Unless they go for Unicode, 26 letters plus 10 digits ("1.com") times 14 top-level domains (com,.edu,.gov,.int,.mil,.net, and.org,.biz,.info,.name,.pro,.aero,.coop, and.museum) gives you only 504 unique possiblities. 540 if they include.xxx when the US stops being a Christian Fundamentalist Republic.
If you multiply that by the number of country codes (248) you still get only 133920 unique addresses.
Regardless their misguided motivation, it will be funny to see Microsoft, McDonald's and Motorola expending millions of dollars and years of Court time to decide who's the rightful owner of "m.com".
During the last days of Netscape, the early days of Firefox and any day with a Mac it was pretty useless to complain to anyone (person or company) about their IE-only/Windows-only sites. Usually people would ignore your complain or send an answer that in the end amounted to "We think you should try IE, billions of us can't be wrong - and by the way, there is no way in hell we will change our site just because some hippies here and there have an irrational hatred for Microsoft". But recently I've been seeing some change. Nowadays, besides those who have already gone and changed their sites right away, companies started answering apologetically and stating they were looking into it and would solve this problem Real Soon Now.
I think Firefox may have crossed the threshold where companies, specially the ones trying to do business in the Web, can't ignore it anymore, so things are bound to change and the odd IE-only site will soon be a thing of the past.
IE View is a Firefox extension for Windows that opens the current page in IE. It usually solves the "last site" problem, when all arguments contrary to Firefox have been shortened to "But I must use site xyz and Firefox breaks it" (still a fairly common situation specially with Internet banking applications).
Depending on the kind of DRM enforcement they choose, the movie itself won't explode but it may well render your computer open to all sorts of nasty things. Including, but not limited to, forms of hijacking that allow the attacker to burn your monitor.
"In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena."
So in your state, science now searches for non-natural explanation of phenomena. As in God created Adam out of mud and here we are. As in Pluto being aligned to Mars, you will meet a charming stranger. As in faith cures cancer, gayness and aby wife's tendency to be ebaten by her husband.
You "newspeak" cannot foul a small child in a foggy night. The "people opposed to thinking independently" are the ones trying to destroy all scientific education in the name of their particular superstition.
It's very hard to possess the long-term vision to say, "we cannot violate this patent, and so patients who could have been saved by doing so will die."
The point here seems to be how many patients have to die before this reasoning ceases to make sense. One? Ten? A thousand? A million?
I believe you lost your perspctive somewhere - the Spanish Flu in the late 1910's killed tens of millions around the world. The scientific community has been estimating that a new epidemic derived from the bird flu virus has a much more lethal potential since the virus would be able to spread throughtout the whole world in a matter of weeks.
So, we are talking here about breaking a patent because whole countries could be wiped out if the medicine is not available, not "some patients".
I mean, just when everybody start thinking they've finally became just another big evil corporation, they go out there and do something good. And then everybody's confused again.
A statement from the bipartisan "National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States" (also known as the September 11 Commission): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/should ers/CommissionStatement15.pdf>PDF link - page 5, fourth paragraph: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."
Another statement from the bipartisan "National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States" (also known as the September 11 Commission): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/should ers/CommissionStatement16.pdf>PDF link - page 8, second paragraph: "We have examined the allegation that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague on April 9. Based on the evidence available--including investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting--we do not believe that such a meeting occurred"
George Bush, President of the United States, 31 Jan 2003, at a press conference with Tony Blair: "[Adam Boulton, Sky News (London):] One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?
I urge everybody here who thinks Bit Torrent is the best idea since Ethernet to download the iso images via torrent and leave their clients open until the share ratio is at least 100%. Remember, more people sharing means smaller download times for everybody (and incidentally, more instance of Bit Torrent being put to good, legal uses next time somebody asks).
While downloading it, I am trying to determine what makes Edubuntu a better choice for a school environment (in order to be able to convince some schools admins I am in contact with to migrate from Windows) - specially, what features and packages are found in Edubuntu that would be required/nice to have in a school lab. Either I failed to find the links or their website is too incipient yet. Any pointers?
