Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Sun, 1 Apr 2001, Robin Szemeti wrote: On Sun, 01 Apr 2001, you wrote: On Sun, 1 Apr 2001, Robin Szemeti wrote: agreed it is a dumb thing, especially if your nameserver doesnt have a name to lookup Erm!!?!? How exactly were you planning to point anything at it? an NS RR requires an authoritative name as it's RHS. if its a box-over-in-the corner that one day will be your DNS server somewhere but right now its just a ip address on a network you're trying to test before deploying .. it did get a name eventually. Hmmm.. I don't quite know how you can *test* it, if it hasn't got any names, and therefore can't serve any zones... and .. surely not all the nameservers are necessarily named, only the ones published to the world, you could have internal servers that don;t answer external queries (such as a primary master server with two slaves used as authoratative servers to the world, whilst your primary master is left untroubled) in which case the primary master would not need a name just an address, and you might want to query it directly yourself to make sure it was not telling porkies. ?? *burble*! It is reasonable to have this property, yes, but then what do you put in the host part of the SOA record for the zones served by this. The entry there should be the master server for the zone. The other case that you might want this is for a resolver, however again, the small amount of work involved in assigning a name for the machine in question suggests that you get no added benefit by *not* doing so. MBM -- Matthew Byng-Maddick Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 20 8980 5714 (Home) http://colondot.net/ Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 7956 613942 (Mobile) Tell me, O Octopus, I begs, / Is those things arms, or is they legs? / I marvel at thee, Octopus; / If I were thou, I'd call me us. -- Ogden Nash
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote: On Sun, 1 Apr 2001, Robin Szemeti wrote: agreed it is a dumb thing, especially if your nameserver doesnt have a name to lookup Erm!!?!? How exactly were you planning to point anything at it? an NS RR requires an authoritative name as it's RHS. Note what Robin replied to: nslookup does a rather dumb thing: it tries to lookup the reverse DNS for the nameserver it's about to use. Apart from being a waste of time, failure to find the name means it will refuse to query that nameserver. Having a name is one thing; being able to find out that name with reverse DNS is another. So if ns.example.com is 192.168.47.11 but there's no PTR record for 11.47.168.192.in-addr.arpa, you have a name server with a name but one that you can't use reverse DNS to look up the name for. Or what do you mean with "an authoritative name" -- does that mean a name that reverses to itself? Cheers, Philip -- Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED] All opinions are my own, not my employer's. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Mon, 02 Apr 2001, you wrote: if its a box-over-in-the corner that one day will be your DNS server somewhere but right now its just a ip address on a network you're trying to test before deploying .. it did get a name eventually. Hmmm.. I don't quite know how you can *test* it, if it hasn't got any names, and therefore can't serve any zones... now tell me .. why cant I have a nameserver stuffed full of zone files sitting in a corner, and want to test that it really beleives it can serve those zones before I install it somewhere .. it doesn;t *need* a name for that, its task is to serve up authoratative info innit... its only nslookup that htinks it needs a name. and .. surely not all the nameservers are necessarily named, only the ones published to the world, you could have internal servers that don;t answer external queries (such as a primary master server with two slaves used as authoratative servers to the world, whilst your primary master is left untroubled) in which case the primary master would not need a name just an address, and you might want to query it directly yourself to make sure it was not telling porkies. ?? *burble*! It is reasonable to have this property, yes, but then what do you put in the host part of the SOA record for the zones served by this. The entry there should be the master server for the zone. its quite common to run a the real primary master server inside an internal network (where it may or may not be named) and put the name of one of the public facing machine(s) in the SOA .. there is no way of telling whther the public facing machine got its info from a zone transfer or a zonefile as far as I can tell ... The other case that you might want this is for a resolver, however again, the small amount of work involved in assigning a name for the machine in question suggests that you get no added benefit by *not* doing so. [thinks: .. hmm theres something about 'recursive queries' that keeps waving at me .. but I cant quite remember what it is ..] agreed .. there is no benefit to be had by not doing so. in general everyhting gets named eventually .. but the original question was 'how can it serve names if it doesnt have a name itself' which is a subtly different question :) -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Fri, 30 Mar 2001, Paul Makepeace wrote: On Fri, Mar 30, 2001 at 01:41:14PM +0100, Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote: host(1)'s error messages are often misleading - it can give the message "try again" to nxdomain responses, for example... Given how fast .NSI namespace is being eaten up, that doesn't seem like such an unrealistic message :-) H But what about typos? dot.con? MBM -- Matthew Byng-Maddick Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 20 8980 5714 (Home) http://colondot.net/ Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 7956 613942 (Mobile) In the face of entropy and nothingness, you kind of have to pretend it's not there if you want to keep writing good code.-- Karl Lehenbauer
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Sun, 1 Apr 2001, Robin Szemeti wrote: agreed it is a dumb thing, especially if your nameserver doesnt have a name to lookup Erm!!?!? How exactly were you planning to point anything at it? an NS RR requires an authoritative name as it's RHS. MBM -- Matthew Byng-Maddick Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 20 8980 5714 (Home) http://colondot.net/ Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 7956 613942 (Mobile) In the face of entropy and nothingness, you kind of have to pretend it's not there if you want to keep writing good code.-- Karl Lehenbauer
