bergeron76 asks: "Does anyone know of any OpenOffice based Content Management applications for Unix? I generate a tremendous amount of documents, spreadsheets, etc. and I'd like a way to organize them in a format other than a filesystem. A while back, I used a system called Docs Open. It was basically just a 'File Save [As]' dialog replacement database front-end for saving my document. I was _required_ to enter only meta-data(not the filename) about the document (keywords, description, etc) in order to save it. Conversely, it had a corresponding open-file dialog box that displayed the recent documents (DB records) and a query window for searching. It was a very nice system, and I'm wondering if anything like this exists for open-office or other popular non-Microsoft Office suites. I'm not seeking web-based systems, I'm seeking an integrated OO Plug-in or similar technology."

Dredd2Kad asks: "I'm tired of HD failures. I've suffered through a few of them. Even with backups, they are still a pain to recover from. I've got all fairly inexpensive but reliable hardware picked out, but I'm just not sure which RAID level to implement. My goals are to build a file server that can live through a drive failure with no loss of data, and will be easy to rebuild. Ideally, in the event of a failure, I'd just like to remove the bad hard drive and install a new one and be done with it. Is this possible? How many drives to I need to get this done, 2,4 or 5? What size should they be? I know when you implement RAID, your usable drive space is N% of the total drive space depending on the RAID level."

Pfhreak writes "Bare Feats has a couple of reviews: one of WiebeTech's G5Jam, and one of the Swift Data 200. Both add extra drive space to a G5. The G5Jam puts two extra drives in the space that would be taken up by long PCI cards, so you'll be limited to the shorter cards in two of the three PCI slots. The Swift Data puts three drives in the space in front of the CPU fans. The writer of the Swift review has an interesting thought in the conclusion: 'Hey! Maybe I could install both the G5Jam and the Swift -- that would give me 7 drives -- and if I get seven 400GB Hitachi 7K400s, that's 2.8 Terabyte total -- Moo hah hah!'"

Doc Ruby writes "The TreoCentral community has announced a bounty for the first BlueTooth SDIO driver delivered for the Treo 600 (PalmOS 5). The thread shows the development of both the requirements of the quarry, and the contributions to the bounty. If this process works, is 'open funding' of development the next wave of the emerging online community? How will the 'traditional' vision/scope> requirements> features> >recode> retest> demo> cycle expand to include the user community in the financing?" Update: 06/16 19:43 GMT by T : Updated the bounty link to a server better able to handle it.

Alex Moskalyuk writes "Remember the Best Buy commercial where a puppet asks a woman for a laptop computer, and upon hearing that it's a 'wireless' laptop, starts imagining his life free of strings and limitations? That guy doesn't know it yet, but soon the harsh reality will kick in, ironically kicking him off the wireless network periodically if he uses Microsoft Windows Wireless Zero Configuration or if he wants to run Linux on a laptop with WiFi card that doesn't support Linux. This book, however, is not just about getting your Linux laptop onto the wireless network. Granted, WiFi plays a big role in today's business and personal networks, and three chapters are dedicated to exactly that purpose, but behind that wireless adjective we have a variety of technologies." Read on for the rest of Alex's review of Linux Unwired, from O'Reilly.

dritan writes "News.com is reporting that a judge has tossed out a privacy lawsuit against Northwest airlines. The plaintiffs claimed that their privacy was violated when Northwest gave their information to the government. From the judge: 'Although Northwest had a privacy policy for information included on the Web site, plaintiffs do not contend that they actually read the privacy policy prior to providing Northwest with their personal information. Thus, plaintiffs' expectation of privacy was low.' Do you always read the privacy policy?" If you haven't read a particular EULA, does that mean it doesn't apply either? Here is the Judge's order (PDF).

JamesD_UK writes "IBM has a short article with some details of their Linux systems at the Wimbledon tennis championships. Aparantly IBM has been using DB2 on a Linux platform to provide statistics and information on the competition since 1999. VIPs will be offered a chance to use O2's XDA to view match details over wi-fi. Time to apt-get install champagne strawberries kismet?" There's also a BBC article about the system.

Bifurcati asks: "I recently bought a Bluetooth enabled Powerbook G4 laptop, which comes with a trackpad. I often give Powerpoint presentations, so I'm interested in getting a wireless controller, to flip back and forward through slides without touching the laptop. Google turns up many options, e.g., Honeywell's, Beamplus and this doohickey. Another option is a combined mouse-controller, throwing an external mouse into the bargain. There are wireless mice (e.g., Logitech's) which need a USB plug-in, but are short range. Or there are Bluetooth mice, like the X-Wing, which are neat and have a 10m range, but seem to be a pain with battery life/charging. Another option is Logitech's Bluetooth Presenter, which is a mouse, PP controller and laserpointer in one (but costs $200!). So many choices! So I'm turning to good old Slashdot. All of you presenters out there, do have favourite remote control devices? What are your experiences with using them? What type of connectivity is the best (wireless, Bluetooth, something else?!) And what about devices that double as an external mouse, or even as a controller for movies, iTunes, etc?"

