Rumor has it that Fred N. van Kempen may have mentioned these words: Speak for yourself! Atari & Amiga hardware is a lot easier to find in Europe than it is in rural America (I just happen to be a Rural American... ;-) -- between one friend and myself, we probably own around 50% of the classic machines in the county - population 34.000. If you wanted to get a Medusa, where do you go? Europe. How about a Hades? Europe. I submitted *several* emails to the Atari ST 3rd party companies trying to get information on becoming a US dealer; no matter the cost. No response whatsoever. :-( And in the more populous areas where pickin's are easier... we still have more crime, slow autobahns, and *really* *bad* *beer*. Wanna trade??? I would... ;-) Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers zmerch(a)30below.com What do you do when Life gives you lemons, and you don't *like* lemonade?????????????

On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, Hans Franke wrote: Hmm, when I drive from here to Frankfurt, I can do a nice 210km/h though, Hans.. must be a southern-DE slowness thing :) Fred -- Fred N. van Kempen, DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) Collector/Archivist Visit the VAXlab Project at http://www.pdp11.nl/VAXlab/ Visit the Archives at http://www.pdp11.nl/ Email: waltje(a)pdp11.nl BUSSUM, THE NETHERLANDS / Sunnyvale, CA, USA

On 2003.10.31 12:47 Hans Franke wrote: Traffic around M?nchen is rather thick. Try A63 Kaiserslautern-Mainz or A62 Landstuhl-Trier. A6 Landstuhl-Saarbr?cken or A6 Kaiserslautern-Mannheim at night is also no problem at sustained 200 km/h. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, Roger Merchberger wrote: Many freeways (autobahns) in Germany (and Holland *grin*) can easily be done at 180-220km/h. But during daytime, there's always the chance of traffic, and then you'd better slow down. Well.. U.S. beer sucks. nuf said. --f

I perfectly understand your anger. I usualy try to call these people up to get a reaction. Good old personal contact. It's way harder not to answer if you're addressed directly :) For one point, trafic is ever increasing and 12 years is quite a time. And then, what's hectic in going just 130 km/h (*1)? 170 km/h is a nice travel speed for a family car ... if you can still travel at that speed. Theoretical yes , theoretical even 200 km/h (125 mph) is doable as sustained speed for almost every mid size car, it it wouldn't be for all these slow downs. It is no fun to accelerate psitive and negative (aka break) all the time. I had to travel between Munich and Konstanz (~200 km) for the last years about once per month, due company policies I had to take rental cars, and I had a wide variety between a Smart (mayimum speed 135 km/h ~85mph) average VW Golf or GM Astra (max. 210 km&h~130 mph) up to Crysler 300 or Mercedes E-class (top speed cut at 250 km/h ~160 mph), guess what, even when I was partly going way above 200 km/h (~125 mph), the difference where less than 7 minutes for a two hour drive. The fact that one is allowed to go as fast as possible and may even go that for a few minutes doesn't help at all. Now go ahead and tell me again that our Autobahn is not crowded over the limit. You see how inacceptable it has become, when even slow busses are made to slow further down. They have a speed limit of 100 km/h (but most go 110 ~70 mph). Why? Didn't you say all necersary about that - Ok, I guess I have to hold up the stand for american beer, there are some that are drinkable. And the rest cand at least be used to anoy people. In CA measurements, Garmisch a suburb of Munich ... it's about 45 miles (70 km) Gruss H. *1 - BTW, it's km/h, not kph (like it's r/min^-1 and not rpm). km/h is not an abrevation of a word, but rather a description/ term. The unit is meter, and k is just a prefix for 1000. The nice ting about the metric (or beter SI) system is that every part fits nicely, and not just by definition. There is just one thing worse than kph ... people translating US books and keeping these hilarious abrevations. I just read a nice SF book, and the translator did keep misspellings like kps or mps (they even capitalized them!). The book even had a apendix where the terms where explained (as the US original). This is the worst kind of pseudo technoligy. Anyway -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

I'm a though guy, go aheadand tell me. Reminds me of a local sherif somewhere in Nevada after going some 80 mph on a two lane highway: 'This is not the Autobahn!' :) I got to keep that in mind... Peak hours are over here by now something like 5:30 until 23:00, so 3 am is probably a goot time to be able to drive above 200 for more than a few minutes. Otherwise ot's just not worth to think about. Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

On Fri, 31 Oct 2003, Vintage Computer Festival wrote: Yes, I5 technically can handle the speed, but the people there cant :) Ah. Yeah, they sometimes just sit there and wait, watching.. Same here. Which resulted in an FTA, since I wasnt there, and when I found out, they had to reopen the case. Or if you're an obvious danger to others, like the assholes zigzagging the lanes at 80+, or, with some officers, esp. chp, just for doing 130 and obviously having no trouble with that. :) It seems to largely depend on the officer pulling you over, and, later, a court judge and his idea on how "dangerous" speeding is. They fried me bigtime twice.. I now make it a point not to speed when I'm home in Kaua'i. --f