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Sun, 01 Apr 2001, you wrote: On Sun, 1 Apr 2001, Robin Szemeti wrote: agreed it is a dumb thing, especially if your nameserver doesnt have a name to lookup Erm!!?!? How exactly were you planning to point anything at it? an NS RR requires an authoritative name as it's RHS. if its a box-over-in-the corner that one day will be your DNS server somewhere but right now its just a ip address on a network you're trying to test before deploying .. it did get a name eventually. and .. surely not all the nameservers are necessarily named, only the ones published to the world, you could have internal servers that don;t answer external queries (such as a primary master server with two slaves used as authoratative servers to the world, whilst your primary master is left untroubled) in which case the primary master would not need a name just an address, and you might want to query it directly yourself to make sure it was not telling porkies. ?? -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Fri, 30 Mar 2001, you wrote: Yes, it's useful. I like nslookup. (Plus I feel that dig is pretty verbose, but maybe there's a flag to control that that I've been too lazy to look for.) I guess it depends on application. If you need to know the nuts and bolts of a query, use dig. If you only need a quick resolution use host. laziness dictates that nslookup allows you to set the server and then execute multiple queries .. with dig you have ot type the server name in each time .. small, but annoying extra thing The problem (for me anyways) was that what you asked for from nslookup need not be what it returned. You would ask it to query one nameserver and it would for no apparent reason ignore your request and use nameservers in your resolve file. nslookup does a rather dumb thing: it tries to lookup the reverse DNS for the nameserver it's about to use. Apart from being a waste of time, failure to find the name means it will refuse to query that nameserver. agreed it is a dumb thing, especially if your nameserver doesnt have a name to lookup nslookup is a throwback to 1970's UNIX bollocks, as is the whole of the BIND distribution. If you have to use anything from BIND, host and dig are at least somewhat consistent but its nice .. I like the old things .. I bough ta tape drive because it would give me the excuse to use the mt command ;) -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
Robin Szemeti wrote: On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, you wrote: Hey, check your attributions -- "you" is not very useful when you're sending stuff to a mailing list :) or nslookup will have to be smart enough[1] to translate "randomkanji" to "bq--buffy" before asking the resolver library. err [1] unlikely to happen because its deprecated as of BIND-tools version 9.1 nslookup deprecated? Rats. you are apparently supposed to use dig or host .. my feeling is that nslookup is too easy to use and useful so they decided to deprecate it to make it harder for non BIND gurus to be able to tell wahts going on ... Yes, it's useful. I like nslookup. (Plus I feel that dig is pretty verbose, but maybe there's a flag to control that that I've been too lazy to look for.) Cheers, Philip -- Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED] All opinions are my own, not my employer's. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
nslookup deprecated? Rats. Good riddence. Yes, it's useful. I like nslookup. (Plus I feel that dig is pretty verbose, but maybe there's a flag to control that that I've been too lazy to look for.) I guess it depends on application. If you need to know the nuts and bolts of a query, use dig. If you only need a quick resolution use host. The problem (for me anyways) was that what you asked for from nslookup need not be what it returned. You would ask it to query one nameserver and it would for no apparent reason ignore your request and use nameservers in your resolve file.
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
Yes, it's useful. I like nslookup. (Plus I feel that dig is pretty verbose, but maybe there's a flag to control that that I've been too lazy to look for.) I guess it depends on application. If you need to know the nuts and bolts of a query, use dig. If you only need a quick resolution use host. The problem (for me anyways) was that what you asked for from nslookup need not be what it returned. You would ask it to query one nameserver and it would for no apparent reason ignore your request and use nameservers in your resolve file. nslookup does a rather dumb thing: it tries to lookup the reverse DNS for the nameserver it's about to use. Apart from being a waste of time, failure to find the name means it will refuse to query that nameserver. nslookup is a throwback to 1970's UNIX bollocks, as is the whole of the BIND distribution. If you have to use anything from BIND, host and dig are at least somewhat consistent
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Fri, 30 Mar 2001, Steve Keay wrote: nslookup does a rather dumb thing: it tries to lookup the reverse DNS for the nameserver it's about to use. Apart from being a waste of time, failure to find the name means it will refuse to query that nameserver. Why doesn't your nameserver *have* reverse DNS. nslookup is a throwback to 1970's UNIX bollocks, as is the whole of the BIND distribution. If you have to use anything from BIND, host and dig are at least somewhat consistent host(1)'s error messages are often misleading - it can give the message "try again" to nxdomain responses, for example... MBM -- Matthew Byng-Maddick Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 20 8980 5714 (Home) http://colondot.net/ Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 7956 613942 (Mobile) There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman? -- Woody Allen
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Thu Mar 29 15:37:29 2001, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * - BTW, does that mean that all calls within NI are now charged at local rate? Can belfast.pm enlighten me on this? Do you really think we'd get that lucky? No we get hit with the charge for a national call even though it's all in the one area code. They just divide it with codes for each area, so Belfast in 02890 whilst Lisburn is 02892. Calling from Belfast to Lisburn is charged as a local call, AFAIK. Before the number change Belfast was 01232 and Ards/Bangor was 01247, but calling between them was considered local. Now they are 02890 and 02891, and still local. So like London we get hit with a 2nd or 3rd change in the last 10 years and get no real benefit from it. It means that we don't have to dial the STD code when calling within NI, saving three keystrokes: NI is well known for golf, after all. -- Marty PGP signature
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Fri, Mar 30, 2001 at 01:41:14PM +0100, Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote: host(1)'s error messages are often misleading - it can give the message "try again" to nxdomain responses, for example... Given how fast .NSI namespace is being eaten up, that doesn't seem like such an unrealistic message :-) Paul
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
