Hardware

Designing and Making Custom Wedding Bands? 121

Posted by Cliff from the more-on-wedding-rings dept.
dystrophy asks: "I'm planning on getting married shortly after I graduate in December. Because I'm a student who doesn't work much, I don't have tons of money to spend on an engagement ring/wedding band. After discussing this situation with friends and family, I discovered that poverty is the great equalizer. My parents designed their own wedding bands and had them cast for relatively little money because they inherited diamonds and gold from their family. Because of finances, they decided to forgo the engagement ring and spend what they had on wedding bands. I have some decent quality diamonds and gold from my family. I haven't talked to my "wife to be" about the engagement ring yet (touchy topic), but she might be willing to go with a simple engagement ring, or just put the money toward a wedding band. I have just started doing research on the topic of designing rings. I have talked to several jewelry designers in the Bay Area, but they don't want to deal with me. They want to sell me their diamonds and gold (I've heard various and interesting excuses from each). How should I go about this? Where should I go? When it comes down to the design, should I just work with my wife-to-be to create sketches to give a designer, or is something more needed? Any really cool ideas and designs for wedding bands?"
Television

Closed Circuit Computer Television? 29

Posted by Cliff from the interesting-methods-of-office-communication dept.
Modern Fix asks: "I work at a small business with about a dozen employee's slaving in half a dozen offices. We're all relativily computer and media savvy, but have all desired for one thing: a networked television channel we can all use for project work and multi video playback. Basically, we've got a television in each office, and an extra pentium 3 computer system. Is there a way (perferabbly wireless) to configure that computer to display media (divx, etc), general computer (powerpoint, etc) work and whatever we have as a source input onto all of our televisions?"
Books

Personal Finance Book Suggestions? 78

Posted by Cliff from the making-your-money-work-for-you dept.
luc13n asks: "I've seen others making requests for books or reading suggestions. I've been out of college and working professionally in the IT field for two years now. I have some money in the checking account and the savings account and I've started wondering... is there a better way to manage my money? Kinda the old adage 'make your money work fo you'. Does anyone have any good suggested readings to teach a 'young'n' how to 'make his money work for him'?"
Privacy

Fighting Marketing Drones Over 3rd Party Web Tracking? 27

Posted by Cliff from the keep-it-or-lose-it dept.
Web Sawy asks: "I work for a large-ish company (4000+). We have a number of disparate divisions and, believe it or not, varying knowledge on How Technology Works. It was brought to my attention that one part of the corporate website has been using 'a third party tool' to 'compare the performance of individual ads'. In other words, some external party is tracking user surfing habits. How does one go about educating co-workers on the evils of these third party services, which are currently 'helping' the Marketing department? What technologies are people using to do this type of reporting to help the Marketing department generate their numbers? In the world that I live, I can't even see those third-party ads (or hidden images!). I certainly can build my own user tracking system using existing technologies but before I fight that major uphill battle, I wonder if Slashdot readers would share their insights."
Encryption

Cell Phone Encryption? 42

Posted by Cliff from the keeping-prying-ears-out-of-your-conversations dept.
Black Diamond asks: "I know I'm not up to speed on cell phone encryption, but I was wondering, are there any cell phones that let you handle the encryption from your end of things? Something along the lines of a phone you hook up to your computer to input specific encryption keys for specific contacts, as well as a private key for yourself. Is such a thing plausible, or should you trust the standard encryption that comes on some cell phones nowadays?"
Hardware

3-button Optical Mice? 180

Posted by Cliff from the we-can-get-mice-with-big-ears-but-not-3-buttons? dept.
proclus asks: "Does anyone else think that scroll wheels are a clunky replacement for the middle button? Mice are supposed to have three buttons, right? It was such an improvement when the three button mice started appearing for PC hardware, but I'm wondering, where are the optical ones?"
Microsoft

Microsoft Windows Update and Network Bandwidth? 144

Posted by Cliff from the bandwidth-hogs dept.
Brett Glass asks: "As we reviewed the cache statistics for our small ISP today, we noted that the traffic generated by Microsoft's Windows Update feature constituted 45% -- no, that's not a misprint -- of our total throughput. Because so many computers on the Internet run Windows, this massive resource drain occurs whenever Microsoft announces major security holes (as it did this week). The traffic could be greatly reduced, and service to users much improved, if the updates were cacheable at the ISP. But Microsoft has set up the service in such a way that the data can't be cached. (It's digitally signed, so inserting Trojans into the cache is virtually impossible; in any event, no more of an issue than intercepting the data stream.) Are others out there seeing the same pattern? How might Microsoft be convinced to make its updates cacheable, so as not to waste unthinkable amounts of bandwidth?"
The Internet

