Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Robin Szemeti]

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.

[Steve Keay]

> 
> *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


Okay, but if I'm investigating a DNS issue, I don't want to be
sidetracked by reverse DNS lookups.   I'm trying to figure out what is
wrong with the nameservice, and nslookup is just hanging while it
waits for the answer to a question I didn't ask?  Annoying.

Somone alters /etc/resolv.conf on a box and nslookup stops working?
Annoying.

Most machines will have a name in the forward DNS, but not everyone
manages to keep in-addr.arpa up to date (1).  It makes no difference
in nomal operation, so there is no earthly reason for nslookup to
insist upon it.

Of course, *real* men would be doing a `perl -MNet::DNS -e ...'

--
Steve Keay

1) ever tried to get a US ISP to configure reverse DNS for a /25?

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Matthew Byng-Maddick]

On Mon, 2 Apr 2001, Philip Newton wrote:
> 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.

Yes.

OK.

But not having valid reverse DNS is silly. 

all: PARANOID ALL

> Or what do you mean with "an authoritative name" -- does that mean a name
> that reverses to itself?

No, I mean an A RR. I wasn't reading the context carefully enough.

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.

[Philip Newton]

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.

[Matthew Byng-Maddick]

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.

[Robin Szemeti]

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.

[Matthew Byng-Maddick]

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.

[Matthew Byng-Maddick]

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.

[Robin Szemeti]

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.

[Paul Makepeace]

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.

[Marty Pauley]

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.

[Matthew Byng-Maddick]

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.

[Steve Keay]

> > 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.

[Redvers Davies]

> 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.

[Philip Newton]

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.

[Greg McCarroll]

* [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.

[steve]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 03:19:46PM +0100, David Cantrell wrote:
> > 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.*
> 
> * - 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.

So like London we get hit with a 2nd or 3rd change in the last 10 years
and get no real benefit from it.

I'll just go and mutter about this in the corner.

Steve

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Matthew Byng-Maddick]

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.

[Robin Szemeti]

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.

[Chris Benson]

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.

[Chris Benson]

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.

[Philip Newton]

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  .
-- 
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.

[David Cantrell]

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/

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Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Matthew Byng-Maddick]

On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Philip Newton wrote:
> Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote:
> > the host (according to RFC1123) must match
> > /^([a-z0-9]+)((.[a-z0-9-]+)*(.[a-z0-9]+))?$/i
> > which doesn't really give you support for hostnames in those many
> > characters.
> 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.

> > > 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,
> > Ah, but on the other hand look at the growth curve for the 
> > internet. It *will* pick up.
> It'll pick up when Microsoft implements such stuff in its operating system
> and/or in Internet Exploder, and not much before. Wanna bet?

Uh huh.

> AFAIK, Solaris has IPv6 in its newest incarnations. I still don't see much
> of it around.

I think in this case it'll need to be in many more routers than it
currently is

> Probably like the explosion of TCP/IP, which (outside of universities etc.)
> really only came with Win95 (modulo Trumpet Winsock).

Sure.

MBM

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The  Universe  shipped by  weight, not by  volume.  Some  expansion of the
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Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Philip Newton]

Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote:
> the host (according to RFC1123) must match
> 
> /^([a-z0-9]+)((.[a-z0-9-]+)*(.[a-z0-9]+))?$/i
> 
> which doesn't really give you support for hostnames in those many
> characters.

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.

> > 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,
> 
> Ah, but on the other hand look at the growth curve for the 
> internet. It *will* pick up.

It'll pick up when Microsoft implements such stuff in its operating system
and/or in Internet Exploder, and not much before. Wanna bet?

AFAIK, Solaris has IPv6 in its newest incarnations. I still don't see much
of it around.

Probably like the explosion of TCP/IP, which (outside of universities etc.)
really only came with Win95 (modulo Trumpet Winsock).

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.

[Philip Newton]

David Cantrell wrote:
> You show me a DNS server which supports kanji :-)

Well, if RACE is the encoding that finally gets chosen, all of them do -- it
maps all of Unicode to [a-z2-7-]+ or something like that.

> 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.