Dave Hodgkinson wrote: Given we can now have kanji URLs, [...] Can we now? I thought there were several different proposed schemes, but none has been officially accepted as standard. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED] All opinions are my own, not my employer's. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 12:26:46PM +0200, Philip Newton wrote: Chris Benson wrote: The people in uk.telecom were suggesting a one-off-this-will-hurt-but- it'll-only-happen-once change where the entire country moved to () - format Wouldn't that be rather wasteful? After all, population is distributed unevenly. You have some cities with lots of inhabitants, and then you have rural areas with a much smaller population density. Does that mean that in rural areas, you (a) have an area code covering a *huge* area, or (b) waste lots of phone numbers? As I see, it's one or the other. What's wrong with (a)? It already happens in (eg) the Highlands, and IIRC Northern Ireland has just one area code now for the entire province.* And if you have a big enough address space - and twelve digits is very big indeed - what's wrong with (b)? * - BTW, does that mean that all calls within NI are now charged at local rate? Can belfast.pm enlighten me on this? -- David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/ This is a signature. There are many like it but this one is mine. ** I read encrypted mail first, so encrypt if your message is important ** PGP signature
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote: On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Philip Newton wrote: Unless you translate them to an acceptable set, which is, I believe, where domain i18n is heading. The question is in which algorithm to choose for translation. Right. Which is evil and horrid. nslookup randomkanji.com euch. Yes. Either you have to translate "randomkanji" to "bq--buffy"[2] in your head or with an appropriate tool, or nslookup will have to be smart enough[1] to translate "randomkanji" to "bq--buffy" before asking the resolver library. Cheers, Philip [1] This includes knowing whether you fed it "randomkanji" in EUC-JP, or ISO-2022-JP, or UTF-8, or KSC-5601, or Yum. [2] which, incidentally, translates to U+0D0A U+0D5C, or MALAYALAM LETTER UU UNASSIGNED. -- Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED] All opinions are my own, not my employer's. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 02:46:48PM +0100, David Cantrell wrote: On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 10:23:12AM +0100, Dave Hodgkinson wrote: Roger Burton West [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: You show me a DNS server which supports kanji :-) This is a big bugbear of mine. Yes, you can register domains in all these weird scripts, but there's bugger all software support for them, and it will take *years* to replace all that's out there with new versions. Look at how slowly crypto use is spreading, or how little-used IPv6 is. IMNSHO, the registrars who are hyping their furrin-language domain registrations are committing a gross fraud, as registrants are led to believe that their new gobbledigook.com will be usable when it ain't. And according to http://slashdot.org/articles/01/03/28/1755243.shtml Xanni writes "Intellectual property claims have blindsided the Internet Engineering Task Force and could derail the group's efforts to develop a common scheme for supporting foreign-language domain names across the Internet. NWFusion is carrying the story." Great! get the lawyers involved :-( -- Chris Benson
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 12:26:46PM +0200, Philip Newton wrote: Chris Benson wrote: () - Wouldn't that be rather wasteful? After all, population is distributed What are you wasting? Numbers? What is the cost of extra numbers? Some people in small places have to type 8 digits instead of 3. People in more populous places dial 8 instead of 7 AND DON'T HAVE TO GET NEW SIGNS, STATIONERY, INFORM ALL CONTACTS EVERY YEAR OR TWO. unevenly. You have some cities with lots of inhabitants, and then you have rural areas with a much smaller population density. Does that mean that in rural areas, you (a) have an area code covering a *huge* area, or (b) waste lots of phone numbers? As I see, it's one or the other. But you end up with the situation we've current got - everything is a special case: * London (after 10? 12? years) back with 1 code (01 - 0[78]1 - 01[78]1 - 020) . * Variable length area codes means a lookup table containing every code because the system doesn't know what's area and what's number ... and that table being consulted at every digit. Having short prefixes with many digits for big places and longer prefixes with fewer digits for small places seems to make sense to me. It's how But it doesn't make for simple/fast/scalable computer programs :-( * And when more numbers are needed because of the new business park/housing estate/... ?? Have you never heard messages like: "You have called an invalid number, 4 digit numbers starting with 5 now have a 62 on the front, 4 digit number starting with 4 now have 52 on the front, 5 digit numbers starting with 2 now have a 7 on the front ...". Stamford Lincs. has had several such changes, when I worked there the local printers loved it: an extra Christmas every other April. However, USA and France seem to be doing all right with fixed-length numbers The US numbering plan worked well for ~50 years, but is now showing signs of stress: number exhaustion, overlapping area codes, and others. They are looking at alternatives: 4/3/4, 3/4/4, ... but also appear to be mired in UK-like short-termism. Think ahead, think big: Vint Cerf was thinking big in the late '60s with 32 bit IP addresses and got it way too small. He backed 128 bit IP addresses in the early '90s. And all this has what to do with Buffy? Keep awake at the back there! Try dialing "Northumbria Police" on a number pad, it seems a lot like the 8uffy code mentioned in another thread :-) (Using capitalisation to denote 0/1 bits: oNe BiT eAcH lEtTeR = 010 101 0101 010101 = 01010101, 01010101 = "UU"). -- Chris Benson
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, you wrote: Yes. Either you have to translate "randomkanji" to "bq--buffy"[2] in your head or with an appropriate tool, or nslookup will have to be smart enough[1] to translate "randomkanji" to "bq--buffy" before asking the resolver library. err [1] unlikely to happen because its deprecated as of BIND-tools version 9.1 you are apparently supposed to use dig or host .. my feeling is that nslookup is too easy to use and useful so they decided to deprecate it to make it harder for non BIND gurus to be able to tell wahts going on ... -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Robin Szemeti wrote: On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, you wrote: Yes. Either you have to translate "randomkanji" to "bq--buffy"[2] in your head or with an appropriate tool, or nslookup will have to be smart enough[1] to translate "randomkanji" to "bq--buffy" before asking the resolver library. err [1] unlikely to happen because its deprecated as of BIND-tools version 9.1 oh, how crap. you are apparently supposed to use dig or host .. my feeling is that nslookup is too easy to use and useful so they decided to deprecate it to make it harder for non BIND gurus to be able to tell wahts going on ... It's not easy to use, but it has better error reporting than the default host(1) command. I think it really is time to switch to using adnshost more... MBM -- Matthew Byng-Maddick Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 20 8980 5714 (Home) http://colondot.net/ Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 7956 613942 (Mobile) The Universe shipped by weight, not by volume. Some expansion of the contents may have occurred during shipment.