siavash_of_stockholm asks: "I have a lot of spare time this so summer, so I've decided to be productive and make my own simple robot. It will come with some basic functions and it should move around without colliding or somehow avoid getting stuck in small areas and so on. I'd prefer to do this without using the popular Lego Mindstorm-kits and instead try to use a laptop and a controller card for the motors and a cheap webcam for vision. Has anyone in the Slashdot community made a similar project (on a tight student budget) and have some documentation of it they can share?"

flynn_nrg writes "Scott Long, from the release engineering team, has sent this message to the freebsd-alpha mailing list:'The day has finally come to demote FreeBSD/Alpha to tier-2 status. While I'm sure that this will come as a disappointment to many, the simple truth is that there is no longer enough community interest nor developer interest to fix critical bugs and assist in the development of new features. We've struggled with this for several years, and it's time to set the proper expectations before we enter 5-STABLE.'" (Read on for the rest of the announcement.)

CHaN_316 writes "News.com.au is running an article about the First Mobile Phone Virus Discovered. The virus 'called Cabir - appears to have been developed by an international group specialising in creating viruses which try to show "that no technology is reliable and safe from their attacks"... until now it has had no harmful effect.' Cabir infects the Symbian operating system, and spreads via bluetooth. Great... lets see when we can download the world's first mobile phone anti-virus!"

Gheesh asks: "Early this year I was thinking on buying a desktop DVD/DivX player. When the KISS issue with MPlayer arose, I decided to postpone the purchase until things cleared up. Six months have gone by and there is not much useful information around on the licensing and hacker-friendly capabilities of the various hardware players that have appeared since then. Can anybody provide some insight into this subject?" Are there any hardware players out there that aren't mired in licensing fights that actually are worth the money?

joNDoty writes "Businessweek is running a story predicting 'This is going to be the most disruptive period in the past 50 years." The period they are talking about is the digital age of convergence, where every software/hardware manufacturer is racing to link cell phones, tvs and computers into universal devices 'that can't be categorized as tech or consumer electronics.' 'The result is a Big Bang of convergence, and it's likely to produce the biggest explosion of innovation since the dawn of the Internet.' Overrated? Perhaps, but +1 insightful nonetheless." Sure, your fridge will tell you you need milk, but convergence is not necessarily a good thing.

CarlosOlivaG4 asks: "We're in the process of acquiring and setting up a renderfarm, and I'm hoping the Slashdot community might light us up a little here. We'll use 6 to 8 nodes first, but would like to be able to expand it in the future." There was an earlier version of this question, but it dealt more with the hardware of the farm's nodes, rather than the network and software infrastructure on which these nodes would be based.

Repran writes "The DVD Forum this week approved HD-DVD 1.0, a specification that will compete with Blu-Ray which is not yet approved for the future of the DVD disc format. This effectively gives manufacturers a green light to begin producing devices. In related news Microsoft's VC-9 codec has been included in the official HD-DVD specs."

LabRat007 writes "PDA Buyer's Guide reviews the Sony VAIO U50/U70, the hybrid PC/PDA that has beaten both the FlipStart and OQO to market. The short version? They like it, but it's too expensive. Editor in Chief Lisa Gade provides the typically in-depth review, with pictures and words and everything." The design looks great, but the price -- yow!

jmke writes "G-nome has finished his amazing Orac case mod, which looks absolutely stunning." An excerpt from the site: "Ever since I saw the first series of Blakes 7 I have wanted my own Orac. For those that don't know, Blakes 7 was a late 70s/early 80s British Science Fiction series and Orac was this intellectually snobbish, difficult and incredibly brilliant computer, hand built by an eccentric scientist. The special effects were straight out of 60's Star Trek and a lot of the props were converted from (or later converted to) props from other classic BBC series such as Doctor Who and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (where the Bambleweeny 57 sub-meson brain looks like it was made by the same bloke!)."

An anonymous reader asks I am thinking about setting up a local "community" network over WiFi minus internet connection. In other words, I would like to run a small server isolated from the web as an experiment in small scale networks (e.g., serving a café-heavy one-block radius.) I have plenty of clever ideas -- discussion/gripe boards, weird artistic projects -- anything to bring back the old-school BBS memories where online users were drawn from a single geographic location. But everything I've learned so far is how to act as a small node on someone else's network. How can I make my own -- and make it wireless? Google doesn't pull much up that I can find: it is mostly targeted towards those building a (free or profit) Internet access point." (Read on for more.)

gr8_phk writes "We recently learned of Intel's plans to go dual-core in late 2005. Well it seems AMD has decided to follow suit. It should be noted that the K8 architecture has had this designed in from the start. Will this be socket 939 or should I try to hold out another year to buy?"

SenorCitizen writes "Seagate is the first hdd manufacturer to announce 400 GB 3.5" hard drives. The 7200.8 is SATA native and comes with buffer sizes up to 16 MB. Seagate also announced a 2.5" portable external hard drive with 100 GB, and an external USB2 pocket hard drive with 5 GB. Get leeching!"