Slashback tonight with another notch up for Virginia Tech's Big Mac, another downloadable robot design for the Mini-ITX crowd, updates (both in the negative) regarding two recently speculated-upon business mergers, and more. Read on for the details.

BSD Forums writes "While Unix has roots in document formatting and layout, configuring printers has always required more black-arts arcana. This hasn't been helped by the appearance of low-cost commodity WinPrinters. Fortunately, tools like Ghostscript, gimp-print, and Apsfilter make configuring printers much easier. Michael Lucas demonstrates quick and dirty -- and working -- printer configuration."

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices reports that MontaVista Software has open-sourced several key software components for Linux-based consumer electronics devices. The company says it hopes the contributions will become part of standard Linux and will foster the evolution of Linux as a platform for digital consumer electronics devices. The open source contributions -- and their SourceForge locations -- include: Dynamic Power Management (DPM) to extend battery life and reduce power consumption; High Resolution POSIX Timers to enhance real-time performance; Variable Scheduling Timeouts (VST) to extend the stand-by time of battery powered devices, such as mobile phones; and Protected RAM File System (PRAMFS) to protect data from errant writes. Additionally, MontaVista says it plans to contribute Prioritized Work Queues (PWQ) technology, to enable prioritization and configurability of driver code for enhanced responsiveness."

willum448 writes "The binaries for Fink 0.6.1 have been released, this version will now work under Panther." I wonder if selfupdate-cvs will work for me now? I had circular dependency issues before.

elliotj asks: "In the latest version of their Finder-replacement product, PathFinder CocoaTech has included a terminal feature based on sourcecode from the GPL'd iTerm. They have made available the classes they developed from the iTerm sources, but not all the sourcecode for their product. Since iTerm is GPL (and not LGPL), shouldn't they have to make the ENTIRE codebase available? This is being debated on their forums. If this is true, what can we do to get CocoaTech to open up the rest of the code?"

Saqib Ali asks: "I am looking for for some OpenSource PDF Writers/Creator. I found one, here. It can basically create PDFs out of common software Like OfficeSuite, Visio, Project or any other Windows Application that uses the Windows Printers. I know OpenOffice can also export to PDF. I am working on a project (fat client) where I need to dynamically create PDF reports from data stored in MySQL DB. I know I can use PHP to create PDFs, and also Apache's Cocoon (you can find an example document, here). Of course, I would like to investigate other OpenSource PDF writers as well. Do you know of any other PDF writers, that I can utilize or learn from by looking at the source-code?"

No_Weak_Heart writes "As reported here back in August, October 15th is the day Microsoft set to ban third party clients from logging in to their IM service. This eWeek article notes that the day is upon us, and MS is offering few details about its progress in creating licensing agreements to continue access. The licensing issue was previously discussed here. And my copy of Fire cannot log in. Anyone else find their IM clients non-responsive?"

Gustavo asks: "My company is climbing the CMM ladder and the need for enterprise grade project management tools is growing. Currently we use a mix of MS-Project schedules and Excel spreadsheets, but this doesn't scale when one has a large pool of resources being used on several projects. Moreover, there being Project and Excel files are now scattered all around making it difficult to keep them up-to-date. One option is to go for the MS-Project Server but I was asked to find out if there is something free that we could use instead. Can you help me?"

canadacow writes "The MT-32 emulation project, which is an offshoot of the DosBox project recently received a cease and desist letter regarding the use of the PCM samples from the synthesizer. Normally this would be an open and shut case, but it just so happens that U.S. Copyright law (specifically 17 U.S.C. section 405) shows that Roland lost their copyright because nowhere did they explicity register it, and registering (or atleast copyright marking) was required before 1989. The MT-32, of course, was produced in 1987. You can find more details at the emulation forum on Vogons" In particular, read through this thread for Canadacow's response to Roland's lawyers, for the type of response that most lawyers probably don't expect from most programmers.

