...making Linux just a little more fun!

The Back Page

• Gazette Matters
• Wacko Topic of the Month
• Not The Answer Gang
• World of Spam

Visible Changes

• lg_frontpage.html is gone, replaced by index.html.
• All lg_toc##.html -> index.html.
• All issue##.html -> TWDT.html. (Going back as far as issue 77.)
• All issue##.txt.gz -> TWDT.txt.gz. (Going back as far as issue 77.)
• All symlinks are removed except the "current" link.

1. If you bookmarked the home page of your favorite mirror as lg_frontpage.html, you must change the bookmark to index.html or just use the site name: http://www.linuxgazette.net/.
2. You can continue to bookmark the current issue as http://www.linuxgazette.com/current/ and it will update each month. This is also useful if you want to download the current issue to your palmtop each month.
3. You can access the TWDT versions each month from a persistent URL: http://www.linuxgazette.com/current/TWDT.html or http://www.linuxgazette.com/current/TWDT.txt.gz.
4. Windows users can stop complaining that symlinks don't unpack from tarballs on DOS filesystems, because there are no more symlinks! (Except one.)
5. The Front Page is reformatted and somewhat less verbose. More on the way.
6. If you have been downloading the FTP tarballs, you have a few obsolete files now. The disk space is minimal, but if you're obsessed with having a perfectly clean directory, delete it all and download lg-base.tar.gz and your favorite issues again. Downloading lg-base-new.tar.gz each month only updates and adds files, it doesn't delete obsolete files.

The mirrors took a bandwidth hit this month as the files were moving around, but the files have all settled down now. There will be another big shuffle sometime when we convert the 649 old GIFs to PNG/JPG, but that's such a big job I don't know when we'll be able to do it. Not just to convert the files -- that can take five minutes with ImageMagick's convert program, find and a small shell script -- but we also have to (1) decide whether image.png or image.jpg is smaller/looks better for each image, (2) change the IMG links in all the HTML files, (3) not use transparency, and (4) look at all the pages on various browsers. Any volunteers?

For next month, I want to refine the navigation links between articles and between the global pages.

There is one change which will affect only a couple mirror administrators. Next to the existing search links, there is a commented link the mirror site can replace with a link to their own search engine. The comment format has changed, and I noticed one misspelling in it ("ENDN" instead of "END"). So mirror administrators with local LG search engines will have to adjust their scripts. There may be further adjustment when the navigation links get refined.

Invisible Changes

---
key:     arndt
author:  arndt
title:   Office Linux -- Feedback
---
key:     bradley
author:  bradley
title:   Adding Plugin Capabilities To Your Code

The article header/footer, TOC, Front Page, Site Map, etc, are generated from Cheetah templates. Cheetah is a free software project I've been a developer on for the past 1 1/2 years. It's a string template system for Python. Cheetah has been generating the LG Mirrors page for several months.

There's a shared "lg" module that reads all the configuration files into a data structure and pickles it out to a cache file for fast reading. (Or actually cPickles it, which is a thousand times faster.) Then the script "article" takes the article entry and author(s) entry and puts the header/footer in the HTML file in place, deleting the previous header/footer if present. The "authors" script is more complicated because it has to make each Author's page as well as the author index, TAG bios index, and previous/next links for each. It also searches through the articles data to generate the links to all the articles published by each author.

I'm close to having TWDT automated, which I'm very happy about. No more manually creating that d*%n thing manually and then having to edit three files (the original, TWDT.html and TWDT.txt.gz) when an article needs a correction. Soon I'll be able to change just the original and then run twdt and have it automatically regenerate those two files. Well, almost. Heather generates the TAG column lg_answer and TWDT.lg_answer.html simultaneously from her mailbox files, and she tells me 'twould be difficult to generate TWDT.lg_answer.html from lg_answer. So for TAG corrections I'll still have to edit three files.

Rick Moen

Iron:

Dan Wilder:

Rick Moen:

You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
Your penpal is gone.

Error messages
Unfold across the monitor.
Glist'ning like the snow.

From From: Mike Orr

I'm writing a script for school and I'm having a bit of trouble. The problem is as follows: it must accept a from a user and display the squares of all the numbers starting from 1 to that number, as follows: 1 square = ___ 2 square =___

n square = ___

[Iron] Did you have a Linux question? If so, you forgot to include it.

You didn't mention which programming language you're using, but it doesn't matter. We're unlikely to answer questions that can be discovered by simply reading a tutorial for that programming language.

See http://www.linuxgazette.net/tag/ask-the-gang.html for the kinds of questions we're willing to answer.

See now... I answered a sendmail question! Smile

That tells you I do lurk, until I see a message I can answer!

---

From: Iron

Aww, somebody's trying to crack my Webware site. Sorry I don't have any files for you, buddy.

HTTP404: /favicon.ico
HTTP404: /_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?UL=1&ACT=4&BUILD=2614&STRMVER=4&;CAPREQ=0
HTTP404: /MSOffice/cltreq.asp?UL=1&ACT=4&BUILD=2614&STRMVER=4&;CAPREQ=0

From From: "Benjamin A. Okopnik" <fuzzybear@pocketmail.com>

On Tue, Jun 11, 2002 at 05:14:29PM +0200, denis k?llner wrote:

Hi i've download your software (lcdproc) and buyed me a display,

[Iron] I'm not sure who the "you" in "your software" would be, unless one of the Answer Gang wrote "lcdproc"...

i've connect the display to my LPT-Port how it is in your picture, but it doesn't work!!

