satish@globalinfotechinc.com
217-241-2015


VIJAY

OBJECTIVE:
Server Builds - Sun Servers and Intel servers with networking,
storage, application servers, Volume management, Cluster server, SSH,
Monitoring, troubleshooting infrastructure problems, Software
upgrades, patching, pro-active maintenance for sustaining environment
for 99% uptime, comprehensive troubleshooting of the Environment with
all the above components.

PROFESSIONAL
SUMMARY

• 6+ years of professional IT experience in Unix System Administrator
(Sun Solaris/Linux) engineering/operations as a UNIX Solaris/Linux
Software administrator supporting mission critical 24x7 projects which
includes more than 5+ years of Assignments on Troubleshooting/
Resolving on services/Applications and hardware Issues in the domain.
• Worked in an environment of 600 Servers and 400 Boxes..
• Primarily worked on Widows, UNIX Solaris, Linux platforms, servers
and applications, Client-Server technologies.
• Installing and Configuring SUN Solaris 8, 10 on all Spark/sun4u
architecture Servers.
• Expertise in Solaris/Linux installation, configuration, design,
implementation, connectivity and maintenance on Sun Solaris, Veritas
Volume Manager, Veritas Cluster Server, Solstice Disk Suite, FTP, TCP/
IP, NFS, DNS, NIS, SSH, LDAP, ZONES, jumpstart, Apache.
• Involved in design, implementation and troubleshooting of complex
systems and networks, which span across multiple protocols, topologies
and physical media.
• Managing Sybase database, Oracle, Websphere, Sunone, Iplanet, Site
minder and Informix Applications
• Expertise in implementation of patches and packages on the Server
for performance enhancement on Solaris Platforms.
• Managing the Filesystems, Disk management and Crash and Recovery.
• Experienced in Sun Hardware Support of Enterprise and Sun Fire/
Virtual Servers.
• Handled server, workstations, user training and help desk support,
including UNIX problems.
• Worked with Large datacenter applications with High infrastructure.
• Run ACT (A Crashdump Tool) against a core dump or live system.
• Build new Unix SUN-FIRE 440, V490, V410, SUN E450, E420, E220, E10k …
etc Unix servers.
• Identifying FRU’s and CRU’S.
• RAID Management.
• Installing and Configuring windows 2003 server and managing ADS.
• Work on EMC SAN, Solistic Disksuite, Veritas Volume Manager, ZFS,
and Veritas Netbackup 5.0.
• Experience in installing Solaris 10, administration of SMF, Creating
a Zones(Containers).
• How to Get a Core dump from a Solaris 2.x system.
• General the flow of building logical volumes, creating a file system
and mounting it
• Designed LAN, handled user application troubleshooting and problem
resolution.
• Certified in Sun Certified Solaris Administrator V10 and Microsoft
Systems Administrator – MCSA.
• Strong troubleshooting, installation and configuration skills.
Attentive to details. Maintained meticulous records of all projects
• Installation, Configuration and Administration of VCS 3.0, Growing
File System
• Using Vxfs 4.1 and Solstice Disk suite, Disk arrays and quotas
• All levels of RAID configuration and management using Raid Manager
EDUCATION

Bachelors in Engineering
CERTIFICATIONS

Sun Certified System Administrator-SCSA V-10
Microsoft Certified Professional-MCP
Microsoft Certified System Administration-MCSA
TECHNICAL
SKILLS

Operating Systems: Sun Solaris V (8, 10), Linux, Windows 2000/2003, NT
4.0.and CCNA.
UNIX Services: NIS, NFS, Auto mount, DNS, SSH, DHCP, FTP and Jump-
start.
Software: VERITAS Volume Manager 4.1. VERITAS file system, ODS, (Disk
Suite), Auto, F-Secure (SSH). VERITAS cluster3.0, VERITAS Netbackup
5.0. EMC with SAN
Tools: ACT, SUNvts, STORtool,
Scripting: UNIX Korn, Bourne shell, Perl, awk, sed. etc.
Resources: ps-mon, ps, net stat, iostat, vmstat, /proc tools, sar,
top, Dtrace.
Monitoring: dmesg and syslog
Security: SSH, ACL etc.
Languages: Shell script
Server Hardware: Entire range of Sun Hardware: SUN-FIRE 440, V490, and
v410, E450 SUN E450, E420, E220 E10K
Networking: TCP/IP networking with Solaris, Linux, Windows 2000, NT.
Network Devices: HUB, Brocade switches, Cisco Routers


EXPERIENCE

September 2007 - EMBARQ Corp, Kansas
March 2008 Sr. Sun Solaris UNIX Admin

EMBARQ delivers a suite of leading-edge communications services to
both residential and business customers in 18 states. Every one of our
employees is committed to providing common-sense ideas, reliable
service and a renewed commitment to the communities we serve. It’s
this commitment to excellence that has propelled our growth, and
EMBARQ is expected to rank among the Fortune 500 in 2008.Embarq
includes all data, applications, systems, hardware, software and
networks.