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Do you really think we'd get that lucky? No we get hit with the charge for a national call even though it's all in the one area code. They just divide it with codes for each area, so Belfast in 02890 whilst Lisburn is 02892. I didn't call my family for 4 weeks because of this, eventually my mother decided to go to the expense of calling my mobile, what can i say? she's from Ballymena. Greg (who realises very few people will understand that) -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
Chris Devers wrote: In any event, the leading 1 is never part of the phone number, but you always have to dial it whenever making a "long distance" call. Well, I would have thought that's just splitting hairs -- is the '0' part of the number 0207 xxx is the number 207 xxx "but you have to dial a 0 before that"? Comes out to the same thing. Except for... This used to mean anything beyond a certain distance from your local calling area /or anything outside of your area code, Where you can have 713 555 1212 without a leading 1, and 1 555 3434 with a leading 1 but without an area code (in big area codes such as maybe 801 = Utah). Hm, so I guess the 1 is not part of the area code. but with 10 digit numbers you'll probably just have to put it in front of about every number dialled, thus giving everyone in the country an 11 digit phone number. But maybe this'll change in the future -- with 1 being always/never present. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED] All opinions are my own, not my employer's. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
Neil Ford wrote: I suppose I'd be splitting hairs if I pointed out that the dialing code for London is 020, meaning numbers should be shown as 020 . Oh, all right. Thanks to Neil and Simon for the correction. I suppose this misapprehension comes partly because it *used* to be two dialing codes (071, 081 -- or was it 0171, 0181? Or both, one after the other? I forget). Cheers, Philip -- Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED] All opinions are my own, not my employer's. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
Simon Wistow wrote: It was origially 01 ne c'est pas? (ITYM "n'est-ce pas?") Yes, it was. I remember that time. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED] All opinions are my own, not my employer's. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On 28/03/2001 at 13:23 +0100, Dave Cross wrote: At Wed, 28 Mar 2001 13:09:37 +0100, Simon Wistow [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [London phone codes] It was origially 01 ne c'est pas? Then it changed to 071 (Inner London) and 081 (Greater London) then it changed to 0171 and 0181 and then finally to 020 7xxx and 020 8xxx And all of those changes have happened in the last 10 (12? I'm guessing here) years. And each time we've been told that the changes will cope with the demand for phone numbers for many years. Which has been a lie. It would have done if Oftel had done things properly; instead they somehow managed to create between 10 and 20 times more numbers and still fuck things up. The US approach (longer local numbers- everywhere is 7 digits now, prepended by a three digit 'city' code) combined with the fact there was room to expand the three digit codes (Microserfs buffs will note that this is because they used to all be \d[01]\d, and now they're \d\d\d) seems to have worked well, as new numbers in, say, outer New York just have different area codes. There must have been *some* way Oftel could have made something similar work here. -- :: paul :: this world's crazy, give me the gun
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 02:09:50PM +0100, Piers Cawley wrote: the fuckwits at Oftel lumbered us with 01[78]1 in the first place is something of a mystery to me... Was it Oftel that made that choice or BT? I was assumed it was the lumbering ineptitude of The World's Most Evil Phone Company (to whom it's customary, and justified, to attribute both malice ** stupidity). Paul
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 03:29:21PM +0100, Paul Mison wrote: There must have been *some* way Oftel could have made something similar work here. The people in uk.telecom were suggesting a one-off-this-will-hurt-but- it'll-only-happen-once change where the entire country moved to () - format, back in the early '90s to my knowledge (some of them were probably suggesting it back in the '60s, they'd been there long enough :-). Instead we get a numbering system consisting entirely of patches :-( -- Chris Benson
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 10:04:34AM -0800, Paul Makepeace wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 02:09:50PM +0100, Piers Cawley wrote: the fuckwits at Oftel lumbered us with 01[78]1 in the first place is something of a mystery to me... Was it Oftel that made that choice or BT? I was assumed it was the lumbering ineptitude of The World's Most Evil Phone Company (to whom it's customary, and justified, to attribute both malice ** stupidity). The word (again from uk.telecom) was that it was officially Oftel, but BT told them to do it: "Alternatives were [] technically impossible, [] would confuse the subscribers [] would confuse the elderly [] would cost business too much". Pick any that might just possibly apply. This may be related to how Oftel was originally staffed: my impression was that it was just the bit of the Post Office that monitored the Telephone bits: they got split off into Oftel. -- Chris Benson
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 07:28:31PM +0100, Chris Benson wrote: it'll-only-happen-once change where the entire country moved to () - Twelve and eight digit phone numbers? So phalanxes of psychologists noting that the human brain has the magic number seven genetically imprinted into it should just be tossed out the window? I still don't see what's wrong with the US system. Sure, it's filling up but then the population is 5x the UK and I'd bet they have more per capita business (i.e. allocated business lines) than the UK. Anyway, the whole 'numbers' thing is long over due to be replaced by those new fangled 'letters'. Works for DNS... Instead we get a numbering system consisting entirely of patches :-( Yes, it's embarrassing. "So, why *is* your country's phone system so utterly hosed?" Paul
