Fading Captain asks: "I'm sys-admin for a mid-size organization and have returned yet again to that fateful question: is Exchange the only viable groupware server in its class? Unfortunately, browser-based solutions won't cut it in my case; management wants all the bells and whistles offered by Exchange. However, I haven't seen any mention of the InsightConnector product made by a company called Bynari (with whom I have no affiliation). Bynari claims the product will fool MS Outlook clients (full, not Express) into thinking any ACL-enabled IMAP server is an exchange server. In other words, my users can potentially utilize the groupware features of Outlook (which said users are beating down my door to do) while I run an inexpensive Linux mail server behind the scenes. Sounds too good to be true. Anyone subjected this configuration to real life testing?"

Ben Jackson asks: "I subscribe to the phone company's voicemail offering because it can take messages even when the line is busy. Although I would prefer vgetty, I can't afford to have several lines and a hunt group just to avoid missing calls. What I'm looking for is a tool you could call `fetchvmail' -- it would use a voice modem to retrieve voicemail and forward it on as a MIME attachment. Does anything like this exist?" We already have mgetty-voice and its ilk, why not something like this? Since many phone companies are now providing voice mail with the service, this would be a very useful utility indeed.

omen asks: "I know the subject of keyboards seems to come up every week or so, but the FingerWorks has recently come to my attention. Before I shell out $330 for the TouchStream Stealth, I was wondering if anyone has any experience with it. Is the gesture system useful? How hard is it to get used to 'zero-force' keys? How well does the 'two finger' mouse work? Any thoughts on the Qwerak layout?" This keyboard looks to be another incremental improvement on ergonomic keyboards, but are these keyboards really good enough to justify their prices?

Aknaton asks: "As I begin to plan for my annual fall purchase of new hardware, I would like to try something different. I have already owned several PPC Macs running MacOS X and many PCs but they still leave me wanting more. I have begun looking for non-Apple/X86 alternatives but I am not finding much. SGI still makes machines but they don't even list prices. Sun offers the SunBlade 100, for just under a grand and it is a consideration. Can anyone else suggest, or know of, any other options? Or is it just a PC world after all?"

palehorse asks: "I am a developer/DBA/etc for a very large State Govt. Agency on the East Coast. We have been subjected to an increasing number of break-ins and website defacements over the past few months. My boss has recently been tasked by our CIO to find a reputable third party (not us or our ISP) to come in and do a complete and independent security assessment/vulnerability analysis for us. Since I'm the guy who usually bugs folks about security, she tasked me to come up w/ a list of firms who could do this for us. and a plan on what to test for and how. I've done the whole Google search/ZD-Net search/etc, which has given me way to many folks who do this kind of stuff, from ISS and IBM on down. Consequently I wanted to get some feedback/suggestions from the Slashdot community on where to go from here."

ioquatix asks: "Hi there... I am planning (not 100% sure yet) on setting up an internet cafe in Christchurch, New Zealand. However, there are many interesting issues that I must resolve first, such as location, staff, security (thats one of the big ones, unfortunately), and computers. The question I want to ask is, who out there (there is bound to be a few) has set up an internet cafe, and what advice can you give?"

kiddailey asks: "I'm working on a project for self-enrichment that involves creating a working prototype of an electronic device. I've made a model of the basic shape of the device out of Sculpey ^(tm) and want to use it as a mold to make the actual plastic housing that I can then insert the electronics into. Has anyone done something like this before? Is there any way to achieve this without a significant R&D buget?"

eugene ts wong writes "This past month, VanLUG went to Comdex, as we usually do. It went fairly well for us, but we are always looking for ways to refine our methods. Our main focus this year has been promoting the professionals of the LUG, so that we aren't perceived only as a bunch of hackers and script kiddies. What kinds of methods and focuses [yes, it's incorrect spelling, but I like it this way] have other LUGs had for their presence at Comdex? Or are there any other LUGs at all that have been to Comdex?"

Embedded Geek asks: "There's an interesting opinion piece at Embedded Systems Magazine about [embedded] programming being a dead end job. The author cites burnout ('Pushing ones and zeroes around doesn't sound like a lot of work, but getting each and every one of a hundred million perfect is tremendously difficult.'), prestige, and skill obsolescence as big reasons for programmers to quit or to go 'over to the dark side' and join management or marketing positions. While the piece primarily addresses embedded programmers, the issue is rising for IT workers and other tech workers. When the age issue is combined with the export of jobs offshore, it makes me nervous just to be pushing 35..." Even though the market is going thru a rough patch, and the number of detrimental aspects to programming are increasing (ageism and so forth), I still do not feel that programming is a dead end job. Computers are going nowhere folks, and as long as they are around, programmers will be necessary. People who are in this career for the money or the prestige may not like it after a while, but the people who are in this for something else will tolerate quite a bit before deciding to opt out. The simple measure here: "as long as you love doing it, you'll keep doing it." Isn't this true for any career?