• First responder/break-fix support for the IT midrange server
environment.
• Rebuild servers, Configuration & Upgrades for existing servers.
• Conducted diagnostic activities/testing.
• Diagnosed OBP Boot failure and recovery.
• Patches &Packages- Installing and maintaining operating system
patches, Firmware updates, and security patches.
• Managed Sybase database, Oracle, Websphere, Iplanet, Site minder and
Informix Applications.
• Recovery from System hung/panic systems
• Resolved installation and boot failure troubleshooting.
• Programming experience using UNIX Korn, Bourne.
• Analysis of system performance.
• Enable deadmans kernel in case of FATAL crash.
• Create a new domain on E10k (Administration).
• Force a crash when box in hung state.
• Setup and Configure sudoers file.
• Recovery file systems from inconsistency state.
• Disk error troubleshooting.
• Added additional swap space for Swap issues.
• New File system creation, resizing and also creating raw
filesystems.
• Changed file/directory permissions
• Resolved SCSI Errors on different sun hardware.
• Cleaned out full operating system directory structures (/, /home, /
var, /usr, /tmp) due to core dumps or improper utilization of system
• Checked paging space as a part of trouble-shooting system
sluggishness
• Added space after SAN allocation, proactive SAN support related to O/
S
• Add or enabling server hardware such as processors/Memory for
existing systems in support of sustaining maintenance or project work.
• How to Get a Core dump from a Solaris 2.x system.
• Ran ACT (A Crashdump Tool) against a core dump or live system
• Installing and Configuring Internetworking with TCP/IP.
• Experienced in installing Solaris 10, administration of SMF,
Creating Zones and managing Dtrace tool.
• Installation and configuration of VERITAS Volume Manager, VERITAS
File System.
• Builded logical volumes, created a raw, block filesystem and
mounting it.
• Created Vxfs filesystems in the VVM.
• Resized the filesystem in VVM.
• Booted the operating system without Volume manager.
• Deported and Imported a disk group.
• Mirrored the system disk partitions using Solstice Disksuit.
• Added additional swap space under the encapsulated root drive.
• Changed VxVM kernel parameters.
• Configured and Maintain High Availability Clustering-Veritas Cluster
server for soalris.
• Storage setups, RAID, Logical Volume Manager, system backup design
and recovery.
• Created User, Groups per client requirement.
• Disk and File system management through VERITAS Volume Manager4.1.
• Configured a Jumpstart including implementing a Jump Start server,
editing the sysidcfg, rules and profile files, and establishing
Jumpstart software alternatives (setup, establishing alternatives,
troubleshooting, and resolving problems)
• Configuration and Administration of VERITAS Cluster Server
• Installation, configuration and remediation of various Securities.
• Open Boot PROM firmware update.
• Configured of kernel parameters or Registry changes as required.
• SSH configuration.
• Configured Cron access, save core, Syslog.
• Trouble shooting of day to day system and user problems
• Configured of Hardware and Software RAID. Disk replacement and File
system recovery.
• Trouble shooting of day to day systems and user problems
• Jump-start installation on more than 50 workstations and inter
networking with the operating systems
• Hardware installation and repair, NIS configuration and FTP
maintenance, DNS configuration, operating system installation and
configuration, and tape backups.
• Designed and implemented a total network architecture and workflow
that increased the productivity within the company.
• Created users, granted roles and privileges
• Provided Network Logon facility for the departments by implementing
NIS + NFS + DNS+ Jump Start, Auto mount to the client machines from
the domains Root, Boot servers.
• Extensive experience in all administrative activities is including
OS (UNIX, Linux, windows) administration, applying patches to the
system, performance tuning. Worked extensively in all aspects of
client management creating, deleting clients in various modes.
• Expertise in installation, configuration, design, implementation,
connectivity and maintenance on Sun
• Configured LDAP clients on server test and troubleshoot for the
same.
• Solaris, Linux, VERITAS Volume Manager, VERITAS Cluster Server,
Solstice Disk Suite, FTP, TCP/IP, NFS, DNS, NIS, Custom jumpstart.
• Strong Name Service configuration experience NIS with auto mount
File System experience includes Unix file System, Network File System,
VERITAS file system, FAT, NTFS.
• Storage experience with Solstice Disk Suite, VERITAS Volume Manger,
Online Disk Suite,
• Recovery a primary boot disk
• RAID level Strong experience in VERITAS Volume Manager.
• Administration of heterogeneous networks – Solaris, Windows 2000/XP,
User Administration, Software Packages and Patches Installation.
• Experience in file system creation and redundancy configuration
(Raid 5, RAID 1 mirroring) with Solstice Disk Suite and VERITAS Volume
Manager.
• Configured and Maintain High Availability Clustering-Veritas Cluster
server for Solaris
• EMC Clarion Management
• Brocade Switches & Management
• SAN Management: Performed Storage management with Veritas cluster
server using EMC`S connectrix under Oracle9 database running on
Solaris Sparc 6500
• Power path configuration and foundation in SAN Technology.
• In-depth knowledge on performance monitoring, tuning and
troubleshooting using the native OS command (iostat, vmstat, netstat,
prstat and snoop).
• Good Exposure on Sun Mid-Range servers

Environment: Sun Solaris (8, and 10), E10K, SUN-FIRE 440, V490, v410,
E450, SUN E450, E420, E220…etc. Brocade switches, Legoto, Tivoli, and
EMC CLARION FC4700, Disk arrays A5000/D1000/T-3, Tape Libraries
Storagetek L700/L180, and SAN Storage Works.
Tools: ACT tool, SUNvts, Storetool, SUNWexplo


July 2006 - INOVIS Inc. (formerly Harbinger)
August 2007 Atlanta, GA
Unix System (Sun Solaris/Linux) Administrator

Upgraded and administered Solaris8, 10/Linux on large scale Sun fire
4800/12k/15k Enterprise server, sun SPARC Enterprise range servers
environment includes Suns Solstice Suite and Veritas Volume Management
tools configuration and maintenance. Maintained 24/7 operations for
the computing Network infrastructure and performed backup and restore
strategies for the system database Oracle 8I Database and implemented
secondary replica servers for load balance and high throughput

• Migrated the Servers with Flash archive tool to store a snapshot of
the Solaris operating with all installed patches and applications.
• Responsible for troubleshooting end user and application problems
• Monitored the system performance and tuning the kernel to enhance
the system performance.
• Created, deleted, managed user accounts and managing user quotas on
the Network.
• Created file systems and configuring NFS for easier sharing of files
and mounting on the mount points.
• Added cron jobs and at jobs and analyzing processes.
• Configured syslog.conf file for effective monitoring of system and
analyzing the application logs and /var/adm/messages log.
• Jump-start installation on more than 50 workstations and inter
networking with the operating systems
• Hardware installation and repair, NIS configuration and FTP
maintenance, DNS configuration, operating system installation and
configuration, and tape backups.
• Designed and implemented a total network architecture and workflow
that increased the productivity within the company.
• Created users, granting roles and privileges
• Provided Network Logon facility for the departments by implementing
NIS + NFS + DNS+ Jump Start, Auto mount to the client machines from
the domains.

Environment: Sun Solaris (8, 9 and 10), E10K, SUN-FIRE 440, V490,
v410, E450, SUN E450, E420, E220, Brocade switches. Legoto, Tivoli,
and EMC CLARION FC4700, Disk arrays A5000/D1000/T-3, Tape Libraries
Storagetek L700/L180, and SAN Storage Works


June 2004 - AMDOCS Corp
July 2006 Champaign, Illinois
Sun Solaris System Administration

AMDOCS is a global leader in providing innovative software and service
solutions designed to help companies build stronger, more profitable
customer relationships and recognized market leader in Billing, CRM
and OSS.

