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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS);faqs.199 Miscellaneous. valkyries.andrew.cmu.edu (128.2.232.4) is a general repository for chess-related material. See the pub/chess directory. New material may be placed in pub/chess/uploads. There are a number of freeware chess programs for MS-DOS (also gnuchess and XBoard), graphical ICS clients, "Chess Bits" archive, and an archive of the Fischer-Spassky II games. GNU chess. Gnuchess is a freely available chess-playing software program. Gnuchess 4.0 can be FTP'ed from prep.ai.mit.edu, export.lcs.mit.edu, and probably other sites. It can be compiled for X Windows (with XBoard, below), SunView, curses, IBM PC character set, or ASCII interfaces. Included in the package are the utilities gnuan (analysis program), game (PostScript printout), postprint (prints hashfile), checkgame (checks a game listing for illegal moves), and checkbook (checks the opening book for illegal moves). It has been posted to gnu.chess. LaTex chess macros. Piet Tutelaers' (rcpt@rwc.urc.tue.nl) chess LaTex package (version 1.2) may be FTP'ed from sol.cs.ruu.nl (131.211.80.5); please restrict access to weekends or evenings. A server can answer e-mail requests (put "send HELP" as the message to mail-server@cs.ruu.nl). Get TEX/chess12.*. See [23]. Notation. Notation is a chess game score preprocessor written by Henry Thomas (hthomas@irisa.fr). It reads chess games, either in full algebraic or shortened notation (i.e., Nf1-g3 or f1g3 or Ng3) and is able to output the games and/or the board at any move, in ASCII, PostScript, TeX, or nroff. It also can generate output for the gnuan and XBoard programs. It is multi-lingual for piece identification; understanding French, English, German, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Polish, etc. The program also handles variations and symbolized comments. It works fine on UNIX (Sun SPARCstation and Sun-3). It uses standard C, and function declarations are done in both K&R-C and ANSI-C. It won't be difficult to compile for MS-DOS with MSC. Sources have been posted to comp.sources.misc. You can also get them from Mr. Thomas by e-mail. They may be FTP'ed from wuarchive.wustl.edu, in /usenet/comp.sources.misc/volume28/notation/*.Z (European users use garbo.uwasa.fi). Chess programming toolkit. The Standard Algebraic Notation (SAN) Kit chess programming C source toolkit is designed to help chess software efforts by providing common routines for move notation I/O, move generation, move execution, and various useful position manipulation services. There are substantial additions to the previous version which include a standard position notation scheme along with some benchmarking tests. A main program is included which gives sample calls for the various routines. Simple I/O functions are also provided. A clever programmer needs only to add a search and an evaluation function to produce a working chessplaying program. A programmer who already has the source to a chessplaying program may improve it further by including toolkit routines as needed for standardization. The author of this package is Steven J. Edwards (sje@xylos.ma30.bull.com). The SAN Kit may be retrieved from valkyries.andrew.cmu.edu (128.2.232.4) as pub/chess/misc/san.tar.Z XBoard. XBoard is an X11/R4-based user interface for GNU Chess. It uses the R4 Athena widgets and Xt Intrinsics to provide an interactive referee for managing a chess game between a user and a computer opponent or between two computers. You can also use XBoard without a chess program to play through games in files or to play through games manually (force mode); in this case, moves aren't validated. XBoard manages a digital chess clock for each player and resets the clocks if the proper number of moves are played within the time control period. A game can be started with the initial chess position, with a series of moves from a game file or with a position from a position file. The "match" shell script runs a series of games between two machines, alternating sides. The man page describes other features. XBoard was originally written by Dan Sears and Chris Sears. It borrows its colors, icons and piece bitmaps from XChess, which was written and copyrighted by Wayne Christopher. We thank him for his work on XChess. Beginning with version 2.0, Tim Mann <mann@src.dec.com> has taken over development of XBoard. XBoard 2.0 can be FTP'ed from prep.ai.mit.edu, export.lcs.mit.edu, and probably other sites. It has been posted to gnu.chess. XICS. xics, an X Window System client for ICS, is available from export.lcs.mit.edu (18.24.0.12) via FTP in /contrib/xics.epi.small.tar.Z. Version 2.0 is available from valkyries.andrew.cmu.edu (128.2.232.4) in /pub/chess/ics-clients/xics-2.0.tar.Z. [19] Chess-Playing Computers ---------------------------- There are numerous dedicated chess-playing computers available commercially, as well as chess-playing software for various personal computers. Prices vary from perhaps $10,000 for the most expensive dedicated computer to perhaps $30 for the cheapest software (see [20]). The differences are basically how strong the machine (or software) plays, and the other features it has to offer (e.g., for dedicated machines: size of board, wood/plastic, autosensory or "push the pieces," etc.). When purchasing a chess computer or software, it is best to buy something which plays at least 300 points above your rating. Here are the estimated USCF ratings for some of the more popular dedicated chess computers. Some explanations of abbreviated headings: "CSS"+ means _Computer Schach und Spiele_ (based on nearly 30,000 games--most at 40 moves in 2 hours--plus nearly 5,000 computer-human tournament games) with 150 points added to adjust for the average difference between C.R.A. ratings and the German list. Numbers in parentheses are calculated from the same program's performance at another speed (i.e., by dividing by MHz factors, a rating achieved at a higher--or even lower--MHz can be adjusted to what its strength would be at a different speed). (This is the top portion of the list from _Computer Chess Reports Quarterly_, 2nd Quarter, 1992.) Computer MHz Approx. USCF rating CSS+ CCR30 Mephisto Vancouver 68030 36 2504 (2449) Mephisto Lyon 68030 36 2456 (2473) Mephisto Portorose 68030 36 2437 (2400) Fidelity Elite 10 68040 25 2415 (2421) Mephisto Vancouver 32 bit (68020) 12 2406 (2340) Fidelity Elite 9 68030 32 2395 (2371) Mephisto Lyon 32 bit (68020) 12 2354 2364 Mephisto Portorose 32 bit (68020) 12 2344 2291 Fidelity Premiere 68000 16 (2335) 2290 Mephisto Vancouver 16 bit (68000) 12 2325 2277 Mephisto Lyon 16 bit (68000) 12 2278 2303 Fidelity Designer 2325 68020 20 2324 2314 Mephisto Almeria 32 bit (68020) 12 2295 2289 Fidelity Elite 5 (2 68000's) 16 2273 **** Mephisto Portorose 16 bit (68000) 12 2248 2235 Mephisto Polgar 10 (6502) 10 **** 2252 Novag Diablo/Scorpio (68000) 16 2227 2225 Fidelity Elite 2 (68000) 16 2258 (2210) Mephisto Almeria 16 bit (68000) 12 2212 2219 Fidelity Mach 3, Designer 2265 16 2223 2204 Mephisto Milano (6502) 5 2175 2123 Mephisto Mondial 68000xl (68000) 12 (2176) 2195 Mephisto Polgar 5 (6502) 5 2165 2193 Mephisto MM5 5 2161 2149 Novag Super Expert/Forte C (6502) 6 2168 (2184) (discontinued) Mephisto Roma 68000 12 2170 2161 Novag Super Export/Forte B (6502) 6 2116 (2201) Mephisto Academy (6502) 5 2131 2146 Fidelity Mach II L.A. (68000) 12 2143 2160 The following were listed in _Computer Chess Reports Quarterly_, 3rd Quarter, 1990. Fidelity Elite 6/Mach 4 20 2285 Fidelity Elite 5 16 2239 Saitek Galileo Maestro D 10 2118 Fidelity Designer Display 2100 6 2071 Fidelity Chesster 5 2055 Saitek Stratos 5.6 2031 Novag Super VIP (handheld) 10 1945 Mephisto Marco Polo (handheld) 8 1880 Some recommendations: If you want a dedicated computer rated at least 2200 and are willing to live with a small plastic board and pieces, buy a Fidelity Mach III for just over $300. For a larger wood board w/autosensory, buy a Novag Super Expert C (now discontinued) for nearly $600. For something in the 2100 range, either the Fidelity Designer Display 2100 (about $150 with small plastic board and pieces) or the Saitek Galileo Maestro D ($? more expensive and nicer). Handhelds: either the Super VIP ($119) or the Mephisto Marco Polo (about the same price). There are a number of non-commercial chess-playing machines, the strongest and most famous of which is "Deep Thought." Deep Thought was built and programmed by graduate students Feng-Hsiung Hsu, Thomas Anantharaman, Murray Campbell, Peter Jansen, Mike Browne, and Andreas Nowatzyk at Carnegie Mellon University, and who are now working (some of them, anyway) for IBM. The current version of Deep Thought has beaten several GM's and many IM's. It has a USCF rating of about 2520. (The Oct. 1990 issue of _Scientific American_ goes into more detail on Deep Thought.) Another Carnegie Mellon product, "Hitech," was developed by former World Correspondence Champion Dr. Hans Berliner and sports a USCF rating just over 2400. [20] Chess-Playing Software --------------------------- The strength of chess-playing software is highly dependent on the hardware it runs on (all software discussed is for MS-DOS; programs available for MacOS