Monday you asked Samba-meister Jeremy Allison a bunch of questions. He has answered the 10 highest-moderated ones in the finest lounge-lizard style imaginable (below).

Ford's announcement last week that it was giving away computers, color monitors and Net access to each of its 350,000 world-wide employees and their families didn't make as much news as the cracking of Yahoo and AOL. But it deserves more attention. It was ground-breaking, technological history in the making. If this idea spreads, it could take the Net and the Web to completely new levels, and upend stereotypes (many advanced by yours truly) about greedy corporatism. Computer companies, schools and governments ought to be mortified that they didn't think of it first. Read more.

trims writes "Ford Motor Company is giving each of its 350,000 employees a computer & printer (and good ones, too), plus Internet service (by UUNet). Are we getting to the point where corporations subsidize the Internet in the name of productivity? It's a NY Times article (free registration required)" The Internet access is supposed to cost $5 per month - and possibly less in low-wage countries. Nice move, Ford!

We asked Jim Hall a bunch of questions Monday. Today we get answers about the reason for and future of FreeDOS, along with a sprinkling of advice for FreeDOS users and developers. Thanks, Jim, for taking the time to do this. (Guys like you, who work on "lower profile" open source projects, don't get nearly as much recognition as you deserve.) Click below for the complete interview.

Johnzo asks: "I'm in the market for a new printer, and I've noticed that a lot of sub-$300 laser printers are popping up on the marketplace. I don't need colour, as most of what I print is text -- but I want that text to be crisp and sharp and damp-resistant -- so a cheap laser would seem to be ideal for my needs. So, my question: can one buy a good laser for less than three bills? Does anyone have any input on specific models to look for or to avoid?" Interesting thought. The printer market seems to be chainging from year to year, and now B&W laser printers are becomming affordable for your average computer user. What recommendations do you all have?

ReadbackMonkey writes "AOL sued a Queen's based group of spammers, and was awarded $600k. " As always spam is a nasty problem. This morning I was hit with my wseekly request to purchase toner (I don't own a printer) as well as an exciting pornographic opportunity. Its annoying, but I still don't feel happy about seeing lawsuits like this. I'm happy to see spammers pay, but how far could this go?

Slashdot covers the continuing efforts of music and other industries to eliminate digital copying of, well, just about anything. But what about paper copies? What if every color photocopy you made included a unique serial number to trace the page back to the copy machine? What if every color printer, down to the lowliest inkjet, printed an invisible watermark on every page it printed? What if every scanner included a watermark in every scan that was traceable back to the scanner?

Last week, Microsoft and antritrust. This week, thoughts on KDE's future from some of the people who work directly on it, specifically Kurt Granroth and Richard Moore. Instead of posting their e-mail addresses here and swamping them with messages, please see http://developer.kde.org, which will tell you not only how you can contact these gentlemen, but much more about KDE development.

Brett Glass sent this message to the FreeBSD -chat mailing list, about his experiences and perceptions at COMDEX, and agreed to let me repost it here. Of particular interest are the problems he had trying to get vendors to support the BSDs and Linux. Read on for more.

mystik asks: "What would be a good printer for my linux system? I bought an HP712C for a great price, but was disappointed to find out that HP made the Protocol propriatary, and unanable to work without some siginificant hacking of my linux system. Hopefully I can get some good printers cheap... " Well, this is a rather broad question. It would help if folks would recommend several different printers covering as many of the printer classes (ie dot-matrix, bubble-jet, ink-jet, and lasers) as you can.

Monday's questions for the Cult of the Dead Cow ranged from serious-tech to silly. Various members of the Cult answered appropriately. Great stuff! One warning: if you are offended by strong language or are a hacker under 18, you should not read this Q&A session. The Cult is one of those groups the assorted nanny-censor programs try to keep away from deity-fearing, good-citizen, mass-average folks because they're commie anachist no-gooders. Or something like that. (And we like them that way!) Click below to learn why these people are A Danger to the Established Order(tm).

Long ago and far away, I started writing a series called "Road To Linux," in which I set out to learn Linux in a few weeks. Talk about clueless. Nearly one year, two wasted computers, a ticked-off spouse, (and a Yellow Lab who ate a motherboard) 30-plus books and manuals and much assorted debris later, I've more or less made it.

Michael Sweet writes "Well, it's taken us long enough (nearly 2 years since we started the project), but the Common UNIX Printing System, or "CUPS", is finally out of beta and ready to replace all those 1970's line printer spoolers masquerading as printing systems. What is CUPS, you ask?

GoRK asks: "I maintain a Samba server, the purpose of which is to serve a small farm of printers (5-10) to our Windows clients. These printers range from parallel-port-connected inkjets to network-connected color laser printers and high-volume copiers. I am interested in a printer management console which could provide a simple (read: cursor-keys) interface to someone who manages printing (read: copy boy). Ideally the console would allow someone to reorder document queues, delete documents from the queue, restart lpd, and pause printing on certain devices. Another extremely slick feature would be the ability to tag a queue'd item to save and reprint again later. Does anything like this already exist for Linux either in a free or commercial product? lpc works fine for me, but it's not exactly friendly and not exactly feature-rich, especially for the copy boy. "

tea-leaves writes "Xerox and Microsoft are partnering to put Windows NT in their print boxes and such. Story says the technology replaces "UNIX-compatible" software already in place. Xerox wants to compete with HP for the desktop printing market with integrated printer solutions that use Microsoft software for the interconnect. Check it out. " I feel like we're going to have to re-sanctify Palo Alto after this.

Flame is an interesting little beast. Some people would argue that it is the thing that makes the internet work- martial law? Mob rule? Others would argue that it is one of the most dangerous things about life online. I'm not (quite) egomaniacal enough to claim that I have a solution to the problem, but I'd like to share my perspective with you a bit. Click below to read it.

Hmmm...this seems to be printer-driver-question day. Vesuvian Doppleganger asks: "Where can I find Linux drivers for a Canon BJC-255SP colour bubble jet printer? The canon sites don't offer any Linux/UNIX support and an exhaustive search of the net has turned up nothing.... "

Jason Osborne asks: "There is one thing though Windows seems to excel at and that's printing. I have an HP Deskjet 660Cse and I can't get it to print correctly. I have searched the Internet endlessly and have tried many filters and daemons including both the original BSD print daemon and the somewhat newer LPRng daemon. I have seen many filters designed for HP Deskjet printers, it seems none will work for me. Does anyone have any information or filters on/for printing in Linux with HP Deskjets that may help? Are there any future development plans by HP or the Linux Development Team for any additional and more up to date information and drivers for the HP Deskjet 660Cse serious and other such 'Made for Windows' type printers? "

Brice Ruth has written a response to the lengthy debates sparked a few days ago on these pages regarding the new Internet Printer Protocol. He has a lot to say, and from an informed position. You should check this out if you're interested in the issue- a lot of good information seperating fact from fiction. Hit the link below to read it.

Ok, I don't own a printer, but some of you guys might still use that outdated paper thing. Here is an article about the Internet Printer Protocol (IPP) which is being touted now as the latest greatest in allowing people to print over the internet. Odd. I did it all the time when I was writing papers and stuff.