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
At 12:04 PM 28.3.2001 -0800, you wrote: Anyway, the whole 'numbers' thing is long over due to be replaced by those new fangled 'letters'. Works for DNS... Yeah, exactly. We're already partly there, sort of. I don't know the phone numbers of any of the people I call at all regularly (i.e. more than twice ever), because the first thing I do with any such phone number is to set the number for autodial. What's my fiance's cell phone number? "May Cell". What's Cingular's number? "Cingular". What's my bank's number? "Eastern Bank". Easy. Work in some kind of good pervasive naming scheme and the underlying numbers can get arbitrarily complex without bothering anyone. -- Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 12:04:05PM -0800, Paul Makepeace wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 07:28:31PM +0100, Chris Benson wrote: it'll-only-happen-once change where the entire country moved to () - Twelve and eight digit phone numbers? So phalanxes of psychologists noting that the human brain has the magic number seven genetically imprinted into it should just be tossed out the window? That's 7+/-2 remember and the 7-2 crowd are screwed anyway :-) so why not up the ante a bit more! Anyway who remembers full telephone numbers? my GF used to be tyneside(0191), jesmond(281), 1143, the taxi is tyneside(0191), newcastle-centre(261), . I still don't see what's wrong with the US system. Sure, it's filling up but then the population is 5x the UK and I'd bet they have more per capita business (i.e. allocated business lines) than the UK. But it *is* filling up now: the aim being, like with IPng, to not have to change again: neat quote from the Economist about IPv6 ... 4 billion addresses for each of 4 billion people on each of 4 billion planets in each of 4 billion galaxies. This should be enough to cope with expected growth in numbers of mobile devices, Internet-capable household appliances and so on for the next few millenia. /neat Anyway, the whole 'numbers' thing is long over due to be replaced by those new fangled 'letters'. Works for DNS... But DNS maps onto ... numbers, 4-12 digit numbers, soon to be luvverly 8 x 4 hex digits! And I'd rather dial 999^W112 than mm,mmm,r,rrr,fff,u,m,aa,r,i,a,#,p,mmm, or whatever "northumbria police" translates to :-) Hey, maybe this is another 8uffy encoding system? Instead we get a numbering system consisting entirely of patches :-( Yes, it's embarrassing. "So, why *is* your country's phone system so utterly hosed?" I'm assuming that's a rhetorical question since you've asked it in polite company :-) But you have to wonder: BT, RailTrack the ToCs, Water Co.s, ... The Dome, ... I've actually started sending DepressoGrams(tm) to homesick friends in New Zealand to make them feel better! -- Chris Benson
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 03:29:21PM +0100, Paul Mison wrote: The US approach (longer local numbers- everywhere is 7 digits now, prepended by a three digit 'city' code) combined with the fact there s/city/area/; NYC, for instance, has at least two area codes at this point. I notice, in fact, that the current Manhattan phone directory not only lists 212 (Manhattan and formerly the rest of the city), but two cellular phone area codes, 646 and 917. dha -- David H. Adler - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.panix.com/~dha/ You get the idea that if Apple won a 90% market share, bought out Microsoft, and hired Bill Gates to mop the bathrooms, Business Week would write: "Apple has all but ignored the possibility of alien invasion..."- David Pogue
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 12:04:05PM -0800, Paul Makepeace wrote: Anyway, the whole 'numbers' thing is long over due to be replaced by those new fangled 'letters'. Works for DNS... Oh @deity, let's not do that. Consider the mess the WIPO's causing now, and then think about competition for "good" phone names... Roger
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
Paul Makepeace wrote: The world would be a much better place if everyone habitually quoted their phone number +access_code area_code local_number. You don't realise how important this is 'til you have to repeatedly find people in various desolate stations dotted all over the world with scant, unlabelled, and usually too few, digits culled from a unkempt LDAP directory... C Paul S Makepeace, +1 831 238 0902 Still not enough. It'll work for the Americans (yet again...)[1] but if you have a phone number whose country codes identifies it as being in country X, and you are in country X on a business trip and want to call that person, leaving off the country code is, in general, not enough. In Germany and England, you have to add a 0 (e.g. +49-40-76470386 turns into (040) 76470386), but in other places, that might be a 9 -- or something else. If you're not familiar with the country, you may not know what to add. Cheers, Philip [1] Though, strictly speaking, I think America requires you to add "1" at the beginning; though it's not part of the area/STD code as the 0 is in England and Germany, I think most places require it to show you're dialling a long-distance call. -- Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED] All opinions are my own, not my employer's. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
