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?"

ZeLonewolf asks: "I'm a consultant to a customer who owns two franchises of a fitness gym. The computers they use to keep track of members and inventory run DOS programs written in the early 90's by a company that has long since gone out of business. My customer needs an upgrade badly. Replacement software to keep track of members and handle check-in and membership expirations, as well as inventory and point-of-sale data, costs $5,000 and up, so a free software solution is desirable. Does GnuCash do the job? Have Slashdot readers successfully set a small business up with Free/Open Software? What software have you had success with?"

harlows_monkeys asks: "I just received a spam, at both home and work, both sent through trojaned Windows machines, offering to sell me a credit card database stolen from camcontacts.net. Included was a link to a sample of the database (no, I'm not providing a link!). I downloaded the sample, and it appears legit. There are 13000 numbers. I picked one of the Visa numbers, went to Visa's web site, and entered it in a form to sign up for fraud protection, and it accepted it, and identified the issuing bank. It was accepted. All indications are that this stuff is real. So, the question arises--what is the correct way to deal with this?

An anonymous reader asks: "I'm in college working on an electrical engineering degree, and I've had a few labs so far involving microcontroller setups. I'd now like to start doing some microcontroller projects of my own devising, so I'll need a programmer, the development software, and the MCUs themselves. The problem is that I don't have a wide experience with the different companies selling this sort of equipment. I know about the BASIC Stamps and the PIC offerings, but what other architectures are there? Both of the MCUs I've named have development tools, but they're for Windows. Are there any companies out there that supply their tools for BSD/Linux? What open source projects are there working on this (I've found gputiles). As always, free (as in beer) is good for us college students. :-)"

greywar asks: "Currently I deal with a OEM [name withheld since this is not a trashing, but rather a request for advice] that has literally wasted over $1000 of my company's time just to arrange a repair on a $5 fan on a computer in Malaysia. I mistakenly used this OEM based on a PAST history of good support. What OEM is providing the best international computer warranty repair service these days?"

Rimbo asks: "I work for a small company developing wireless mesh networks to (among other things) give broadband access to large areas where a single access point can't cover the whole place. Since we're small, we made the mesh networking application for Windows, intending to support other platforms later. To our surprise, our first beta site complained: 'Most of our residents use Apples.' Has anyone else experienced anything similar? Is Windows losing its dominance to the point where small shops must consider multiple OS support to get business, either through Java, 'web services,' or cross-platform toolkits like Qt?" With the number of IE vulnerabilities, macro viruses, exploits and other such annoyances over the years, is this really that surprising?

Paul Crowley asks: "Given an HTTP URL for an MP3 file, what's the best way to read its ID3 tags on a GNU/Linux system? It shouldn't be necessary to fetch the whole file: HTTP byteranges should make it possible to fetch only the tiny fraction that's needed, for a big saving in network bandwidth. However, existing ID3v2 libraries are designed to read local files. Extending these libraries for this purpose, or implementing a new one, would be a big job. What's the clean solution - is FUSE the best way, or is there a simpler way that doesn't require root privs? Can I do it using the existing id3lib binary?"

zoglmannk asks: "I've become interested in grid computing. A lot has happened since the last time that I looked at it several years ago during the SETI@home heyday. Now several public supported grid applications are coming to fruit: climate modeling, cancer research, protein folding, smallpox therapies, fighting bioterrorism, mersenne prime search, evolution, SETI, and others. All of these have public interest to make a better world. Is mass adoption of public interest grid computing just around the corner? Is there really a need for a majority of those spare CPU cycles? Or is there more computing power than can reasonably be used for the types of problems that can be distributed to home and educational PCs? What is needed to bring grid computing to the masses? More education, advertisement, prizes, reimbursement?"

Anonymous Coward asks: "I am an autistic high-schooler, who is currently in special education. I am very bright, but I lack the ability to do even very basic math. I am interested in Technology and Computers very much, but after looking at the requirements for a computer science major, there is no way I can do all that. What options, other than college, are available for a good education?"

bigattichouse asks: "I've been working on a business plan lately, sort of a 'If I ever get out of computing' fantasy. Its simple, a bakery. But since I *know* I'm not going to do anything with it, I thought it would be interesting to create a GPL equivalent.. a plan, logos, recipes, methods that anyone could use to start their own bakery/delivery service under a GPL/Copyleft sort of arrangement. I image there are a LOT of potential entreprenuers who might benefit from a 'Free/Open' franchise looking at the market. Has anyone done something like this?"

Chase asks: "I run a couple of websites(including for my work). I'd like to have a backup web server that people would hit when my server goes down. My primary host is on my companies T1 line and even though I've had my server die once the most common reason for my sites to be offline is that our T1 goes down. I've looked at the High-Availability Linux Project but it seems that almost everything there is for failover using ip takeover which isn't an option if my network link dies and my backup server is on a different network. ZoneEdit seems to offer what I'm looking for but I'm wanting a do it myself solution. The only software I've found is Eddie and it seems to have stopped development around 2000. I know DNS based failover doesn't give 100% uptime but with a low cache time and decent monitoring it seems like it's the best solution for having my backup server at a differnt location and on a differnt network. Anyone know of a good solution? (Using Linux and/or Solaris hosts)"

Simon Brooke asks: "I have today received from Microsoft a flyer about an event entitled 'Microsoft and Open Source 20/20 Seminar: An open and honest technology discussion'. Microsoft are touting one of their speakers as an 'independent analyst'. All the other speakers are either Microsoft employees or represent businesses related to Microsoft. The 'independent' speaker is Philip Dawson of Meta Group, and his job title is given as 'Senior Program Director, International Infrastructure Strategies'. He's described as 'a leading authority on Linux, high end UNIX, Windows server platforms and storage'. Among the 'seminar benefits' is listed 'question the platform and Linux technical experts' so clearly their pitch will be to present this guy is a 'Linux technical expert'. Anyone prepared to help me out here? Have Microsoft held similar events in your part of the world, and if so how did you respond? Do you have any scoop on Mr Dawson?" Sounds like more par for the course from Microsoft. Nevertheless, it doesn't hurt to go into these things armed with more information...that is if you are in to events like these.

pnutjam asks: "I have googled and perused several publications seeking an answer but I find no mention of this problem anywhere. I am running applications not designed for a multi-user environment on Windows XP. To allow standard users to run these applications I've modified permissions on files, folders, and registry keys. Whenever a computer with the modifications is rebooted, the permissions revert to their previous settings. It doesn't happen when the users log off, only when the computers are rebooted." When adjusting Windows XP to support such applications, how do you make permission changes so that they survive through a reboot?