PerlGuru writes "The Xbox-Linux project has posted a submission form, and now some initial results for various Xbox hardware details. The aim of the form is to collect enough information to be able to make a good guess as to the internals of the box before even taking it off the shelf at the store. Being able to predict the hardware is especially nice considering things like hard drives which can range from 8 to 20 (?) Gb, or the new video encoding chip from Focus which doesn't have Linux support yet."

chrisatslashdot asks: "By training and title I am a Mechanical Engineer. I have never been involved with any serious software development although I am competent to develop quality code. Because the company that I work for will not purchase a canned software package, I am developing a web based CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System). I GPLed the project and put it on SourceForge hoping to help other people in my situation. The project is attracting much more attention than I anticipated. I have observed the development of many OSS projects but almost all of these have been by developers, targeted to developers. So what advice can you give a novice software developer on managing an open source project? What dangers and pitfalls await me? How does one foster more developer involvement? What resources should I exploit to keep from screwing this project up?"

RanmaPlex asks: "I've been asked by a university professor to design a network security lab for use by about 15 students. Designing a course was asked earlier, but little info was discussed on equipment. It needs to be vendor independent if possible. I've got ideas on using virtual machines, patches, IDS, firewalls/vpn and sniffers but would like to know what the Slashdot community can come up with."

alucard writes "The JourneyOS people have published this overview of their upcoming window system. It looks like it is OpenGL based and uses XML as the communications protocol. The biggest news is that it is supposed to have Xlib compatibility, but uses HyperQueues instead of Unix domain sockets. Could this get rid of the speed problems of XFree86 while still retaining Xlib compatibility? I think this is something everyone wants, but projects to create alternative GUIs such as Fresco and PicoGUI have given up any hope of compatibility with X11 or Xlib. Can we expect another alternative out there soon?"

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?"

giantsfan89 writes "A report from CNN says that a shuttle (possibly Atlantis) could fly again next fall. "The latest launch window is September 12 to October 10, NASA said Friday." A conference call referenced in the NY Times (free reg or via Google News) says it'll be an uphill battle (obviously) but that 'I'll also guarantee you that we're getting an awful lot smarter about this and we're going to come back stronger and safer as a result.'"

Xen Team writes "The University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory Systems Research Group is pleased to announce the open source release of Xen, a virtual machine monitor for x86. Xen lets you run multiple operating system images at the same time on the same PC hardware, with unprecedented levels of performance and resource isolation. Even under the most demanding workloads the performance overhead is just a few percent --- considerably less than alternatives such as VMware Workstation and User Mode Linux. This makes Xen ideal for use in providing secure virtual hosting, or even just for running multiple OSes on a desktop machine."

Semi-Anonymous Reader writes "Skipper 1.6.0 is a GPLed Linux accessibility suite for the severely physically disabled - cerebral palsy, road traffic accidents, motor neuron disease, Parkinsons etc. It takes input from multiple devices like graphics tablets and microswitches connected directly to the printer port, does input switching and processing (configured graphically like modular synthesisers), and provides clever genetically annealed menu systems for application and desktop control. With just one detectable click, people can have full Web and email access - in fact the whole Linux desktop - in complete privacy. Now the problem's getting it to people who need it. Charities and institutions think physical, Windows and money, so it's down to the geeks. Set up a kid near you this Fall - they might not be the next Einstein or Mozart, but you'll be giving them a lifetime of education, activity, self-expression and self-determination."

Sparks23 writes "Third-party instant messaging clients have begun to reconnect to Yahoo. While the authorization scheme has not been completely decoded -- expect some bumps -- Gaim and Trillian have both partially restored connectivity. Gaim has the new authorization scheme in CVS and their new 0.70 release, and Cerulean has made a beta patch available for Trillian Pro 2.0; consider both patches 'beta' for the moment."

jj00 writes "CNET News is reporting that Yahoo has started blocking 3rd party Messenger clients from their service. The article is about Trillian, but I have noticed that my gaim client hasn't been working for the past few days." As reported earlier.

Slashback tonight brings you more on recent RIAA madness, the readability of scrambled words, word of the return of Nullsoft's WASTE, another decision against the FTC's do-not-call list, and more -- read on for the details.