UPFRONT

Here's an interesting trend. A few months ago, Wal-Mart.com started selling cheap PCs equipped with no OS at all. Then they started selling the same boxes equipped with the new Lindows OS (which runs Linux and Windows apps). Now they've added a series of slightly more upscale models that run Mandrake Linux.

The Lindows models run $299-$599 (US). The bottom model has an AMD Duron 850MHz processor, 128MB memory and a 10GB hard drive. The top model has a 1.8GHz Pentium 4, 256MB DDR memory and a 40GB hard drive.

The Mandrake models run $391-$648 (US). The bottom model has an AMD Duron 900MHz processor, 128MB memory and a 40GB hard drive. The top model has an Intel 2.0GHz Pentium 4 processor, 256MB DDR memory and a 40GB hard drive.

None come with monitors. Those begin at $128.42 (US) for a 17" model with up to 1280 × 1024 resolution. Color printers start at $49.63 (US) for a Lexmark Z23.

Prices and models are from mid-July 2002.

—Doc Searls

Q1 Eric Allman wrote the original Sendmail program to allow users to exchange mail among what three networks at the University of California, Berkeley?

Q2 ^TO_ in a procmail recipe is short for what?

Q3 How do you expunge deleted messages in Mutt?

Q4 What was the first Mail Transport Agent (MTA) ported to Linux, and when did it occur?

Q5 D. J. Bernstein's Maildir structure for storing mail in directories uses what three subdirectories per mailbox?

Q6 The --send-keys option of Gnu Privacy Guard sends keys where?

Q7 Who has the world's longest .signature file?

A1 ARPANet, UUCP and the University's own BerkNet.

A2 Any header that specifies a recipient of the mail: To, Cc and Bcc, along with less common ones such as Apparently-To and Envelope-To.

A3 Use the sync-mailbox function, which is bound to the $ key by default.

A4 smail, which Ian Kluft ported in 1992.

A5 The three subdirectories are: new, for newly delivered mail not yet seen by the user's mailer; cur, for mail that the mailer has seen (but that still may be unread by the user); and tmp, for temporary files.

A6 To a keyserver, so that other PGP and GPG users can easily look up your key.

A7 James “Kibo” Parry. It contains two ASCII art representations of the Starship Enterprise, one ASCII art sword, a recommended reading list and much other fascinating material. At 993 lines, it exceeds the recommended four lines by a bandwidth-sucking 24,725%.

—Don Marti