ibm1130 asks: "I was unpacking, since I had recently moved from Virginia back to Silicon Valley, and I came across an old piece of technological ephemera. To whit a 'UNIX Pocket Guide' issued by Link Advanced Products Division, an entity once housed in what is now the Fry's in Sunnyvale, CA and for whose parent I once toiled in upstate NY. I'm not sure where I really got the thing. The booklet is dated Aug 1983 and on the front cover is a small cartoon of a penguin in front of a computer console. I'll probably take the thing to this year's SVLUG UNIX picnic. Now it's highly unlikely that Linus ever saw a copy of the booklet, although Finnair did have some Link-built flight simulators at one point, in the correct 90's time-frame, and some of them may have been hosted on UNIX boxes (possibly Motorola board sets in Schroff boxes with 68010 or 68015 chips for CPUs, IIRC ). It is however kind of interesting that Linus wasn't the first person to associate our mascot with the Unix continuum. A later version of the same booklet is a much slicker product but is minus the cartoon and the Link APO attribution. Does anybody have/know of an older instance of the Penguin-Unixverse connection?"

Pecisk asks: "Maybe lot of you have already tired of discussing this, but I would like to know opinions (professional one would be very good) how much this case can have *legal* impact to Linux users/businesses in other regions like EU, Russia, Eastern Asia. I know that in many cases there's no effect of US court decisions to other countries, but how (for example) the EU patent law will take this, and in generally how much and do we have to be really worried about this case? This question is very important to me, and I guess, for other guys from non-US countries too. I want to know this also because when I have to speak about the using of Linux and free software in IT solutions and if someone argues about this case and it's impact to us, I would like to know what to answer (I'm from Latvia, Eastern Europe, we are going to vote for EU membership in September)."

An anonymous reader asks: "With the relatively easy instructions available from various sources (LSF being one), it's fairly easy now for just about any relatively advanced Linux user to create their own distro. I'm well into creating a distribution (for my friends and myself, nothing major), but I can't seem to find any real projects out there to actually go through an installation process. Anaconda is there, but the lack of documentation is serious. Are there any others out there? If not, what would be required to create one? An obvious start would be a stripped down, bootable Linux CD, and an application to handle partitioning, formatting, setting up the filesystem, and installing packages (of whatever sort), but what all has been done before?"

Nos. asks: "I work for a small webhosting company (I'm on leave from my Gov't job) and we've started having some power problems. Actually someone managed to blow out the substation powering the area so we're piggy backing off another one, and they're slowly powering more and more things off. Elevators, lights, etc. are gone. Since the building we work in has a few IT company's working it in, they're trying as hard as they can to keep the A/C running, but its not looking good. As such, the possibility exists that our server room could get very warm, very quickly. Since we've already powered off everything that's not essential, we're starting to look at ways to keep the room cool without using a lot of power. Generators an small A/C units are a last resort as it would mean holes in the walls. The only thing we've been able to come up with is dry ice and some small fans to circulate the air. Of course this is happening as we're heading in to a week of over 30C days. Does Slashdot have any ideas?"

sporty asks: "I have one machine, a unix box, that serves many time zones at once. Because of this, everything is stored in GMT. Even the system clock is set relative to GMT. The problem is determining when midnite is. I need to run certain jobs, via cron or similar, so that something runs at midnite in that timezone. Anyone have this situation before?"

wolfbane01 asks: "I spend some time giving tech suggestions to a medium sized business firm (~100 employees) with a large amount of demand placed on their file server. Their current server is a dual Pentium 500 with RAID array and they are looking to upgrade it. The dilemma is the current server OS is running SCO OpenServer 5.0.5, and their new raid array requires 5.0.7. Their programmers have demonstrated that a Linux box can process records much faster, but are still worried about the investment and potential problems that switching OSes would entail. I have already mentioned the cheaper price and the community availability when problems come up, but what other reasons have Slashdot readers come up with for a switch? What arguments am I forgetting that make Linux more attractive then SCO? Should I advise against switching to Linux and advocate them sticking to SCO? Is SCO going to even be in business long enough to make the upgrades product cycle?"

A not-so Anonymous Coward asks: "CNET's download.com has become a 'pay to list' service, so it doesn't make sense to list freeware there, anymore. What are the best alternatives? Also, you cannot post linux software there anymore for any price: 'Note: We are no longer accepting any new submissions for Linux, and we will be discontinuing all coverage of Linux on our download sites shortly.' What is the hard working but generous coder supposed to do?"

scdeimos asks: "I started out working life as an electrical engineer, but subsequently moved into software development due to the lack of 'interesting' design jobs in the EE industry...one manufactory/power plant control system is much like another. Nowadays I find myself heading back to electronics as the field becomes more and more interesting with PIC?s and STAMP?s that are more powerful than many desktop systems were just a few years ago. Companies like Future Technology Devices International make useful single-chip USB solutions that allow your hack to appear as a serial port (FT232BM) or a parallel port (FT245BM) connected to your favourite CPU for device intelligence. This lets you build useful test equipment like computer-controlled voltmeters, logic analyzers and CRO?s for not much outlay.Which brings me to my question, which centers around NIC solutions. What are people using out there today for providing single-chip NIC connectivity? What benefits do you feel your chip preference has over the competition? Do any have a sockets (TCP/UDP) implementation built-in, or do you still have to write your own protocol libraries in the support CPU?"

darrelld2 asks: "I'm having problems finding a low cost access point that is reliable. I started searching the web; however, I can't find anyone who has done independent research on access points to find which one is the most dependable. I have had several different brands; Cisco, 3Com, and Netgear. The only one that has lasted more than 6 months was the Cisco. What are other Slashdot users seeing?" Just as an added datapoint, I've been using my Cabletron Wireless AP for well over 2 years, and aside with a (repairable) problem with the power supply, it is still going strong. What have your experiences been with wireless APs?

smammon asks: "I manage the IT department for a pretty average hospital. Our equipment is used everywhere, including the patient rooms, operating suites, and hallways. We expect it to move into more areas (hands) in the future with advent of more and more wireless/handheld technology. Our problem is that even with constant employee education and regular maintenance/cleaning efforts on our part - it is still very common for equipment to become contaminated with all manner of nasty goo. We have been looking for a method of disinfection that kills the bugs without killing the equipment. So far the only reasonably good looking alternative is vaporized hydrogen peroxide. Problem is that it's not known to positively kill the kind of tough bug that lives on surfaces. Anyone know of, developing, or selling a method for disinfection of sensitive equipment? Any innovative solutions from the geek collective?"

PateraSilk asks: "I've been resisting the DVD pull for a while but VHS is becoming more and more obselete. So, I'm thinking about joining the hordes, but I have two problems with the DVD format: compression artifacts and low-level pixel dithering, which annoy me no end. Maybe I've just seen crappy DVDs, but this leads me to my question: should I go ahead and purchase a DVD player regardless of my qualms or wait for a violet/blue laser standard to emerge? My hope is that a larger storage capacity would lead to a less lossy compression format, but, then again, I could be waiting in vain. Plus, I don't want to embrace a technology only to have it be replaced within a couple of years." Remember, Sony's violet-laser player has already hit the market, so hopefully it won't be long before other manufacturers follow suit. How long will it be before competition in this market drives down prices to reasonable levels?