CowboyNeal writes: "Last week was a big week for gamers, with the release of both Borderlands 2 as well as Torchlight 2. I already shared my thoughts on the former last week, so I got to playing the latter over the weekend. Torchlight 2 is the follow-up to Torchlight, the 2009 point-and-click ARPG created by Runic Games. What's new that the first game didn't have? And, the big question, how does it stack up against Diablo 3? Click the link below to learn my impressions of the game."

An anonymous reader writes "I know most people use backup services in the cloud now, off-site, but does anyone have good ideas on how to best protect data without it leaving the site? I'm a photographer and, I shoot 32GB to 64GB in a couple of hours. I've accumulated about 8TB of images over the past decade and just can't imagine paying to host them somewhere off-site. I don't make enough money as it is. Currently I just redundantly back them up to hard drives in different rooms of my house, but that's a total crapshoot — if there's a fire, I'd be out of luck. Does anyone keep a hard disk or NAS inside a fireproof safe? In a bunker in the cellar? In the detached garage? It's so much data that even doing routine backups bogs the system down for days. I'd love suggestions, especially from gamers or videographers who have TBs of data they need to back up, on what options there are with a limited budget to maximize protection."

A few weeks ago you asked security guru Moxie Marlinspike about all manner of security issues, being searched at the border, and how to come up with a good online name. He's graciously answered a number of your inquiries which you will find below.

generalhavok writes "I read the story on Slashdot earlier about the EFF encouraging people to leave their WiFi open to share the internet. I would like to do this! I don't mind sharing my connection and letting my neighbors check their email or browse the web. However, when I used to leave it open, I quickly found my limited bandwidth dissappearing, as my neighbors started using it heavily by streaming videos, downloading large files, and torrenting. What is an easy way I can share my internet, while enforcing some limits so there is enough bandwidth left for me? What about separating the neighbors from my internal home network? Can this be done with consumer-grade routers? If the average consumer wants to share, what's the easiest and safest way to do it?"

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister takes a first look at Wallaby, Adobe's experimental tool for transforming Flash content into HTML5, and finds the tool an interesting idea with little yet to offer. 'Wallaby engineers have made sound decisions in designing the tool, but what you actually get when you convert a Flash project to HTML5 is extremely limited,' McAllister writes, in large part because many Flash features are not supported, leaving developers to add their own interactivity with jQuery."

jibjibjib writes "According to projections by APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston, IANA's central IPv4 address pool is expected to run out any day now, leaving the internet with a very limited remaining supply of addresses. APNIC will probably request two /8s (33 million addresses) within the next few weeks. This will leave five /8s available, which will be immediately distributed to the five Regional Internet Registries in accordance with IANA policy. It's expected that APNIC's own address pool will run low during 2011, making ISPs and businesses in the Asia-Pacific region the first to feel the effects of IPv4 exhaustion. The long-term solution to IP address exhaustion is provided by IPv6, the next version of the Internet Protocol. IPv6 has been an internet standard for over a decade, but is still unsupported on many networks and makes up an almost negligible fraction of Internet traffic. Unless ISPs dramatically accelerate the pace of IPv6 deployment, users in some regions will be stuck on IPv4-only connections while ISPs in other regions run out of public IPv4 addresses, leading to a fragmented Internet without the universal connectivity we've previously taken for granted."

mapkinase writes with this excerpt from Discovery News: "The Apollo Passive Seismic Experiment recorded motions of the ground from moonquakes and other activities generating sound waves until late 1977. The network was too limited to directly monitor waves bouncing off or scattered by the moon's core, leaving scientists dependent on more indirect techniques, such as measuring minute gravitational changes, to craft a picture of the moon's interior. Those models turned out to be pretty accurate, says lead scientist Renee Weber, with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The new research confirms the existence of a solid inner core and liquid outer layer, similar to Earth's. Unlike Earth, the moon also has a partly melted, mushy layer over that."

The launch of Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001 vaulted Bungie to the top of the game development industry and helped provide a stable foundation for the success of the original Xbox. Nine years later, having completed a trilogy and a standalone expansion for the Halo universe, Bungie has returned to the IP one last time for a prequel called Halo: Reach. They clearly wanted to do right by the fans and the franchise with their final sendoff, and the effort they put into the game reflects that. Read on for the rest of my thoughts.

gyrogeerloose writes "During its last mission, astronauts from the Space Shuttle Atlantis installed an Automatic Identification System antenna on the outside of the International Space Station that will allow astronauts aboard the ISS to monitor signals from the AIS transmitters mandated to be installed on most large ocean-going craft. Although these VHF signals can be monitored from the Earth's surface, their horizontal range is generally limited to about 75 km (46 mi), leaving large areas of the ocean unwatched. However, the signals easily reach the 400 km (250 mi) orbit of the ISS. The European Space Agency sees this experiment as a test platform for a future AIS-monitoring fleet of satellites that will eventually provide worldwide coverage of sea traffic."

theodp writes "A CS student blogger named Carolyn offers an interesting take on why learning from PowerPoint lectures is frustrating. Unlike an old-school chalk talk, professors who use PowerPoint tend to present topics very quickly, leaving little time to digest the visuals or to take learning-reinforcing notes. Also, profs who use the ready-made PowerPoint lectures that ship with many textbooks tend to come across as, shall we say, less than connected with their material. Then there are professors who just don't know how to use PowerPoint, a problem that is by no means limited to college classes."