Yes. The big problem here is client support. While "Hitachi" in Kanji might
translate to bq--mxs77sy under RACE (if I got my conversion right), this
won't help anybody unless browsers recognise kanji in the location bar and
translate them to RACE before sending off the DNS query. Or, if the browser
sends some standard (e.g. URI-encoded UTF-8 or whatever, which is, I
believe, what IE does in some cases) and the DNS server translates that to
RACE before looking in its cache.

However, there are two types of fraud -- the case you mentioned (where names
are sold that have no client support) and one that's even worse: where names
are registered in some funky encoding which may become the standard or may
not. So if I work for Hitachi and register bq--mxs77sy.co.jp, and the
official standard becomes not RACE but some other encoding, my domain is
worthless, even though it was sold me as "the translation of 'Hitachi'".

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.

[Matthew Byng-Maddick]

On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, David Cantrell wrote:
> You show me a DNS server which supports kanji :-)

Although the format for domain names is 8-bit, and they do support 8-bit,
the host (according to RFC1123) must match

/^([a-z0-9]+)((.[a-z0-9-]+)*(.[a-z0-9]+))?$/i

which doesn't really give you support for hostnames in those many
characters.

> 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

and anything checking for an RFC1123 valid host will barf.

> 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,

Ah, but on the other hand look at the growth curve for the internet. It
*will* pick up.

> 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.

Possibly true.

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.

[Philip Newton]

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.

[David Cantrell]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 10:23:12AM +0100, Dave Hodgkinson wrote:
> Roger Burton West <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> > 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...
> 
> Given we can now have kanji URLs, why not just go for logos?

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.

-- 
David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/

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Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Dave Hodgkinson]

Roger Burton West <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> 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...

Given we can now have kanji URLs, why not just go for logos?

-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Interim CTO, web server farms, technical strategy
   

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Philip Newton]

Chris Devers wrote:
> Work in some kind of good 
> pervasive naming scheme and the underlying numbers can get 
> arbitrarily complex without bothering anyone. 

Maybe. I'm told that was Tim Berners-Lee's plan for hypertext -- that
hyperlinks would be clickable or something like that and that nobody would
ever have to type in a URL. Obviously, things have come out differently. I
think I read once that if he had known URLs would be displayed (e.g. in
advertisements) and typed in by hand, he would have chosen a different
syntax.

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.

[Philip Newton]

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.

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
England and Germany do it. (For example, a boy in my sister's school class
had a three-digit phone number, and a five-digit area code. Small village,
so didn't need many digits, and small area code area overall; five digits
was the maximum length before East Germany came into the game.) Maximum
length for phone numbers used to be 7 in Germany but is now 8 for
direct-dialled numbers (especially for new numbers caused by switching to
ISDN); it can be more for exchanges with extensions (e.g. in companies) --
they might have, say, five digits + four-digit extension numbers.

However, USA and France seem to be doing all right with fixed-length numbers
(though in France, I hear they changed from 8 digits to (8 + 1 if you're
dialling from "central" France to "outer" France and vice versa) to 10
digits, with 01, 02, 03, 04, 05 (others?) giving a rough area, followed by
the previous 8 digits. So I guess they needed room for expansion, too.

And all this has what to do with Buffy?

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.

[Roger Burton West]

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.

[David H. Adler]

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.

[David Cantrell]

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?

Yes.  We have these things called address books we can look numbers up
in.  It doesn't matter how long your number is, I have no reason to
remember it.  I have this handy-dandy device I can store it in.  In my
case, the device is a Palm, but my luddite relatives seem to get by
just as well with paper address books.  When it comes to important
numbers, I seem to remember 12 digits (IP addresses) and 10 digits
(phone numbers) just fine, and I certainly don't pretend to have a
fantastic memory.

I can never remember my number at work, but that has always been the
case regardless of whether the number was six, seven or eight digits long.
And on the rare occasions I need it, I can look the damned thing up in
[starts counting] seven seconds.

Anyway, I thought that the psychologists couldn't agree amongst
themselves whether the magic number was five six or seven.

> > 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 not convinced that it's any more hosed than any other country's.
Telecoms is both hardware and software.  Both suck, the whole world
round.

-- 
David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/

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** I read encrypted mail first, so encrypt if your message is important **

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Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Chris Benson]

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:  

 
... 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.

