TAG writes "TopCoder just announced rules for this year annual international programming tournament. The 2004 TopCoder Open, Sponsored by Microsoft will set as rivals some of the IT industry's top professionals and international collegiate coders. Software will be designed and developed. Seemingly unsolvable algorithmic problems will be solved. $150,000 will be awarded over the course of 14 weeks. 24 of the world's best programmers will be invited to compete live at the onsite finals in Santa Clara, CA, USA. This competition is 'Free'. Yep. Free as beer. Everybody over the age of 18 is eligible. So? What is your TopCoder rating today?"

Kojote writes "The latest PDRoms Coding Competition has just finished. The idea was to write a homebrew Game & Watch-style freeware game for handhelds or consoles, and there were a total of 24 freely downloadable submissions. In detail, there were 10 Game Boy Advance entries, 8 GP32 entries, 3 Gameboy Color entries, 1 Genesis/Megadrive entry and 1 Neo Geo Pocket Color entry. The winning entries were headed by Beer Belly Bill (GBA) by Metalvotze. If you don't have real hardware to test the entries, you can use emulators such as VisualBoy Advance (GBA/GBC) and GeePee32 (GP32). Have fun!"

mjamil writes "The NYT(free registration required) has an article talking about the polarized use of OSS in the building of campaign Web sites. Specifically, it states that the sites for John Kerry (Democratic candidate for President) and the Democratic National Committee are built using OSS, while the site for President Bush's re-election campaign uses IIS. Linus and ESR are quoted. It's an interesting look at how even presidential politics are no longer immune to the free software war (free as in beer)." (David Brunton, pictured in the article, wrote to say "Now I'm going to go call my mom... won't she be proud? For all those girl geeks and gay geeks out there, I'm already taken, but it is an awful nice picture, isn't it?")

Omega1045 writes "The Austin Chronicle is running an interesting article on how Austin is fast becoming the Wi-Fi Capital of the Free (as in beer) Wireless World. With the industry standardization board Wi-Fi Alliance moving to Austin earlier this year, and groups like Austin Free-Net helping local businesses, the article quotes Austin has having more hotspots 'than anywhere else on the planet'. While this article does quite a bit of bragging about Austin, it also does a great job of highlighting how businesses and local non-profits can work together to promote and profit from free Wi-Fi Internet access. This provides an excellent model for other cities to follow using tools like Less Network."

Lufi2 writes "QNX 6.3 was released on 3 Jun. New features include accelerated 3D, the Voyager 2 browser which supports HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.1 now, SCTP (stream control transmission protocol) and packet filtering with NAT! GCC 3.3.1 is also included. If it's not a typo, the Professional version costs $8695/user o_O Usual QNX NC (non-commercial = free beer) LiveCD is not available on the download area yet (As of 9 Jun)... But it sounds very promising"

Search and Seizure asks: "This week, the local police contacted one of my co-workers and informed him that they had been contacted by the FBI who requested that they investigate his apartment. According to the police, while his apartment repair staff were checking his smoke alarm, they had noticed suspicious looking items in his kitchen and had called the FBI because they suspected that he might be a terrorist. What do you do when your landlord suspects that you might be a terrorist and reports you to the FBI?" If the law comes a-knocking, always remember that you can politely ask for a warrant.

An anonymous reader writes "Looking at the beer gut that's developed over the winter, and the excercise schedule that I haven't kept for more than two days at a time, I realize that I need a new plan. A gym isn't the answer; I can't keep a schedule for working out in my apartment, there's no way I could make it to the gym on any regular basis. I've had multiple people in the last few weeks tell me stories involving weight loss through Dance Dance Revolution, and it sounds like a great idea to me! working out is hard, playing video games is easy, and dancing is fun. But a Google search turned up way too much info, and way too little of it was useful unless I want to spend the next four weeks researching this. Does the Slashdot community have any ideas, suggestions, or personal experience that they cared to relate on any of these topics?"

An anonymous reader asks: "I'm in college working on an electrical engineering degree, and I've had a few labs so far involving microcontroller setups. I'd now like to start doing some microcontroller projects of my own devising, so I'll need a programmer, the development software, and the MCUs themselves. The problem is that I don't have a wide experience with the different companies selling this sort of equipment. I know about the BASIC Stamps and the PIC offerings, but what other architectures are there? Both of the MCUs I've named have development tools, but they're for Windows. Are there any companies out there that supply their tools for BSD/Linux? What open source projects are there working on this (I've found gputiles). As always, free (as in beer) is good for us college students. :-)"

trs9000 writes "Going a step further than your average case mod, Tubby includes not only a nice wooden casing, but also a built-in refrigerator! You dont have to get up for a refill! Tubby's homepage has specs and pics of the process. Images are also here and here."

