ps writes: "Like many people, I work in a cubicle. I am also surrounded by several computers each with their own speakers and sound cards. And people complain that they are too loud (the volume won't go any lower!) I would love to have a simple "mixer" that I could wire in all my sound cards to one set of headphones. Nothing fancy, I just want to hear the alerts on all my boxes. Any ideas? I don't want to spend a fortune on this..." As michael puts it, like an KVM switch, but for audio.

jmaslak expresses himself thusly: "I'm in the market for yet another new mouse. My average mouse-span is three months. Once in a while, I can stretch it to four, but sometimes the darn things die after only one month. I've tried cheap mice and expensive mice. Microsoft makes a decent mouse, as it usually lasts four. But I hate spending $50 every 4 months!" (Read more for the details of jmaslak's quest.)

sparcv9 writes "The NetBSD Team announced today the offical start of the NetBSD/hpcarm port of their multi-platform OS. This port runs on StrongARM-based handheld PCs. So far, the HP Jornada 720 and the Compaq iPAQ H3600 are supported. With this port hot on the heels of the SH3/4-based hpcsh port and last year's MIPS-based hpcmips port, it looks like NetBSD could give Linux a run for its money in the handheld arena."

root_dev_X ventures: "Admittedly, this is a random question, but here goes - Does anyone out there know of any ways to totally erase the data on a drive? Some friends of mine got into a discussion about this not too long ago; one of them told me they had heard from a friend in the military that they hooked up old HDDs to modified stun-guns and zapped them in order to totally erase them - apparently this method scrambled the magnetic field of the disk, leaving the data irrecoverable. Does this work? Are there any other methods for "data-destruction" (keeping the platter intact, that is)?" A nice "obliberate data to the point of senselessness" tool would be nice -- or is keeping the platter intact a senseless question if you want true security?

libertynews writes: "Last night at the Kitsap Peninsula Linux User Group meeting we had one of our members bring in a new Linux product that he's been working on for the last year. It is a hardbound-book sized Linux PC. Complete with sound, video, touchpad, SVHS output, docking bay for floppy and cdrom, 2 USB ports. It's called the Nano PC by a local Washington State company called Linux-Works. It was running with a 533MHz Celeron and 128Mb of ram and Caldera's Linux distribution (dual booting with win98). And its only $799!" This thing has wearable potential no doubt. Very cool looking, and under a pound. Wow. Good to finally see these things (almost) in the wild.

hero_or_what writes "Tom's Hardware has built one the fastest PCs on the planet. Its basically an overclocked Athlon running at 1600MHZ!! The beast is described here. I wonder how long this monster would take to do a "make world"."

Jeffv323 writes: "I was thinking the other day, what would my Logitech optical mouse look like with a superbright blue LED ^[?] ? I couldn't find any Web sites that had any technical specifications on how the optical sensor works, so I am not sure whether this idea might work. All the sites I did go to said the sensor was actually a small camera taking 1500 pictures a second. If this is true it seems like my idea could work." Has anyone out there replaced the LED in his optical mouse, out of necessity or curiosity? Have you found any good information about wavelength tolerances, voltages, etc? Anything that can handle a blue LED ought to have one in it, IMHO.

ECaldwell writes: "It looks as though Sharp is stepping up to the PDA plate with a unit (the Zaurus) that uses Linux instead of Palm, CE or a proprietary OS. These units are designed to be direct competitors with Palms, Handspring and other PDA's. The timing for a release of is planned for around Christmas. The problems for Palm and CE devices so far is the limit of easy to use programming languages which makes it difficult for a novice to write even an basic progam (I don't know C or C++). The good news here is, with Linux loaded on a Zarus we should be able to use any of the great languages that Linux already supports to flood that market with good software." (Read on for more).

Diesel Dave writes: "Fibre Channel is an awesome technology handling serial Gigabit transmission rates of both SCSI and IP over up to 30 Meters of 2 pair Copper or 10 Kilometers of optical cable, with up to 126 hosts or devices per loop.(WOW!) The newest FC runs at 2GHz. That's up to 400 Megabytes per second in full duplex mode. The problem of course is FC is normally very expensive. However, many of the hackers out there have noticed large amounts 1GHz FC equipment is being dumped on Ebay for a song. (I purchased new 18GB Barracuda drives for $70 each!) The problem is cabling up those funky 40 pin SCA drives without buying a $3000 8 bay enclosure. After much searching I have just found a company called Cinonic Systems that is making low cost Fibre Channel drive and cable adapters that work with plain old CAT5 ethernet cable! As far as I'm concerned firewire, parallel SCSI, and Gigabit ethernet are now dead technologies." It's not all that big a device either -- probably Cinonic is not alone in selling such a thing. Rather cool to connect up hard drives with CAT5, too -- not PITA ribbon cables.

Audent asks: "I've been reading (and writing) about 'Bluetooth ^[?] Coming Soon!' for what seems like years now... Is it time to give up? Where are the products? Where are the new devices that promise piconetworks and the like? And what about the risks from having an entire network of Bluetoothed devices beaming around this already saturated office of mine (100 people plus PCs plus printers, scanners, laptops, palmtops, cellphones times Bluetooth equals...?) I know they run on the same band as microwave ovens (2.4GHz) but they won't interfere with each other but are we all going to be cooked by these tiny chips? Or will Bluetooth take off in the way USB did once the first products came out in commercial quantities?" Bluetooth sounds great on paper, but have life's realities proven too much in terms of getting working implementations out of the door?

