So the vi team won on technical grounds. In reality though I think both teams won. I found the emacs team very convincing (I use both daily btw); I'll be using Emacs more for sure. I think a better topic should have been selected myself (although I'm to blame for that one being selected :-/).

That would have allowed each team to argue their strengths (the topic basically asked each team to argue the weakness of its editor).

I wonder if perhaps the best thing to do would be to have each side simply present their strengths. Instead of deciding the "winner" as we did last week; a better way would be to see who is going to try either of the editors/other religious war topic.

A line struck me from the affirmative to the effect that emacs only works on part of your file at once, doesn't neccessarily read the whole thing in memory. I didn't know that about emacs, it's certainly something to keep in mind.

The only argument that is worthwhile is one that changes your mind.

If you _have_ to 'screen scrape', I've found the following perl modules very useful.

use LWP::UserAgent;
use HTTP::Cookies;
use HTTP::Request::Common qw(POST);
use HTML::Form;

Tempting to apply for 50,000 ABN numbers (don't do this!)

DISGRUNTLED LINUX USERS "FIX" OZ GOVT, MAKE WORLD BETTER PLACE

SLUGWIRE Mon Jul 3 12:22:01 EST 2000
Exploiting a "hole" in the Australian Tax Office meta-process, users of the Linux computer operating system today bombarded the ATO web site with thousands of Australian Business ABN Number requests, in what they describe as a "Denial of Non-Service" attack. SLUG elder Hamie Jonan denied that Larry Wall appeared to him in a dream and told him to take action, and continued by saying "I just thought it was a funny idea at the time -- I forgot to take into account that every stupid idea mentioned on the SLUG mailing list gets done by someone, somewhere, within 48 hours".

"I just wanted to be able to do my taxes without pausing CivCTP," explained SLUG member Ranthony 'Umble, "and in order to do that I had to import Win4Lin. The Tax Office specifies in detail what you need for the GST, but 'cluefulness' isn't part of it".

But while the course of action was clear to the SLUGgers, some finer points tripped them up early on. For example, they spent the first 36 hours arguing about what editor to use to write the script in. "Sure, it was a ten-line script" explained Langus Ees, "but like hell I'm looking at that without syntax highlighting". Fourteen people replied instantly to this comment, variously pointing out that vim has syntax highlighting, that jed has syntax highlighting, and that syntax highlighting is for weenies.

Even before the script had been written, Kanand Umria had released a debian package for it. "I had to make it a virtual package, seeing as the code didn't exist yet," he explained, "but of course, Debian's good for that sort of thing". The package is configured to bombard the Tax Office every morning at 7am, and, in passing, it makes toast and jam. "What can I say -- I like toast and jam," said Umria, "that's why I use Debian".

Four meaningless flamewars later, the script was ready to go. After passing through various incarnations in perl, python and php4, it was decided to write the final version in visual basic script. "The package management on Linux systems is pretty good," explained Bason Jall, "and Napster is even better, but we realised the most effective way to distribute software today is using Outlook Express". "Outlook Express sux!" chimed in one user. "Besides," continued Jall, "this way everyone will just blame Bill Gates, and he gets away with this sort of thing all the time".

Within minutes of the attack being launched an urgent message appeared on the SLUG list from one pcostello@ato.gov.au, who wrote "</lurk> Hey, cut it out ppl. We'll let you use Linux for the GST, but first you've gotta hack GnuCash so it _works_. If you start now you can probably get it done by next July.

"While I'm here," he continued, "can anyone help me? I'm trying to write a script to add 10% to every number in a file ..."

So I have been dreaming for some time of how to create my own .pdf files without paying a heap for Adobe Acrobat. Most of the docs I want to pdfify (pdf - i - fy) are M$ word docs. The new import filters are good enough to handle most word docs, so I nowsimply load the .doc file. Then I do a print to file (e.g. myfile.ps) which I then run through ps2pdf (e.g. ps2pdf myfile.ps myfile.pdf). Churn churn and a few seconds later you have yourself a nifty looking platform independent free pdf file.

If you're really clever you can turn this into a printer share and let people print to it from their Windows boxes and either (if authenticated) have the pdf emailed to them or turn up in some shared temporary directory a few moments later. After all, even Windows can produce Postscript!

I have only a rudimentary understanding of journalling filesystems, so please be gentle with my rather basic question. I installed my system SuSE 6.4 using the Reiser FS and found it to be slower than the regular ext2 FS by quite a large amount. So much so that I reinstalled using ext2. (My Linux box is only a Cyrix 686 166+) Is a journalling FS usually slower or is it just my box?

journeling goes

"cache"
"ok im going to write data"
"write data"
"i just wrote data"

so if it crashes any way through nothing is lost
ext2 just goes

"cache"
"write data"

yeah, thats pretty much journelling in a nut shell

hi,
this is the error i am getting when i try to mount a iso image.

#mount -t vfat -o loop /home/schakrab/shuv.iso /mnt/cdrom
ioctl: LOOP_SET_FD: Invalid argument

thanx in advance !

shuv

ps- kernel is 2.2.12 which has loop device support ( modular ). i already did an "insmod loop"

i can also provide the detailed strace message if u want :)

This may seem like a silly question but I need to know:

What are the finer distinctions between NERD and GEEK?

Which if wither would you like to be?

A geek on the otherhand os more 'normalised'. Not socially backward - quite the opposite, not as concerned with own appearance but more clothing concious (vendorware :), general hacker mentality. Knowledge hungry and either knows a lot about a lot, or is at least knowledgeable in many technical aspects. That's why if you ask *any* question on SLUG you'll get lotsa answers from lotsa people :)

Nerds are people who pursue unusual activities of a non "sport" nature and are often social outcasts of one form or another. They are not neccessarily "clever" or have outstanding IQ's - they may in fact be the dumbest kid in the classroom. They are typically socially ostracized maybe because they look different or act differently.

Geeks are more typically educated in something and are passionate about whatever it is. You can have maths geeks, computer geeks or even history or linguistic geeks. They are often confused with nerds because they may look or act the same.

Children are the most conservative of conservatives - they do not like their peers to be different from the others in their group. If one kid acts funny, looks funny or talks funny they will often be classed as a "nerd". Nerds with enough brain power to realise their predicament and find a form of escape usually graduate to being geeks. Those that don't, join the army, drive taxis or become single mothers....

I think a nerd may want to be a geek but has somehow lost it on the way.

Bottom line
Nerds are nerdy
Geeks are kewl =)

The funny thing is, in my experience, 'geek' is the derogatory term and 'nerd' is the term of praise. I get called 'nerdy' by my non-computer literate friends, and amongst my comp-literate friends we call each other 'nerd'. 'Geek', I feel holds negative connotations; it sounds too much like 'freak'.

Nerd is Nice,
Geek is Grotesque.

Site, simply because they are under permanent construction.

A sight is what you call a woman whom you want to upset, instead of calling her a vision.