Wine

What Linux Distribution is the Best for Games? 178

Posted by Cliff from the introducing-the-Lbox dept.
CodeGeekGuy asks: "I've been thinking of doing the big switcheroo from Windows to Linux. I have, in the past, had various levels of success using Linux, but I generally have to give up as soon as I feel like playing a game. I've done dual booting before, but find it a pain if you're waiting for something to finish and just want a quick game of Half Life 2 or WoW. I'm willing to give this another shot (as I hear that Cedega plays HL2 and WoW quite nicely). I've used Mandrake and Fedora Core and even Redhat, is there another distribution out there that is the best distro to use to get Cedega (and ultimately games) to work well? "
Robotics

Best Webcam on a Budget for Linux? 42

Posted by Cliff from the by-your-command dept.
Garak asks: "Webcams seem to be hit and miss for a combination of image quality, light sensitivity and price. Lately I've been mostly missing looking for a webcam to use on my mobile telerobot that I'm building for my thesis project. I require a webcam that will produce an acceptable picture under normal office lighting without breaking my shoe string budget. So Slashdot, what is the best value in a low cost, Linux compatible webcam?"
Printer

Finding a Reliable Laser Printer? 181

Posted by Cliff from the rocks-of-printer-stability dept.
SpottedKuh asks: "Perhaps the days of sturdy laser printers are over, or perhaps it is just my bad luck. I've recently been the proud owner of two paperweights: First, an HP LaserJet 1100, which continually misfed papers and smeared toner. After selling that printer, I foolishly purchased a LaserJet 1012, not realizing just how poorly it played with my BSD systems. Naturally, I've learned my lesson about checking LinuxPrinting.org; but, more than that, I'm gun-shy about purchasing yet another printer to replace my current LaserJet. I look at one of my friends who has had a LaserJet 4P for probably around ten years, and it's still going strong. Are the days of such quality gone, or am I just looking in the wrong places?"
The Almighty Buck

What Do You Charge for Tech Support? 1168

Posted by Cliff from the scratch-under-the-table dept.
war3rd asks: "Years ago I used to offer tech support for friends and family (for free), and ended up doing it for everyone they and I knew. I cut it out because it was taking too much of my time, but I've been getting more and more requests lately due to everything from viruses, spam, spyware, as well as aging PC with Windows 98 and ME (oog!) on them still. I was thinking of saying OK to requests that are convenient, but I want to make it worth my while. So I ask, I'm sure that some of you out there must do this, what is the general going rate for basic user tech support (i.e. getting someone's home machine cleaned up and back to normal email & web browsing capability)?"
The Internet

Dealing with Deep-Linking to Your Online Photos? 139

Posted by Cliff from the content-snagging dept.
Pig Hogger asks: "I've had my own hobby website since 1993, and over the years it has expanded to be quite a reference for the domain I am covering (some pro websites list it as additional reference, and so does Wikipedia. Google page-ranks it amongst the top). Every so often, I peruse the logs, most especially looking at the referrers to see where people come from, and once in a while, I notice that some webloggers deep-link to an image on my site. I do not mind too much when it's on-topic, but when it's not *AND* it's sucking-up bandwidth, I tend to be irked. Or worse, when you can't go look at the referring page without registering on the weblog site. In those cases, I change the picture filename (and the corresponding webpage that calls it), and I substitute a smaller (and most often, naughty) picture. What other tricks those of you are facing the same problem have to address this problem?"
Software

Innovation in Open Source Software? 88

Posted by Cliff from the it-doesn't-come-from-just-the-big-fish dept.
ndogg asks: "Many have said that there is a lack of innovation in OSS software, and tend to talk about the big projects, like Mozilla and the Linux kernel. However, I would contend that innovation is quite abound in OSS, but that the problem is the spotlight is rarely shown upon those projects that are truly innovative. For example, I would contend that Data Display Debugger (DDD) and The Boost C++ Libraries are quite unique and innovative projects. What OSS projects do you feel are innovative, but underapreciated?"
Microsoft

Why is Microsoft Making its Own Life Difficult? 105

Posted by Cliff from the mind-boggles dept.
sebFlyte asks: "Asking Slashdot readers what they think of Microsoft's methodology and ethos might seem like a silly thing to do, but a ZD-Net article raises some interesting points. The main one is that: 'Microsoft's behaviour is technically, morally and practically indefensible. It could publish its CIFS specification tomorrow if it so chose, an act that would correspond closely to the spirit and letter of the European decision. The company would then be free to compete through the simple process of making better products, something it claims to favour, while also encouraging precisely the sort of interoperability it says is missing.' The question I'm curious to canvas opinion on is why Microsoft is taking an attitude that is believed by so many to be damaging to their market position."
Security

Free Open-Source vs. Commercial Security Tools? 234

Posted by Cliff from the don't-buy-into-the-FUD dept.
sahirh asks: "I work as a penetration tester and recently started writing a whitepaper on the benefits of free, open-source security tools over commercial tools. Through my own experiences, I've found that many free tools such as Nessus and Kismet are more reliable and have better features than expensive commercial alternatives like ISS Internet Scanner or Airopeek. I've also noticed that tools like Ettercap have no commercial alternative. Further, the flexibility offered by the open-source nature of such tools is a great benefit. I'd like to ask for Slashdot's experiences and opinions on why you don't need to spend thousands of dollars on an expensive tool to perform a professional security assessment." Update: 02/07 11:15pm EDT by C : Thanks to all who wrote in to let us know the proper URL to the Kismet site.
Technology