• User administration and File system, disk management
• Analysis of system performance.
• How to recovery file system from inconsistency state.
• Added or removed software packages, agents, or Operating system
utilities.
• Disk error troubleshooting.
• Swap issue troubleshooting.
• Resolved new user access issues at as requested by Corporate
Security User access Team.
• Resolved SCSI Errors on different sun hardware.
• How to Get a Core dump from a Solaris 2.x system.
• Ran ACT (A Crashdump Tool) against a core dump or live system
• For supporting 20 Sun servers such as Sparc 80, Ultra2, Ultra5,
Ultra 10 for production, development and testing.
• Responsible of Installation of, maintaining the Network
Administration and System Administration.
• Installed, Configured and Maintained the DHCP, DNS, NFS, and SSH in
servers.
• User Account Management, Group Account Management, configuring dumb
terminals, adding modems, formatting and partitioning disks,
manipulating swap, local and remote printer management, taking and
restoring backup, scheduling jobs.
• Performance tuning and preventive maintenance.
• Solaris/Linux Installation, Configuration and Administration of the,
NFS, Auto mount, NIS, DNS, Jumpstart, and LDAP servers in UNIX with
Linux environment.
• Strong Name Service configuration experience NIS with automount
• File System experience includes Unix file System, Network File
System, Cache file System, Veritas file system, FAT, NTFS.
• To boot without Volume manager.
• Deported and Imported a disk group
• Storage experience with Solstice Disk Suite, Veritas Volume Manger,
Online Disk Suite, RAID, Shared Storage SAN, and Brocade Zoning.

Environment: Sun Solaris 8.0/9, Linux, Sun Fire 4800/V240/V440/V880,
Enterprise 280R/220R, E10k, etc, Veritas Volume Manager.Etc.

October 2002 - Key Bank Corporation
June 2004 Cleveland, OH
UNIX Solaris System Administrator

• Responsible for day-to-day systems administration for SUN SOLARIS
and Windows NT, 2000 servers.
• Built the Servers with Solaris operating system.
• Third Party software upgrade and porting to Solaris.
• Storage setups, RAID, Logical Volume Manager, system backup
design.
• Systems performance monitoring.
• Solaris Operating Systems upgrade, package installations, updates,
patches and software fixes.
• Worked with Large datacenter applications with High infrastructure
• Built the Sun Enterprise Servers with Sun SOLARIS operating system
2.9 and configured the A1000 and D1000s using Sun RAID volume
manager and VERITAS volume manager.
• Responsible for troubleshooting end user and application problems.
• Created User accounts, groups, printer etc
• Installed operating systems, patches, hardware, vendor software
packages, system customization and documentation of all departmental
UNIX, PC-based workstations and Terminal.
• Monitored system resources, logs, disk usage, scheduling backups and
restoring.
• Set up Quotas for the user accounts & limiting the disk space
usage.
• Creation/configuration of Additional Swap/tmp dynamically as and
when required.
• NFS Management - Take care of user accounts/groups, setting up of
NFS Environment. Solving the problems as & when created when NFS data
being accessed.
• Configured auto mounts/maps for the user accounts.
• Administration/Configuration of Print Servers/Clients in the Network
• Worked closely with database administration staff to ensure optimal
performance of databases, and maintain development applications and
databases.
• Designed and maintained Mission Critical applications in 24X7
production environment on Sun servers.
• Designed computer displays to accomplish goals using flowcharts and
diagrams.
• Installed Operating Systems, Application Software’s and Installing
the required patches & packages on both workstation and servers.
• Monitored the system performance and tuning the kernel to enhance
the system performance.
• Created and deleted and managed user accounts and managing user
quotas on Network.

Environment: Solaris 2.9/2.8, Windows NT, 2000, SUNFIRE 3800/4800/280R/
450/250, Ultra machines, VERITAS Volume Manager and NFS, NIS, DNS,
Shell Scripts, DNS servers, and Custom Jumpstart.

Jun 2001 - Sun Microsystems India Pvt Ltd
September 2002 Kasturba Road Banglore
Sun Systems Engineer/Administrator

Handled the network of 30 Sun servers along with 135 clients.
Responsible for building and maintaining a stable production
environment consisting of Sun Solaris servers in a 24x7 environment.
Intec is a Facility providing Software Solutions to Big Corporate in
India. Being a system Engineer to Setting up Unix (SUN OS) volume
manager, and Network Administration.

• Diagnosis of Hardware problems like Disk crash, board failures, etc
and work with SUN Microsystems, to resolve the problem. Interacting
with Sun and Software Vendors to fix bugs and Problems.
• Resolved TCP/IP network access problems for the clients.
Implementing Remote System Monitoring with Sun Microsystems.
• Developed and automating Shell for performance monitoring and Disk
Performance Monitoring and Tuning
• Checked health of file system.
• Performed daily backup.
• Created users.
• Attended User related problems.
• Grew size of volumes.
• Proficient with Sun Enterprise (250, 220R, 280R), Experience in Sun
Solaris Operating systems 2.8-9, Windows 2000.
• How to diagnose hardware and software issues and depending problem
• Provided solutions or suggest changing the part.
• Experienced with user permission administration, backup, debugging.
Proficient with tar, Ufsdump, Ufsrestore. Administration of
heterogeneous networks – Solaris, Windows 2000/XP, User
Administration, Experience in file system creation and redundancy
configuration (Raid 5, RAID 1 mirroring) with Solstice Disk Suite and
VERITAS Volume Manager. Custom Jumpstart installation.
• Highly motivated, reliable, team oriented and with excellent
interpersonal skills, analytical and problem solving capabilities.
Have excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Created file systems and configured NFS for easier sharing of files
systems and mounting on to mount point.
• Added cron jobs, at jobs and analyzing processes.
• Configuring syslog.conf file for effective monitoring of system and
analyzing the application logs and /var/adm/messages log.
• Documented the inventory of all Unix Servers, Disks, Storage, Backup
tapes and network devices.
• OS hardening, installation of patches/packages and configuration of
SUN tool for remote access through RSC.
• Parsing of log files and System activity report
• Specified hardware and software resources, recovering the system by
coordinating with hardware vendor ensuring minimum downtime

Environment: Sun Solaris2.8, Windows NT/2000, Cisco Switches/Routers,
McAfee appliances, SAN EMC CX200 storage, Brocade Silkworm 3200, SUN
Volume Manager, Bluecoat Proxy servers appliances, BIND, SENDMAIL,
Enterprise Servers, Sunblade100, Netra T1, SparcStation 10,40, Donovan
SparcStationDonovan SparcStation.

[Posted and mailed]

In article <f2f8aa33-32e9-4902-b490-775949895ede@z24g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,
satish <satishglobalinfotechinc.com@gmail.com> writes:

Let's try again, shall we?

What is it you do not understand about the nature of this
newsgroup? It is NOT a jobs group, as has been said many
times, but a place where systems administrators "hang out"
and discuss sysadmin issues.