At 01:44 PM 27.3.2001 +0200, you wrote: I think America requires you to add "1" at the beginning; though it's not part of the area/STD code as the 0 is in England and Germany, I think most places require it to show you're dialling a long-distance call. Correct. Standard format is an implicit 1, a three digit area code, a three digit local code and a four digit extension. The local code extension are always mandatory, so effectively phone numbers are 7 digits long -- the local code is just useful to give a rough idea where the number may be base (but then with cell phones it's meaningless, so the original purpose, already diluted, is disappearing). We're burning through phone numbers very very quickly, to the point that new area codes are being added all the time and as a result people's phone numbers are changing all the time. To control the hemmoraging, some areas are going to full ten digit phone numbers; we'll see how much it helps. In any event, the leading 1 is never part of the phone number, but you always have to dial it whenever making a "long distance" call. This used to mean anything beyond a certain distance from your local calling area /or anything outside of your area code, but with 10 digit numbers you'll probably just have to put it in front of about every number dialled, thus giving everyone in the country an 11 digit phone number. -- Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Tue, Mar 27, 2001 at 01:44:49PM +0200, Philip Newton wrote: Still not enough. It'll work for the Americans (yet again...)[1] but if you have a phone number whose country codes identifies it as being in country X, and you are in country X on a business trip and want to call that person, leaving off the country code is, in general, not enough. In Germany and England, you have to add a 0 (e.g. +49-40-76470386 turns into (040) 76470386), but in other places, that might be a 9 -- or something else. If you're not familiar with the country, you may not know what to add. I'm assuming the user is intelligent enough to read a phone book or ask at the reception desk and learn how to make a national phone call... There is, IMO, no need to document the inner machinations of the local phone system in fully qualified phone numbers of the +X Y Z format. Besides, it looks ugly on business cards having +44 / (0) 117 924 ... :-) Paul
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
At 03:28 PM 27.3.2001 -0800, you wrote: With 10 digit dialling, it's 10 digit dialling, no extra '1' required. E.g. if I was in Houston (which has three area codes and is 10-digit) I would dial 713 555 1212 regardless of whether I was already in 713. Ahh. This explains why a cell phone works whether or not the leading 1 is included with the rest of the number. In fact, if the whole country went 10 digit, the need to use the '1' would even disappear. I thought it had a purpose as a sort of control character for the phone companies, with any number beginning with a 0 or 1 having special meaning. I guess that special meaning evaporates under 10 digit schemes... PS That single-\n paragraph formatting is evil, IMO. Yeah I know, I don't like it either. Blame Eudora... -- Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Fri, 23 Mar 2001 19:07:16 +, Dave Cross wrote: At 17:48 23/03/2001, you wrote: On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, you wrote: Well, I can make a guess at what the first number represents. Those expansion plans really are short-term. Peter Haworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Put down those Windows disks Dave Dave? DAVE!!" -- HAL 9000 and for a bonus half point (cos its easy) .. why was HAL called HAL? Well, Arthur C Clarke claims it's a pure coincidence, but if you take the letters after each of H, A and L - you get IBM. I vaguely recall it standing for something like "Heuristic Algorithmic Logic," but that doesn't really set it apart from anything. -- Peter Haworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mary had a little key - she kept it in escrow. And every thing that mary said, the feds were sure to know. -- Sam Simpson
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Mon, 26 Mar 2001 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I vaguely recall it standing for something like "Heuristic Algorithmic Logic," but that doesn't really set it apart from anything. how does that explain SAL9000? MBM -- Matthew Byng-Maddick Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 20 8980 5714 (Home) http://colondot.net/ Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 7956 613942 (Mobile) Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle. -- Michelangelo
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Tony Bowden wrote: On Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 03:24:48PM -0800, Paul Makepeace wrote: More trivia: NT stands (the above not withstanding) for New Technology which makes reading 2k's splash "Built on NT Technology" sound a bit like recording on DAT tapes. Or entering your PIN number? into an ATM machine? j --- jon eyre ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) (http://simpson.dyndns.org/~jon/) the slack which can be described is not the true slack
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Wed, 21 Mar 2001 15:46:07 +, Marty Pauley wrote: The interplanitary URL is sufficient for our short-term expansion plans. Unfortunatly the actual specification of the scheme is a millitary secret, but I can target your house with the following: ipbm://3/401392692/759227092/5 Well, I can make a guess at what the first number represents. Those expansion plans really are short-term. -- Peter Haworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Put down those Windows disks Dave Dave? DAVE!!" -- HAL 9000
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, you wrote: Well, I can make a guess at what the first number represents. Those expansion plans really are short-term. Peter Haworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Put down those Windows disks Dave Dave? DAVE!!" -- HAL 9000 and for a bonus half point (cos its easy) .. why was HAL called HAL? -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 05:48:42PM +, Robin Szemeti wrote: and for a bonus half point (cos its easy) .. why was HAL called HAL? It's IBM with each letter shifted once to the left. -- Niklas Nordebo -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] "The day is seven hours and fifteen minutes old, and already it's crippled with the weight of my evasions, deceit, and downright lies"
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
Tony wrote: On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Lucy McWilliam wrote: Love and fruit flies, I only really want /one/ of those things... Ditto. And I have the wrong one... Love and grapefruit, L.
