visionWhiteout asks: "I've been looking around a while for a laptop that would suit my special needs. I have a rare eye disorder known as achromatopsia which makes it nearly impossible to see a laptop screen in bright condititions. The ideal solution is a headset with a small screen near the eye, but the ones that I've seen (mostly on ThinkGeek) are a bit bulky. I'm not sure how many people remember it, but there was an old IBM commercial featuring a small voice activated PC that used a device like this. I was wondering if that, or anything similar has become available that I may have missed. Any other commentary is greatly appreciated."

soulhuntre asks: "A well known and respected company creates aftermarket 3D human figures for a popular rendering/posing system. Part of the value of these figures is that a large add on marketplace is thriving for clothing and props that will work with these characters. So far so good. Recently though there has been a controversy around the claims this company is making on what kind of work is derivative under US copyright law, and what they have to be asked for permission for. Can anyone cite any cases that might be of use in figuring this mess out?" It all boils down to how much deviation is allowed for a work to still be called "derivative". Even though a company may still own the models, does that mean they own the clothes, which were made by someone else for that model, used to "dress" it?

Rimbo asks: "I'm building a computer for a friend, who has three major requirements from his system: He wants an Athlon with a 333MHz FSB, he wants absolutely no Microsoft software anywhere near it, and he needs the ability to read and edit Chinese. I imagine Red Flag Linux has great Chinese support, but is it as easy to use as a desktop OS as Mandrake or Red Hat? How easy is Chinese text editing and entry under the major distributions? What "office" software for Linux is good for editing Chinese? Thanks!"

batobin asks: "I just moved into my first apartment that allows pets, and am looking forward to finally getting some sort of animal companion. My question to the Slashdot community is this: are there any pets out there that are especially conducive to a nerdish personality/lifestyle? I was looking into hedgehogs before I found out they're illegal in my state, but ferrets are starting to look fun too. Which pets are especially trainable? Which will be entertained by (yet not intrusive upon) a typist with a flashing screen in front of them? Is cable-gnawing an issue? Something tells me I can do better than simply a dog or a cat."

rtphokie asks: "The story about the TiVo get-together along with some recent trials and tribulations rolling out a knowledge base along with the time I've spent recently helping my 80 year old grandfather with this VCR and TV has gotten me thinking about user interfaces and the elusive "user-friendly" label. When someone who thinks of themselves as 'non computer savvy' works with a gadget like TiVo and compains that it's 'too complicated', how should we react? Why are users immediately forgiven for not even taking the least amount of effort to look for a solution to their confusion in the manual. The tendency has always been to blame the interface and ultimately the engineers who designed it but isn't there a point where users have got to share some of the blame? Why do today's software and consumer electronics users expect to be able to fire up their new toy and magically have a complete understanding of how to use it?"

Graham Wheeler asks: "Lately I've been obscessed with grassroots community network projects, and the hardware that enables them. Most sites I have seen focus on wireless RF networking, but I have noticed a few projects revolving around free space optical transcievers. Twibright Labs' RONJA is a good example of what I'm talking about. Not being an electronics hobbyist, however, makes the various plans for building a comm laser from scratch look rather daunting. It seems to me that it would be easier to just make a lens and housing system into which would go one of the many cheaply available copper-to-fiber media converters. Then you could simply modify it so that the laser ports were optically connected to the TX and RX lens assemblies instead of the standard fiber interface. So, what factor(s) am I overlooking that would explain why nobody seems to be doing this?"

