interpreter  to  use  by  "echo"ing  an  association  string  into the
   /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register pseudo-file. In this case, we want to the
   string to indicate that any 'executable' file with the 'extension' of .mp3
   is to be interpreted by /usr/bin/xmms, so the registration strings are

  echo ":xmms:E::mp3::/usr/bin/xmms:" > /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register
  echo ":mps:E::mp3::/usr/bin/xmms:" >/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register
  echo ":ogg:E::ogg::/usr/bin/xmms:" >/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register
  echo ":m3u::E:m3u::/usr/bin/xmms:" >/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register

   Now, when we (as a regular user)

  ~ $ chmod u+x my_life_changed.mp3

   and then

  ~ $ my_life_changed.mp3

   up pops XMMS and the music plays on.

   The format and variations of the "registration" string are documented in
   /usr/src/linux/Documentation/binfmt_misc.txt.

   Kewl, eh?

   My thanks to Michael Heiming and Chris F. A. Johnson for pointing out
   how to do this.
            ____________________________________________________

Two cent tip: ISO 8601 dates

   Rick Moen ([80]LG Contributing Editor)

     On wondering if his tip was lost entirely. We don't always publish tips in
     the same month that we get them. -- Heather

   No, they've always been sent to tag@... 

     (!) [Heather] Strictly speaking, 2c tips began as good bits from people
     who weren't the Answer Guy. They tended to be, but weren't always, short,
     and were handled by the editor - I only did the TAG column. After some
     point I got involved with formatting tips as well, and then they were
     effectively merged with The Answer Guy's stuff, short items being put
     towards Two Cent Tips. With the advent of the Answer Gang, I actively
     encourage people wherever I run into them - send in your good tips :)

     The confusion seems to have arisen from my header on the 2c tips column
     being too plain. sigh

   Someone looking for the right submission address might (as I did) follow the
   link from [81]http://linuxgazette.net to the Author FAQ, which says to mail
   article submissions to [82]articles@linuxgazette.net and news items to
   [83]bytes@linuxgazette.net. If we want the uninitiated to use the desired
   submission address for 2 cent tips without having to ask here first, it
   probably would be prudent to amend the Author FAQ, nicht wahr? 

     [Thomas] You might as well add it. No harm in doing so.

     [Ben] It'll make it easier for authors who want to submit tips.

   Anyway, this duplicates my June 18 post to "[84]articles@linuxgazette.net": 

     One feature of the GNU coreutils' "date" program that's indispensible in
     creating date-stamped filenames: "date --iso-8601" returns the current
     date in international date standard (ISO 8601) format. E.g., on June 17,
     2005, "date --iso-8601" returns "2005-06-17".

   Why is this so handy, you ask? First of all, ISO 8601 dates sort correctly
   in ASCII- or alphabetical-ordered listings, unlike any number of other
   popular  date  formats such as 06/17/2005 (United States), 17-JUN-2005
   (NATO), or the Commonwealth format I grew up using (17/06/2005). 

   Second, like NATO format, it's unambiguous to people everywhere, a virtue I
   would have appreciated when I switched from the British school system to the
   USA's (and thus, suddenly, all written dates before the thirteenth of each
   month were indeterminate). 

   I use the technique frequently when archiving file trees, as follows: 
$ tar czf /tmp/etc-$(date --iso-8601).tar.gz /etc

   It should be noted that ISO 8601's format has long been traditional in
   Chinese culture. It's always good to have a quarter of humanity on one's
   side for starters. 

   There are elaborations to the standard, that are somewhat less immediately
   applicable to computing, e.g., time of day would be written in the obvious
   24-hour hh:mm:ss or hhmmss formats. One can append a "Z" suffix if such
   time-stamps are in zero-meridian ("Zulu", aka UTC) time. Otherwise, times
   are impliedly local. 

   Unfortunately, the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) do
   not  have  a  freely  downloadable  copy of the ISO 8601 standard, but
   independent  authors Gary Houston, Steve Adams, and Jukka Korpela have
   written pages that may be of interest to the more devoted calendar freaks
   (including code snippets for some common programming languages): 

     * [85]http://hydracen.com/dx/iso8601.htm
     * [86]http://www.saqqara.demon.co.uk/datefmt.htm
     * [87]http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/iso8601.html
            ____________________________________________________