An unnamed corrrespondent asks: "Are LCD flatscreen monitors better for your eyes than CRT's? Have studies shown that LCD's reduce eyestrain, red-eye, or other eye fatigue compared to CRT monitors due to less radiation, no flicker, or other differences in the technology?" Studies aside, I certainly find it more comfortable when working for hours at a time to be staring at a nice TFT LCD than even a high-quality CRT, which is one reason that I'm growing resigned to laptop keyboards.

K asks: "As a long time subscriber to many magazines(Linux Journal, Dr. Dobbs, Byte, etc.) and as a person who can't throw away anything written for fear it might one day be useful, I was wondering if anyone knew of any high speed scanners that would allow me to archive these magazines for (possible) future use. My house is just getting too clutered and I would hate to lose these data. In addition, are there any legal questions about this. I have purchased the magazines so I believe that I should be allowed to archive them in any fashion I choose. Is this wrong?"

robkill writes "PCWorld has this article on a new drive by Maxtor, using 1 platter, 1 head and 70% fewer moving parts. Using one side of a 30GB platter, the drive holds 15GB and has a smaller height as well." Well, it's not huge, but it's sufficent size - and with more durability, putting it into mobile devices becomes easier to do.

10 Yogurts writes: "Saint Song Corp. recently announced the release of the Cappuccino G1, successor to their acclaimed pocket PC, the Espresso. Although no longer a "pocket PC," due to the docking bay's features being integrated into the unit, the Cappuccino is a very small (and very, very cool) set-top box--and Saint Song is specifically touting "Linux compatibility." What does the Cappuccino have that the Espresso didn't? How about S-Video and RCA outs, Ethernet, swappable DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive, V.90 modem, 16-bit sound, IrDA support, more bus ports, and a new chipset (i810E), to name a few. Impress Watch (Japanese text) has several photos of the box, including two interior shots. Tsukomo, also in Japanese, has even more photos, and is selling the units for ¥84,800 (about US$720)." It looks like a sleek little device - and is cheaper then the iPaq I bought from the shady looking store in NYC. But does anyone have more detailed information? Please post below, if so.

Big Nothing asks: "My company is building a PDA solution for a company that makes industrial machines. Currently, all service technicians (some 1500 people) are handling the work orders and service reports by paper, and clerks are manually punching the data into the computer systems. The idea is that this that this could all be done on PDA's via GSM. When connecting to the company server, finished job reports are uploaded and new job orders are downloaded. Some time ago, I read an article in the NYTimes [free reg. required] on medical doctors using PDA's in their daily work . The impact of PDA's on various industries seems to be enormous, and I'm curious to learn about other success stories on PDA's and to hear your thoughts on possible uses of PDA's in the industry?"

mach-5 asks: "I am currently in the process of starting my own business, building custom computers. Our business model is to offer friendly customer support without the big corporation BS, waiting in the phone que, etc. My big fear is that most people will be turned off by the higher prices we are forced to have because we don't have the buying power of big brother corporation. Basically, I'm worried that Joe Consumer will see a Compaq priced for $500 (after $500 MSN rebate) and would rather pay that than the $1000 that we are initially charging. I'm also worried that Joe Consumer will not be able to grok the quality of computer they will be getting as compared to a mass produced machine, with proprietary drivers, etc. What can I do to market my machines so that the public knows they are getting a quality machine, and friendly service? What niche can I position myself in to attract business? Also, what qualities would you Slashdotters like to see in a computer hardware vendor that would make you purchase from them, rather than Dell or Gateway?"

dantes wrote to us about OpenH.org which is a new site focusing on open hardware, and references for hardware. Good idea - it's just starting out, but the references and designs will make life easier for open source drivers, as well as working with new systems. My only caveat is that when I read OpenH, I thought about a methadone replacement, but that might just be me.

FoamNuts asks: "Gone are the boring days of foam inserts and styrofoam peanuts. We all like to buy toys, and my question is simple: What's the coolest packaging you've come across? Yesterday I got a Sony CD-RW which was secured in a warped plastic inner-tube. My previous HP CD-R was packed in a clever plastic/cardboard combo where the cardboard folded up and a plastic sheet lifted and supported the drive in a cool hyperbolic way. Sometimes we forget the other places cool engineering shows up." I guess I'm just a Philistine when it comes to packaging. Anything is cool as long as I don't have to grab the X-acto blade to carve thru layer-after-layer of plastic.

Captain Novell asks: "Have you ever wondered what happened to the likes of the Intel Intelligent Server Adaptor? I have, one day it was on their site and then, later...*poof*...it was gone, only to be replaced by this Windows 2000 IP/Sec card! With tears in my eyes I went looking for any other manufacturer that had Intelligent NICs, but all I could found was this IP/Sec rubbish! (for those of us who run OSI complient software, a TRUE intelligent adaptor will off-load part of the OSI stack to the card and usually has some form of large cache on-board a.k.a. the old Intel Intelligent Adaptor card. I recommend server adaptors to many sys admins! Does the Slashdot community have any advice on where I can still find these elusive devices?"

Blah writes: "A while back Slashdot made reference to The Platypus Solid State Disk. The boys down at LinuxWorld.com.au have scored themselves one and given it a look over. The article has some pictures showing just how much SDRAM this thing has on it, as well as graphs which compare its IO and transfer rate performance against that of standard SCSI disk."