Doug:

RH8 is certainly liveable. You'll want to probe its security using [link|http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-2000-08/lw-08-expo00-hacking.html|nmap] and make sure any services you leave enabled are tightly configured and kept up to date. If you choose to ssh/scp into it from elsewhere, you might make a policy of doing so only using the aforementioned LNX-BBC or Knoppix disks. (Either is a Linux system on a bootable CD. The LNX-BBC is burnable to business-card-sized media, and I was one of its designers.) And of course never, ever use for that machine passwords you use elsewhere. If you have a PalmOS PDA, you can get one of several encrypted password-storage utilities for it, such as GNU Keyring, from my [link|http://linuxmafia.com/pub/palmos/|archive] of open-source code for and about PalmOS.

I lived in HK in the late '60s, because my father was transferred there by Pan American World Airways, for whom he was a captain. That was before the Harbour Tunnel, so I saw a lot of the Star Ferry. Alas, we never got to cross the border from the New Territories: We were always jealous of the Brits, whose passports were valid over there. (Except, during the Cultural Revolution, the presence of that border was rather ominous.)

I'm curious: Do you know if Peak School is still in operation? It was or is a government-run grammar school, a few blocks from the top of the Peak Tram.

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com

Doug wrote:

Yup PS is pretty well known.

Thanks for the links. Since we're off-topic, I'll try to keep my comments short:

Nice to see the old place, a bit. E.g., photos at [link|http://www.ps.edu.hk/oldsite/school%20prospectus/history.html|http://www.ps.edu.hk/oldsite/school%20prospectus/history.html]. The changes since the '60s, inevitable in a handover from the UK government to the English Schools Foundation are quite apparent: The big one is heterogeneity. Back then, the students were all-British other than me, my sister, and one other Yank -- and we got in over stiff official opposition. Bizarrely, no Chinese students, then! Or staff, I think. It was also run by a headmistress, vs. today's "principal", and didn't have a "PTA".

Creeping Americanism, or at the least fading of Empire, is mostly a blessing, I'm sure. I could have done without the mandatory singing of "Onward Christian Soldiers" and such at 10AM assembly, at least.

(We live in Discovery Bay which is at the tip of Lantau Island - the map doesn't show the big bridge from mainland to Lantau.

Lantau was a boat ride, back in the day. I remember Discovery Bay well, as we had friends there. Also at other points around HKI, such as Deepwater Bay, where we shot off fireworks for American Independence Day and Guy Fawkes Day, every year. (For Chinese New Year, of course, the fireworks came to you.)

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com