Household Emergent Behavior? 359

Posted by Cliff from the silly-'intelligent'-household-devices dept.
Sam Pullara asks: "I got an IM from my Mom today telling me that she couldn't find her Roomba. It somehow had escaped the kitchen and she couldn't find it anywhere, all the doors that it could reach were shut and she checked under everything. She eventually found that it had gotten into a room and closed the door behind it. Once all household items are networked I wonder if a rich environment like a house will make strange behavior like this commonplace? Will the interactions between all the individual devices create something more than the sum of their parts?"
Hardware Hacking

Making a Color LCD Dashboard Replacement? 132

Posted by Cliff from the not-as-reliable-as-the-gauge-but-cooler dept.
DarkHand asks: "I've recently begun a project that would allow me to replace the analog gauges in my cars dash with a TFT LCD screen displaying a digital representation of the same. A number of animated analog-looking gauges would display the same information the physical gauges display, based on info from the ECU, as well as any other information the ECU has access to, such as intake air and coolant temperatures, throttle position, pop-ups for any warnings or error codes, etc. I'm looking to be able to add, remove, and customize the positions of the individual gauges, and possibly even make the background skinnable. Stability is crucial, so I'm leaning toward a Linux-based system. I have a few software friends who are willing to help on that end, but finding the proper hardware for such a project has proven difficult."
The Almighty Buck

Restricted Financial Support for Open-Source? 54

Posted by Cliff from the disparate-financial-options dept.
Anonymous Writer asks: "PayPal has become the standard for making donations to Open-Source projects, and in many cases the only way. Out of the 247 countries and territories represented by top-level domains on the Internet, credit cards are available in 128. However, PayPal only accepts credit cards from 45 of these countries, which excludes 83 from using their service. Nearly two-thirds of the countries on the Internet with valid credit card billing services are currently prevented from making donations using PayPal. Even credit cards issued from those 45 accepted countries with billing addresses not among them are excluded, which affects people working overseas and expatriots. If you want to support the Open-Source Software movement but don't live in a PayPal-accepted country, what are your alternatives?"
Spam

How to Get Rid of Referrer Spam? 56

Posted by Cliff from the get-a-net-bouncer dept.
wikinerd asks: "I have recently opened my own community website. Everything was fine until spammers found it, which happened quite quickly. As usual they filled up my mailboxes, but SpamAssassin can take care of that when it is needed. Then, they discovered my blog and my wikis and employed their bots to fill them up with spam comments. I solved this problem by moderating all comments. Now, however, they employed another evil trick: Referrer spam. They caused my webserver statistics to grow up by orders of magnitude by making their stupid websites to show up on my referrer lists. Unfortunately now my webserver usage statistics are full of viagra, poker, casino, porn, spyware, and pharmacy sites. I am afraid that this is a problem I cannot solve with the knowledge and the tools I have at the moment. So, I came here to ask Slashdot readers: How can I fight referrer spam and what tools are available in a GNU/Linux environment to ensure clean and spam-free usage statistics?"
Wireless Networking

Wide Area Wireless on a Shoestring Budget? 239

Posted by Cliff from the cheap-area-networking dept.
wkytechhead asks: "My father owns a greenhouse operation that covers a few dozen acres. He has a number of greenhouses some up to 1000' plus apart that he would like to network. Currently he is using a HomePNA based network via regular RJ12. He has decided that he would like to go at least partially wireless. Some consideration has been given to using the backbone with fiber convertors, but he would really like to do full wireless. I have checked into homemade and commercial 'Cantennas' but I am not sure if they are worth the money. How would my fellow geeks go about wirelessly networking a large outdoor area for as cheap as possible?"
Security

How Secure Is Microsoft's Fingerprint Reader? 72

Posted by Cliff from the you-gotta-be-kidding-me dept.
Moos3d asks: "I recently found out about this Microsoft Fingerprint Reader at the library and ever since then I have been fascinated by using something like this for my own PC. How secure is this compared to using multiple 10+ character long passwords? Some people I've talked to seem to think it isn't safe at all and some people seem to think it is only safe for casual use. I only plan to use it for online forums and other applications that don't require great measures of security so it seems to be perfect for me, but how secure do you think it really is?"
Privacy

Outsourced Support, Now Outsourced Telemarketing? 125

Posted by Cliff from the you-can't-escape dept.
Sir_Dill asks: "I was a little skeptical of the whole chicken-littlish sky is falling attitude about outsourcing to India, that is until it hit home. Over the last couple of days I have started to receive at least two calls a night from an unknown telemarketing company. First it was discovercard and tonight its a mortgage company called Parsec (whose webpage doesn't work in Firefox). Each time they ask for the person whose name is associated with my phone number in Google (an entirely different story altogether). When I inform them that they have the wrong number, they read the same script each time and each time I ask them to take me off their lists. Its getting old and I am feeling a little helpless in regards to this...and the worst part is...it is not an offer I can't refuse...it is one I can't understand. Has anyone else experienced this? How did you handle it and does the National Do Not Call list even apply?"

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