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, you wrote: At 17:48 23/03/2001, you wrote: On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, you wrote: Well, I can make a guess at what the first number represents. Those expansion plans really are short-term. Peter Haworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Put down those Windows disks Dave Dave? DAVE!!" -- HAL 9000 and for a bonus half point (cos its easy) .. why was HAL called HAL? Well, Arthur C Clarke claims it's a pure coincidence, but if you take the letters after each of H, A and L - you get IBM. you have it in one .. I had heard (as others point) out that he denies he noticed .. I reckon he was scared of IBM suing him for some totally implausible reason .., I can however believe that Stanley would have wanted to re shoot bits when he found out as he was several watermelons short of a dinner jacket that man. I wonder if Darkstar is available on DVD ? .. hmm now .. who do we know htat does DVDs? -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Leon Brocard wrote: Really? How many flies do you have? One on each pair of trousers. Except track-suit bottoms. Tony
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
Andrew Bowman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: In Iceland they append 'son' for sons and 'dottir' for daughters - hence Magnus Magnusson is the son of Magnus, whilst Sally Magnusson would, in Iceland at least, be Sally Magnusdottir. I used to work with an Icelandic chap who told me that the Rekjavik phonebook is ordered by first name because they still use proper patronyms. -- Piers
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
Redvers Davies wrote: and if you don't have a last name??? I have three friends who are surnameless... their credit cards have a "." as a surname because the bank computers couldn't handle a lack of surname. An example from the Perl world: Gurusamy Sarathy. His name is Sarathy, and Gurusamy is his father's name. If he wanted to be complete, he could add another couple of ancestors in the male line at the beginning: ... Srinivasan Venkatasamy Rangasamy Sinnappa Gurusamy Sarathy Naicker (from a canned FAQ he sent me in response to a question). If he had a child, it would be called Sarathy Foo. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED] All opinions are my own, not my employer's. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Simon Wilcox wrote: I thought I'd look this up, but the BSI want 50 quid for a copy. I appreciate this is how they make money to fund the standards work but it seems a tad steep for the casual viewer such as myself. Anyone know of a free online resource ? Useful Summary: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html Standard: ftp://ftp.qsl.net/pub/g1smd/8601v03.pdf Google is Good[tm]. TOny
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
At Wed, 21 Mar 2001 11:37:32 + (GMT), AEF [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Simon Wilcox wrote: I thought I'd look this up, but the BSI want 50 quid for a copy. I appreciate this is how they make money to fund the standards work but it seems a tad steep for the casual viewer such as myself. Anyone know of a free online resource ? Useful Summary: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html Standard: ftp://ftp.qsl.net/pub/g1smd/8601v03.pdf Google is Good[tm]. Looks like you _can_ get it directly from ISO by going to: http://www.iso.ch/markete/8601.pdf Dave...
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
At 06:42 21/03/2001 -0500, Dave Cross wrote: At Wed, 21 Mar 2001 11:37:32 + (GMT), AEF [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Useful Summary: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html Standard: ftp://ftp.qsl.net/pub/g1smd/8601v03.pdf This one seems to be a second edition although the filename infers third. Google is Good[tm]. doh ! will now write 100 times - "use all your resources before bothering other people" Looks like you _can_ get it directly from ISO by going to: http://www.iso.ch/markete/8601.pdf This seems to be the first version. Quite a lot seems to have changed between versions judging by the markup on the qsl.net version above. I agree wholeheartedly with the observation on the IDFC page Dave posted - "Seems pretty daft to me - if you want a worldwide standard to be adopted it should be freely available to everyone who could possibly want to use it" /rant Simon.
RE: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
This site seems to confirm it tho: http://www.saqqara.demon.co.uk/datefmt.htm Hmmm, 11 reasons to use this format: 5 of these reasons are "Because it makes it easier for me to write software if you do" which don't carry much weight IMNSHO However, in the spirit of standardisation, I'd like to suggest: 1. Please can we stop this silly 'firstname lastname' format. The most significant string (family name) should come first, with a standard delimiter (comma) before the first name (which should come last). This is what bibliographies and libraries have used for years, so should everyone else. Please use: LASTNAME, [FIRSTNAME|FIRST INITIAL] 2. The address format is a real mess, being least significant string first, and no clear guide as to whether comma or newline or both are the acceptable delimiters. Also, the location of the postcode string is arbitrary, and in any case the postcode repeats information and is often redundant. However, since postcodes can be easily fed into computer programs, and are language independant, they should replace all that other stuff. Please use: ISO planet code, ISO country code, POSTCODE, Building Number[, apartment number][, business name] Note also that country code is compulsory. In the past post offices assumed that addresses without a country code were local and assumed the 'current' country as the one required for delivery. This sort of assumption landed us in the Y2K mess where people foolishly assumed that a year was in the 'current' century, for some silly reason. Note too that ISO planet code has been introduced so that when we colonise mars, we will not be left with 3 billion ambiguous addresses! What a mess that would be! As you see I have really learned from the Y2K thing, which caused such massive chaos here on earth when all the computers stopped working and the planes fell out of the sky etc etc. I hope others will take these suggestions to heart, Peterson, Jonathan Earth, UK, W1H 6LT, 40, Ideashub 2001-03-21
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
