On Wed, May 09, 2001, Ehud Gavron wrote:
"Europeans have this knack..."
OFF-TOPIC and stupid.
Europeans have this knack of taking a perfectly good on-topic operational problem and turning it into a whine about how Americans don't try and speak their N languages.
Referring to me? God, I hate being flamed.
Welcome to the Internet. We speak English. Welcome to telecommunication carriers. We speak English. Welcome to the International Space Station. We speak English. Welcome to maritime SOS. We speak English. Welcome to my backyard.
We speak English. You don't have to like it, but it's not xenophobic, xenocentric, Americentric, Anglocentric, or anything other than REALITY created through EXPEDIENCY.
Thats strange. I see lots of work with the free unices in an attempt to get internationalisation to work. I see lots of commercial software applications and operating systems which have localisation and internationalisation options. And, on mailing lists with a subscriber base that is non technical and non-English-subscriber-limited, I frequently get emails sent by people in some other language[1]. In fact, I could say that a lot of foreign users can get away being on the internet without a decent understanding of English. The internet != telco != ISS != Maritime SOS != any other internationally agreed upon and perhaps regulated area where English has been accepted as being the "language of choice". The internet has no regulations, and as such you must understand that not everyone on the internet - admin or user - is required to speak English. Adding to that, the intelligence level required to pilot an airplane, operate telco infrastructure, fly a spacecraft or sail a boat is _NOT_ being dumbed down so any idiot user that can read can use. Now, if it were me, I'd force any company with an internet connection and a BGP connection to have a NOC/sysadmin(s) capable of speaking a common language. I'd prefer it to be English because I don't speak any other languages (yes, I'm Australian, and as my dutch friends will be quite happy to point out _i do not speak any other languages_) but I'd be happy with some form of standard. The internet has a bunch of technical standards which we loosely agree to. There's no law stating "thou shalt speak English if connected via BGP4 to thy internet". Live with it. Adrian [1] Generally they are french. :-) -- Adrian Chadd "How could we possibly use sex to get <adrian@creative.net.au> what we want? Sex _IS_ what we want!" -- Fraser