An anonymous reader asks: "Our small southern shop (an eleven man team) is about to commence development on some medical software geared for physician's offices and hospitals. Since we have never developed in this area before (our primary source of income comes from developing software for regional transportation offices of the government) we are at loss for the reigning technologies. The two technologies we are considering are J2EE and .NET. What are the opinions of the Slashdot crowd? Surely others have developed for the monstrous healthcare industry. Thanks!"

A user writes "IBM has big plans for the 970, Apple's so-called "G5". The CPU will support partitioning, similar to IBM's mainframe systems, allowing multiple operating systems to run at the same time on a single CPU. A Mac built around this chip could theoretically run OS X, GNU/Linux, Mac OS 9, and the PowerPC version of Windows NT, all simultaneously and independently."

McWizard asks: "We've recently had a code split at a project I'm leading. (No name given, as this is a question, not an advertisement campaign). While both projects have done some major design decisions in opposing directions, we've been keeping a close eye on the changelog of the spinoff for small changes that could be used. So, whenever we've found an interesting piece of code (mostly GUI stuff, nothing longer than 20 lines of code), we transferred it to our project and gave credit to the spinoff team in the changelog. What does Slashdot say on that matter? Is this unethical or are such things fair game?"

museumpeace writes "CNET has an article about a robotic exoskeleton ginned up by tinkerer from Alaska There are a few cool pictures. The audacity of Mr. Owens project, if you believe the article, compares to the efforts of the old Home Brew Computer Club when compared to the work of GE or Toyota. Inspiration here comes more from sci-fi and video games than from industrial competition. The article is a good roundup of MECHA related developments, some of which sprang from DARPA money, so I am glad at least a few of my tax dollars are having some real geek fun."

vanyel asks: "Yesterday, my external USB 2.0 drive enclosure finished cooking a 3/4 full 200G drive after its fan quit working who knows how long ago. In the time honored tradition of closing the barn door *after* the horse has wandered away, I'm accelerating my quest for a RAID solution. In particular, I want something that will support 4 SATA drives and has temperature monitoring that doesn't require a particular vendor's RAID card or Windows. Better yet, is there a RAID-5 NAS that isn't in the $4-5000USD price range. Anyone with a better barn door to close this problem with?"

prostoalex writes "In 2005 Wolfgang Puck will start selling containers of self-heating coffee, USA Today says. The combination of calcium oxide and water will heat the coffee to 145 degrees and keep it warm for the next 30 minutes. The coffee will be sold in regular grocery stores, and folks at Fool.com tell Starbucks to watch out as this product, coming from a well-known chef, might target those of us grabbing a cup of hot latte on the way to work."

Recently, quite a few questions surrounding technology for the visually impared have dropped into the Ask Slashdot in-box and I'd like to take the time to share these questions with you. Please read on for more.