Jesse Ferrell asks: "My neighbors are asking for me to remove my (weather) web cams from my website because they show part of their houses. Is there any legal precedent to a case like this? I can point the cameras upwards towards the sky more (they are weather cams of course) but it will take time and equipment, possibly modifications to my house. Have you ever heard of a similar situation? What should I do? I'll check the local ordinances and see what I come up with."

Bitten-by-BIOSbugs asks: "My job involves porting PC BIOS code supplied by one of the Big Names to my employer's products. In my experience, this code seems to be so full of holes you could strain pasta with it. However, the vendor seems not to care when I report bugs, and rarely have fixes been made available. What is the experience of other Slashdot readers regarding the quality of commercial BIOS products?"

Monkius asks: "A year ago, there seemed to be two promising Linux HA frameworks--along with lots and lots of experimental things: SGI's FailSafe, and Kimberlite from Mission Critical Linux. The FailSafe software website now seems very out of date, although the mailing list remains active, and there seems to be forward momentum. On the other hand, Redhat seems to have forked the development of Kimberlite, calling the fork Redhat Cluster Manager. They don't seem to be making development source available, at least to the public. Are these two projects still relevant? What's the current status of Open Source HA?"

Jeremy asks: "I am drafting a policy for my employer's patents and software. My employer is unwilling to do away with software patents altogether, but I believe that there are benefits in restricting our patents' enforcement. Comments on our draft of a policy and opinions on what the business advantages of both sides are greatly appreciated."

vrmlguy asks: "Where I work has several Unix-based servers, all running the same vendor's OS. We are getting ready to buy another big server, and management wants to get bids from other vendors. However, our staff is only familar with our current vendor's OS. Yes, I know that any two flavors of Unix are more alike than not, and yes, I know about the Rosetta Stone for Unix that makes it easy to transfer skills. I want to know about the down-side: What's the difference in the cost of operations between a mono-culture and a shop running two or more vendors' OSs?"

psxndc asks: "My fiance's boss is recommending my fiance to a biotech company in Switzerland (the boss is leaving and thinks my fiance is too talented for her current position). We're in the US currently, but if my fiance moved to Switzerland, I'd have to go too (shucks). My question is: "What is the state of the job market over in Europe (specifically Switzerland) and the rest of the world?" For me specifically I'm looking for *nix work and Java, but the question stands for just IT in general. In the US it's still pretty dismal (in Boston at least), but I wanted to know what else might be out there."

Benanov asks: "I'm doing a literature review on the Feasibility of Linux for a public-access lab (i.e. not Computer Science students at a university but instead the entire student body would have a login), and I haven't found any detailed studies about any places where this is actually done. If you know of any citeable sources about studies / reviews, I'd really appreciate it."

An Anonymous Coward asks: "I need a GPS receiver for some field research, and am having some trouble finding one that meets my requirements. I need to have the coordinates and time recorded once per second for an extended period (12+ hours) with a decent accuracy (5 meters or so). Ideally, I'm looking for a device which will record real-time to my Dell notebook (running Windows XP), but I'd be okay with one that recorded into it's own memory as long as I could download to my Dell easily and: a) it has enough memory to save a days worth of data or b) it will save about an hours worth of points but is cheap enough that I can get two (so I can tag-team them). I'm working on a research budget, so the solution has to be under $800 (but less is better, or course). I thought a PCMCIA card receiver might be a good solution, but it seems like the stand-alone units have more to offer, so I'm open to either option."

Rob Sweet asks: "I recently got started coding for a PHP front end to RRDTool. Right now, there are only two developers but we get the impression that once a protocol is in place, we'll have several more. The question has been posed: We can use CVS to keep our code synchronized but how do we go about keeping our database schemas synchronized? The obvious answers involve using mysqldump to keep updated table creation scripts in CVS but I'm wondering if there isn't a better way..." At the very least, a file containing a list of schema changes would be necessary, but what about programs that can take two schemas, look at the differences, and return the commands necessary to make the one mirror the other?

richardtallent asks: "Other than various X-10 compatible products, has anyone found a consumer-level, computer-programmable thermostat? I could hack something out with some discrete components and a serial port, but I'd prefer a stand-alone, wall-mounted device that communicates via Ethernet or serial. GPL/LGPL/BSD-licensed software is a must; full documentation and a CLR, Java, or ActiveX interface library would be even better. With a fully programmable interface, I could set up any number of scenarios and variables based on DOW, time, work/school schedules, CPU temperature override, current or forecasted weather, electricity/gas rates, IR signals, remote control via DSL, etc. I could also automate alerts for replacing the filter, estimate costs before the bill arrives, etc." I have seen the home of the future. We will build them ourselves out of nifty little projects like these.

J.J. Lee asks: "I must say that I'm truly touched. I've just read some of the peoples' response to the System Administrators - College or Career? posting and I found it very encouraging that people have posted selfless, useful, encouraging and helpful advice to a complete stranger. I've been a Slashdot devotee for about a year now and I know this wasn't the first time I felt proud to be in such a community. The responses (for the most part) were well though out and had a genuine concern for this young fellow. Would the Slashdot community be willing to come together for an annual convention or event? If so, what would be the theme and what talks would a convention like this have? Just thought it might be great to meet some people and get to know each other on a non-virtual level." I've been doing Ask Slashdot for somewhere close to 5 years, and it's been one of the best experiences of my life. I sure wouldn't mind meeting some of the faces behind the nicknames (particularly this "Anonymous Coward" chap), what about you? If not a huge convention, would local get-togethers be more your speed?

ignipotentis asks: "I've been given the task to find a multi-platform (windows, macintosh, linux) version control system. Currently, CVS is being used, and it isn't working quite as we expected it to. We are creating large Flash files and CVS is having problems keeping everything straight. It apparently doesn't like the large file sizes. I was wondering what other decent version control software is available that doesn't require a huge sum of money?"