 
> 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.

[Chris Benson]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 08:16:01PM +0100, David Cantrell wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 07:28:31PM +0100, 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,  back in the early '90s to my knowledge
> 
> Would that have worked?  I thought that some of the smaller exchanges
> were still crufty and non-digital until at least the mid-nineties, and they
> wouldn't have been able to cope with the longer numbers.  It's threads

I think that was probably the "not technically feasible" reason

> like this which make me still confuse london.pm and (void).

:-)  uk.telecom was a lot like this until it drowned in whining about
OT posts, split into several groups, drowned in X-postings then went
part-moderated :-( 

> Wow!  Askjeeves actually came up with a relevant link when I asked it "when
> did BT replace their last electro-mechanical exchange?".  0600 hrs, 11 Mar
> 1998 apparently, which is when Leigh-on-sea switched over from a TXE4
> to System X.  OK, TXE4 wasn't electro-mechanical, but that did signal the
> change-over to a fully digital network.

People keep recommending Askjeeves: that seems like a very good example.

-- 
Chris Benson

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Chris Devers]

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.

[Paul Makepeace]

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.

[David Cantrell]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 07:28:31PM +0100, Chris Benson wrote:
> 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

Would that have worked?  I thought that some of the smaller exchanges
were still crufty and non-digital until at least the mid-nineties, and they
wouldn't have been able to cope with the longer numbers.  It's threads
like this which make me still confuse london.pm and (void).

np: Ray Charles cover of Eleanor Rigby.  It's ... odd.

[pause]

Wow!  Askjeeves actually came up with a relevant link when I asked it "when
did BT replace their last electro-mechanical exchange?".  0600 hrs, 11 Mar
1998 apparently, which is when Leigh-on-sea switched over from a TXE4
to System X.  OK, TXE4 wasn't electro-mechanical, but that did signal the
change-over to a fully digital network.

-- 
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.

[Chris Benson]

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.

[Chris Benson]

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.

[Paul Makepeace]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2001 at 06:35:56PM -0500, Chris Devers wrote:
> 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...

I think you're right, it used to switch in different routing circuitry
-- I was more commenting from a theoretical standpoint -- the only
'control character' number would be 0. Oh, and you could then use
the 1..  'local' numbers too. That's another 10^8 phone numbers :)

My guess is a pretty hefty overhaul of the phone system... (Doubtless
UK's BT could offer some advice to pointedly ignore.)

> >PS That single-\n paragraph formatting is evil, IMO. 
> 
> Yeah I know, I don't like it either. Blame Eudora...

I'm used to doing that.

Paul, had to (indirectly) support Eudora in a 60k employee company.

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Paul Makepeace]

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.

[Paul Mison]

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.

[Philip Newton]

Piers Cawley wrote:
> Note that, in US phone numbers, the leading 1 is in fact the country
> code. 

I think that in many cases, this may be coincidence -- that US-centric
Americans put a long-distance 1 in front of their number, which just happens
to be their country code.

I'll admit that in some cases they may be aware that country codes are
required for international calls, that putting a country code in your
telephone number is a good thing if you do business widely, and that the
country code for the NANP is 1.

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.

[Philip Newton]

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.

[Robert Shiels]

>
> That's right. 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's fun (well, that's maybe too strong a word) to look at shops and vans
around London to see how diligent businesses have been at keeping up-to-date
on the telephone code changing.


/Robert

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Piers Cawley]

Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> 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...

Actually, if we're being strict then London numbers should be of the
form 020 [78]xxx , since 020 is now the code for London. Quite why
the fuckwits at Oftel lumbered us with 01[78]1 in the first place is
something of a mystery to me...

Note that, in US phone numbers, the leading 1 is in fact the country
code. 

-- 
Piers

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Dave Cross]

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 - what people don't seem to 
> realises is that theoretically someone could move in next to me and 
> where I have a number that starts 020 7xxx they could actually have 
> 020 4xxx.

That's right. 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.

Dave...
[who has gone thru all of those codes whilst living in London]

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Simon Wistow]

Philip Newton wrote:
 
> 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).

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 - what people don't seem to realises is
that theoretically someone could move in next to me and where I have a
number that starts 020 7xxx they could actually have 020 4xxx.