are noted). Here is a method to approximate the strength differences for the same software running on different hardware (source: _Computer Chess Reports Quarterly_). Processor "Chess MIP's" 8088 Speed in MHz divided by 19 80286, 1 wait state Speed in MHz divided by 8 80286, 0 wait states Speed in MHz divided by 6 80386, no cache memory Speed in MHz divided by 6 80386 with cache Speed in MHz divided by 4.7 80486 Speed in MHz divided by 2.3 Now, if a program has a given rating on a 1 (Chess) MIP machine, this is how to adjust the rating for other MIP's (interpolate between points): MIP: 0.25 0.5 1 1.5 2 3 4 6 8 12 16 24 32 48 64 Adj.: -180 -87 0 47 80 124 154 195 223 261 287 323 347 379 402 For example, a program running on a 10 MHz 8088 (0.5 MIP's and -87 points) will be about 272 USCF rating points weaker than the same program running on a 33 MHz 80386 (no cache: 5.5 MIP's and +185 points). The strongest commercially available chess software is generally agreed to be MChess (price around $100), with RexChess and Zarkov next (for around $70). All these programs will play in the USCF Master range on a 33 MHz 80386, with MChess approaching the Senior Master threshold. Zarkov interfaces to the Bookup database (see [21]). In descending order of strength, here is the next tier of commercial software: Colossus Chess X, Chessmaster 2100, and Sargon IV. These programs would generally perform in the USCF Expert range on a 33 MHz 80386 machine. BattleChess is a weaker program, although it has by far the most entertaining graphics. Available for MacOS: Chessmaster, Sargon, and BattleChess (also CheckMate, by the authors of BattleChess). Recommendation on chess-playing software: Buy one of the top three programs, especially if you have something less than a 33 MHz 80386. Only consider Colossus Chess or Chessmaster 2100 if you are bone poor or you have a very fast PC and don't ever intend to play above 1800 USCF. Gnuchess is a freely available chess-playing software program (see [18]). Its strength varies widely based on the machine for which it's compiled. [21] Database Software ---------------------- Chess databases store games and information about games, and can manipulate and recall that information in a variety of ways. The "big three" of chess databases are NICBase, ChessBase, and Bookup. You can purchase data disks for each of these databases. NICBase and ChessBase are game-oriented, while Bookup is opening-oriented. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. A good (but dated) review of these programs was written by Eric Schiller and appeared in the Sept. 1990 _Chess Life_. Bookup interfaces with the Zarkov chess-playing software. NICBase 3.0 ($175; MS-DOS & Atari) & NICTools ($125) from Chess Combination, Inc., P.O. Box 2423 Noble Station, Bridgeport, CT 06608-0423. 203-367-1555; fax 203-380-1703. Internet 70244.1532@compuserve.com (Albert Henderson). Free catalog. $10 demo disk (free for Internet or CompuServe users). ChessBase 3.0 (MS-DOS only); basic $295, deluxe $395, upgrade from 2.2 $75. ChessBase ACCESS $39.95. ChessBase USA, P.O. Box 133, Hagerstown, MD 21741. 301-733-7541 (orders only: 800-524-3527); fax 301-797-6269. USCF prices: 3.0 $279, ACCESS $37.95. ChessBase 4.0 is out; upgrade from 3.0 is $60-70, depending on manual. (I don't have current prices on 4.0). Bookup from Chess Laboratories, P.O. Box 3541, S. Pasadena, CA 91031. 818-799-7567. Version 7 for MS-DOS costs $99 and version 1.3 for MacOS costs $59. [22] Utility Software --------------------- Eric Churchill's Chess Recorder, a (PC) Windows program that records chess moves, suitable for keeping track of postal games, will be uploaded to GEnie and submitted to comp.binaries.ibm.pc. (It even keeps a log of when the moves were entered, which could be used to keep track of postal time limits.) You can enter annotations and other comments and they appear in a separate window when the corresponding move is displayed. The program will print out the moves of the game (with annotations). $15 shareware fee. Graphics are quite good--looks OK even on monochrome systems. The colors of the pieces on color systems are 'interesting.' It can now flip colors to put Black on bottom. For other software utilities see [18]. [23] Using Figurine Notation, Symbolic Annotation, or Diagrams in Printed Text ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ There are basically three ways of composing chess texts in international figurine notation (or including diagrams in printed text): 1) Use a wordprocessor or page-layout program and a chess font. For instance, for the Apple Macintosh there are at least 3 different sets of fonts usable with standard wordprocessors like Microsoft Word, MacWrite, Nisus or WriteNow; or with page-layout programs like Illustrator or PageMaker. Most of these fonts are proprietary (you must purchase them). The fonts usually can be used for both the figurines and the diagrams. A freely available/usable PostScript font, including a variety of figurines, diagrams and _Informant_ symbols, has been posted to comp.fonts and rec.games.chess by Andy Walker (anw@maths.nott.ac.uk). 