drteknikal asks: "I'm the admin for a small law firm. We use our ISP as our secondary mx. We are receiving spam from our secondary mx even when our primary has been continually available. We suspect that spammers are routing to our secondary MX to bypass the DNS-based spam filtering on our primary. After examining some of the traffic, our ISP agrees. Neither of us sees an immediate solution, given the purpose and function of secondary MX. They already restrict relaying to hosts on their network. Has anyone else seen this? Does anyone have suggestions on how an ISP could secure their mail exchangers without interfering with the functionality required to function as secondary MX for an external domain?"

aws910 asks: "I was in Las Vegas recently, and I noticed that most machines now give barcoded tickets as payment instead of coins. These tickets can then be used in other machines as a wager instead of paper money. A basic slot strategy is to move from one machine to another, and play machines in certain areas of the casino floor to improve your odds. With the ticket system, It seems all too easy for someone to build a system to track a player from one machine to another, giving the house the ability to kill the player's (already slim) edge. If a machine knows how much you've already won as soon as you sit down, do you think it will give you good odds? I couldn't find any articles on it. What does Slashdot think about this?"

Emperor Tiberius asks: "It seems more and more dedicated server companies are turning tail to the idea of hosting IRC machines. Hosts like Rackshack are adding 'no-IRC' rules to their AUPs at the risk of having one's server unplugged. Why is IRC (the once applauded chat medium) being thrown to the dogs? Some might say the horrendous botnets written for the protocol are a part of the problem. However, if we were to shut down the IRC protocol. Isn't it theoretically possible the botnet authors would just migrate to a different protocols like Oscar/AIM, ICQ, ICB, Jabber, just to name a few? If so, how would we manage the problem? Would we shutdown all ICB servers, and cut-off the ICQ network? Are we trying to kill off the problem in the wrong way, or is there a compromise to keep IRC alive, and keep botnets away?"

chthonicdaemon asks: "I am about to embark on a mission: to create a Free (as in freedom) chemical process simulator. My field is control engineering, and as such, dynamic simulation is what it is all about. There is an open source steady-state simulator called sim42, but I have not found one that can do dynamics. There is also a lot of work available in the form of implementation standards, so I am confident that it can be done. Is there anything like this out there that I have not found, and what open technology could I leverage to get this done faster (perhaps something like SML)."

Midnight Warrior asks: "I am one system administrator for what is an organization of dozens of LANs. Together, we all must keep our machines patched. Now we can all watch CVE, frequent securityfocus.com, or let LWN [Updated vulnerabilities section] bring things together. LWN does a fabulous job, but I'm looking for something bigger and more personalized that doesn't require the system be on the internet. Freshmeat, SourceForge, and Google are all NULL on this question: is there a database, and scraping agents in existence that will let one person oversee dozens of OS installations, a mish-mash of software packages, and an even worse level of up-to-date patching exist so that when a new vulnerability against, say, OpenSSH comes out, I can look up which systems need to be tested and patched? My work should be limited to maintaining OS (not just Linux distros), software versions, and current patch lists. This is a classic database problem, but has someone already solved it?"

worm eater asks: "I've been hosting my email with my web site host for some time, although a while back I used commercial services such as Yahoo! and Hotmail. I liked Yahoo!, but was disappointed to hear that they stopped offering free POP3 access. So I'm looking for a good, free webmail host for a friend of mine that supports POP3 -- because sometimes you don't want to have to deal with a web interface, no matter how well designed. And it's nice to be able to store messages indefinitely. What do you recommend?" This was last asked two years ago, but webmail is more prevalent now than it was then, so maybe better options are available. Readers interested in security with their webmail might find this discussion interesting, as well.

pstreck asks: "I've been going to a traditional university part-time for a couple of years now and am finding the pace slow, and classes to be at inconvenient times. So I have been considering transferring to one of the on-line universities like ACCIS or the University of Phoenix. How do you managers look upon a degree from one of these universities?"

mixwhit asks: "In our ever increasing effort against spam, we are now considering replacing all mailto: links on our website with something unharvestable (i.e. 'user (at) address', javascript mailto links, character entity evasion, etc.). Obviously this won't stop the spam, but it seems prudent to stop the harvesting so that the spam may slow down someday (year 2024 maybe?). What are others doing with this issue? We would prefer to preserve mailto link clickability, but also only want to make this adjustment once." One suggestion I would make is to put your email address in an image. People can read it, but harvesters won't be able to harvest it (unless they download the image for OCR), but any barrier you can place in front of the spammer, without blocking people honestly interested in communicating with you, is probably a good thing.

sangfroid asks: "As my personal technology products have increased, I've started to look more and more like a Batman wannabe. I now carry an iPod, a PDA, a Cell Phone, a Leatherman and a GameBoy (for the subway, really -grin-). Cargo Pants are out because of work and I don't particularly want to carry a back-purse everywhere I go. Is there a solution that doesn't require me to give up all my technology? A PDA/Phone might help but the holy grail would be a HD-based PDA/Phone/Music Player. How do you deal with all these devices without looking like a gargoyle? Is the answer better technology or no technology?"

pluckyduck asks: "What's the goofiest USB device out there? The links below are by no means an endorsement of the company, just links to goofy USB devices to illustrate my point. The first one is not really a USB device, but a wall adapter in case you want to power your USB Coffee Mug Warmer from a wall outlet (hey, there's a concept!). I believe they also have an auto adapter should you feel the need to run your USB air purifier in the car. The latest PC I bought only has 6 USB ports, I'll need to buy a hub soon!" Yes, they even have USB Massage Balls, as well. Although goofy, some of this stuff could be useful in the right situation. What off the wall USB devices have you found? How might you use some of the devices, that have been listed?