Privacy

Shielding Domain Registration Info? 93

occamboy asks: "I'd like to register a new domain, but I'm tired of getting tons of spam (most filtered, but some not) and snail mail whenever I register a new domain. In short, I'd like the domain, but I don't want to announce the details of its owner to the world. I was thinking of using GoDaddy's domain proxy, but the terms are scary: they reserve the right to change the agreement anytime, by posting the new terms on their site, and the buyer automatically agrees to the new terms. What's to prevent them from grabbing my domain name from me, or doing some other nefarious thing? So, is there any good way to anonymously acquire a domain? Should I just register with fake info, use a service ... or what?"
Software

CPUs/Compilers for Numerical Simulations? 56

X43B asks: "I'm building a 'luggable' computer for numerical simulation work (very niche, I know). My goal is to have the best single precision floating point performance for under $1000. I have decided on a Shuttle XPC layout. I can build a AMD 3500+ for ~$80 less than a Prescott 3.4Ghz. I know the AMD is supposed to be a better 'general purpose' CPU however I found this comparison which says the Intels are better for floating point. Additionally, even though the AMD is somewhat cheaper, I have found the free Intel Linux FORTRAN compiler quicker than gfortran. So even if the AMD had similar performance for cross compiling, the Intel would be ~10% faster with the free compiler. Does anyone have any recommendations on AMD vs Intel for single precision floating point operations? If you recommend the AMD, what (cheap or free) compiler can be used that is comparable to the Intel?"
The Internet

Dynamic DNS - The Good, The Bad and The Cheap? 89

flyman asks: "I recently was 'downsized' from a company, and have had to really cut back on expenses. One of those cut-backs was to cancel my business class DSL with static IPs. I have since signed up for standard Cable Internet, which only has dynamic IPs. I know there are several DDNS providers out there, but which ones are good? Easy to use? Free or cheap? I still want to host some dev sites from home, if possible. Any advice would be appreciated."
Wireless Networking

Persuading A City To Go Wireless? 168

An anonymous reader submits "We keep reading about cities dishing out free wireless; Philadelphia, San Francisco, Austin, TX, and many, many others. But how does one go about forming a group to get their city to go wireless? Looking around, there are a few articles out there, but most deal with selling it to businesses. I haven't been able to find a definitive guide to "Getting your city to go wireless". So I send my plea out to the Slashdot community - just how does one go about getting your city to go wireless?"
News

Slack LCD TV Market Means Cheaper Phones And Monitors 478

A user writes "CNN and Business2 are running a story about the apparent failure of LCD TVs to make a major market impact and what it means for you. Specifically for us geeks it means cheaper cellular phones and laptops due to an oversupply of LCD manufacturing. Does this mean I can finally afford that 21" LCD monitor I've always wanted?"
Education

What Should 10-Year-Olds Know About IT? 234

stephendl writes "I have been asked to give a computer based talk to a local primary school. It is part of an after school science club and I have a pretty free rein to talk about whatever I want for 10 minutes. The children will be aged 9 and 10 and will come from a range of backgrounds, there will be a parent of each child present too. My initial thoughts for the subject included the history of computers, the components in a computer and what computers are used for. Does the slashdot community have any suggestions, experience in this area or tips?"
Technology

Vehicles of Tomorrow? 727

Human Factors Guy writes "We've seen here before car manufacturers putting more and more technology into cars, but what are the cars of tomorrow going to look like? Driver monitoring through head and eye tracking (which Volvo is already implementing), Adaptive Cruise Control systems, maybe even pedestrian recognition systems. With cars becoming more like semi-intelligent robots every year, what do /. readers think will and won't make it?"
Editorial

Your Favorite Political Weblogs? 785

worm eater would like to know: "As the mainstream media is coming under closer scrutiny from the 'blogosphere,' and is having to actually respond to these journalists in pajamas, I thought I'd ask Slashdot: what are your favorite political blogs? Lately I've been reading Talking Points Memo, a liberal weblog by Joshua Micah Marshall, and a blog by Andrew Sullivan, a conservative writer. Where do you go when you want to see the mainstream media dissected and poked at?"
Television