2) Use a chess-specific writing application. ChessWriter (Apple Macintosh) offers an interface including a chessboard and a text window. Moves made on the chessboard are automatically transformed into characters in the text window. ChessWriter is proprietary. 3) Use the LaTeX chess macros and fonts package by Piet Tutelaers (see [18]). TeX is an advanced public-domain system for text formatting available on mainframes, workstations and personal computers. LaTeX is a set of text-formatting macros for TeX. METAFONT is a font generator program for TeX. For general information on all of these, and pointers to reference manuals, see the FAQ list posting in comp.text.tex.) Once you have the chess package, you'll need to 3a) be able to use METAFONT to generate chess fonts starting from the programs contained in the package; 3b) be able to install the LaTeX macros in your TeX system; and 3c) learn the macro language to format chess texts. Activity 3a can become tiresome if you do not have any help from a TeX wizard. Using LaTeX to write chess text is not very simple, but the results are worth the effort. [24] Trivia ----------- How long is the longest possible chess game? The basic idea is a player may claim a draw if fifty moves elapse without a capture or a pawn advance. Ignoring the special cases where more than 50 moves are allowed by the rules, the answer is after Black's 5948th move, White is able to claim a draw. The simple calculation is (<Pawn_moves> + <Captures> - <Duplicates> + <Drawing_interval_grace_period>) * <Drawing_interval>, or (16*6 + 30 - 8 + 1) * 50 = 5950; we're able to trim two moves from this total by observing that sequences of Captures/Pawn_moves must have (at least) 4 alternations between the two players. [25] Common Acronyms -------------------- AI Artificial Intelligence ("Anything we can't do with a computer") BCE _Basic Chess Endings_ (see your local chess book source) BCF British Chess Federation BCO _Batsford Chess Openings_ (see [11]) DT Deep Thought (see [19]) DT II Deep Thought; latest version ECO _Encylopedia of Chess Openings_ (see your local chess book source) ELO Arpad Elo's rating system (see [5]) FAQ Frequently Asked Question (see news group news.answers) FIDE Federation Internationale des Echecs (see [1]) FM FIDE Master (see [1]) F-S II Fischer-Spassky match held Sept-Nov '92 (Fischer won 10-5) GM Grandmaster (see [1]) ICS Internet Chess Server (see [18]) IGM see GM IM International Master (see [1]) IWM International Woman Master (see [1]) KIA King's Indian Attack (see opening books) KID King's Indian Defense (see opening books) MCO _Modern Chess Openings_ (see [11]) N Novelty (see TN) NM National Master (or just "Master"; see [5]) OTB Over-the-board (as opposed to correspondence/postal chess) QGA Queen's Gambit Accepted (see opening books) QGD Queen's Gambit Declined (see opening books) SM Senior Master (see [5]) TD Tournament Director TN Theoretical Novelty A new idea in an opening line (usually used when a GM first tries it) USCF United States Chess Federation (see [2]) WGM International Woman Grandmaster (see [1]) [27] Variants ------------- Over the centuries, many variations of chess have appeared and more have been invented recently by gaming enthusiasts. Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc. (28 South Main Street, Rutland, VT 05701) has published a general book on the subject: _Chess Variations: Ancient, Regional, and Modern_ by John Gollon. Two of the most popular alternatives to our version of chess are known as Chinese Chess (or shiang-chi or xiangqi) and Shogi (or Japanese Chess). Ishi Press International (76 Bonaventura Drive, San Jose, CA 95134) sells good books on both of these games. (_Chinese Chess for Beginners_ by Sam Sloan and _Shogi for Beginners_ by John Fairbairn. Warning: Sam Sloan's eccentric views about chess history are far from universally accepted.) One relatively recent variation of chess is called Ultima and is described in detail in the book _Abbott's New Card Games_ by Robert Abbott. [28] Disclaimer and Copyright Notice ------------------------------------ Some answers given may reflect personal