Barkmull asks: "We have been running a Windows 2000 Terminal Services-based network for some time. We are currently using RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) and CDS (Citrix Device Services) for local COM and printer port usage on our thin clients. My question is this: has anyone been successful in using USB port replication with Windows 2000 Terminal Services? We looked into using Metaframe XPe, but it is ridiculously expensive to implement. I would very much like to know what other solutions Slashdot users have come up with using Terminal Services and local port replication."

bpm140 asks: "I'm interested in turning my spare PC into an MP3 server, but unless I can hook it up to my home theater system, it's not really worth the effort. My biggest requirement is that I can view the desktop on my TV. Right now I'm limited to S-video, but in the future I plan on upgrading to HDTV. What are my options for getting legible text on my current TV? Any specific video card I should look at?" Are there any HDTV units in the pipe that may make this easier than it is now with current TVs? I've seen televisions with VGA inputs, before, but for the life of me, I can't remember who makes them.

evilquaker asks: "After finding a reference to the (still open) odd perfect number problem, which is claimed to date back to Euclid, I wondered: what are the oldest unsolved math problems? The folklore answer is that the odd perfect number problem is the only one posed by the Greeks which is still open. However, it seems there is some doubt as to whether Euclid actually wondered about odd perfect numbers. Further, there's a claim that the twin primes conjecture dates back to the Greeks. So what's the oldest documented still-open math problem? Perhaps something about Fibonacci numbers?"

TheQuantumShift asks: "I'm part of a small video game retail franchise, and as such deal with corporate competition on a daily basis. Usually this is not a problem as we undersell the big corporate chains most of the time. One thing that really bothers us is the fact that these stores take opened, clearly used games, re-shrinkwrap them and sell them as new. One customer opened a shrink wrapped 'new' GBA game, only to find the previous owners receipt. Ex-Employees have confirmed the practice. This seems a little more than dishonest, and we would like to get them called on it. The trouble is, we have no idea where or who to start with. And exactly what proof we should have ready. We've been toying with the idea of contacting Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc... directly, but I believe this isn't the way to go. As long as these big corps order tens of thousands of systems and titles, is Sony really going to care? Any insights would be much appreciated." Caveat, Consumer.

whoppers asks: "I'm sure we've all had our share of computer fans die, but what happens if your box is running while you're at work and several fans go out? My in-laws spare TigerPC AMD K62-400's power supply fan just went out about two hours ago, and the thing was blazing hot. A little poke to the blade, and it started up again, but shouldn't these things be made to stop if the fan stops for any reason? I'm starting to wonder if I should start leaving my box off when I'm away for a few hours. Since it's usually wide open, I don't see too much harm, but these cheap boxes that never get opened and cleaned have to be a hazard right? I can't afford a halon system in my office just yet. The only link I found related to this is here and should a few more people read this, here's the cached version. Does anyone have any thoughts or stories related to this?" The fact that this article appears on July 4th, when most Americans will be lighting fireworks is purely coincidental. That doesn't change the fact that the submittor raises a very good point. A general rule of computers is: the older they get, the more dusty they are and dust bunnies and their denser cousins are highly flammable. Unless you can keep such machines clean, it' is probably safer to leave them off.

Phillip31337 asks: "I've been looking online for places to buy t-shirts related to computers and gaming. The only websites I have found so far are ThinkGeek , Game-Skins , and ErrorWear. Does anyone else in the Slashdot community know of any other sites that sell game and nerd/geek related t-shirts?" Just about every online comic has some form of merchandising going on these days, and if they sell T-shirts (most do), said shirts would fit nicely into this category. What other online vendors have unique shirts that would please your average (or the discriminating) Slashdot reader?

jjshoe asks: "I have received one bumbling voice mail from a woman who seemed very confused as to why I wasn't there, like her auto dialer transfered her call to my cellphone in time for my voice mail, one missed call, and one in which I actually talked to the woman. My concern is that this all costs me minutes, which of course equals money. What laws are out there for me? What bills are out there waiting to head their way towards becoming laws? What can I do to be compensated for time? After I screamed at the tele-marketer lady she said she would mark me as a wrong number, but I still don't believe this is enough." Considering most tele-marketers use auto-dialers, would it be so hard to grab the definitive list of area-code/extensions that are exclusively used for cellular phones and just apply that to their dial-out lists?

