SeriousEyePanda writes "With this year's edition of RoboCup now taking place in Portugal (June 27-July 5), and many of us not able to attend, I'd like to ask for on-site reports from the event. The official site seems a bit lacking in this respect. What are your experiences and thoughts so far? Links to videos depicting game play would be especially appreciated (Freecached for Pete's sake)"

RebRachman asks: "Has the inevitable finally happened? After years of dismissing as alarmist all the commentary about how spam and security concerns will eventually render email useless, is it actually happening to us? I don't know about you, but for the past three days, all of our staff (we are a virtual company of 20 telecommuters) and clients have been unable to get email to one another reliably. Attachments disappear or become garbled, mail disappears into the great beyond, or arrives hours after it has been sent, even within the same ISP. We've resorted to sending one another an IM every time we send an email to confirm that the messages are arriving alright. In extreme cases we have even reverted to using a telephone handset to ensure that clients have received everything that was sent. Is it only a matter of time before we all resort to file transfer by P2P? (And if so, what are we going to do with these firewall boxes?)"

share_it asks: "On my Win PC I used a lot of encryption: I had encrypted small files for personal stuff, encrypted virtual disks for programs, music, video, etc. I used PGPdisk and mounted 3 big virtual disks (for a total of 170 gigs) on startup with just one single passphrase and those 'disks' were even quite fast. I have now switched to GNU-Linux for most of my interests, but sometimes I have to use Windows and I want my data to be encrypted and accessible from both OSes The only software that I found which can mount the same encrypted disk on both platforms is BestCript, but from Linux I can't store file with long names. Is there a better way to share encrypted data between when I dual-boot?"

An anonymous reader asks: "I'm currently working on a project that is 'partnered' with Cisco. Despite that they make good routers, the company's relatively large size does not appear to be willing to meeting unique, customized, requirements. So what are your opinions of the alternatives: 3com, Juniper, etc? Anyone had bad/good experience with these companies? Are all their routers really essentially the same? How about comparative performance with totally customized routing solutions via Linux+Zebra or some other open solution?"

Kronos666 asks: "I've been working with a network of about 50 computers, and a few of them have to be locked down. What I mean is that there is an application running, and the users must not be able to do anything else on it. The computers (Windows XP), are in a Windows 2000 domain and I've tried everything that comes to mind with the group policies. Now, I know it might seem contradictory to some, but is there a way to make those computers completely locked down? Maybe someone has had previous experience with something like this?"

RH Wesson asks: "We use eFax to distribute a 3 page fax once a week to about 75 customers of ours. Yesterday we uploaded a postscript version of our 3 page fax instead of the usual PDF version using the eFax Manager on Windows. We started getting calls from our customers about a 300+ page fax of garbage (it was really postscript source) We spent hours with eFax requesting them to stop the sending of the garbage. eFax was never able to stop it, in fact we spent hours trying to determine if the fax was even in their queue. In short we lost a lot of business that day and managed to piss off ALL of our customers at once. We are going back to using a regular fax machine. Has anyone else had a situation where the danger of technology loosing you business outweigh the efficiencies gained?"

tgrissom asks: "I work for a municipal government whose policy is to have support contracts on all software that operates mission-critical applications. Some of our web mapping applications have begun to use Apache Tomcat as their preferred java servelet engine. (They used to use Macromedia jRun, needless to say I am ecstatic about the change as I use Apache at home and in various other project arenas). My issue, however, is that I am being asked to find someone to be the 'supporting agency' and myself, my friends, my geek network, and the open-source community at-large are not acceptable replies. To cut to the point - does anyone out there use a reputable open source contractor to provide technical support for Apache Tomcat and if so, can you provide their contact information? Thanks for your consideration and response."

briant97 asks: "Microsoft is sitting back making all this money by charging for desktop and server operating systems. If you go for a server, they also add additional charges through client access licenses. Well, now that they've charged you all this money they leave their software open to viruses and exploits beyond belief, which will cost your company even more money. When will it stop? When will Microsoft become liable for their actions? I mean they are making billions while costing other companies billions. Ford, Chevy, and all other car manufactures get held liable if they make a defective product, why not Microsoft?" One can argue that you sign away your right to seek damages from Microsoft, by agreeing to the EULA, however there is still this issue as to the strength of a EULA since they've never been tested in court. How do you feel about this subject? Should software owners be allowed to "sign" away their basic rights via click-thru licensing, or should software manufacturers be liable for the critical defects that show up in their software?