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "A federal judge rules that government can obtain access to a person's inbox contents without any notification to the subscriber. The pros and cons of this are complicated, but the decision hinges on the assertion that ISP customers have lowered privacy interests in e-mail because they 'expose to the ISP's employees in the ordinary course of business the contents of their e-mails.' Fortunately for everybody, this is not true — most ISPs do not allow their employees to read customer e-mails 'in the ordinary course of business' — but then what are the consequences for the rest of the argument?" Read on for the rest of Bennett's analysis.

stoolpigeon writes "It has been well documented that the reception for Microsoft's Windows Vista has not been all that warm. Yet, visiting the web site of many PC manufacturers or visiting a retail outlet selling computers will show that most new hardware is being offered with Vista as the primary if not only option. O'Reilly's newest in their Annoyances series, "Windows Vista Annoyances", by David A. Karp, seeks to alleviate some of the pain for new Vista users. For the Vista owner who is able to put the book's suggestion into place, the edge should be taken off. For the individual considering a purchase of Vista and wondering if it can really be that bad, this book seems to indicate that yes, it is that bad." Read below for the rest of JR's review.

Last week hundreds of you posted questions for Slashdot's CmdrTaco, AKA Rob Malda. Today we present his answers to 10 of the highest-moderated questions. CT: You can continue to sign up for 10 year anniversary parties but we're already working on shipping shirts so you won't be able to get a care package... but you can still try to run for the big grand prize by just taking videos of pictures or just doing something cool at your parties to prove that we should have been there.

InternetVoting writes "Expanding on the limited 2005 Internet voting pilot successes, the small European nation of Estonia will become the first country to allow voting in a national parliamentary election via the Internet. Fresh off the news of France's successful primary election using Internet voting and the announcement of 12 new UK election pilots, is Europe leaving the U.S. behind?"

An anonymous reader asks: "My SO just inherited a computer lab from a departed teacher who was no security guru. These are Windows XP systems, and security basically consists of a password on the admin account, a subscription to McAfee Security Center, and a free Internet filter. The students have access through a non-passworded 'limited' user account that doesn't seem to limit much. They have been going in and changing settings, downloading games and music, and generally screwing the computers up during class time, in many cases leaving them unusable. As the geek in our house, she has asked me to give her a hand, but while I have dealt with some security issues in the past, it was to protect against remote intruders, not against someone who has to have access to the keyboard. Any suggestions on the best way to lock these systems down?"

An anonymous reader asks: "What cheap yet effective cooling solutions are available for servers for a small business? Keep in mind, I don't mean a small 100 employee business but rather 10 full time employees. The place is based out of an ex-residential unit, outfitted for the business. As with any small business, there wasn't any real consideration for IT needs when the place was built. The organization is getting its first real in-house server and all rooms within the unit are already in use, meaning the server must live nicely in office space, with humans, where the existing switch is. The organization follows a policy of turning off PCs and air-conditioning out of hours and in the Australian summer, the unit easily heats up past 35 degrees Celsius, exceeding the maximum operating ambient temperature for the server. Now, I can convince them of leaving the air-conditioner on, but the humans may not want the room as cool as I want it for the server and it's difficult to ensure that no one has turned it off. Are there any other cheap yet effective cooling solutions for a small business where the budget is extremely limited?"

Yesterday's story about a creative approach to dealing with uninvited (and unwanted) users on a private wireless network -- by intercepting and modifying the images received downstream -- provoked some thoughtful comments on open wireless networks, and a storm of analogies about networks and property generally. Read on for some of the most interesting comments in the Backslash summary of the conversation.

Spencerian writes "The surge of Unix-derived operating systems such as Mac OS X, Linux, and the now-free Solaris is not slowing against the fortified but embattled breakwaters of the Microsoft operating system family. But new power users of other operating systems, including those just starting with Unix as well as the graphical interface of the operating system (such as the Mac OS Finder, or the navigators of KDE or Gnome), remain in need of a comprehensive primer for Unix that complements their previous knowledge. The fourth edition of Dave Taylor's "Teach Yourself Unix in 24 Hours" should remain on the top of the buy list for computer users in need of a strong Unix reference where they may find themselves managing or using the subtle variants of Unix flavors." Read the rest of Spencerians' review.

Halloween is almost upon us, and today we've got a pair of games unnaturally interested with blood. If that sounds like a feeble attempt at theming this dual review, you'd be right. October has seen an avalanche of game releases, and two titles for the DS seemed somehow appropriate for this weekend. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow carries the flag of side-scrolling excellence, and despite being on Nintendo's newest handheld brings back fond memories of days gone by. Trauma Center: Under the Knife utilizes the DS's touch screen to provide a wickedly challenging, more modern, and thoroughly different gameplay experience. Both games have their quirks and copious amounts of blood, and you can read on for my reactions to these sanguine titles.

You may recall that sometime last November we put up a request for questions to be passed on to author, voice actor, comedian, and card shark Wil Wheaton. Seven months and many adventures later, Wil has responded in depth to the excellent queries Slashdot users put to him. If you're curious about what's kept him, what it's like to be a Teen Titan, or how to use the LCARS User Interface, read on for his responses.