||*-------- At Tonight's Meeting... ------*|| ||*-------- Bozeman Linux User Group Meeting ------*|| ||*-------- June 26, 2003 ------*|| ||*-------- ------*|| ||*-------- Ken Dyke, editor ------*|| ||*-------- ------*|| Howdy folks, and welcome to another edition of "At Tonight's Meeting..." ||*-------- At Tonight's Meeting... ------*|| ||*-------- by Ken Dyke ------*|| Thanks go out to Josh, Mike, Dan, Jeff, Ryan, Bob, Neal, Sheri, Scott, Warren, Ken, and anyone else who's name I have forgotten. ||*-------- LUG Business... ------*|| A few more details have been worked out. There is another sponsor. It is now to the point where "real soon now" I will start a thread where we can begin hashing out the bulk of the details. We will also be looking for additional ideas/leads for securing more sponsors. The calendar has been getting shuffled and re-written. The updated schedule will be posted "real soon now". ||*-------- The Meeting... ------*|| The Meeting began with the usual round of introductions, book give away, and some LUG news. Scott brought some mult-media in which we are working on have copies made so that they will be available at the next meeting. Neal Richter then launched into an in-depth presentation of ht://dig. Starting with an overview of information retrieval, he then described various methods used in this field generally. Neal then introduced ht://Dig, its origins, architecture, components, internals, library, and finally some history of the project organization and licensing issues. It was thorough and well done presentation. Thank you, Neal. There was a humorous interlude where the pronuncation of MySQL was discussed. The open discussion period after the main presentation was particularily lively and interesting. It was one of those "you should have been there" sort of happenings. ||*------ Tool Tip -------*|| ||*------ by Ken Dyke -------*|| gcc - the Gnu C Compiler. Other then a couple of "hello world" type programs when I started to learn C I have never directly invoked the gcc. Using make and a makefile is much more useful for this. But none of this has anything to do with this month's Tool Tip. What does is the version of gcc being used. The current/latest release of gcc is 3.3.x but it is a mistake to use the latest version to compile all packages. A classic example that highlights this is the Linux kernel. It is highly recommended that one use the gcc series that the kernel series being compiled was developed against. This is a rough rule of thumb. Like other software packages the gcc is an evolving tool. This evolution is reflected in the version numbering. Coding practice that worked with the 2.xx.xx gcc may not compile properly under gcc-3.x.x. It is a known that stability issues or compilation errors occur when using gcc-3.x.x to conpile a 2.4.xx kernel. On the other hand, from watching the LKML it appears that some of the core maintainers are using gcc-3.x.x to compile 2.5.xx devoplment kernels. Thus any coding style bugs that arise as a result get ironed out. This brings up a related issue of kernel headers being included in other packages and how to go about doing that safely but that deserves a column all to itself. ||*------ PHP News -------*|| ||*------ by Ryan Gantt -------*|| Ryan is busy with his new job and summer so I am filling in for him. But I am a lousy substitute so the only news is what you probably already know: PHP 5.0.0 Beta 1 has been released. ||*------ Doghouse -------*|| The RIAA for announcing that they will begin a campaign to sue thousands individuals for "illegal file trading". In a top ten list of signs of a broken business model the number one sign would be suing your customers. (Which is also a hint to last month's Doghouse dweller, SCO.) ||*----- Book Reviews ------*|| Not surprisingly, I have read a number of books this past month. However, they are all research for future presentations to the LUG. Since I do not want to steal the thunder from said presentations I am not going to publish reviews of these books at this time. I have not received any book reviews from other LUG members in the past month. *hint*hint*hint* ||*----- Books Available for Review -----*|| Due to the great response/demand for this feature I have been working with publishers to increase the selection of books available. I have succeeded in establishing a couple of relationships for keeping book reviewers busy. The guidelines given to me by these publishers vary somewhat but the the following outline encompasses behavior that will avoid feelings of abuse and exploitation all around. Please read and follow these guidelines in ordering review copies of books. 1) Limit one book per month. 2) Publish a review before ordering another book. 3) When selecting a book for review choose one that has been published within the past year or so. 4) We are a Linux User Group. Please keep this in mind when selecting titles. (For example, Photoshop does not run on Linux so it would be inappropriate to ask for "Photoshop 7: The Complete Reference") 5) If there were a fifth item it would go here. We have not developed a guide for the review itself so until then you might give Slashdot's book review guide a look see: (slashdot.org/book.review.guidelines.shtml) Send reviews to Ken to be published in the next issue of "At Tonight's Meeting...". Please make the files ascii text only with lines wrapped at 75 characters (to fit an 80 character wide screen). Check out the fmt command. I will use 'fmt -u foo.bar' to format files that do not fit an 80 character screen. This will likely result in mangling of any layout you desire. As noted in the Slashdot guideline, do not fear of making your review too long. You have taken the time to read the book don't wimp out and write a too short a review that does not tell the rest of us fully what you think of the book. The following books are available for review: www.osborne.com www.oreilly.com/catalog/prdindex.html New Riders Press Addison Wesley [ken_i_m: If there is a publisher whose books you have enjoyed for their quality please let me know and I will try to work out an arrangment with them for obtaining review copies.] ||*----- EOF -----*||
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