3Suns asks: "There are many proprietary symbolic mathematics suites available, including Mathcad, Mathematica, and Maple. Strangely, I can't find a single free software project with similar functionality. These programs are as ubiquitous in universities and engineering companies as they are expensive. Given the deep roots of open-source in higher education, what can explain the lack of free/open-source mathematics software?" We last addressed this question three years ago, but a lot can change in that time. Has it?

FunkMonkey asks: "I administer a custom web app for my company (unfortunately, it's a Windows-only company -- servers and all), and I've been asked to find a web log analysis tool that our users can use to look at standard stats (number of visits/hits, etc.), as well as the ability to filter by authenticated users (including putting those users into groups). Additionally, the tool must be free or under $100.00, and be able to generate Excel (or Excel-compatible) reports. My app generates ECLF reports, so just about any web log analyzer should be able to read the logs themselves. I see this as a good opportunity to weasel some Open-Source stuff into the company. Any help you can offer -- suggesting apps, tips, forums to which I could post this question, etc. -- would be most welcome. Thanks in advance!"

WTFmonkey asks: "Having looked at several woodworking websites and magazines, I've got some good ideas for the woodworking part of my planned shop. Sadly, I can't find any shop ideas specific to electronics and computer repair. What is considered essential for a good workbench? Dinner-table height or counter-top height (I'm 6'2"), and what is an adequate depth? Lighting strategies, handy equipment, organization issues? To put it succinctly, what are the most comfortable and effective benches you've worked at, and why?"

koreth asks: "You have the remote-controlled lighting. Your kitchen has speakers in the ceiling and a control panel to play your MP3s, your bedroom is wired for gigabit Ethernet, and you already record HDTV on your computer and watch it on a front-projection screen. You even have a robot to do your vacuuming. So now what? Is has all the nifty stuff been done already, or are there still some nifty homebrew projects out there? What's next on your list of high-tech home improvements? What have you had to cobble together yourself, because nobody sells it in a package yet? What gizmos and conveniences do you expect your home will have in a year or two?"

phorm asks: "While there are newer many distributions of linux that come bootable from CD, I've found that some are a bit difficult to customize and wonder how hard it would be to create my own. Currently we are looking at replacing some of our Windows desktops at work with Linux test-machines - and it would be nice to make the installation process as simple as possible. How hard would it be to create a bootable CD that would automagically install Linux onto the first detected hard-drive? How would you go about 'imaging' an existing machine to use as the base? I suppose that in many cases a tar-gzip of the entire OS would work, provided you could partition the drive correctly, recreate some important handles as in /proc, and run lilo/grub to install a boot loader. Does anyone here have experience with this? I know morphix/knoppix make nice bootable distros but what I really want is a basic Linux bootCD which installs a preconfigured version of the OS of my choice."

vrioux asks: "While browsing through available Internet service offerings in my area, I became puzzled by the large amount of different speed records that seem to have been achieved in the past months. Some say that 5.44Gbits was the fastest ever achieved, while others seem to think 923Mbits is still in the race. Is there anybody who really knows who holds the Internet transfer world speed record?"

waffle zero asks: "I've been looking for a simple domain to host personal photos and journals. I gave up on getting a .COM or .NET TLD and started looking into one like firstnamelastname.ny.us. NeuStar manages the .US TLD and sub-domains like los-angeles.ca.us are run by third parties (mostly regional ISPs and universities). My local municipality is a small city so there is no 'delegated zone'. The only ones I have seen frequently are of the form k12.ny.us used by primary schools. I would like to hear users experiences working with locality based domains and what it would take to run one for my area."

OutRigged asks: "With Serial ATA hard drives starting to go mainstream, and being almost equal in price to their parallel equivalents, one would think we'd have Serial ATA CD-ROM drives by now. Yet wherever I look, all I see are PATA based CD-ROM drives. It's obvious that an optical drive will benefit little, if at all from using SATA, but why not switch for the sake of the cable size? CD-ROM drives are usually at the top of the case, and with the 1m limit in length, along with the small size of the cables, I see no reason not to use a Serial ATA interface in a CD-ROM drive."

CraigEagle asks: "Mistakes are made every day. The more technical knowledge you have the bigger your mistakes can be. What is the biggest technology related mistake you have ever made?"

morris57 asks: "In the past few months, I have had at least 3 brand new compact disks or DVDs not work right out of the box. I don't mean that any sort of copy protection on the disk prevented me from using them; they were simply defective disks. I was able to exchange my DVD of 'The Matrix Reloaded' at Best Buy for a working copy, but some disks I got for Christmas I just recently opened and they are either unplayable or garbled. It is not a hardware issue, either. I've tested the disks in several types of players: new, old, component, computers, etc... It seems to me to make a very good case for downloadable media files, although I know these tracks are not available on iTunes or audible.com. So, I guess I'm wondering if the Slashdot community has noticed a decline in quality control of CDs/DVDs. What can be done (individually or communally) to not get burned by defective disks?" The solution for this particular type of problem boils down to simple consumerism. If you get a defective product, return it! If manufactures notice a high rate of return (and they should), they'll hopefully address the quality of what they ship. Has anyone else noticed an increase of non-working DVDs or CDs?

rbanffy asks: "Does anybody know what this card is? I am resurrecting an old Macintosh LC II and would like to attach it to a network. The card was inside it, but the hard disk had no drivers. It is an LC-PDS Ethernet card with RJ-45 and BNC connectors. The important parts seem to be a SMC 91c92 chip and an EPROM (haven't seen one in years) labeled 'LC ROM 44F0'. Could one of you can identify this critter and point me to the correct drivers?"