MiTEG writes "The Washington Post has an article on a cheaper alternative to Microsoft's Office Suite, ThinkFree Office. Currently selling for $50, their product also includes a one year subscription to Cyberdrive, a 20 MB web file-storage service. While it's no StarOffice, this glowing review may help people realize that Microsoft is not the only option." 'Glowing review' probably isn't the right term to use, since the reviewer found quite a few faults.

Uttles writes "According to Yahoo!, Celine Dion's latest CD will not play in computer drives. In fact: 'Should the consumer try to play Dion's CD on a PC or Macintosh, the computer likely will crash.' How is this legal?" Since Sony admits that their product is designed to cause damage to your computer system, almost anyone would likely have a good lawsuit against them. Attention Celine Dion and all musicians: crashing your fans' computers is not a good business practice. No matter what your agent says.

Gatton writes "Terra Soft has released version 2.2 of their Linux distribution for Apple hardware known as Yellow Dog. According to the website, a few of the features are: Red Hat 7.2-based system, 'ext3' graphical migration program, XFree86 4.2.0, KDE 2.2.2, Gnome 1.4 w/Nautilus & Evolution, improved modem & printer support, improved support for nVidia GeForce2 MX & ATI Radeon--including ADC digital. No ISOs, only SRPMs on the ftp site at the moment. Presumably it will be available for download soon." I bought two previous versions of YDL, but this time I am just going to download it, as I don't use it enough to warrant buying it, now that I primarily use Mac OS X as my "other" OS. And, darnit, I want to download it now.

An Anonymous Coward asks: "I'm looking to purchase an external Ethernet print server with an USB printer interface. I've only found two such beasts HP JetDirect 175x and Sercomm PS5800). Do I have any other hardware options? Do USB print servers work with any USB printer, or are there driver issues?" Comments, anyone? Information about running such a box under free operating systems would also be nice.

danny writes: "'Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software' is an insightful biography of a figure whose mere name tends to start flame wars on Slashdot ..." Stallman may be one of the most interesting people alive right now: read on to see how well the biography is up to the task of describing him and his movement -- acccording to Danny, that may depend on the reader.

Robert Jung writes "Is Epson waging a coordinated discrimination effort against Mac users? MacSlash reports that Epson is refusing to honor their $50 rebate coupon if the printer was purchased at an Apple retail store, and Daily Mac notes that if you want Mac OS X drivers for Epson scanners, you must fill out a form, fork over $4, and wait for the mail to arrive -- while Windows users are able to download XP drivers for free." Apparently, Mac OS (Classic) users can also download the drivers for free. Maybe they assume Mac OS X users don't have Internet access?

bmeteor writes: "Short and very sweet: CUPS is licensed by Apple. A boon for both Apple and GNU." CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) is a system based on the Internet Printing Protocol for standardized printing on Unix systems. That's nice, but when can I print over the network to my Epson inkjet, like I can in Mac OS 9 with USB Printer Sharing?

Linuxthess asks: "I work in a small company with only 20 or so employees. Being the most tech-savvy of them I find myself doing less work as a salesman, and more as their non-paid tech support. I was asked for a solution to create a domain for login authentication, a DHCP server, a webserver, file & printer services, and e-mail. I found three such companies with an inexpensive, yet solid products aimed at what we need: one is Celestix with their Aries and Taurus products; there is a company in Chicago called Dartek which sell a custom-built box called iMass which comes in three flavors; and lastly a company in Canada named Net Integration Technologies Inc who has a box named Net Integrator that is available in various flavors. Does anyone have experience in regard to these solutions? I think we will go along with the Taurus, but I want to hear a little more regarding the quality of doing this job inexpensively (these things start from $800 and go until $3000). I spoke with a tech-support guy, and he told me customers buy a couple of these since they're so cheap for redundancy, and clustering."

borgquite asks: "At the school that I work for students waste a lot of paper and toner because they print without thinking. I've been looking at printer quota / charging software, but unfortunately I can't seem to find any for Linux, and the Windows based software is all priced far too high. What I need to do is to say that students can print a certain amount per day/week/month/year, and provide a system where they can pay to increase their quota. I've looked for Linux / BSD based solutions, but all I could find is lots of references to a tool called lpquota, but no information on how I can obtain and implement this on my network. Does anyone know of such a system?"