Interesting and Educational Web Pages for Children? 450

Posted by Cliff from the exposing-young-minds-to-the-digital-world dept.
watashiwananashidesu asks: "I am a teenager with no siblings and a a good number of little cousins. Being something of a nerd, I'm incredibly popular with these cousins, especially the ones who are 8-11. Recently, when my first cousin (female, 8) was over, I began a collection of links that she might enjoy--sites that were appropriate and fun. Now that the Cold/Flu season is over, I can expect more visits from my first, second, and third cousins, and I'm left with a dismally small collection of links (eight, to be specific) for them to peruse. Also, the few I have are unsatisfactory; they're mainly corporate sites like Barbie.com and Lego.com with a few non-corporate games mixed in. None of the sites have any educational value, least of all about the things that I really want to expose them to--science, math, literature, and computers. In fact, I especially need sites that will teach them about computers, so that they'll be able to better keep in touch with me, when we're all older. What are some good sites I can bookmark for my cousins that are: educational, appropriate for children aged 5-11, (mainly three boys and two girls), fun, not a security threat, non-corporate (though this last one is optional) Also, how can I make my friends/protégé(e)s/cousins make the best of what few links I have or manage to find?"
The Almighty Buck

Web Advertising Revenues? 30

Posted by Cliff from the starting-a-(hopefully)-profitable-website dept.
WoTG asks: "Every now and then I dream about starting a website and making it popular. Maybe for profit, maybe for fun. Web hosting costs are pretty easy to find and estimate. But I've always been stumped when it comes to guesstimating the revenue. How much can a moderately popular site expect to earn from advertising revenue? What companies that resell advertising space are -reliable- in their payments? How much more expensive are the larger ads (bigger than banners) worth? What websites are good for finding out more about this stuff?"
Software

Building a Cube Farm that Sucks Less? 110

Posted by Cliff from the coders-in-sardine-cans dept.
cubiclist asks: "It has been decreed that our company is moving from private offices to cubicles. We all know that Peopleware has hard data to warn us away from this, but it cannot be helped at this point. Now that we know that we are going into cubes, what can we do to make it suck less? In research on the web, I cannot find any advice on office layouts for developers in cubes. I have found some threads on improving cube interiors from places like ThinkGeek and Ikea, but I am really interested on some best practices for the overall layout of the floor.
Handhelds

Enlanging the Screen of a PDA? 24

Posted by Cliff from the a-magnifying-glass-for-small-screens dept.
2Stupid2KnowIt asks: "Given the article on the Braille PDA I would like to find an application for the Palm which will allow me to magnify the entire screen. I found TealManify and it almost does what I need, but it disables the input to the screen. I would like the application to use only the scroll wheel on the Sony Clie for moving the magnified area. Pressing the scroll wheel switches between vertical and horizontal scrolling."
Books

Errata in Programming Books? 55

Posted by Cliff from the how-often-do-you-find-it dept.
WgT2 asks: "I recently have set my mind to learning to code PHP. Not being a programmer, yet, I went out and got myself a book on the subject from a very trusted, at least in my eyes, publisher (and they still still are). So far so good. However once I got down to trying the code out myself I have found too much errata for someone who has just scratched the surface in learning the ins and outs of programming. I was wondering just how common place Slashdot readers have found errata in the code examples of programming books they have purchased?"
Technology

Building a Town-Wide LAN? 304

Posted by Cliff from the just-think-of-the-lan-parties-you-could-have dept.
The Mainframe asks: "My town (Hanover, NH, home of Dartmouth College, the Dartmouth Medical School, and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hospital, non-college population approx. 9K people, double that with the college) is conducting a feasibility study on building a town network. They'd like to deliver fiber to every home within town limits. This fiber will carry (certainly) the internet and (probably) cable-like television programming access. They're estimating that it will cost $40 per month per household. I just filled out and returned my survey (one sent to every Hanover household) in which they asked a number of questions like: 'What would your primary use of this service be?' and 'Would you be willing to pay $40 a month for this service?'. What reasons, other than the obvious benefit of having fiber to one's house, can you think of for making this kind of commitment to the infrastructure?
Education

Looking for Linux Help When You've Lost Your Way? 85

Posted by Cliff from the assistance-needed dept.
ChesireKat asks: "I'm interested in knowing where people go for their Linux help/questions/needs. It seems that most IRC users will laugh at you, kick you, or just make you feel stupid because you're not quite as smart as they are (irc.nullnet.net is pretty good, they are usually willing to help). Forums are nicer about it, but most of the time, no one quite knows. Man pages always work, but it so time consuming, and sometimes after hours of searching, your still just as clueless as when you started. I'm interesting in knowing where other people find answers to the questions you just can't seem to figure out."
Television

Time Warner DVR box vs. TiVo? 32

Posted by Cliff from the DVR-no-holds-barred-cage-match dept.
pfunk asks: "Time Warner Cable in Cincinnati is now offering an all-in-one Digital Video Recorder/Cable Box. I have a TiVo and basic cable now, but as I ponder an upgrade to digital cable and premium channels, I wonder if an integrated box might be a better choice? I haven't found out anything about pricing yet, but I was wondering if anyone else had any experience with Time Warner's new box? Any direct comparison to TiVo features would be a plus."

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