There are newsgroups - hundreds, if not thousands - whose only
purpose is jobs and, wonder of wonders, most have the word
"jobs" in their names. The offer job announcements, as well as
a place for job seekers to post their resumes.

Having been told this repeatedly, what makes you think that
anybody who frequents THIS group would consder you for even
an entry level position, given your obvious failure to grasp
even the simplest of concepts: this is NOT a jobs group?

Now, kindly take your resume, post it in the right place, and
quit bothering the real professionals who use this group
appropriately.

--
Robert G. Melson | Rio Grande MicroSolutions | El Paso, Texas
-----
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable
reason so few engage in it. -- Henry Ford

On Mon, 28 Apr 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.unix.admin, in article
<CcmdnZt3f9DIj4vVnZ2dnUVZ_r2nnZ2d@earthlink.com> , Robert Melson wrote:

In article <f2f8aa33-32e9-4902-b490-775949895ede@z24g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,

OK - a googlespammer

Web Results 1 - 10 of about 361 for 217-241-2015. (0.28 seconds)

I still haven't made up my mind if they are an ordinary job scam
outfit, or if this kl0wn is really this brain-dead. My feeling is
that it's a troll, because no one can have any of the skills claimed
and still make so many obviously false statements and typos

Call the INS

Trolls don't have to understand anything

[compton ~]$ grep -c jobs .newsrc
1157
[compton ~]$

but most of them are useless.

Only problem is that few people bother with those groups any more
because they were trashed by job spammers. There are two groups that
aim at the Arizona market, and together they've had 12 posts this
month, with 11 of the 12 being blatant spam unrelated to job offers
anywhere. The 12th was a really crude "work from home" scam posted
from an apparent zombie on comcast. Even the truly brain-dead job
spammers don't bother with those groups any more.

Old guy

In article <slrng1h8e8.n40.ibuprofin@compton.phx.az.us>,
ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld (Moe Trin) writes:
Well, yeah. But it feels so _good_ to LART'em.

Surly Ol' Bob

--
Robert G. Melson | Rio Grande MicroSolutions | El Paso, Texas
-----
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable
reason so few engage in it. -- Henry Ford

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:54:05 -0500,
Robert Melson <melsonr@aragorn.rgmhome.net> wrote:
You've been reading NANAE too much if you think of talking to a bot
or something suspiciously acting like same as ``LART'em''. To my mind
applying a LART would be to go there and apply the designated tool, such
as a 2x4, until the luser's attitude is suitably adjusted. For online
analogues the attitude adjustment part is still mandatory, and I don't
see this happening. You could perhaps try a more effective action?


--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
consent and may be a violation of international copyright law.

In article <slrng1hgm1.1tmm.read_the_sig@mantell0.local>,
jpd <read_the_sig@do.not.spam.it.invalid> writes:
we're dealing with is a 'bot. As for the rest, while I agree
there's a helluva lot more pleasure to be obtained from
directly applying the appropriate attitude adjustment tool
(I prefer a crowbar applied to the elbows), there is still
some small amount of satisfaction to be derived from, ahhhh,
lesser means.

In the immortal words of Mehitabel the cat, "tojours gai,
whatthehell, whatthehell!". Probably time to end this
thread and do what should've been done earlier - killfile
the topic and the poster. But what _fun_ would _that_ be?

SOB

--
Robert G. Melson | Rio Grande MicroSolutions | El Paso, Texas
-----
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable
reason so few engage in it. -- Henry Ford

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:41:21 -0500,
Robert Melson <melsonr@aragorn.rgmhome.net> wrote:
I don't know it's human, either. Doesn't act like it at any rate.


Yes, a point. When taking action, I'd still advocate taking slightly
less ignorable action, though.


--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
consent and may be a violation of international copyright law.

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.unix.admin, in article
<Hp6dneToFLL8VoXVnZ2dnUVZ_jadnZ2d@earthlink.com> , Robert Melson wrote:

I'm not sure it's a bot, but it's something quite lacking in swifts.
(BTW, good luck with the gas company.)

The question is, where is "there"?

The message ID suggested the id10t is a google-poster, and much as I'd
love to see it, google makes substantial money from spammers, and would
find it EXTREMELY difficult to even notice the complaint. Some have
found it useful to simply killfile anything posted from there (most
competent news readers can filter messages where the Message-ID: string
contains 'googlegroups.com').

Which is why I suggested the INS.

Well, the phone number is from Springfield, Illinois, but fax numbers
that have been posted as alternatives are all over the place (Spokane,
Washington, Long Island, NY just to mention two). Don't know what the
local law enforcement types are like, but here in Phoenix, the local
(Maricopa country) sheriff (plug "Joe Arpaio" into your favorite search
engine) is having a field day busting illegals. Controversy? Wazzat?

I don't use knews, but my spooler has a googlegroups rule that applies
to 8 of the 80 groups I try to scan every day. In two of those, I've
gone further an have a rule that kills _replies to_ googlegroups posts
(References: googlegroups.com>$) because some can't resist replying to
googlespam.

Old guy

In article <slrng1i49f.8h3.ibuprofin@compton.phx.az.us>,
ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld (Moe Trin) writes:
knews' kill mechanism is effective, if archaic, and certainly
a lot better than a lot of the other open source newsreaders
floating around. I'm now globally killing any/everything from
gmail and would do google groups if the mechanism permitted.
It doesn't, so I won't/can't until something better than
knews comes along.

Your mention of Sherrif Arpaio brought a smile and a chuckle.
I personally think he's spot on, pink jpmpsuits, bologna
sandwiches, tentage and all the rest. That'd sure discourage
me from a life of crime, particularly in a typical Phoenix
summer.

Southwestern Ol' Bob

--
Robert G. Melson | Rio Grande MicroSolutions | El Paso, Texas
-----
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable
reason so few engage in it. -- Henry Ford

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.unix.admin, in article
<RcWdnWw-3MQ2s4TVnZ2dnUVZ_t2inZ2d@earthlink.com>, Robert Melson wrote:

The news reader should be able to filter based on From:, Subject:,
References:, Date:, Bytes:, Lines:, Message-ID: and Xref:. Using the
message-id works for me.

"green" bologna on 3-day old bread.

The county attorney has mixed opinions - he just issued a legal
opinion that the current immigrant crackdown (asking for proof
you are legally entitled to be here) isn't racial profiling as
some have charged, but he also lost two recent cases where
plaintiffs sued to county for the sheriff's other actions - to the
tune of a megabuck.