biases of the author and the FAQ listing's contributors. In cases where the answers name specific products and their respective manufacturers, these are not to be taken as endorsements of, nor commercials for, the manufacturer. Where cost information is stated this is based on "street" information, and is in no way binding on the seller. Unless otherwise stated, prices, addresses, and telephone numbers are in United States' terms. The answers contained herein pertain to discussions on the rec.games.chess newsgroup, and are by no means exhaustive. The FAQ list owes its existence to the contributors on the net, and as such it belongs to the readers of rec.games.chess. Copies may be made freely, as long as they are distributed at no charge, and the disclaimer and the copyright notice are included. -- William R. Shauck Internet: shauck@netcom.com Xref: bloom-picayune.mit.edu soc.college:16731 soc.net-people:5469 news.answers:4690 Newsgroups: soc.college,soc.net-people,news.answers Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!enterpoop.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!news.bbn.com!usc!cs.utexas.edu!torn!news.ccs.queensu.ca!qucis.queensu.ca!dalamb From: dalamb@qucis.queensu.ca (David Lamb) Subject: FAQ: College Email Addresses 1/3 [Monthly posting] Message-ID: <faq1_724597813@qucis.QueensU.CA> Followup-To: poster Supersedes: <faq1_722005814@qucis.QueensU.CA> Reply-To: dalamb@qucis.queensu.ca Organization: Computing & Information Science, Queen's University Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 13:10:20 GMT Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu Expires: Sat, 30 Jan 1993 13:10:13 GMT Lines: 1127 Archive-name: college-email/part1 Last-Modified: Tue Dec 15 14:12:18 1992 by David Lamb Version: 3.24 This is a summary of how to find email addresses for undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff at various colleges and universities. If your university is not listed, send me a detailed description of how to find email addresses there and I'll add it to this list. Please mail ADDITIONS, CORRECTIONS, SUGGESTIONS, and OTHER INFORMATION to me at dalamb@qucis.queensu.ca. I will *not* answer requests for help finding a specific address; if the school is not listed in this posting, I probably do not have any information about the site, and certainly do not have the time to answer the mail. An updated version of this list is posted every once in a while to the newsgroups soc.college, soc.net-people and news.answers. The version date for this list is located at the top of the file. The list is also available via anonymous ftp from ftp.qucis.queensu.ca (host 130.15.1.100) in the directory pub/dalamb/college-email as the files faq1.text, faq2.text, and faq3.text. You can also get the file by anonymous ftp from rtfm.mit.edu (18.172.1.27) in the file /pub/usenet/soc.college/Student_Email_Addresses, or by sending a mail message to "archive-server@qucis.queensu.ca" with the subject send dalamb/college-email or by sending a message to "mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu" with the subject send usenet/soc.college/Student_Email_Addresses A copy of this file may be found on the WAIS server at wais.cic.net, thanks to Edward Vielmetti (emv@msen.com, emv@cic.net). After a discussion of general facilities for locating email addresses, we present detailed information on locating the email addresses of students, faculty and staff at various universities. Disclaimer: Most universities have restrictions on the uses of directory information. So don't use this info for commercial purposes or whatnot without securing permission from the individual colleges and universities. ;;; ******************************** ;;; General Facilities ************* ;;; ******************************** There are several general facilities for locating an email address. We concentrate on those usable from the internet. o finger Finger is a user information lookup program that lists the login name, full name, office location and phone number (if known), login time, idle time, time mail was last read, and the contents of the .plan and .project files from the home directory of current UNIX users. The information listed varies from site to site, and not all sites allow remote fingering. [Plan files are "sys$login:plan" on VMS systems.] To use finger, simply call finger as follows finger <username>@<machinename> replacing <machinename> with the name of the appropriate machine, and <username> with the name of the person or the person's login ID. For example, % finger mkant@cs.cmu.edu [CS.CMU.EDU] [ Forwarding mkant as "mkant+@a.gp.cs.cmu.edu" ] [A.GP.CS.CMU.EDU] Login name: mkant In real life: Mark Kantrowitz Directory: /usr2/mkant Shell: /usr/cs/bin/csh Last login Tue Apr 2 15:21 on ttyQ7 from LION.OZ.CS.CMU.EDU No new mail, last read on Thu Apr 11 16:27 Notice how fingering my userid at the generic address forwarded the request to the correct machine. Many universities are set up to do forwarding in this manner, so that mail may be sent to the generic address and is automatically forwarded to the maildrop on the machine where the user receives his or her mail. Fingering using last names or full names may work, depending on the site: % finger Mark.Kantrowitz@cs.cmu.edu [CS.CMU.EDU] [ Forwarding Mark.Kantrowitz as "mkant+@a.gp.cs.cmu.edu" ] % finger kantrowitz@cs.cmu.edu [CS.CMU.EDU] [ Forwarding kantrowitz as "mkant+@a.gp.cs.cmu.edu" ] Some sites with use an underscore (_) instead of a period (.) in the full name (e.g., Mark_Kantrowitz), or require an extra period to specify middle initials (Mark.X.Kantrowitz). If fingering using the last name doesn't work, you can try sampling various possibilities for userids. The following are some possibilities. After the description of each possibility, I give an example in square brackets with either my name (Mark Kantrowitz, no middle initial) or "John C Smith", and a generic acronym for the method (these acronyms will be used in the detailed listings section of this file). - Many UNIX sites limit userids to 8 characters, so try the first 8 characters of the last name. [smith or kantrowi] llllllll - If there are two people with the same last name, the first initial (and possibly the middle initial as well) are appended at the front of the name. [jsmith or jcsmith] flllllll fmllllll - Try appending the initials at the end of the name. [smithj or smithjc] lllllllf llllllfm - Try the initials of the users name. [jcs] fml Unfortunately, you cannot finger to bitnet addresses. o whois/nicname Whois is the internet user name directory service. Do whois help nicname -h to get a help message. The whois and nicname programs will check the database maintained by SRI-NIC (Network Information Center at SRI International) for the given names. For example, nicname <name> whois <name> whois -h <host> <names> (e.g., whois -h stanford.edu <names>) This is only useful for people listed in the database. Many regional networks and some universities maintain their own NICs. You can also get some of this information by telneting to nic.ddn.mil and running whois and host there. o Merit Network NetMail database Allows one to find the appropriate bitnet, internet or uucp address for a site given part of the address. telnet hermes.merit.edu At the "Which Host?" prompt, type netmailsites then enter any part of the address you want. o nslook/nslookup and hostq programs Some sites have programs which will give you information about a host given its name or IP address. Some such programs include nslook, nslookup, and hostq. o Netfind Use a netfind client or server program to search for name domain where name is the last name of the individual and domain is the domain name. You can use Netfind by telnet/rlogin to bruno.cs.colorado.edu (use userid "netfind" with no password). o help/gripe/olc If your site has consultants or facilities staff responsible for helping users/fixing bugs/maintaining software, try sending them mail. Often they will be able to help you. If you don't know how to contact these people, ask someone in your department, or try sending mail to the userid 'help'. o postmaster Most sites have an individual responsible for network and mail operations at the site, usually with the userid of 'postmaster'. So if you're having trouble with mail, first send mail to postmaster at your site, and if that fails, try sending it to postmaster at the destination site. Postmasters are usually very busy people, so try not to bother them much. o /etc/hosts Mail routing on the internet use to use a large file called /etc/hosts to validate host names. This file contained information regarding the known hosts on the network. Many sites have switched to using the BIND name server for this purpose, so the file /etc/hosts may be horribly out of date. On the other hand, some sites may use /etc/hosts as a backup when the name server isn't running. Usually sites will create the /etc/hosts file from the host data base maintained at SRI-NIC; unfortunately, the SRI-NIC database is incomplete. In any event, if you don't know the name of a machine at the university your friend is at, you can try greping through /etc/hosts for the university name or acronym to possibly come up with a likely for the site.