ageoffri asks: "My 5 year old Pioneer DVD player is starting to act up so I need to replace it soon. A friend of mine mentioned he got a Go Video DVD player. This got me wondering how many more networked DVD players there were and some searches found a few, but almost no reviews on any of them. I'm wondering if any Slashdot readers have used a networked DVD player and if so how well it worked? Is the picture quality the same for playing a DVD in the player or from a PC? I'm only looking for one that either comes with or can accept a wireless connection."

shadfc asks: "I'm starting a new job as the system administrator for a small company in Tampa. They currently have 10 Red Hat servers (they are open to distribution change) that have not been actively maintained for a few months. I'm a Junior in College with a decent amount of Linux experience, but this will be my first job in this kind of position and responsibility. I'm asking for resources that can help fill in the holes in my knowledge and help make me a better administrator. Quality books on the subject would be preferred, but any advice is welcome. Thanks!"

notthere asks: "In Florida, Cox High Speed Internet (the home service) has been having problems with out-of-network emails for almost a week, since that is the date on the latest piece of email in my Inbox. I contacted Cox tech support this morning. The first responder read a statement to the effect that 'there were some problems, and they do not know when the problems will be fixed.' When I complained and demanded some clear explanation of what the problem was and when the service would resume, she said 'Cox HSI is an entertainment service, so we do not guarantee service. If you want to talk to our people in the business division, I'll be glad to give you their phone number.' I then asked to talk to a manager, who was certainly nicer (he apologized), but offered no answer or projection as to what the problem is and when it will be fixed. Interestingly, the Cox support web page reports no outages." If you use Cox's Internet service, have you recently had trouble connecting to your mail servers?

reallocate asks: "When you quit an ISP, do you expect that your personal info and your email accounts will be purged? So did I, but I was wrong. Do you know what your ISP does with your data if you quit them?" At first glance, this would seem to be a reasonable expectation, but these days, businesses are holding your data longer than you'd expect. If someone doesn't know for sure if an old business is holding their personal data, is there any way they can find out?

drewhearle writes "I'm sure lots of Slashdot readers act as technical support to friends and family. I do a lot of this myself and have collected all sorts of miscellaneous computer hardware over the years, such as cases, power supplies, older memory, hard drives, cables and the like. If you're like me, you have to dig through everything and look in various closets, drawers and boxes whenever you need something. What do you use for keeping track of your inventory? Is there a full-featured open-source or freeware package out there that actually works?" Read more for what he's looking for -- sounds like a useful niche.

ear1grey writes "With summer fast approaching in the northern hemisphere, do any readers have experience of taking their 'working from home' one stage further and 'working from the garden'? Any tips for making the screen more visible in the bright sunshine? Any problems with direct sunlight and overheating components? Are there other issues that we should be aware of before we venture, blinking, into the great outdoors?"

GhostCypher asks: "I've been a Mac user for nigh on 12 years, and recently made the reverse-switch (yes, Mac to PC) due to an unfortunate accident to my PowerBook. Now that I have this spiffy new HP laptop, I want to run Linux or Unix of some flavor on it, but I don't know the best one to run. I've been considering FreeBSD and OpenBSD, as well as SuSE Linux, Fedora, and Mandrake. Could the wisened Linux gurus here offer some insight as to the best package for a former Mac user to introduce him to the greater world of Linux without major headaches in setting it all up?"

H0NGK0NGPH00EY asks: "I hate cars. -- Why in the heck am I lugging a giant steel box with me everywhere I go, and paying through the nose to make it go? Well, the main reason is because there aren't any affordable, viable alternatives. Are there?"

dacarr asks: "An associate on a mailing list I am on recalled an article (which he, in turn, does not recall), in which the author managed to reduce his spam some 80% by, of all things, using the provided 'unsubscribe' mechanism in the messages. This is totally counterintuitive to what most of us have learned (doing so was a spectacularly good way to actually *confirm* your address) - but perhaps this isn't the case anymore, based on this. Has anyone else had any luck as far as this goes? By following the aforementioned unsub links, said associate found a number of broken links and dead addresses (and one link that tried to create an attachment and email it out (which he stopped)), but after three days and 400 unsub links, he trimmed his spam levels 'from an average of 250 a day to just 40 today' - that's just around 17% of what he was getting. Maybe spammers are getting their act together and listening for a change." Do any of you have any anecdotal evidence to provide to confirm or contradict this? Have you been able to lower your spam volume by "unsubscribing"?

Chibi Merrow asks: "Matt Hartley in his latest GnomeReport speaks of supposed browser hijacker programs that are now targeting Mozilla FireFox instead of IE. While this is in a way cool (since that means the browser's now considered mainstream), it's also hard to believe. It doesn't help that his article is very light on details. Now there have been some discussion about spyware masquerading as valid extensions; but they require user intervention to install. Most people think of a browser hijack as something that automatically installs itself. Has anyone ever encountered an actual self installing browser hijacker/spyware program that has targeted Mozilla Firefox, or is this a bunch of FUD?"