Oh, and he does have 'misting coolers' in Tent City[1], which is
just as well as Tuesday hit 99F/37C. Today was cool and windy,
but it ought to warm up soon enough ;-)

Old guy

[1] "Tent City" is the "overflow" detention facility, which
basically consists of 15x30 feet (5x10 meter) army style tents
pitched on concrete slabs. The misters cool nicely when it's
bone dry (2% RH, dewpoint below -18C/0F as it was on Monday) but
aren't very useful in late summer when the dewpoint is above
13C/55F (sometimes waayyyyy above). Not meant to be a hotel.

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:39:21 -0500,
Moe Trin <ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld> wrote:
Thanks. :-)


Valid question. I haven't investigated it; didn't seem necessairy for
the argument I was making.


That I took as a given, but you're certainly correct.


Not something _I'd_ contact, but there's plenty of stateside people
reading this group. Question is, is it illegal? Might very well not be.


Probably something he eats for breakfast. Not commenting on many of his
methods, I do find abusing law, lying about your actions, and so on and
so forth, inexcusable for a supposed upholder of the law.

On another note, I think that the notion of ``illegals'' is becoming
more and more silly. If we don't manage to blow our societies or
ourselves to smithereens in the meantime, in a century or two we may
have done away with borders entirely. In the meantime, it'll require
plenty effort fixing our governments, though.


--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
consent and may be a violation of international copyright law.

On 2 May 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.unix.admin, in article
<slrng1m6lt.24dm.read_the_sig@mantell0.local>, jpd wrote:

Certainly - I know about transmitting electricity over IP, and Orbital
Anvil Delivery Systems, but I haven't seen anything about LART-over-IP.

H1 visas have some very specific requirements, and it would appear that
the people at the other end of that phone number specialize in skating
over the line. The INS doesn't go searching for violators as much as
other agencies, but they will act when the case is presented to them on
a silver platter.

[Sheriff Joe]

The local 'civil rights' groups are ready and willing to take him to
court when they detect a civil or criminal violation of any law. So far,
he hasn't been accused (let alone charged or found guilty) of criminal
violations. Stupidity has never been against the law - to many
politicians could be convicted if that were the case.

It's perceived as a significant problem here, and I'm sure elsewhere.

I suspect not. In the USA, you can cross state lines pretty much
transparently, but the local jurisdictions remain - the states (and
counties and even cities) provide services that are non-national in
nature even if they are normally found everywhere. Fire protection,
policing, public utilities (water, sewer, garbage collection) and
similar are all locally funded. Roads might be owned and maintained by
city, county, or even state but not the national government (national
roads are actually state roads that meet additional requirements)
although the national government does provide some monies for such
roads. On the other hand, air traffic control is nearly always a
national issue, even in cases where a city or similar local entity
owns the airport.

This means the individual cities/counties/states have their own laws
and financial setups. I pay taxes to the city (property tax and a
levy on most sales), county (as the city, but different rates),
state (income tax and levy on sales) in addition to the national
income tax - never mind all of the other annoyance taxes like the
license plate on the car, and so on. There are also four different
school districts (primary, secondary, and two levels of college) who
have their hands into the property taxes I pay. Those borders mark
more than color/shape of vehicle license plates, and it gets really
interesting[.cn] when one lives in one state, and works in another.

While the European Union does have a common currency in most states,
and citizens of the EU can move relatively freely between the various
member states, those local distinctions aren't going away very quickly.
(Actually, Europe does have an extra problem - the individual states
making up the USA had "colonies" for only a short time, and those few
colonies became other states joining the union in the first 30 years.)

Or are all Europeans going to speak a single language some day? ;-)

It's going to be a lot more than just the governments.

Old guy

On Fri, 02 May 2008 19:37:37 -0500,
Moe Trin <ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld> wrote:
Surely, come next year, someone'll come up with an RFC. AKA the ``stab
people in the face over the internet'' protocol.


I heard of at least one case where a local policeman (chief of the
village's police service, something to that tune) saw himself forced
to resign after losing credibility by doing a fancy `waking up in the
gutter' involving collapsing in a boat after missing a bridge, ISTR
while he was riding a bicycle. That he was entirely not on duty was of
no importance.

It may be a cultural difference that on your side of the pond a sheriff
can get away with bending the law just as much as, possibly more than
anybody else, and here the police certainly can't -- they are expected
to be the good example.

Likewise, the whole outsourcing of military duties to civilian companies
to circumvent international law -- done by the government -- has cost it
a lot of credibility here. ``You're supposed to be better than them, not
pull dirtier tricks'', instead of ``anything for the cause, as long as
it's (you're) successful''.


Yes, sure, as it is now I'll probably not disagree, for a number of
reasons. But if I take the long term view, it's starting to look silly.


And while that makes for interesting(.cn) work for lawyers when dealing
with the next town over, it's much less of a hassle than having to talk
to a government accross a rigidly enforced border.

Iff we manage to get our governments in order, we may well find that to
be most effective (... at not being seen/heard/noticed while smoothing
everybody's daily lives, instead of peddling influence because that
strokes the politicians' own egos) we end up reducing governments so
much that rigidly enforcing borders will be obsolete.

But like I said, it's a fairly extreme long term view. Or maybe it's
just my wishful thinking. For it certainly would be nice if we could get
rid of the need for all the requirements on border passing.


California also comes with a sizeable Spanish-speaking population,
probably other places (Texas? New Mexico?) too. So what makes Mexico so
special that the people there have to be kept out?

The trend here seems to be to give more languages (semi-)official
status rather than less. I think the differences in Europe are bigger
than that. We do have more languages to deal with, but in plenty
countries multiple languages are spoken already[0]. Altough people will
increasingly find themselves pressured to speak at least the current
lingua franca, which happens to be English.


[0] EG. Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands[1], the UK, others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...uages_by_state
Interesting to see that the USA also sports a couple regional languages.
[1] Dutch, also Frysk when in Frysl\[^a]n. Most if not all Frysians speak
perfect Dutch, even if they choose to pretend not to to fsck with the
non-Frysk-speakers.

--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
consent and may be a violation of international copyright law.

On 3 May 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.unix.admin, in article
<slrng1p1vo.29q0.read_the_sig@mantell0.local>, jpd wrote:

There might be less evidence if you used a variation on RFC1097. I'm
honestly surprised that hasn't been incorporated in hypertext or the
various scripting languages already.

Within the metropolitan area (about 50 mile/80 KM radius), we hear of
an incident at least once a year, regrettably sometimes even more often.

The rule of thumb here is that peace officers may only be scheduled to
work 40 hours a week, but even when off-duty, they are still peace
officers and MAY have to respond. Consequently, they are held to a
higher standard.