"Jonathan Peterson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This site seems to confirm it tho: http://www.saqqara.demon.co.uk/datefmt.htm Hmmm, 11 reasons to use this format: 5 of these reasons are "Because it makes it easier for me to write software if you do" which don't carry much weight IMNSHO However, in the spirit of standardisation, I'd like to suggest: 1. Please can we stop this silly 'firstname lastname' format. The most significant string (family name) should come first, with a standard delimiter (comma) before the first name (which should come last). This is what bibliographies and libraries have used for years, so should everyone else. Please use: LASTNAME, [FIRSTNAME|FIRST INITIAL] 2. The address format is a real mess, being least significant string first, and no clear guide as to whether comma or newline or both are the acceptable delimiters. Also, the location of the postcode string is arbitrary, and in any case the postcode repeats information and is often redundant. However, since postcodes can be easily fed into computer programs, and are language independant, they should replace all that other stuff. Please use: ISO planet code, ISO country code, POSTCODE, Building Number[, apartment number][, business name] Note also that country code is compulsory. In the past post offices assumed that addresses without a country code were local and assumed the 'current' country as the one required for delivery. This sort of assumption landed us in the Y2K mess where people foolishly assumed that a year was in the 'current' century, for some silly reason. Can I commend ISO 11180 to you? -- Piers
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Wed, Mar 21, 2001 at 11:23:59AM +, Simon Wilcox wrote: At 11:43 20/03/2001 -0500, Dave Cross wrote: Which is the ISO standard (number 8601) for dates for a very good reason. I thought I'd look this up, but the BSI want 50 quid for a copy. I appreciate this is how they make money to fund the standards work but it seems a tad steep for the casual viewer such as myself. Anyone know of a free online resource ? Not for standards in general, but that particular one is at http://www.iso.ch/markete/8601.pdf -- David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david The voices said it's a good day to clean my weapons.
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Marcel Grunauer wrote: Jonathan Peterson writes: Please use: ISO planet code, ISO country code, POSTCODE, Building Number[, apartment number][, business name] [snippage] Peterson, Jonathan Earth, UK, W1H 6LT, 40, Ideashub 2001-03-21 That works for the UK, but in Austria, post codes also require a street name, since post codes are too broad to identify individual blocks. And what if the Martians have completely different systems? What about coordinates of things moving through space (i.e. on their way to Mars)? I suggest introducing the concepts of "unimatrix", "grid" and "node". These can be extended into n-dimensional space. bahhh .. now you've let the genie out of its Klein Bottle. I suggest introducing the concept of a large blank form field and allowing the address to be in an appropriate local format ;) -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
Quoting Jonathan Peterson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): Please use: ISO planet code, ISO country code, POSTCODE, Building Number[, apartment number][, business name] Please move to one of the former USSR countries, they write their addresses there like that. http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/postal.html Makes for interesting reading about posting to anywhere. Cheers, -- Merijn Broeren| Some days it just don't pay to chew through Software Geek | the restraints in the morning... |
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, you wrote: Human postmen can do amazing things, like deliver letters addresses to "John Smith, the house with the blue door, near the flower shop in the main street in Newtownards". blimey .. he really _IS_ a martian .. must be ... down here on Earth the postmen can't even deliver it with the correct address on including post code .. so they must be martian postmen you are talking about ... -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
LASTNAME, [FIRSTNAME|FIRST INITIAL] and if you don't have a last name??? I have three friends who are surnameless... their credit cards have a "." as a surname because the bank computers couldn't handle a lack of surname.
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
On 2001, Mar, 21, Wed Pauley, Marley wrote:
That would work if 'significant' was well defined in relation to names,
but it isn't. It works with dates because 'significant' has a well
defined meaning in relation to numerical quantities.
I wonder what Larry thinks about this.
Later.
Mark.
--
print "\n",map{my$a="\n"if(length$_6);' 'x(36-length($_)/2)."$_\n$a"} (
Name = 'Mark Fowler',Title = 'Technology Developer' ,
Firm = 'Profero Ltd',Web = 'http://www.profero.com/' ,
Email = '[EMAIL PROTECTED]', Phone = '+44 (0) 20 7700 9960' )
RE: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
[Continuing off-topic - not a surprise on London.pm, I'm sure (I thought Mr. Cantrell's [ot] the other day denoted 'on-topic' :--)] From: Marty Pauley [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] In some countries the 'family name' is actually defined by your job, location, or other mutable property. It used to be like that in Europe. Hence names like Smith, Fletcher, Skinner, Mercer, etc. etc. (inc. Bowman). On a related note, many Jewish surnames are of a similar, central European origin (the likes of Goldblum (Goldflower), Spielberg (Playhill), Birnbaum (Peartree) etc.) is that Jews didn't have/use family names (at that time at least)and, following a change in the law (those Germans again), had to adopt family names, hence the preponderance of names like those above). In other countries the family name changes each generation, so taking "Jonathan Peterson" as an example: his father would be "Peter something" and his children would be "something Jonathanson". The same happened in Scotland/Ireland/etc. - Mc/Mac literally means 'Son of', hence names like MacDonald and Donaldson are essentially the same name. Irish republicans sometimes reverse the anglicisation of names, hence the likes of Sean MacStiofain, a senior IRA man, who was originally born in London as John Stevenson. In Iceland they append 'son' for sons and 'dottir' for daughters - hence Magnus Magnusson is the son of Magnus, whilst Sally Magnusson would, in Iceland at least, be Sally Magnusdottir. Andrew.