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Philip Newton]

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.

[Clarke, Darren]

Title: RE: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.





Neil 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  .
>
>Of course BT mis-informing people in their own bumpf didn't help matters.


Well I am one of the mis-informed!  I thought it was 0207 and 0208.


The fact I'm not a London boy probably doesn't help :¬P


Darren Clarke
Neophyte
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Simon Wistow]

Philip Newton wrote:
 
> 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...


The '0' part is 020 *NOT* 0207. The seven is part of the phone number
not the dialing code.

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Neil Ford]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 01:43:57PM +0200, Philip Newton wrote:
> 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...
> 
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  .

Of course BT mis-informing people in their own bumpf didn't help matters.

Neil.
-- 
Neil C. Ford
Managing Director, Yet Another Computer Solutions Company Limited
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Philip Newton]

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.

[David Cantrell]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2001 at 03:30:54PM -0800, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> 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...

Indeed everyone knows that the + sign means "insert local international
access code here" and people who don't know that should be shot.  Although
a nice feature of GSM phones is that you can dial +442087712924 and get
through to me from anywhere.  And despite dialling an international number,
you'll only be billed for a normal call in the UK cos it won't get routed
through the international switches.  Likewise if you dial a +49 number in
Germany, for example.

-- 
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.

[Chris Devers]

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.

[Paul Makepeace]

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.

[Paul Makepeace]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2001 at 11:58:17AM -0500, 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. 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. 


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.

In fact, if the whole country went 10 digit, the need to use the '1'
would even disappear.

Paul


PS That single-\n paragraph formatting is evil, IMO.

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Chris Devers]

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.

[Philip Newton]

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.

[Paul Makepeace]

On Wed, Mar 21, 2001 at 12:00:24PM -, Jonathan Peterson wrote:
> LASTNAME, [FIRSTNAME|FIRST INITIAL]

This really doesn't address (ho ho) unfortunate people whose first
name isn't used except when their passport/national ID kit is being
bandied about. Nor people lumbered with four names.  :-/

Thank ghod credit card authorising software is so slack.

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

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Matthew Byng-Maddick]

On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, 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.

And of course, is a trademark of Northern Telecom. As mentioned on the NT
CDs. (if you choose to have a *real* one, of course ;)

MBM

-- 
Matthew Byng-Maddick   Home: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  +44 20  8980 5714  (Home)
http://colondot.net/   Work: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> +44 7956 613942  (Mobile)
Amoebit: Amoeba/rabbit cross; it can multiply and divide at the same time.

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Matthew Byng-Maddick]

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.

[pmh]

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.

[Greg McCarroll]

* AEF ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> 
> 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.
> 

At first i thought you mean't zippers at the bottom of tracy suit bottoms,
this would of been truly evil! The only thing worse than this is track suit
bottoms which dont have elastic at the ankles, you know ... the baggy ankle
ones , the sort of thing you expect dustin hoffman to go jogging in, in some
early 80's comedy romance movie



-- 
Greg McCarroll  http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Dave Cross]

At 21:39 24/03/2001, Jon Eyre wrote:

>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?

At the TSB Bank?

Dave...



-- 
  SMS: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Data Munging with Perl 

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Chris Benson]

On Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 08:36:42AM +, Piers Cawley wrote:
> 
> 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. 

The standard example is that you're more likely to remember a casual 
aquaintance's first name than their surname.   

Unfortunately there are a lot of Helga's in the Reykjavik phonebook :-(
-- 
Chris Benson

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Jon Eyre]

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.

[Tony Bowden]

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?

Tony
-- 
--
 Tony Bowden | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.tmtm.com/
 If I'm feigning coherence and calmness  Laugh with me
--

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Paul Makepeace]

On Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 07:07:16PM +, Dave Cross wrote:
> 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.

If you take the letters VMS and shift 'em one, you get WNT, a popular
Redmond OS one of whose lead architects was a VMS vet.

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.

P

> Dave...

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[AEF]

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.

[Robin Szemeti]

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.

[Dave Cross]

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.

Dave...



-- 
  SMS: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Data Munging with Perl 

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Lucy McWilliam]

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.

