Balthisar asks: "Like so many others, my wife and I have recently made the move to pure mobile telephone use, and have disconnected the landline permanently. Today, I turned on the TiVo and received a stern warning that only three days of the program guide remained! I screwed up. Anyone have a good emergency way of refreshing the program guide while I wait for my TiVo networking card to come in? An additional concern is DirecTV: I never use Pay Per View, but it's not connected, either. Any horror stories about not having your DirecTV connected to a phone line? If you don't have any advice, at least take this as a cautionary tale to make a good checklist before taking the leap of eliminating your terrestrial line!" This topic was handled in a previous article over 2 years ago. What suggestions do you have for others, that find themselves in this position?

May Kasahara asks: "Seeing as how my Unreal Tournament buddies are considering upgrading to UT2004 soon, I thought I'd check out the system requirements ahead of time. I thought that I'd have no problems, seeing as how UT2004 is mostly just UT2003 with new content, but upon looking up the specs online, I found quite a different story. My PC runs on a 733mHz Pentium III, just meeting the minimum system req.'s for UT2003 (which runs very smoothly on my machine, BTW), but UT2004 requires at least a 1gHz processor for the PC version. Curious, I checked out the UT2003 system specs listed on the official site, and found much the same info-- specs that were quite different from those listed on the retail box in my storage closet. Naturally, I got to thinking about other games and apps, and what I want to know is: what gives? How accurate/trustworthy are system specs listed on a box? Are they artificially inflated to sell more hardware from companies that these publishers are affiliated with (nVidia in UT's case), or is there a more logical explanation?"

Dan asks: "For several years now I have been working on the ultimate rescue CD, being able to load many disk images, Windows XP PE, all from CDROM while having a nice graphical menu as the main interface during bootup (I would post a nice screenshot, but I like my bandwidth) and I mainly used the ISOLINUX bootloader. I recently received a SanDisk Mini Cruzer 256 USB 2.0 keychain drive, and I am really eager to put some sort of multi booting system on my USB key drive to achieve the same goal. I haven't seen anyone having any success with ISOLINUX or something similar, but the drive is bootable for sure. I have exhausted all options, I searched, I posted on many forums, I never get any useful replies. Since Slashdot readers mostly share the same interests, I am hoping you guys can help me out!" How would yo u configure a USB Key drive to boot multiple operating systems?

Frank Winstead asks: "I stumbled upon some "Free to air" (FTA) satellite television references on the web, mostly selling equipment. There seems to be a lot of non-English programming available subscription-Free on the Ku band. The English programming seems to be a mix of religious shows, network feeds, and unexplained content from American over-the-air TV stations. Is it worth a one time ~$200 investment for equipment? Is the authoritative info on FTA?"

ahuber asks: "As part of a class for LIS 391 @ the University of Illinois, I'm doing a history of the gopher protocol. My intent in this is to track the rise and fall of old technologies in hope that it tells us something about technologies we use today. So, my question to you is: When was the last time you used a gopher server? What did you use it for? And finally, do you miss the gopher now that its virtually gone? While some of you may think this is a silly topic, old and useful technologies are going the way of Gopher every day. One example from my campus is the retiring of the newsgroup server and telnet. Do you have any similar experiences that made you think twice about giving up an older technology?"

An anonymous reader asks: "I started using Linux years ago, with a Red Hat distribution. When Red Hat's custom configurations started getting in my way, I jumped ship to Slackware. I have never looked back except that I cannot stand the BSD style init scripts. I like having a full compliment of run-levels and control on the fly over which scripts will be running, and which ones will not. That is hard to achieve, when you put multiple configurations in the same file. I also liked having the scripts around to start, stop, and restart services. While I was rewriting my own startup scripts [based on Debian's scripts], I discovered that there is a third style, based on dependencies. AFAIK this is the style adopted by Gentoo. I don't want to start a distro war; but, I am curious about what kind of init scripts Slashdot readers prefer, and what they think are the benefits of each."

deacon brown asks: "My employer has just acquired the license to operate a low power FM station in the area (on a tight budget, of course). Because of our location, I'm the only local tech guy, so they might need my help setting this thing up. I can't do it at the job, but I'd LOVE to make Open Source work for this radio station, so I can keep the costs as low as possible. Does anyone have experience setting up, or operating, Radio stations? How should I go about getting information together, to have a go at this? I know they're some areas where I'll need to buy some hardware to do a job (mixers, etc), but are there software solutions like (e.g. the Linux phone switch) for other parts?" While there have been a few helpful articles on this subject, I think they more dealt with the hardware side, rather than the software side of the equation. What operations and infrastructure can you see Open Source handling in a small radio station?

sonictooth asks: "I have dreams of writing a toy operating system, as I know some people have already done in college. Unfortunately, I don't have that opportunity. I was wondering what books (as there are so many) and methods people [have used], either in college or on their own. Amazon is littered with books from varying authors, Tanenbaum in particular, and there are both positive and negative reviews of his books. Does anyone recommend a simple book to walk you through the early stages, and then explain the more complex theories later on."

An anonymous reader asks: "I am fed up with the telcos. My last phone bill for one line was over $100 _without_ the $45 for ADSL, so i'm looking to cut as many costs as I can. I've compared my current Voice + Internet solution to one consisting of Voice-over-IP and Cable Internet and it looks like I would save over $50 a month by throwing away my land-line phone and switching to Cable/VoIP. I'm new to the whole changing-from-POTS-to-VoIP process though, so what are some of the 'gotchas' involved with switching? Can I keep my existing number? Will calls suck my bandwidth dry? And most importantly, do any of these VoIP providers work with or support Linux?"

rudescotsman asks: "Hi, I'm an independent game developer who just finished his first game on the Pocket PC and SmartPhone platforms. I targeted PPC/SP originally because that's what I owned and the dev tools are easily accessible, but now I'm thinking I'd like to write games for other platforms too. What platforms do Slashdot readers think are appropriate for a one-man game coding-squad to tackle?"

NivekEnterprises asks: "At my school where I am an Electrical Engineering major A Wi-Fi network has been set up, and is running in several buildings. Since the coverage extends outside several of my friends and I are trying to map the signal strength. Basically we are going to take a map of campus and walk around with a Wi-Fi enabled laptop, marking as best we can. Is there an easier way to do this? Has anyone else done something similar and is willing to share some their insights?"

nhn asks: "Being a caffeine-addict, I feel quite miserable not having my favourite coffee, every morning. I can't walk to Starbucks/Gloria Jeans, while I'm at work, since there is an instant coffee machine available (and I dislike filtered coffee). For the record: I hate Nescafe, it simply sucks." What must you drink, after your dreams have evaporated into the waking world? What types of coffee would you recommend to a seasoned coffee afficionado...or even your garden variety caffeine addict?