An anonymous reader asks: "I'm going to a demonstration of some music software products tomorrow night. The music store hosting the event may be attempting to start a users group of music software. This seems like a job for open source advocacy! Anyone know of any good F/OSS for working with music and audio? I am already aware of Audacity and (Free as in Beer) Jeskola Buzz, but what else is there in the realm of sequencers and audio manipulation?" We did another helpful article back in 2001, and another from last August. What musical creations have you put together with any of this software, and others we may have missed?

kwiens writes "We've been slaving away for months to create the FixIt Guide Series-- a set of Free-As-In-Beer step by step PowerBook disassembly instructions. Maybe waiting another 6-18 months for those PowerBook G5's will be easier if you fix your old PowerBook now (or just use the Guides as a starting point for that killer PowerBook case mod). Guides are up now for the PowerBook G3 Wallstreet, Lombard, Pismo and Titanium PowerBook G4 Mercury, Onyx, DVI."

JeffTL asks: "By necessity, I carry around an Apple iBook running OS X Panther. In the event of its theft, I would like to have the thing send me its IP address, not only for the benefit of law enforcement but also so I could SSH in and trash my personal data with srm, while doing an SFTP backup of anything I forgot to back up. I am not really wanting a subscription, so I am looking for a free-as-in-beer (and if anything beyond a shell script is involved, free-as-in-speech would be much preferred to make sure that no one else is getting anything). Currently, I have a bash script that can create a report, and I am thinking about sending it using either e-mail or FTP. I am considering setting it up to where it only starts barraging me if a specific code is posted to an HTML document of my choice. Is there already something like this in existence somewhere for free? If not, does anyone have any pointers on how this can be done?"

Willy K. writes "Technology comes to the rescue when disaster strikes and your pitcher runneth dry. These Cornell students have rigged up beer pitchers that wirelessly advertise to the central serving station when they are empty, prompting alert wait staff to bring another round." Add a few steins and you're all set.

Ipingforpong writes "Recently a University of Florida engineering student named Brian Pietrodangelo built a mini fridge named Koolio that when you place an order through the website, will deliver a cold soda, beer, or various candy to you. Right now it's only available in one building at University of Florida but soon it could catch on in office buildings and other places."

MikeDawg asks: "With so much uncertainty in the current job market for tech workers, and with varying financial situations; are you required (or want) to work a second job? I'm in one of those situations. I work as a bartender during the days and weekends, and I work as a mainframe operator during the night. Often browsing classified ads for positions, I see ads for jobs that pay a minimal amount more than my current tech job, and a possibility for less stability (see this Slashdot Article). Do you think it would be a better idea for someone to work two somewhat secure jobs, getting paid a little bit less, or going for a higher paying somewhat insecure job? I also run into varying conflicts such as scheduling if I would like to try and maintain two jobs, which is never fun (Don't even ask about how happy my girlfriend is). So my question to you out there, would you rather work 2 secure jobs, that pay a little bit less than what you could be making, or would you rather get paid a touch more, and work for 1 less secure employer?"

Galvatron writes "A group of researchers at Stanford have shown that, despite being lighter than the beer itself, bubbles can actually slide down the sides of glasses. So, if you see it happen, it's not just that you've had too much to drink. For a description of methodology and an explanation of why it works, see the article."

Ben Crowell writes: "The economics of college textbooks is goofy, because the person who picks the book isn't the person who has to pay for it. Combined with the increasing consolidation of the publishing industry, this has blown the lid off of textbook prices over the last decade. But remember what the World-Wide Web was basically about before the Dot-Com Detour? It wasn't about marketing dog food, it was about democratizing publishing. Many textbook authors these days are using the internet to bypass the traditional publishing system, making their books available for free downloading. Although MIT's Open Courseware project gets most of the press, the movement started before that, and is going strong. In this article, I've reviewed five calculus textbooks that are either free as in speech or free as in beer." Read on for Crowell's take on each of the five books he's selected -- and pass the review on to any math teachers you know.

An anonymous reader writes "CNN is carrying a story about Budweiser's national internal sales tracking network called BudNET. It allows Anheuser-Busch to instantly track sales across the country, and 'If Anheuser-Busch loses shelf space in a store in Clarksville, Tennessee, they know it right away.' It brings up some interesting privacy issues, because according to the article 'The last time you bought a six-pack of Bud Light at the Piggly Wiggly, Anheuser servers most likely recorded what you paid, when that beer was brewed, whether you purchased it warm or chilled, and whether you could have gotten a better deal down the street.' Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands."

This is an unusual Slashdot Interview, since instead of using email I asked all the questions in person last week either at LinuxAsia2004 or in casual meetings with local LUG members and other techies I met during the conference. Some of your questions were answered quite well by other Slashdot readers in the original post. (Slashdot has many readers both in and from India.) I also inserted a number of personal observations, which I usually don't do in these interviews, because it seemed to be the best way to answer some of the questions. And some questions were nearly unanswerable, as you'll see when you read the rest of this article.

SparafucileMan writes "Ok, I'll admit it. I've spent way too much time at the pub drinking... er... playing these arcade golf games such as Golden Tee 2004. However I'm annoyed by the lack of features, graphics quality, and courses and figure that playing golf on my computer, where there are several outstanding titles available, would get me a lot more bang for the buck. However, what's the fun in playing arcade golf with a mouse and keyboard?! I want to invite some people over to hammer the bejesus out of a huge trackball, just like at the arcade. Anyone have any suggestions on where I can find such a contraption, or how I could build one myself (with USB hook-up, no-less)?" We've previously covered the cult of Golden Tee, and the inevitable injuries that result from the mixing of beer and trackballs.