[Leon Brocard]

AEF sent the following bits through the ether:

> On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Lucy McWilliam wrote:
> 
> > Love and fruit flies,
> 
>  I only really want /one/ of those things...

Really? How many flies do you have?

Leon
-- 
Leon Brocard.http://www.astray.com/
yapc::Europehttp://yapc.org/Europe/

... How do you pronounce my name? With reverence ;-)

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[AEF]

On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Lucy McWilliam wrote:

> Love and fruit flies,

 I only really want /one/ of those things...

 Tony

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Lucy McWilliam]

On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Robin Szemeti wrote:

> and for a bonus half point (cos its easy) .. why was HAL called HAL?

I'm not even going to bother answering that ;-)


Love and fruit flies,
L.

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Niklas Nordebo]

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.

[Robin Szemeti]

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.

[pmh]

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.

[Simon Cozens]

On Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 06:07:52PM +0100, Philip Newton wrote:
> If he [Sarathy] had a child, it would be called Sarathy Foo.

Bit of a weird name for a kid, but I wouldn't put it past him.

-- 
fga is frequently given answers... the best are "Date::Calc", "use a hash",
and "yes, it's in CPAN" or Data::Dumper or mySQL or "check your permissions"
or NO Fmh THAT'S WRONG or "You can't. crypt is one-way" or "yes, i'm single"
or "I think that's a faq." or substr! or "use split" or "man perlre" - #perl

Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[David Cantrell]

On Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 12:05:11PM -0500, Dave Cross wrote:

> I'm guessing that the author of Date::MMDDYY went for dashes rather
> than slashes because the string was going to be used in a filename.

I never had a problem with it using dashes, just with everything else.

> I emailed the author today with a list of his errors. I pointed out 
> that I was doing him a favour as he was becoming the laughing stock of 
> the Perl community. I forgot to mention that it was me who brought the
> module to the attention of the Perl community :x
> 
> Dave...
> [who, on reflection, may be getting a bit _too_ bitchy]

Naah.  You're doing him a favour.  You're trying to help him. 

-- 
David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

   The voices said it's a good day to clean my weapons.

Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Simon Wilcox]

At 17:51 22/03/2001 +0100, Philip Newton wrote:
>Simon Wilcox wrote:
> > Or even better YY-MM-DD which avoids cross-pond confusion.
>
>Oh yeah? Which year, month, and day are represented by the combination
>02-03-04? Depends on the side of the pond, and on which pond (MM-DD-YY in
>US, DD-MM-YY in UK, possibly YY-MM-DD in Japan).

I admit I suffered from speedy-reply syndrome. A moments more thought and I 
would probably have recognized the need for a 4-digit year.

But at least I learned about ISO8601 :-)

Simon.

-- 
"The avalanche has started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote."
  Ambassador Kosh, B5

Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[David Cantrell]

On Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 05:51:40PM +0100, Philip Newton wrote:
> Simon Wilcox wrote:
> > Or even better YY-MM-DD which avoids cross-pond confusion.
> 
> Oh yeah? Which year, month, and day are represented by the combination
> 02-03-04? Depends on the side of the pond, and on which pond (MM-DD-YY in
> US, DD-MM-YY in UK, possibly YY-MM-DD in Japan).

Which is why I like to use [punctuation]MM[punc]DD.  That avoids all
confusion about which is the year, and seeing that no-one uses /DD/MM
it also means there can be no confusion about the day or month.  It also
helps that I document it - every date entry field or date display has
text nearby telling you the format.

-- 
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.

[Philip Newton]

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: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Dave Cross]

At Thu, 22 Mar 2001 17:56:16 +0100, Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote:
> Robin Houston wrote:
> >   use POSIX 'strftime';
> >   print "The date is ", strftime("%m-%d-%y", localtime()), "\n";
> 
> Or, for those who want to type even less, strftime accepts a '%D' 
> format specifier on at least some platforms, which does %m/%d/%y for 
> you (which is probably used more widely than %m-%d-%y, anyway). From 
> `man strftime` on penderel:
> 
>%D Equivalent  to  %m/%d/%y.  (Yecch  -  for Americans
>   only.  Americans should note that  in  other  coun­
>   tries %d/%m/%y is rather common. This means that in
>   international context this format is ambiguous  and
>   should not be used.) (SU)
> 
> (SU) appears to mean that this comes from the Single Unix standard.