Despite often reported abuses, we have the same expectations here.

Oh, it's far more than the next town over - even the next state. While
cross border issues are generally the work of "higher" levels (issues
involving multiple towns may be dealt with at county, state, or rarely
national level), the lower levels still try to work together. An
example is our state (Arizona) officials dealing with Sonoran state
(Mexico) officials over common problems. The results may not have the
force of law (international relations are the job of the national
officials), such "unofficial" agreements work well.

At this stage in the life of civilization, many (most) government actions
are for appearance. See http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.14.html noting
specifically "Air marshals' names tagged on 'no-fly' list" among others.
Does anyone _really_ think the "no-fly list" is worth the CPU cycles needed
to write those words in ASCII - never mind preventing terrorism? But it
gives the _appearance_ of doing "something".

For individuals, we've pretty much got that situation at the state level.
Both Hawaii and California have agricultural inspections at their border
(mainly to protect their industry against agricultural pests), and many
states have "weigh stations" (where trucks are weighed, and possibly
inspected for safety issues) because of differing local laws, but that's
about it. Crossing into neighboring countries (specifically Canada and
Mexico) is usually comparatively painless unless you are doing so for
commercial gain.

Spanish? OK, you also want Arizona, Florida, New York and neighboring
states.

Ask the citizens of Guatemala, Honduras, and other countries South to
Panama why they have to be kept out of Mexico.

While you must "speak, read, and understand" the basic English language
as in common use to become naturalized US citizen (Immigration and
Nationality Act section 312(a)(1), though there are several exceptions),
those people who are born here don't have to meet that requirement. In
many states, that means they voting materials have to be made available
in several languages. The ballot for the next election (May 20) that
I have is bilingual (English/Spanish), and it's far worse in California
where (for example) Los Angeles County provides printed materials, as
well as oral assistance in seven languages: English, Chinese (though I'm
not sure which dialect[s]), Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog and
Vietnamese. I know that other languages are used in other areas of that
state.

There has been (and is) a significant opinion of requiring English as
the official language (currently there is no _national_ requirement),
and there have been a number of different ballot initiatives to that
end at the state level.

I doubt we're that far behind, though as stated we don't generally have
an official language. All official primary/secondary schools (meaning
those receiving public funding) are required to teach in English as the
primary language. If the students speak something else as their primary
language, classes _may_ be offered speaking in those languages, but the
language that is _taught_ (rather poorly by the way) is English.

That's the case here, even though something like 13% of the population
(nationally) speaks Spanish as their primary language.

And that list is far from complete. How do you classify our Native
Americans? In this state alone, we have at least 10 independent groups
speaking their own languages - you may have heard of the Apache, Hopi,
Navajo, and Zuni to mention just four.

That happens here as well for various values of "perfect" $LANGUAGE.

Old guy

On Sun, 04 May 2008 19:38:34 -0500,
Moe Trin <ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld> wrote:
``Cause of death: subliminally stabbed. over the internet.''


Which then brings up the interesting question why Joe Arpaio is still in
office. Maybe it's different for elected sheriffs? Elected anythings?


I had already seen that, though not there, as it too often turns out to
be an excercise in raising my blood pressure. thedailywtf is something
I can laugh about. Would I be in a position to engineer anything, I'd
consider it a mandatory reference of what not to do, though.

Too bad too many people still fall for the ``security circus''; it's
highly annoying for those of us who see right through it, and has real
detrimental effects on privacy and civil liberties, for exactly no gain
to the people. In fact, it also seems to foster dishonesty and outright
theft among the enforcers.


So it isn't just excessive use of 13375p34k, the kids really haven't
been taught any better.

It does bring up whether public schools can't be replaced by something
more effective while ensuring close-to-100% levels of functional
literacy for everybody, including the poor and the illegals.


--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
consent and may be a violation of international copyright law.

On 30 Apr 2008 20:00:19 GMT
jpd <read_the_sig@do.not.spam.it.invalid> wrote:

Didn't you know? Consultants are not human.

--
Stefaan A Eeckels
--
Sometimes I wonder whether the world is run by smart people who are
putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it. --Mark Twain

On Tue, 6 May 2008 00:31:33 +0200, Stefaan A Eeckels <hoendech@ecc.lu> wrote:
I'm going to go ahead and assume you're parodying an utter jerk on this
one, Stefaan. Amazingly enough, there are people where I work who feel
that way in real life.

That was intended to be funny, right?

On 5 May 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.unix.admin, in article
<slrng1tluc.2h83.read_the_sig@mantell0.local>, jpd wrote:

"I don't know, Inspector - it appears that he died from self-inflicted
but repeated blows to the head by a blunt object - possibly the keyboard."

elected and re-elected (twice). A lot of people like what he does
overall. (He does go out of his way to present a good image of
upholding the law, being tough on criminals, etc. His "Tent City"
``jail'' is an example of that.) The result is a lack of decent
candidates to run against the incumbent. And our polititians in
their wisdom would never allow a "None of the Above" choice.

Unfortunately, most of the rules have no automatic end if they turn out
to be useless, and politicians would NEVER think to manually revoke
such mistakes. Daylight Savings Time is a good example. The "Uniform
Time Act of 1966 (15 U.S.C. 260a(a)) was amended by Public Law 109-58
to lengthen the duration of Daylight Savings Time. Section 'c' of that
law required "not later than 9 months after the effective date" the
Energy "Secretary" shall "report to Congress on the impact of this
section on energy consumption in the United States". Section 'd' of that
act says "Congress retains the right to revert the Daylight Saving Time
back to the 2005 time schedules once the Department study is complete."
Oh, yeah - that's sure to happen.

The air security rules have increased the ground delays significantly.
For a one hour (schedule times) trip, I now have to _add_ an hour on
the departure end, and a half hour on the arrival end (beyond the
times of several years ago, and this doesn't include the times to and
from the airport. In Europe, you at least have the alternative of
grabbing the train. Here in Phoenix, we don't even have passenger
train service - the nearest stop is about 50 KM to the South in the
desert - I think there are two trains a day to the East (El Paso, TX)
and West (Los Angeles). For that one hour trip to LA, it's actually
faster for me to grab a private plane (cruise speed 230 KM/H) at the
local G/A airport. For the shorter trip to Las Vegas, the common
personal car will probably have a shorter overall (door-to-door) time.

