)" Readers may remember this thread from early May about doing something similar with new hardware. Since this is the "budget version" of the similar question, I felt it was deserving of its own post. How hard would such a device be to build fom old computer parts and hard disks? Details on cheap electronics (like the submittor-mentioned device) that would make this easier would be appreciated.

Hagmonk asks: "Recently I crashed my motorbike at the racetrack and severely broke my left arm (sorry, nobody caught it on camera). I had a week in hospital, which was a problem since I'm contracting and you don't get paid for sick leave. Furthermore, I have my arm in a cast for 6 weeks (possibly another 6 again after that), which severely cramps my hacking style - no fast switches to other windows to make quick changes, and you should try operating emacs without two hands! Luckily, my employer was generous enough to purchase a hinged keyboard that allows me to type two handed. So I'm interested to hear from other hackers: how have you coped with injuries that stop you doing what you were born to do? Could you find a work around? Did you experience prejudice in the work place as a result, or were you supported?"

cant_get_a_good_nick asks: "I was trolling Sourceforge, and found NetLooney. Since there seemed to be interest in a quality Apache admin tool, I was wondering if anybody here had used it and can comment on it. It was commercial at one time, now iit's GPL'ed."

Steven Wallace asks: "I'm currently attending an Internet2 related meeting (Joint Techs) in Boulder Co at the NIST building (same building as the most accurate atomic clock). WWV, the radio station that broadcasts the current time on 2.5, 5, 10, & 15Mhz is just down the road in Fort Collins Co. They transmit with about 50,000 watts. Surprisingly I can't receive any of the WWV broadcasts while here in Boulder (I carry a sony shortwave radio with me). The locals tell me that Boulder is a dead spot. I would think I'd hear the thing in my filings given the proximity and power. Anyone care to explain the radio propagation physics that prevent me hearing WWV while at NIST?"

gillrock asks: "My company is about to conduct a search for a new Help Desk ticketing application to replace the home grown one currently in place. With luck, maybe we can find one that has asset inventory tracking as a feature or add-on plus some other nice bells and whistles. My biggest concern is that the group will end up choosing something that is 'Windows Only' that won't function with any flavor's of UNIX or at least have a web component. Are there any good, full featured, cross-platform friendly Help Desk apps out there that will make us UNIX Admins happy? We're a small shop, so something that works out of the box would be best."

thisisvinod writes "Frustrated with the lack of efficient project monitoring features in MS Project 2000, I was searching on the web for something that would suit my needs. I want a tool that would be browser-based, which will allow the PM to delegate tasks to others, against which they can mark the "effort" spent on the task (as hours/minutes), not percentage complete. Along with that, features that would allow creating of tracking reports, sending of email notifications and would also provide integration with empirical data would be quite nice. Any ideas on which tool would provide all this? And I really do think that most project management tools fall drastically short of one thing or another - MS Project is beautiful, but seriously flawed in the monitoring business. I'm sure other Slashdot readers have faced similar problems, and might have good solutions." Update: 07/30 2pm EDT by C : For the curious, Ask Slashdot last tackled this issue in this Linux-specific article, and discussed web-based versions, here. It's been 2 years, any changes?

LionsFate asks: "Just like the subject says. I want End User Licence Agreements (EULAs). I'm starting a database of as many EULAs as I can get. I want to know the first EULA that said we can't reverse engineer their software. I want to know the first that said they can watch our activities. I want to know how the NES agreement differs from the GameCube. Did Nintendo lighten, or tighten restrictions? I'm looking to generate a time-line of EULAs and how they have changed. What permissions we have been given, and taken away over that period. What rights did we have in Windows 3.1, compared to Windows XP? How has the MPAA and RIAA changed our 'legal rights' on software as a result of their effort? Watched Napster or other P2P software and seen the changes in their EULAs? I'm starting my EULA database at here and I need as many EULAs as I can get to populate the database. If you can, please email me any/all that you can. I'm hoping within a few weeks to have the site online." Ask Slashdot last tackled the topic of EULAs in this piece. It would be interesting to grab a nice sample of EULAs across the last 2 decades to see what has changed, if anything.

Genjuro Kibagami asks: "With regards to the current environment in the tech sector and the difficulties finding good positions, I was curious if anyone had taken to running freelance work from their own computers at home? I'm not talking about your regular dodgy fly by night 'Make up to 10,000$ per week with no risk!' type thing. But perhaps problem solving, coding, professional advice, or remote administration / fix functions, payment via paypal or some such thing. Any assistance appreciated."

Milo_Mindbender writes "It seems like almost all the new high-end 3d cards now support dual-monitor operation as a matter of course. I'm wondering if the game savvy people out there can recommend games (Linux or Windows) that have special features or modes for playing on a dual monitor system. I seem to remember seeing at least one C&C like game awhile back that let you have two views on the world (one on each monitor), there must be a few more that take advantage of this. Anyone know of any good ones?"

David Rusenko asks: "I've been taking a datastructures class at CMU as part of a summer CS program. One of these structures we have gone over is hash tables. After going through many different probing methods (linear, quadratic), multiple hash functions, and double hashing, I was all too curious to know if these are the best methods currently known. Some other interesting ideas came up, such as using the Fibonacci numbers for probing, but I haven't had time to test them yet. Any comments?"