I'm guessing that the author of Date::MMDDYY went for dashes rather
than slashes because the string was going to be used in a filename.

I emailed the author today with a list of his errors. I pointed out 
that I was doing him a favour as he was becoming the laughing stock of 
the Perl community. I forgot to mention that it was me who brought the
module to the attention of the Perl community :x

Dave...
[who, on reflection, may be getting a bit _too_ bitchy]

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Philip Newton]

David H. Adler wrote:
> And some of us have middle names/initials that they consider
> significant...

And then there are those who consider the case of their names (and the
punctuation used) significant, and post style guides on their web site.

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: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Philip Newton]

Robin Houston wrote:
>   use POSIX 'strftime';
>   print "The date is ", strftime("%m-%d-%y", localtime()), "\n";

Or, for those who want to type even less, strftime accepts a '%D' format
specifier on at least some platforms, which does %m/%d/%y for you (which is
probably used more widely than %m-%d-%y, anyway). From `man strftime` on
penderel:

   %D Equivalent  to  %m/%d/%y.  (Yecch  -  for Americans
  only.  Americans should note that  in  other  coun­
  tries %d/%m/%y is rather common. This means that in
  international context this format is ambiguous  and
  should not be used.) (SU)

(SU) appears to mean that this comes from the Single Unix 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: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Philip Newton]

Simon Wilcox wrote:
> Or even better YY-MM-DD which avoids cross-pond confusion.

Oh yeah? Which year, month, and day are represented by the combination
02-03-04? Depends on the side of the pond, and on which pond (MM-DD-YY in
US, DD-MM-YY in UK, possibly YY-MM-DD in Japan).

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.

[Piers Cawley]

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.

[David H. Adler]

On Wed, Mar 21, 2001 at 04:10:37PM +, Redvers Davies wrote:
> > 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.

And some of us have middle names/initials that they consider
significant...

dha
-- 
David H. Adler - <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.panix.com/~dha/
Freedom ain't nothing but a word, ain't nothing but a word.  Let me
see your ID.  - Gil Scott-Heron, "Johannesburg"

Re: Balding Badly-Coiffed Hackers (was Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.)

[David H. Adler]

On Wed, Mar 21, 2001 at 02:49:17PM -, Jonathan Stowe wrote:
> 
> What are we saying here, Michael Schwern is that Alien Drag Queen ?

You know... that would explain a lot.. :-)

dha
-- 
David H. Adler - <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.panix.com/~dha/
... we didn't know what the hell we were doing, but we did it loud.
- Andy Partidge on early XTC

RE: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Andrew Bowman]

[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 " and his children would be "
> 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.

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Mark Fowler]

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.

[Redvers Davies]

> 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.

[Robin Szemeti]

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.

[Marty Pauley]

On Wed Mar 21 12:00:24 2001, Jonathan Peterson wrote:
> 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]

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.

In some circumstances the family name is the most important: the
bibliography example works because we tend to talk about 'Einstein'
rather than 'Albert'.  It would also work in most situations in some
countries (like Japan) where the family name is used much more
frequently than in English-speaking countries: in Japan it is standard
to give your name as family name followed by common name.

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.

In other countries the family name changes each generation, so taking
"Jonathan Peterson" as an example: his father would be "Peter "
and his children would be " Jonathanson".

> 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]

So, you think the Martians actually care about ASCII, Roman alphabets,
or the 'International' standards!?  Well, they do care a bit, but only
for the sake of peace.

> 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.

No they didn't.  If the address is obviously not local, they try their
best to send it to the correct country.  If the postmen were machines,
then they would probably make assumptions.  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".

> 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

Colonise Mars!?  Not if we get here first.

> 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

To assist with interplanetary communication, the Martian government has
decided to standardise on the URL syntax for specifying locations within
our solar system.  They are working with standards bodies to produce
seperate schemes for pan-galactic and inter-galactic URLs, but they are
being hampered by a lack of absolute inertial frame of reference in the
universe, and some stubborn blue creatures from Sirius.  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

Have fun!

-- 
Marty

Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.

[Merijn Broeren]

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... 
  |