Oh, you mean something like Senator Ted Kennedy's name showing up on
the 'no-fly' list (March 2004)? I'm surprised. as many federal laws
and regulations have weasel-words such that they don't apply to
senators and congress-critters, and anyway - you REALLY don't expect
them to fly on a common airliner with ordinary _people_ do you? It's
a huge security problem, where voters would be screaming at them about
some perceived injustice/stupidity caused by congress. ;-)

In another newsgroup, someone mentioned questioning people on the
street and proposing that the average person couldn't name (any)
eight (US) presidents (GWBush the current is the 43rd president). I
suspect this to be an honest assessment, even though I had no trouble
naming the last 13 in order (Hoover, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy,
LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, GHWBush, Clinton, GWBush). I'm older
and our schooling was quite different. Hell, there was a map of the
world on the classroom wall, and we were taught how to read it, and
something about those foreign lands. Guilders? Yeah, I know about those.
Marks? Which one - Finnish Markka or German (which one) Mark? How about
the "franc" (again, which one, as just like the "dollar", "peso", and
"pound", the name is used in several countries).

Probably won't fly - we already have a controversy over public verses
private verses schools operated by religious organizations and so on.
Then there is the fact that education is _generally_ a state rather
than national issue (though the national legislature dangles the
carrot of federal money if the state requirements follow federal
guidelines). In the mean time, the cash registers in the fast
food joints have icons denoting the individual food items - and
$DEITY help you if you give the clerk an unexpected amount of coin
to pay the bill (I owe 5.14, and give the clerk 6.04 so I don't
get pennies in the change - no, that blows their talentless minds).

Old guy

On Mon, 05 May 2008 21:52:08 -0500,
Moe Trin <ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld> wrote:
Gee, why would that be?

There was a bit of a discussion about the voting machines lacking an
``invalid vote'' button. With (traditional dutch) red pencil voting you
could write in big angry letters that you didn't agree with the world at
large and so on. That'd be counted as an ``invalid vote''.

I think that lack is a valid objection (in addition to all the other
defects voting machines invariably have).


The Belgians have or had a department for cleaning up the rules and
streaming up the process of interacting with goverment. ISTR this mostly
touched on things like combining all N desks you need to talk to for,
say, starting a company, into one, and things like that. Turns out to be
a big moneysaver, both for J. Random Citizen and for the government.


There was this report, recently, that said the whole DST thing, not
just the recent tinkering with it, was a big waste of money overall.


*sigh* Yeah. Just axe the whole thing already. :-)

But as you say, not gonna happen. Politicians need their little ego
strokes. If they'd wanted to actually do something useful they wouldn't
be in politics.


Yep, here too. And the ``no water'' rule was hailed by the EC as a
really good idea, so let's keep it! Last time I flew I just took one
shoulder bag to avoid losing the luggage, packed one toothbrush, and
left my apparently highly explosive toothpaste at home.

I normally also pack a litre of water, wich was sorely missed.


The airport here is half an hour or so by public transport, and for intra-
european flights with a check-in-at-home printed-it-myself boarding pass I
just had to waste 30 minutes there before the flight. This seems to be a
feature of this airport -- the one hour flight back required 1.5 hours of
walking around the airport like a zombie; the trip had been _busy_. I think
that next time I'll see if I can't get an overnight train back instead.


Not always an option, but I do take the train whenever I can. The German
IC trains are quite fast already (the ICE is a bit faster, but a bit
more expensive, if not quite as much of a hassle as the TGV).

I missed a plane from AMS once, due to recently increased security circus,
on a non-refundable ticket (which I hadn't booked myself), so I went down
a couple of stairs, bought a train ticket for a fraction of the air fare,
and was at my destination before the next plane arrived there.

Of course, the British are touting introducing portable security circus
gear to trains, too. If they haven't already done so.


The Dutch authorities seem to positively hate small airplanes and
airports for such. Berlin is also ditching the old airport there; that
had already had most of its regular flights stripped, but had retained a
few short haul flights and some private air traffic. So using it would
instantly label you ``super rich'' in the eyes of the socialists.

I still want to fly from/to that airport once, before it closes.

As to trains, I heard something about how a functioning service got
killed, and now it's too expensive to re-create that infrastructure
again. Then again, ditching (or rather, not starting) just one war
and use the monies to improve trains should go a long way. Heretical
thoughts, these. *waits for the black helicopters to arrive*


I was actually referring to occurences like people having to hand over
their laptops ``for inspection'', getting told they'll receive it back
within a week, but a year later, still no laptop. (Happened to a British
woman, as related by The Register.)

I thought the senator on the no-fly list to be a test for the senator:
Instead of using his friends-on-high to get just him off the list, he
should've used the normal procedure, then use his influence to get it
fixed for normal citizens, too. That probably would've been unpatriotic
or something.


I stopped reading here for a moment; I did get to eight with a little
effort. (Missed Hoover, Truman, Nixon, Ford, Carter, all of which turned
out to be at least known names).


Of course, heads of state is not really comparable, as ours is Royal and
thus lasts a while longer. Willem I, Willem II, Willem III, Wilhelmina,
Juliana, Beatrix goes back to 1813.

Eight Dutch prime ministers would give me a bit more trouble. Den Uyl,
van Agt, Lubbers, Kok, Balkenende, covers 1973 to now. I had to peek, as
I'd somehow swapped Kok for Zalm (longest serving finance minister and
also deputy-prime minister). I haven't really been paying attention to
politics lately, and before this list the names are just that to me.


Most of them now spelled ``Euro'', which I still think is a silly name.
There is an upside of needing to change much less when crossing borders,
easier sending of money and all that, and it is somewhat interesting to
spot a foreign-minted coin when looking for change to fill up a payment.
The downside is that the changeover hid a sizeable hike in prices, and
that the currency now attracts more counterfeiters, gets fscked over by
more governments, and so on and so forth.


This being a mostly theoretical question, for now anyway, I don't really
care what the political climate is right now. Coming up with something
that promotes kids actually learn something is hard enough without the
usual daily hubhub.


*Sigh* I do that daily; the teller clerks here are literate enough
that they can at least count the cash and enter it into the register,
which'll then quote a number back that is to end up in my hands again.

As banks charge for supply of small change, this is actually beneficial
for both: They get small change to give someone else, and I end up with
a lighter wallet. Then again, ``the populace'' in .nl decided they
didn't want to deal with 1ct and 2ct coins, because that would bulk up
their wallets too much. Prices are informally rounded at the nearest
5ct, like they were in the pre-euro days (only the exchange rate is
2.2something guilders to euros). Here I get those and hand'em out as
needed too. With a little care I rarely end up with too much small
change, and when, it's usually the larger coins. Which is easily taken
care of the next time I need to buy something to eat.


