JaytheMover asks: "I've just moved, and my wife won't allow me to set up my desk as I had before. I had a gaggle of cables under my desk which only NOW seems to bother her in the new house. How do you guys keep this mess under control? I Googled 'Cable Organizer' and found this thing called the cable organizer at cable-safe.com which hangs the cords like in a closet or this cable snake thing which binds them all together. What do Slashdot readers use to keep their cable clean and their wives happy?"

M3wThr33 asks: "I currently own a Casio WQV-3, which is a digital camera watch with IR, but lately it's taken a turn for the worse. With the news of Fossil recently scrapping their latest PDA watch, I'd like to know what other kinds of high-tech gizmos I can slap on my wrist? I've recently been eyeing the Matsucom OnHandPC, but am beginning to think that it's outdated. I already have a Palm Zire71, so the watch would be more for the 'ooh' and 'ahh' factor, as opposed to actual usefulness."

manavendra asks: "I have been using a couple of streaming audio rippers for about a week now (StreamRipper and StationRipper, most notably), but most of them seem to be afflicted with the same problem - inconsistent track separation. I've read about the Shoutcast Metadata Protocol, but I haven't properly understood how the silence-detection mechanism of track separation works. There have been users who have observed that since most tracks are skewed by a few seconds (depending upon the radio station), they advise adding provision to delay or advance the timing. Has anyone implemented a better mechanism, since basing breaks on silence detection seems dodgy in first place? Can someone can shed some light on the inherent problems of reliable track separation?"

David Barber asks: "I've just started learning Java, and to my exceptional disappointment it is as case-sensitive as C. I'd like to ask Slashdot readers to make the case for case-sensitivity in a programming language, because I can't see it. Although I've used C on and off since 1976, I also have a history of Fortran, COBOL, PL/I, assembler, and other legacy languages that were never case sensitive (perhaps due to the single case nature of card punches). Today I use modern languages including Visual Basic which preserves case for pleasing appearance, but is not case-sensitive itself (it will correct the case for you in the IDE, which is quite nice). In all my years of programming I have never seen the rationale for making a programming language case sensitive. It simply makes typing it in harder, and mistakes easier, yet we persevere with maintaining it in modern languages like Java. Without making this into a religious war, can someone make the argument of why case-sensitivity in a language is 'a good thing'? And don't confuse this with handling case-sensitive data, which is fine."

flosofl asks: "I work for a large company in the Authentication and Cryptography Group. Recently, we have decided to centralize all management of our certificates. Right now we manage something on the order of 200 certs. We estimate that there may be something on the order of 100-150 certs in our enterprise that we are unaware of/managed locally. What we especially want to eliminate are the 'in house' cert servers that have cropped up here and there. What we need is a tool to crawl the network and discover these certificates. I thought maybe nmap, but could not find any options for this. I am aware of the Certificate Discovery Protocol, but can find nothing other than specification pages and I am not a programmer. We would like some kind of tool that would crawl the networks and discover servers with VeriSign, InstaSSL, and type of certs. We also would like to keep it inexpensive (sub $10,000). Any help would be appreciated."

rcha101 asks: "I'm not sure if many of you are aware but Robert L. Ziegler use to host (IMHO) the best online firewall configuration tool (formerly available here here, check out the link now for his sad synopsis) until recently when he decided to pull the plug on it. I have since been trying to contact him in an effort to get this tool back online and develop the IPFW2 side of it (correct some of the rules, add extra features to it etc) but have had no luck. Does anyone know how to contact him? Has anyone else been in a similar situation? What web tools do you use that could suddenly disappear overnight? Robert are you out there?"

FreakerSFX asks: "My son has shown an avid interest in video games like most kids his age. What's different now is that he insists that he wants to learn how to build his own game. He's 9 and fairly gifted from a mathematics and computer standpoint and certainly capable of learning basic programming. What tools/books are recommended for a neophyte computer game programmer?" I remember one of my first exposures to computer languages was Logo, which was a language that seems perfectly suited to young children. There is a Windows version available here that seems like it would be perfect for the development of simple games, especially for youngsters. What languages, and language resources, are you aware of that might be suitable for youngsters with an interest in creating games, and learning programming?

ehb asks: "With all the (r)evolutions going on in networking (IPv6), video (MPEG4/H.264) and audio (MPEG4 AAC), I was wondering what happened to that big image compression promise of some years ago: JPEG2000. According to the official JPEG2000 page, although the entire standard not is completed, the important parts are, which would allow JPEG2000 to function as a still-image replacement for the old JPEG! I have seen lists of software programs that implement (parts?) of the JPEG2000 specification, but missed the important ones (web browsers, etc). There even exists an Open source implementation of the codec, so what is holding everything back? The benefits over normal JPEGs are huge, so can someone shed some light on the hold-up?" Back in April of 2002, JPEG2000 was "coming soon", and it was touted as being the "the future of imaging", but after that the hype seems to have dried up. What happened to this promising specification? Did another format surpass it (PNG, perhaps)?

Milo_Mindbender asks: "I'm looking to buy a cell phone that is reasonably accessible to hacking. Not illegal stuff, I'd just want to be able to write and load programs on the phone myself. I particularly want access to the GPS in the phone. I'm not picky about what language or environment I have to use as long no hardware mods to the phone are required and I don't have to pay someone an arm and a leg for a developers kit. Can anyone recommend something (just normal sized phones please, not the big PDA hybrids) they've had good luck with?"

ThenAgain asks: "Many sites obscure e-mail addresses by adding noise (like 'STOPSPAM') or by translating the punctuation into words (Ex: 'me at domain dot com'). This makes users feel good but does it actually help? Ten lines of perl could defeat any of the present schemes with ease and the spammers have shown plenty of adaptability. So if we're not helping hold back the flood of spam, why are we decreasing the utility of the web by eliminating mailto tags and forcing users to hand-correct the addresses in their mail clients?"

paenguin asks: "Our Linux User Group sometimes needs to hold Exec meetings, electronically. We have used IRC in the past, but it leaves us with a problem: there is no easy or built-in way to prove who is who. Do Slashdot readers know of a way to provide non-repudiation over IRC, or of another open source method of holding group electronic meetings where we can verify that everyone is who they say they are?" Wouldn't a private IRC server, with a combination of suitable IRC services (ala NickServ and ChanServe) and fairly restrictive policies, be one solution to this problem? How would you set up such a system? For those willing to brave the setup hassles, might some form of secure IRC also be an option?