At the beginning of this month we sent your questions to Isam Bayazidi of Amman, Jordan. He's a Slashdot reader, founder of the Jordan Planet blogging community, and (I know this from personal experience) knows the best places to buy discount-priced computer components in his home town. Enjoy!

Michael J. Ross writes "To modify a digital image, most computer users turn to a GUI-based image processing application, such as Photoshop. However, while Photoshop and many other similar programs can process multiple images in batch mode, they still require manual usage, and thus typically are unable to process images via a command line or within a second application. Those capabilities call for a programmatic digital image manipulation tool such as ImageMagick, which is explored in a relatively new book, The Definitive Guide to ImageMagick." Read the rest of Michael's review.

Tony Tony Chopper writes "The team from Kororaa who brought us a GUI based Gentoo installer have just released the first live CD to use xgl technology. From Kororaa.org, the lead developer Chris writes 'Today I am happy to release a Kororaa Live CD showcasing Xgl technology.' The response so far have been incredibly positive, an article at tuxmachines.org is glowing with much praise and few complaints. For those who love eye-candy but don't want to mess with their existing installs, this is the perfect opportunity to see what Xgl is about. The torrent can be downloaded from LinuxTracker."

Boudewijn Rempt writes "The KOffice GUI Competition has been won by Martin Pfeiffer. His entry was chosen from eighteen submissions by the jury because of its innovative, ground-breaking approach to workflow and document handling. Many submitters broke away from the beaten path and explored wild and wonderful ideas. The results page also has all submitted entries available for review."

An anonymous reader writes "Why is there more than one Java GUI tool kit? The best answer is that one size does not fit all, nor is there a one-size-fits-all GUI tool kit to be invented soon. Each tool kit offers advantages and disadvantages that make selecting one more appropriate, given your needs and intended audience. Read descriptions of each tool kit's basic features, and the pros and cons of using each."

amartel asks: "Four years ago, Ask Slashdot asked if anyone was using a Model-Driven Architecture. The number of MDA tools are now almost overwhelming, and I strongly believe that comments to the same questions would be rather different nowadays. What are the drawbacks, difficulties and limitations of MDA? What percentage of code can actually be generated? I would like to add a few more: is it realistic to create a custom GUI rather than CRUD operations with these tools? Finally, what about Microsoft, the new competitor on the scene, and their DSL Tools?"

Ctrl+Alt+De1337 writes "The Mactel-Linux folks have now successfully booted Linux on a 17" Core Duo iMac. They used the elilo bootloader, a modified kernel, and a hacked vesafb to boot from a USB drive. No GUI pictures for now, just white text on a black background. The distro of choice was Gentoo, and instructions and patches are promised this weekend."

markmcb writes "OmniNerd once again digs into the math behind iTunes. The 5-star ratings in iTunes are actually stored in a variable allowing values from 0 to 100, with 20 = 1-star, 40 = 2-star, etc. Known to few, if you set a rating to 30 (manually), it will show up as 1 1/2 stars in the program's GUI. Matt Schinckel provides interesting statistical evidence showing that not only do non-whole, non-half values (e.g., 47) not increase the amount a song will play, but neither do the half-star ratings (with the exception of .5 star)."

null_functor asks: "I need to create an ultra-stable, crash-free application in C++. Sadly, the programming language cannot be changed due to reasons of efficiency and availability of core libraries. The application can be naturally divided into several modules, such as GUI, core data structures, a persistent object storage mechanism, a distributed communication module and several core algorithms. Basically, it allows users to crunch a god-awful amount of data over several computing nodes. The application is meant to primarily run on Linux, but should be portable to Windows without much difficulty." While there's more to this, what strategies should a developer take to insure that the resulting program is as crash-free as possible?

pgsqlDAO writes "NetBeans 5.0 has been released. The new version of the cross platform, extensible, award winning Integrated Development Environment (IDE) comes out with some impressive features that make developing GUI and Web applications easier as well as new modules for creating extensions to NetBeans. The new Matisse GUI Builder makes it easier to layout professional looking windows and dialog boxes. On the web front you can register JBoss and Weblogic servers to deploy and test your applications intuitively from within the IDE. Better integration with popular web frameworks such as JavaServer Faces and Struts has been added including templates for the creation of JSF Managed Beans, Struts Actions, and Struts Form Beans. Other features included better tools for Web Services, Version Control, Debugging, Code Completion, Refactoring and more. Sun has also set up a free beta program to provide technical support to developers."

fwc asks: "Over the past few years, I've been fortunate to be able to avoid writing a Windows GUI application, however this good luck is coming to an end. In the next few weeks, I need to write a fairly simple application which will need to display data received from a serial port in a decoded (and graphical) form via a Windows GUI. Unfortunately, my skills in this area are out of date, since I haven't written any GUI apps for close to 10 years. Because this program needs to be fairly small and easy to install, the use of Perl/tk isn't a valid option. What options do I have to build a small application on Windows, without a large learning curve?"

Chiggers writes to tell us that Mad Penguin has an interesting look at Oboe, the new music service from MP3Tunes. For a monthly fee Oboe allows you unlimited space to create a cross-platform music playlist available anywhere you have an internet connection via their AJAX-enabled GUI. The audio player still needs a little work but overall it is an interesting idea.