RiverWolf asks: "As a Systems Administrator (a.k.a. 'paranoid security freak') I spend much of my time tightening down systems, loading patches, and just generally making sure no one does what they're not supposed too. While tools like ssh have become a staple for file transfer and terminal sessions, I recently began looking at all the little print servers we have throughout my offices and wondered "hmm, can those things be sniffed?". Until now, my focus for printing has always been 'just get it working', but if someone can sniff the print jobs (like payroll and other confidential information) as they go across the network, then it doesn't matter how locked down eveything else is. Is there a standard for secure (encrypted transmission) network printing, or does anyone know of a way to do this? I found this document that deals with it in a round about fashion, but with dozens of printers spread throughout multiple locations, I don't see it as an option."

skaffen42 asks: "Recently there have been a lot of employment related "ask slashdot" posts. There have been questions about hot technologies, the international job market, certification, college and even landing a regular job! I find myself in a situation that have not been covered these posts. I dropped out of college after a year and went to work as a programmer. Now, ten years later, I am a senior systems engineer at a medium sized software company. I have challenging work, a decent salary and good prospects for advancement. But we all know that in this economy even a good job like this can disappear without warning. Unfortunately I don't have a degree. Which brings me to my question: a couple of years ago anybody could get a job if they could spell "C" and someone like me with nearly a decade of experience could usually pick and choose between job opportunities. Those days are (unfortunately) long gone. What I want to know is how much my lack of a degree will count against me in the present job market? And what can I do to make my lack of a degree less of a liability? What can I do so that I can also have these kind of problems?"

Gameface asks: "I am looking for the smallest system I can find, in quantity, for my company. We need thousands of these systems, and I'd like to ask the Slashdot community what they'd recommend. Looking for the tiniest footprint for: Case, Motherboard, CPU, RAM, HDD, Serial Port, (2) 10/100 ports. No video required, no sound, all access will be via console (serial port). No OS, just a bare piece of hardware that I can load the OS onto the HDD. I'd really like to find something with SIMMS so we can upgrade the RAM if we need to. And of course, price is very much an issue. Thanks."

dmayle asks: "I'm an origami folder, and I have some diagrams stored as web pages on a cd. I'd like to print them out (since folding in front of a computer monitor is not the easiest of tasks), but the web pages have all of the steps laid out horizontally. I've tried using Mozilla, Opera, Netscape, and even IE (on a windows platform), but I can't seem to find a printing engine that can handle wide web pages. Am I missing something? Hasn't anyone ever tried to print wide web pages before? What I'm asking is: Do you folks know of any utilities (or browsers) that I've missed that can handle printing wide web pages?"

Internet Ninja asks: "After only doing mathematics in high school level and in my first year of University, I've suddenly developed an interest in mathematics. Since that was now almost 10 years ago I'm a little rusty. Anything past pythagoras is a little tough for me :) but I know I could get back up to speed quickly. I could probably steal my daughters math textbooks and start reading but I'm wondering if there is a better way. I considered a part-time University paper at US$495 each and you need to do two as bridging courses in order to even start on undergraduate courses. A bit pricey when you have a home and family to look after as well. Another option was a night courses but I'm kept pretty busy with work. Does anyone have any advice or good resources?"

Revar asks: "My local net admin recently installed an 802.11a 54Mbps wireless network. Under Windows, the speed is great and at 5Ghz, it has much less interference then the 2.4Ghz 802.11b wireless. The problem is, I cannot seem to find any 802.11a PCMCIA cards that have Linux or MacOS X support. Are there any, or is no-one actually working on this?" Whenever new hardware is released patience, when wating for Linux support, is a necessary virtue.

jark writes "Outlook is, for the most part, the industry standard for contact management, personal information management and email use in the corporate workplace. We are looking in to deploying Mozilla across our network, included with the Calendar project, but have one last necessary hurdle: PalmOS synchronization. Are there currently any applications that will sync Mozilla mail, address books and calendar events with PalmOS based handhelds? If not, are there any plans in the works for this to become a reality?"