Plenty of dystopian future portraits assume icons will solve all. Now,
nothing wrong with icons (eg. the Dutch railways use them extensively
to indicate where to buy tickets and where to get out of the joint,
and roadsigns often are ``iconized'' ways to indicate various things,
even if you have to learn how to read them and they thus aren't very
``intuitive''), but that doesn't mean they're suitable for everything.

Teaching math through icons? How about reading a classic novel? Look ma,
it's all icons! I think functional illiteracy will be the death of our
high-tech society.


I did read something about someone figuring a way to muck with programs
for the macintosh' finder to allow dragging and dropping them onto each
other to form ``pipes''. Interesting idea, but ISTR seeing such a thing
packed up as a ``programming language'' in the 100 bottles of beer list,
and that language doesn't seem to have grown beyond the curiosity stage
either. I wonder why.


--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
consent and may be a violation of international copyright law.

On 6 May 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.unix.admin, in article
<slrng20f8s.2lbu.read_the_sig@mantell0.local>, jpd wrote:

It's been discussed - but no one has ever come up with a decent reason.

We've only had this capability with paper type ballots. The mechanical
monstrosity I first used had mechanical interlocks to prevent voting
for other than a valid choice. All you could do was to close the
curtain and not select a candidate for a specific office. However as
I recall you did have to vote for something. (Usually, we have multiple
issues/offices to vote on. For the machine to be happy, you had to vote
on at least one issue/office, though you could leave all the rest empty.)

If the laws were simplified/cleaned up, this would leave less work for
lawyers and officials. Legislators are generally lawyers and recognize
that this would be bad for (their) business.

(I honestly don't know how many rules exist It's an enormous amount.)

I know that was the case in California. It's not a significant problem
here, because this state doesn't observe DST (except for that part of
the state administered by the Navaho).

Section 260.a.(1) any State that lies entirely within one time zone may by
law exempt itself from the provisions of this subsection providing
for the advancement of time, but only if that law provides that the
entire State (including all political subdivisions thereof) shall
observe the standard time otherwise applicable during that period,

That's us because the Native American entities are not subdivisions of
an individual state.

30 minutes? Which airport is that? The normal rules here are 60 minutes,
but the airlines usually recommend 90 minutes, and the airport authorities
recommend 120 (and occasionally 150) minutes during busier times. If you
are changing planes within a terminal, you may seen times as low as 45
minutes, but the normal is 60 or 90 minutes. If you are changing
terminals (which means going outside the "secured area"), bump those
times up.

Oh, we get large rations of sh!t from the authorities, but we have a
large number of airports. In this county (Maricopa) alone we have nine
airports with control towers (2 military, 7 civil), and at least 10 more
that are open to the public (there are around 30 _privately_ owned
airports at well). Only two airports have regular scheduled airline
flights. My airport directory lists 82 airports in the state, but only
7 have airline service.

Is that Templehof? I was in/out of there a few times in the 1970s, and
the last time I flew in was to Tegal in 1983.

If it were a one-owner private plane, I'd have to admit you're right.
But I'd suspect most of the aircraft belong to companies, or are air
taxis/charters. Expensive, but the costs can often be justified by
the time savings, and 'go when you are ready' (non) scheduling.

"Down-town" airports are not all that common any more. Many that still
exist are under noise pollution attacks even though the airport was
probably there long before the people complaining were even born, let
alone moved there and suddenly discovered that airplanes tend to be
loud - surprise, surprise.

It's similar to the cost of a motorway, but with the added disadvantage
that they tend to be used by a single owner/entity. Can you imagine any
company with the money to build a "personal" motorway between Amsterdam
and Berlin - for their own limited use (no more than 15 trains an hour)?
Even a national government would find that daunting.

That's no worse that a recent incident where a classical violinist was
told she'd have to check that Stradivarius as ordinary baggage.

Apparently this was an ordinary screw-up. What was more ridiculous was
that the problem occurred at Boston, which is the capital of the state
he represents in the Senate. They _knew_ who he was, but were just
following the law.

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/23.50.html

Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 19:41:02 -0500
From: Dan Wallach <dwallach@cs.rice.edu>
Subject: U.S. air travel without government identification

That's a bit unfair to you - I wouldn't expect people overseas to know
more than one or two. But this hypothetical question referred to asking
people on the streets of a US city.

Yeah, they tend to stick around a log longer. AND be more popular.

Well... But I learned about those in the 1940s and 1950s. By the 1960s,
I had even visited/worked in several of those countries. I think the
'Euro' name is the best of a very limited set of choices. It would be
very difficult to use the name of an existing currency

That's normal even when they haven't changed the currency. It used to
be that we bought coffee by the pound - one, two and three pound tins
or bags were the rule. Now? The "three pound can" holds something
between 35 and 39 ounces - metric??? No - one tin hold 39 ounce or 1106
grams - another is 35.5 ounces or 978 grams. Actually, I'm seeing some
"three pound cans" holding 33.5 ounces, or 2.1 pounds - 950 grams. Of
course, the prices for that old "three pound" can isn't much higher
than what it was - even though the can hold less than 70% of what it
used to. But no one will notice that...

I _thought_ the Euros were a heck of a lot harder to counterfeit
compared to previous currencies.

The only reason they can do that is the cash register is telling them
the exact change to return.

Here is MUCH more common for the price to be slightly below the
round number. Heck, gasoline/petrol is sold here with prices to
three decimal places (I paid $2.539 per gallon Sunday evening, but
back in the 1950s when I learned to drive it was ALWAYS listed as
<mumble> point nine cents - with the final digit (for which we
haven't had a coin in more than 200 years) always shown in a font
a tenth the size of the other digits used. That way, it _seems_
cheaper, even though you know the real price is higher.

It was quite common here that you emptied the coins out of the pocket
and put them into a large container - I'm of that vintage, and there
are four empty 1.5 liter whisk[e]y bottles full of coins. Several
times a year the coins get sorted, counted, and rolled for return to
the bank. That used to be a form of "savings".

We've got that here to a lesser extent, but probably for the same
reason - they're international standards, so that foreign drivers
can understand them.

You teach people to read??? Fancy that. I suppose someone reading in
standard Chinese wouldn't see anything odd about the idea, but even they
are using roman characters when they need to get an idea across to
someone who can't read the ideographs.

I don't see how it would be practical. Either the icon programs will do
very little (and you're going to have a shedload of them to account for
the various possibilities), or you are going to be quite limited in
what they can do.

[compton ~]$ history | grep -c '|'
112
[compton ~]$

A separate icon for 'grep -c' - and separate ones for each thing you may
want to count?

Old guy