select distinct and order by

Pg complained that select distinct column and
order by column must be the same.

Is there any way to get around that?

If not I have some questions re DBI

Say I am using perl DBI to retrieve
like
------------
$s=$dbd->prepare('select ...');
$s->execute(...);

while(my @a=$s->fetctrow_array())
    {
    .
    .
    .
    }
---------------

And let's say select statement return 10,000
records and I exit the loop after reading
1000 records.  Let's also say that
the client and server are on different
boxes.  Is 10,000 records transferred
over the network even if I quit after
reading 1000 records?

Thanks in advance