As  far  as I can tell, the most important thing is just to keep these
   conferences going, so that even if people can't attend next year, maybe they
   can do the year after, or maybe some overseas people will go to one and
   others to the next.

   Another thing that's happening in the Python world is different kinds of
   events are emerging. These three are traditional conferences with speakers.
   In Seattle we've had a couple sprints (=weekend hacking sessions) without
   speakers, and I gather those are happening in Europe too. So maybe the
   answer  is not just more opportunities for speakers, but more types of
   events.

   Any other ideas?
     _________________________________________________________________

                                GENERAL MAIL
     _________________________________________________________________

     * [32]Re: your comment suggested an article idea
     * [33]LG #109 - Laundrette
     * [34]Math bug in Advanced Features of netfilter/iptables article
            ____________________________________________________

Re: your comment suggested an article idea

   Sun Dec 12 08:55:47 2004
   Ben Okopnik ([35]LG Editor)
   Question by Edgar Howell

     Edgar    Howell    is    one    of   our   article   authors,   see
     [36]http://linuxgazette.net/authors/howell.html for his bio. -- Heather

   As you noticed, the use of a wildcard in a command like mount really blew me
   away. The remark you added to my article compounded it. find, great. less,
   OK... mount?! 

     [Ben] [grin] Yeah, pretty amazing. It gets much more amazing when you
     install and enable "bash_completion"; all the... well, stuff that has
     multiple options becomes available at the prompt. E.g., typing "ssh "
     (note the space) and hitting 'Tab' twice shows me a list of all the hosts
     in my ~/.ssh/known_hosts; typing "mount " and hitting 'Tab' three times
     (since all the entries start with '/', which is displayed immediately)
     gives  me  a  list of all the directories listed in "/etc/fstab"...
     obviously, completion happens when you have a unique string: I've been
     doing "ssh li" for a session at linuxgazette.net for so long
     that I'd be lost without it. :)

   If you count the couple of years I had used Coherent prior to graduating to
   [37]SuSE Linux, I've probably been at *nix for 10 years or so. In other
   words off the steep part of the learning curve, but, boy, is there ever
   enough curve left! 

     [Ben] That's the lovely thing about Unix, to me. You keep gaining these
     chunks of power every time you learn something - and the chunks don't get
     any smaller with time. It can be a little tough on the ego for the folks
     who think that way... but to me, it's a fantastic opportunity to squeeze
     any amount of juice that I may need out of a system. It's not a question
     of "is it possible" any longer, but "where do I find the HOWTO?" instead.

   Anyhoo, I would like to encourage you to do an article on obscure uses of
   wildcards on the command line. 

     [Ben] Um. Well... the problem is in defining "obscure". To me, they're
     not; they're just how shells operate. To someone else, they may well be
     obscure. Say... maybe looking at it in broader terms would be useful - an
     article, or even a series on CLI usage in general might be pretty good!

     I'm sorta swamped for the moment - and actually "owe" about three articles
     to myself :) - but that one sounds like a really good idea.

   Like ignoring the consequences of SuSE's apparent elimination of the need
   for mount -- there are still questions in my mind but, then, I bounce back
   and forth between root and any of several users a lot and may have messed
   things up -- what would "mount *" do? 

     [Ben] It would give you an error. :)

   Try to mount every /dev? Cycle through /etc/fstab? root can mount stuff not
   in /etc/fstab. Permissions. Users. Mind-boggling. 

     [Ben] Essentially, you've answered your own question: "mount *" would just
     be too ambiguous. E.g., "ssh " or "ssh ben@" is not at all ambiguous: the
     host name is what has to come after either one of them, and it makes sense
     that hitting the completion key (Tab) would "complete" them or show the
     possible options. I assume you know that 'Tab' works to complete program
     names at the CLI, right? Filenames, too - "vi ~/.bash_p" pulls up my
     "~/.bash_profile" every time.

   Keep up the good work 

     [Ben] Thanks, Edgar! Heck, you might want to write the article yourself:
     read the Bash man page, and take a look at the "/etc/bash_completion"
     script. That should give you a good start.
            ____________________________________________________

LG #109 - Laundrette

   Sun Dec 5 10:23:23 2004
   Jimmy O'Regan ([38]The LG Answer Gang)
   Question by Mark W. Tomlinson