Who_Sez asks: "I'm interested in setting up a Linux based webcam, however the solutions I've been seeing are either very convoluted in execution, or the referring sites appear to be out of date. Can anyone recommend a webcam package that runs on Linux? I don't really care what distro is required but I'm familiar with Fedora, Yellow Dog, and Ubuntu. I guess I would be considered a 'mid-level user' with regard to experience. Is there a web cam software package that is a fairly complete solution that is also pretty easy to configure (preferably with a GUI)? Also, some suggestions for compatible webcam hardware would be welcome. I'd like to be able to do this on the cheap, and would love to be able to brag about setting up a Linux web cam. Any help here would be appreciated. Thanks!"

Bard Of Vim writes "Microsoft has issued critical security patches for beta testers running the Windows Vista December CTP (Community Technology Preview) and Windows Vista Beta 1, and warned that the new operating system was vulnerable to a remote code execution flaw in the Graphics Rendering Engine. The Vista patches address the same vulnerability that led to the WMF (Windows Metafile) malware attacks earlier this month. The recent out-of-cycle security update for the WMF vulnerability (see slashdot coverage) makes no mention of Windows Vista being vulnerable, but with the release of this weekend's patches it is clear that the poorly designed 'SetAbortProc,' the function that allows printing jobs to be canceled, was ported over to Vista."

nazarijo writes "Python seems to be devouring everything these days, with more and more people using it for serious projects. It's quickly supplanting Perl in some circles, and with good reason. It's a powerful, richly featured language with boatloads of extensions. And, unlike Perl, it's very easy to do complicated things in simple, legible code. Python books are still only a small part of the shelf at your local bookstore when you compare it to the popularity of Perl, but which ones are the gems and which ones are fluff? Having looked at a lot of Python books in the past couple of years, I think that Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional is the one that I'll most recommend to people." Read on for the rest of Jose's review.

norburym writes "The Bruce Perens Open Source Series of books published by Prentice Hall PTR is a strong collection of nearly 20 volumes focusing on Linux and open source technology. Edited by Linux guru and former Debian GNU/Linux Project Leader, Bruce Perens, the books are aimed toward developers, sysadmins and power users. Several months following the release of a new print volume, a free electronic version is made available on Prentice Hall PTR's web site. The series includes some excellent editions including Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide (2nd ed.), Linux Quick Fix Notebook and PHP 5 Power Programming. The newest book by Mark Wilding and Dan Behman, Self-Service Linux: Determining Problems and Finding Solutions, is another well-written and worthy companion to this series." Read the rest of Mary's review.

overpayd writes "ZDnet is reporting that Microsoft has hired 'user interface guru' Bill Buxton to work as a senior researcher. Will this move help focus the design teams for Vista, Office, etc? From the article: 'My sense is that Microsoft is in transition from an engineering-led company to as much a design-led company ... There are more designers at Microsoft on any single team as there were, not too long ago, in the entire company. It's a wonderful change.'"

Michael J. Ross writes "The typical computer program has more bugs than there are ants at a picnic -- except ants are usually easier to find. Programs written in Perl are no exception, because the compactness of the language does not make any existent bugs easier to spot; they can simply be packed into fewer lines of code. To help remedy this problem, Richard Foley and Andy Lester, two seasoned Perl programmers, offer a new book, Pro Perl Debugging: From Professional to Expert." Read the rest of Michael's review.

Milo_Mindbender asks: "For a C++ application I'm working on I want to be able to pop up an interface to a class that will display all the 'tunable' parameters of the class and let me inspect/modify them, while the program is running. The catch is that I'm running on a minimal embedded OS with Open GL but no GUI library. Rather than porting a widget set or writing my own, I was thinking about having the application talk to a web browser, and then use the browser to display the GUI, take user input, and finally push the data back to the app. The classes have metadata that describes the public data locations/types so they can be accessed, but not being a web-wizard I'm not sure of the best way of generating the information I need to create the UI. My first thought is to generate HTML and push that to the browser, but it seems like there must be a better way than this, maybe someone has written a library specifically for doing this sort of thing? Any help/suggestions would be appreciated!"

initialE wonders: "A friend of mine, working for a bank, mentioned to me that she had just undergone training for the migration of applications from their legacy systems (think DOS-based interface, AS400 powered) to a snazzy new web application. Whereas the younger users were impressed by the bling it provided, the older users were less happy, and the reason provided was that the application lacked shortcut keys to doing their most common tasks. The newer staff were mighty pleased not to have to learn all those arcane commands, of course. This led me to consider a few things. I administer Windows-based systems, and more and more I am choosing to use whatever key-based interface is available - I don't even use the file explorer anymore, preferring to type 'WindowsKey+R', and typing in the file path (Windows helps with auto-complete). It's better for me to keep my hands on the keyboard and not touch the mouse. It's certainly not because my mouse is bad, I just don't want to release the focus on the keyboard. And it works - I get things done a lot faster than anyone else in my department. Have we placed too much emphasis on making GUI-based applications, and left behind what was a perfectly good way of doing things?"