Max Groff writes "This brief ZDNet article (printer-friendly version) describes how Adobe is considering leaving its Asian markets due to the apparently high levels of piracy across the Pacific. This change would not only cut off the marketing of Adobe products to Asian markets, but also halt the development of much of the company's Asian-language software."

Karl De Abrew writes: "In the Spring of 1991 Dr. John Warnock wrote a paper he dubbed "Camelot" in which the Adobe Systems Co-founder and CEO laid out the foundation for what has become Acrobat/PDF. With the author's permission, Planet PDF is pleased to publish the full-text of that historic document. [Archived copy here.]" Of course, now it's 2002, and the dream of universal display / printing remains only partly realized; PDFs really have helped to narrow the gap between dream and reality, though.

Now that wireless technologies are more-or-less a household name, BSDevil wonders if it's possible to use such technologies (ie Bluetooth, 802.11, etc) as a replacement for those situations where long ungainly cables are usually called for: "My laptop and printer are placed such a way that running a cable from one to the other would just plain suck (too long if not direct, if direct then in the way, etc.) and because both are about a year old. I want (to make, if need be) a little box that I plug into my Parellel port on the laptop and one that I plug into the port on the back of my Printer, and have them talk and print and be merry. Power could either be directly off the port (best) or from a rechargable battery inside the thing that is used to power the system when transmitting, and recharges when not - like a big capacitor - off the power of the Port. Does it exist, and if not, any ideas on making one?" And if such can work for printers, why not other peripherals as well?

Jonny5 writes: "In preparation for the transition from windows to a Linux based workstation, the main focus is that of peripheral compatibility. Sure Linux is rock solid stable, and has an almost totally customizable GUI, but dammit, if my hardware won't work, what's the point? ...After hearing about TurboPrint, and their claim to provide 'Printer set-up and configuration is as simple as on Windows or MacOS,' I had to rise to the challenge. LinuxLookup.com has done a full review of TurboPrint For Linux."

Dan asks: "I'm in desperate need of a manual (in digital format) for the IBM 6408 printer. Hours of scouring Google returned nothing majorly useful. Does anybody out there possess such a thing?"

Ravagin asks: "I am deeply in love with my Dell Inspiron 8100 running Windows 2000. I have a perfectly good NEC Silentwriter SuperScript 610Plus that I want to use; however, NEC's support site has nothing for Windows 2000 (the 610plus win95/98 drivers return a Windows version error). It's supposed to be HP LaserJet IIP compatible, but I've had no luck getting that to work. Google hasn't helped, either. Does anyone have any useful experience or sites for getting this old, 'unsupported' printer to play nice with Win2k?"

An open information society is inevitable. I was a little surprised last week to receive a forwarded e-mail from Junis, who lives in a small town 35 miles southwest of Kabul. This weekend, a movie theater and video store opened up again in Kabul (renting Independence Day), Afghan TV cranked up, and so did the Net. Americans understand all too well that our techno-driven culture produces wonders and dangers, but it's one of the most popular social and political forces in the world. Passion for pop culture relentlessly undermined repressive governments like Poland, East Germany and the former Soviet Union. The world, it turns out, really is porous now. Technology and information will squeeze through every closed nook and crevice. The Taliban never made a dent in the attachment this Afghan programmer and his friends had for it.

Adam Jenkins contributes this review of The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer, the newly re-named and republished telling of Babbage's insights and struggles in creating a steam-powered calculating machine, and the modern efforts to bring his work to fruition.

CrashRide writes: "This story on FOX states that UofA scientists have discovered a way to print light-emitting pictures on thin sheets of plastic using a standard inkjet printer. Fold up pocket monitors?" The article says that these scientists have produced "OLEDs of simple bands of light, a scorpion, the University of Arizona logo and even photographs of themselves."

All Dead Homiez asks: "My company has several very nice printers left over from our old mainframe setup. Unfortunately, they have a BNC interface that speaks the IPD/SCS protocol instead of Ethernet. We are an all-Linux shop now and we'd hate for all of these perfectly good printers to go to waste, so does anyone know if there is any software for Linux that speaks IPD/SCS?"

We put up the original call for questions on September 5. Jamie's travel schedule (mentioned in one of his answers) is so hectic that it is amazing he found time to answer these questons at all. But answer he did, in detail. It's going to be interesting to see how Jamie's take on tech-oriented lobbying compares with that of "commercial" lobbyist Morgan Reed, whose interview responses we hope to see in the very near future.