FunkyGibbin' asks: "I've just started with a new company that has outsourced a project to translate a 4GL language - some 1.5 million lines of it - into J2EE. It's way behind schedule, and keeps on tripping over itself at acceptance test points (one item is fixed, others are broken). The outsourcing company chose as their conversion tool IBM's Rexx. They don't parse the 4GL to a syntax tree and then generate from that. They 'match patterns' which then generates the output. In addition, they're not even using the object oriented features of Rexx; it's in procedural Rexx! They have no regression test suite that runs through the original system and the newly generated system to ensure that they produce the same result [this apparently was 'our job' to do it manually]. Frankly, I consider the outsourcing company to have adopted completely the wrong approach, but I'm happy to be proven wrong if compiler construction or language translation experts can tell me that Rexx was their best choice, or even a reasonable choice! Any and all information gratefully accepted - this project has so far cost many dollars, and the board is unsure what to do with it."

Joe Griego of Bishop Union High School, CA asks: "I'm the Director of I.T. for a small school district, and we've implemented a 'Game Night' for our kids. We open the lab once or twice a month, and let the kids sign up for the lab computers (we have 34 of them), and play LAN games until the wee hours. It's a lot of fun for the kids, and I enjoy seeing them use the computers for recreation, as opposed to purely academic purposes. However, my question would be - do other high schools even do this?" Judging by the post-Columbine reactions from the government, parent's groups, school systems, and the media, if a school is doing this, it's probably on the QT. Personally, I think this is a great idea, it keeps kids off of the streets and their parents know where they are. What do you think?

toygeek2002 asks: "With the proliferation of 802.11b, plans like this one are popping up all over. Where is the best place to FIND such dishes? Numerous Google searches have led to dead-ends, and calls to some local satellite TV shops tell me I'm gonna pay a lot for a 2-3' dish. Where's the best place to find old Primestar or other such dishes?"

Undercover Journalist asks: "I need to take pictures and video in an area where soldiers/police will try to stop me if they saw what I am doing or/and confiscate my equipment. I need a rig that will allow unobtrusive taking of video/pictures and a way to transmit these images out as soon as I take them. I am thinking on a very small digital camera that can link to a notebook/pda that will spool the stream and use wireless to send the stream to a back-office for emailing it. Preferably, I should be able to script things, e.g. automatic, hand free operation and self-delete of files after transmission. The equipment should be at consumer level pricing. I don't have CIA budgets. I would appreciate thoughts about the kind of rig that would work best."

Phantoman asks: "I work for the Campus Cinema at University of California Davis and we are looking into getting a Christie or Barco DLP system for Digital Cinema projection. Now if this is the wave of the future I ask you all to compare 35mm to Digital. The price tag on a digital setup is roughly $140,000. Without content. 35mm isn't all that cheap, but if my old Century 35mm projectors break I can get replacement parts for usually less than $100-300. If something goes wrong with the DMD (digital micromirror device) I have a feeling those digital projector parts are going to cost me big. Are the movie theater chains going to get stuck with big costs down the road because Hollywood producers want to save money and have tighter control over distribution? As if they didn't a monopoly already: it costs us between $500-1000 (or half of our profits, whichever is more) for each night we show a movie!" At those prices it doesn't sound like digital theaters will overtake 35mm theaters anytime soon, but what would happen if Hollywood suddenly got the "bright" idea to limit 35mm reel distribution within the next few years?

cromacks asks: "I am trying to set up CVS on my Windows 2000 machine so that I can checkout repositories from our server. As far as I know, it uses ssh authentication, and that seems to be giving me the problems. I'm using cvs from cvshome.org through my command line, and I have already set my environment variables (HOME, CVSROOT, and CVS_RSH=c:\WINNT\plink). The problem is, when i go to do the checkout, i receive the following error: ' from cvs serverning: unrecognized response 'cromacks@cs.bc.edu's password: it repeats that line until I Ctrl-c. Any suggestions?"

Fastball asks: "I have a couple ideas for some web-based games that I'd like to develop. I'm an avid Linux, Perl, Apache, and MySQL user, and I believe in the GPL. However, I'm trying to figure out how I can develop these games as open source and still make a buck. It would be rewarding to produce them without seeing a profit, but I'd like to make enough money to get a company going and quit my current, uninspiring job. Can I get there via open source, would I be more profitable going closed source, or should I forget about make money altogether?"

Suffering Sekret Keys asks: "When I first started working for the company I'm with now, back in 1996, I was charged with finding a way to keep our customer credit card info secure in our database. Now that I'm smart enough to realize the flaws in this system, I am wondering how you avoid the catch-22 of needing to be able to encrypt/decrypt the data on the same machine that houses it, without exposing a secret key that could make that data more vulnerable in the event of an intrusion?" This question has been submitted a few times, recently, but this was the best one out of the lot. It seems many of you are wisely concerned about private data stored on your company's net, and the risks involved if it gets stolen. Well, now is your chance to discuss various solutions. How would you securely store your customer's private information, especially when it comes to critical pieces like credit card numbers?