Switzerland

Switzerland (/ˈswɪtsərlənd/), officially the Swiss Confederation (Latin: Confoederatio Helvetica, hence its abbreviation CH), is a country in Europe. While still named the "Swiss Confederation" for historical reasons, modern Switzerland is a federal directorial republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities, called Bundesstadt ("federal city"). The country is situated in Western and Central Europe, and is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is a landlocked country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning an area of 41,285 km² (15,940 sq mi). While the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, the Swiss population of approximately 8 million people is concentrated mostly on the Plateau, where the largest cities are to be found: among them are the two global and economic centres, Zürich and Geneva.

The establishment of the Swiss Confederation is traditionally dated to 1 August 1291, which is celebrated annually as the Swiss National Day. The country has a long history of armed neutrality—it has not been in a state of war internationally since 1815—and did not join the United Nations until 2002. Nevertheless, it pursues an active foreign policy and is frequently involved in peace-building processes around the world. In addition to being the birthplace of the Red Cross, Switzerland is home to numerous international organizations, including the second largest UN office. On the European level, it is a founding member of the European Free Trade Association, but notably it is not part of the European Union, nor the European Economic Area. However the country does participate in the Schengen Area and the EU's single market through a number of bilateral treaties.

Chat

Chat or chats may refer to:

Communication

Entertainment

Places

Science and medicine

Birds

WvDial

WvDial (pronounced 'weave-dial') is a utility that helps in making modem-based connections to the Internet that is included in some Linux distributions. WvDial is a Point-to-Point Protocol dialer: it dials a modem and starts pppd in order to connect to the Internet. It uses the wvstreams library.

WvDial uses heuristics to guess how to dial and log into a server, alleviating the need to write a login script.

Graphical frontends

There are some GUI tools which allows using WvDial:

See also

References

External links

Chat (mining)

Chat is a term for fragments of siliceous rock, limestone, and dolomite waste rejected in the lead-zinc milling operations that accompanied lead-zinc mining in the first half of the 20th century. Historic lead and zinc mining in the Midwestern United States was centered in two major areas: the Tri-State area covering more than 2,500 square miles (6,500 km²) in southwestern Missouri, southeastern Kansas, and northeastern Oklahoma and the Old Lead Belt covering about 110 square miles (280 km²) in southeastern Missouri. The first recorded mining occurred in the Old Lead Belt in about 1742. The production increased significantly in both the Tri-state area and the Old Lead Belt during the mid-19th century and lasted up to 1970.

Cleanup

Currently production still occurs in a third area, the Viburnum Trend, in southeastern Missouri. Mining and milling of ore produced more than 500 million tons of wastes in the Tri-State area and about 250 million tons of wastes in the Old Lead Belt. More than 75 percent of this waste has been removed, with some portion of it used over the years. Today, approximately 100 million tons of chat remain in the Tri-State area. The EPA, the states of Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri, local communities, and private companies continue to work together in implementing and monitoring response actions that reduce or remove potential adverse impacts posed by remaining mine wastes contaminated with lead, zinc, cadmium, and other metals.