HDTV Onto a PC Through FireWire? 49

William George asks: "As of April 1st, 2004 it has been required that all cable companies in the United States be able to provide customers, upon request, with a High Definition set-top box with IEEE 1394 (FireWire) connectivity (e-CFR Part 76.640 Section 4 Subsection i). This was designed to allow easier connections between modern TVs, set-top boxes, and digital PVRs. However, it should also allow for a connection to a computer... at least in theory. Well, I am out to test that theory. After extended communication with my local cable company (CableONE) they have arranged to send out a pair of techs to help me try this out. The arrangement is for them to come out on September 22, and with phone support from their corporate offices and Motorola (the company that provides their set-top boxes) we are going to see if it will work."
The Internet

Can Anyone Suggest a Good Switch? 54

wgadmin asks: "I am a sysadmin for a 500-node Linux cluster. We are doubling the size of our compute nodes, so, as a consequence, we need a new switch. We currently have a Foundry FastIron 1500 -- however, a) it doesn't have enough ports (only 208) and b) it is extremely unreliable. We want something that's solid as a rock. We process mostly serial jobs. And we will probably require ~320 ports. What's everyone using for their HPC clusters? There's so many high performance switches on the market, we hardly know where to start."
Java

Numerical Computing in Java? 196

Nightshade queries: "I work for a department in a big financial company that uses equal amounts of C++ and Java. For a variety of reasons, we've decided that Java is the future of the group because of all the benefits of the language (it's so easy to use compared to C++, we can use Eclipse, Ant, jUnit, etc). The problem is that we do a lot of numerical computing and Java has no operator overloading! Languages like C# have operator overloading and because of this company's like CenterSpace have popped up with some nice looking numerical libraries. Try to find numerical packages for Java and it'll be pretty tough. What have people done in terms of numerical computing in Java? We currently use the Jama and Colt libraries for matrices and complex numbers, but these have awkward interfaces without operator overloading and are incomplete (no support for things like symmetric matrices) so we're looking for better solutions. So should we bite the bullet and switch to C#? Should we use a pre-processor like JFront? What have other people done?"
The Almighty Buck

Would You Bid for a Job? 614

Roland Piquepaille writes "Several U.S. hospitals have found an innovative way to deal with nursing shortage. They post shift openings and the highest hourly rate they're willing to pay on their internal networks. Then, the nurses bid online for these extra shifts. The lowest bidders get the shifts and are notified by e-mail. This bidding process is almost certainly a good thing for the hospitals, but is it good for the nurses? Or safe for you? And what will happen if other industries also adopt auction systems? Imagine a company telling you, "Hey, you want to make some extra dollars by building this car or writing this piece of software? Name your price, and you'll make some more cash." What do you think of this bidding process? Read more before posting your comments."
The Courts

Trademarking Open-Source Projects? 77

dautelle asks: "I had the nasty surprise to receive a letter from a company in New-Zealand asking me to stop using the 'jade' name they have recently trademarked (my open source project has been Java Addition to Default Environment or JADE for short, long before their trademark filing date). I am going to comply, but I wonder if our open-source projects should be trademarked (cost >300$) to prevent such misfortune?"
The Internet

Replace NAT Box with Commercial Broadband Router? 118

hjf asks: "Three years ago, when I got DSL, I set up a 486 box, with 8 megs and a floppy drive to run FloppyFW. It has been through a couple hardware upgrades: 16Mb RAM for running the 2.4 kernel and a 100MBit PCI NIC for the internal network. It has a little UPS which lasts for over 60 minutes. The only downtime it has is when there's a thunderstorm and I unplug it. Besides that, it has been running flawlessly since I set it up. Lately I have been kind of seduced with this product from 3Com, and other similar to it. I know it says it can handle 253 simultaneous users and all that. My home network has 4 users, but most of us run eMule and other P2P, and as many of you know, those P2P programs can beat the crap out of your router."

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