Oh, of course we instantly recognize the exact problem! Thank you for such a precise description.

what is a Linux kernels?

[Neil Youngman] That's the tasty bit inside the Linux shell.

If you crack a Linux shell you can eat the kernel. Also you can grow new Linux trees from it.

They are very important if you're stuck on a desert island and they are your only source of food.

P.S. We don't do your homework for you.

Ben Okopnik:

Iron:

Ben:

I learned that stuff in school; with a lot of Russians of the previous generation (mine was already too cynical), it was an article of faith.

Iron:

Ben:

Neil Youngman:

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH STROKE
LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH STROKE

Ben Okopnik:

CAPITAL LETTER NOT PRONOUNCEABLE BY AMERICANS
SMALL LETTER NOT PRONOUNCEABLE BY AMERICANS

Heather Stern:

Not that this has much to do with Linux of course.... but there are a lot of Linux users in Brazil; IIRC Conectiva is quite popular.

I don't think Yahoo has a mirror of Linux Gazette, but searching there for "Brazil" would net you a better chance of good information than visiting Linux Gazette would, anyway.

Iron:

Iron:

Every program is different. I have no idea what *that* program does, whatever it is. I can guess from the word "view" that it's a database application, but that's only a guess. Why don't you tell us?

Iron:

Breen Mullins:

-- Breen, without quite the high notes to sing that baritone line.

Subject: The Punk Kittens Have A Song For You! *LOL*

Punk Rock Kittens *NEW* LOL!!

Iron:

I can just see Heather editing TAG with punk kittens wandering around the room....

Heather:

Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

PFRBQkxFIGNlbGxTcGFjaW5nPTAgY2VsbFBhZGRpbmc9MCB3aWR0aD03MjUg
Ym9yZGVyPTA+DQo8VEJPRFk+DQo8VFI+DQo8VEQgc3R5bGU9IkZPTlQtU0la

[Looks like a Klez worm to me. -Iron.]

• http://www.haxial.com/fraud/mikeaba.html
• http://www.geocities.com/scamjokepage/
• http://www.brianwizard.com/work/nigerian_419.htm
• http://www.state.gov/www/regions/africa/naffpub.pdf (PDF)

• profile signups for people that come to your page
• eNewsletter facility
• a database driven design -- so to change your content - you work with the database - not HTML

--------------------------------------------------------
DOWNLOAD THIS WHITE PAPER AND LEARN...
--------------------------------------------------------

*  The Hacker Profile

*  Common Hacking Tools - The Hacker's Toolkit

*  Top 10 Ways to Secure Against Attack

*  Seven Questions to Test Your Security

Faber Fedor:

Jay Ashworth:

What you should expect from this mini-course...

Today we'll give you the single, *most powerful* element in the ebook writing process...

Then we'll send you 3 more emails (one every 2 days) where we cover:

Email 1 - Creating an Idea and Writing your eBook quickly

Email 2 - Publishing Your eBook so *everyone* can read it

Email 3 - Selling Your eBook and making money!

So you see Answerguy we have a lot of ground to cover... let's get started!

[The interesting thing about this scam is not the measly amount they're offering ($33,000 instead of $33,000,000 -- as the message just before this offered), but the fact that it comes with a text attachment containing 1230 e-mail addresses, several being Linux Gazette authors and other famous Linux personalities. Oops, I think their harvesting software made a mistake. Did they run it in reverse? The funniest address is "billsux@microsloth.com"; I bet he's just waiting to invest. Here's an excerpt: -Iron.]

Email
gazette@linuxgazette.net
tag@lists.linuxgazette.net
Heather Stern <star@starshine.org>
Michael Conry <michael.conry@softhome.net>
tag-request@ssc.com
Shane Collinge <shane_collinge@yahoo.com>
Matteo Dell'Omodarme <matt@martine2.difi.unipi.it>
Paul Evans <pevans@catholic.org>
Mark Nielsen <info@gnujobs.com>
Ben Okopnik <ben-fuzzybear@yahoo.com>
billsux@microsloth.com
sponsor@ssc.com
webmaster@linuxgazette.de
ftp@be.easynet.net
Doc Searls <doc@ssc.com>
Contact Us <info@osdn.com>
ShadowDragon <brian.smithSPAM@SUXshadoweb.net>
ASCIIMan <jsaNOSPAMboe@artifexREMOVETHIS.org>
tag@lists.linuxgazette.net
postmaster@aol.com
Username@Host
needbulkisp@yahoo.com
MAILER-DAEMON@aol.com
550MAILER-DAEMON@aol.com
gnu@gnu.org
email us <weblocal@linux-mandrake.com>
click here <tony@eastmont.net>
Ben Okopnik <fuzzybear@pocketmail.com>
marketing@elinux.com
you@email.address
info@suse.com
support@suse.it
suse@suse.de
announce@en.tldp.org <announce-subscribe@en.tldp.org.NOSPAM>
-unsubscribe@en.tldp.org
esr@thyrsus.com
debian-user@lists.debian.org
mirrors@debian.org
security@debian.org
sales@nostarch.com
webmaster@kernel.org
ftpadmin@kernel.org

Happy Linuxing!

Mike ("Iron") Orr
Editor, Linux Gazette, gazette@linuxgazette.net