Alvaro asks: "My question is rather simple: i've recently acquired a Soyo K7V Dragon+, an excellent Ahtlon XP motherboard which includes by default a smart card reader. My intention is to get this smart card reader working on Linux, but i've no idea on how to start. Is it a serial interface? Does it have an embedded controller in the MB? Does it need kernel support? Which programs should I use to access (read from/write to) the smart cards? I've searched the web to find useful information, but so far, no luck. The final idea is to use the smart cards to hold the key to decrypt an EFS (Encrypted File System), and the computer won't boot if the card isn't inserted since the BIOS also supports booting on smart card insert! Can anyone help me?"

nautical9 asks: "Spam is a huge, annoying, and costly problem, there's no question. But what about those of us who run a valuable service, such as a newsletter, that users willingly sign up for and actually DO want to receive in their inbox every day? It's really too bad a few bad apples (ok, thousands of bad apples) are ruining the email system for the rest of us. Not all bulk-mailers are spammers, and large service providers do have a legitimate need to communicate reliably with their customers. But with everyone focusing on blocking commercial and unsolicited mail, no one seems to remember that there are valid reasons for having large-scale mailing lists." Maybe ISPs could utilize a system that could scan outgoing email for mailing list joins and then add those addresses to the "white" list for a specific user. Actually, why haven't ISPs adopted some form of user-level filtering system for email yet? It would seem like this would be the next sensible step in the fight against SPAM.

arunmehta asks: "We're setting up short-range mono FM radio stations in Indian villages. We're currently recommending minidisk recorders to tape and edit (mostly voice) -- does anyone have a better idea? In some stations, we will also implement radio-surfing, so there will be a PC available, and so would like some USB-type connectivity that allows bidirectional transfer of digital audio at speeds higher than real-time. Suggestions for a recorder?"

wirefarm asks: "I know there is are lot of well-supported pieces of hardware for Linux, but I was wondering, which vendors really go out of their way for the community? While tracking down drivers for a wireless PCMCIA card today, I found that the vendor boasted of having Linux support, but it was seemed that they were actually touting drivers that were community-developed, rather than written with any help of the company. So my question is this: Which companies really stand out when it comes to providing specs and developing drivers?"

An Anonymous Coward asks: "There is a site that wishes to test more than 450 users running thin-client X on a server without having to have 450 client terminals. Is there a simple method to do this. So far I've thought of the following options: 1) recording X network packets then sending them from multiple dummy 'clients' on the same PC. (This was done during the Mindcraft benchmarking episode by simulating 'netbench'). 2) some sort of scripting process that can simulate typical X11 usage on the server. Unfortunately, expensive load testing software is not an option."

dustinc20 asks: "I dont know if this is the right area, but being as this is a geek site I'd ask my fellow geeks if anyone knows a way to build a battery pack for one of those X-10 cameras. It has a frequency encoder(?) in the power supply and this makes it more complicated than just supplying 12vDC."

kwerle writes "I have just received my new iPod, and am now faced with the issue of how I should hook it up to every stereo I own. For the car, I could just get one of those cd-to-cassette converters, but that just doesn't...feel right. What experience have you had with mp3/cd player transmitters (like this one from Arkon or the MK-90)? Any suggestions?" Don't forget about the iRock Update: 04/24 07:46 GMT by C : Errors in the URL for the iRock have been fixed. My apologies.

Cutriss asks: "I suspect the odds are fairly good that a high percentage of Slashdot readers have a folder, disk partition, network share, or even a hard drive dedicated to storing Oggs or MP3s. Given that this is the case, wouldn't it be beneficial to develop a filesystem optimized for such a use? For instance, in Windows, Microsoft has special folder layouts for folders declared to have digital music or images in them. The digital music folders don't bother with file permissions or any unnecessary data, but instead display your songs with the appropriate ID3 tag information instead. If a filesystem were developed that intrinsically indexed its files by ID3 tags (or similar mechanisms), wouldn't this be an ideal structure for storing and searching through your album collection? And, more to the point, are there any such efforts under way to develop such a beast?"

krishnaD asks: "I have been using webalizer to generate access log reports for the site but lately my customers are asking for statistics like average amount of time spent by visitors on site, if a person reaches a page X, what is the probability that from here he goes to Y? From which link people exited the site etc. Basically, they are asking for a detailed flow analysis of usage patterns of visitors. Are there any tools that will do this kind of analysis? I love to know what kind of tools other sysadmins use to generate reports for their clients."

clambert asks: "A few co-workers and I are in the market for a new laptop, but it's been incredibly difficult to try and explore what's out there. How do Sony's warranties rank up against Dell's? Can I get Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on the new Toshibas? What model IBMs feature DDR memory? There doesn't seem to be an AnandTech/Ars/Toms for the notebook market, and short of filtering through all the marketing hype on every {brand}.com, its tough to find out what systems offer what specs. Are there any comprehensive resources out there for those of us in the market for a new laptop?"

jonerik writes "A friend of mine who is attempting to create three-dimensional computer models of social networks is looking for software that can do the job; in her words, 'the computer version of a tinker toy set.' She'd prefer software for the Mac, however she has access to PCs so MS-based software would be okay, too. Anyone have any thoughts on the subject?" Think about molecular modelling, where each "atom" is either an agency or an individual and the "bond" is the connection between the two.