As a matter of fact, even the White House has already given up linking Hussein and al Qaeda. It was never a good link (Hussein was perhaps the most secular leader in the Middle East and had extreme allergy to all things fundamentalist - you're talking about the same guy who, in the 80's fought a proxy war for the USA against the fundamentalist Iran).
When you say Yet there seems be enough evidence of some ties to at least investigate the possibility. you leave the reader under the impression no investigation was conducted, when in fact a very extensive investigation was conducted and returned no evidence whatsoever. Hence, misperception. The same goes for the most impressive instance of misperception, the WMDs thing.
So you really mean the US will invade and depose the brutal dictators of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Kwait and Egypt and apologyze for supporting in the past the brutal dictators of Iran, Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Brazil, South Africa, Iraq and a list too long to keep listing? We'd really like to see that.
English as second language has its disavantages - I've read "founder" instead of "funder" and in the heat of the moment went on from there. My bad...:)
On the real subject of funding, I'd say that the US co-authored and signed the UN Charter, that clearly establishes that each member State's contribution is calculated on the basis of its share of the world economy. Want to pay less? Become poorer...
That's excessive credit claim for technologies that were being researched all over the world. At that stage, 1962, what eventually became the Internet was not yet even techonology development, it was just plain scientific research. The Soviets were doing it. The Western Europeans were doing it a lot. The Japanese were not yet doing it but eventually they would, as would the Chinese and even the Brazilians. As it is, TCP/IP eventually became the basic set of protocols, but they could easily have been surpassed by something else.
But all this is irrelevant. Nobody is dismissing American contribution to Science and Technology development. But you can't control everything forever - specially the most important communication network ever created. Every globally relevant invention followed down this path - invention, local adoption, world-wide adoption, huge international treaties creating huge international bureocracies to deal with the said technology. Navigation, aviation, broadcasting and every other relevant technology has its use controlled by international bodies, bodies who are themselves regulated by treaties. Eventually the Internet has to follow.
OK, wait, let me see if I got this right -- free speech (I assume we're excepting yelling "Fire" in a crewded theatre and such) is not necessarily a good thing? OK, I guess you can have that "different" view, but when you try to impose it on everyone else's internet, then that's when we have a problem
I haven't said that - I have said there are a whole scale between a contitutional mandate free speech right and a dictatorial information control. Many important European countries (UK, France, Germany, for instance) don't have this absolute right and they are, in some aspects, more democratic the the USA.
The internet wasn't designed to be, nor should anyone try to mold it into, something that is "good for developing and under-developed nations." Oh, and how in the hell is the internet "just another tool to transfer resources from the poor countries to the rich?" That's so out there you've just got to back it up with something. Please.
Now that is just cute - under what logical falacy you change "global unregulated commerce" (what I said) to "the internet" (what you said) and pretend to make any valid conclusions about anything? I was clearly answering to the top poster, I quoted the text I was answering to, and yet you choose to leave the reference out and just make up something that wasn't there. Cute, indeed.
Well, to these left-wing liberal Bush-hating ears it sounds right about spot on. And it doesn't discount any of the (few, but notable) good things that group of crackpots and assholes has done. Right. Without the UN who would http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=42088>rape the children and steal oil-for-food money?
Exactly what and how I was saying - you concentrate on your government (very small, very petty) marketing hotspots and forget the UNESCO, the UNICEF, the Peace Corps and a miriad of other actions that do not interest you. Because they are geared toward giving a better life and a better chance to very poor people in coutries you don't even know exist. But, hey, the agenda says "The UN is bad" so all of it must be bad.
Enjoy your web censored by China and Syria. We'll be here having fun here on the web as it was meant to be. Free.
Is your web free? Interesting, mine is too. But I don't think I have to thank the USA for it. I also happen to live in a democracy, with regularly elected leaders and its own approved laws. That was one of my points: if all you can say is "Syria will control the Internet!!" you are largely off-base. Syria won't control the Internet. Neither will China. But the USA won't either.
So, objectively speaking, the same can be said of the US, but I doubt we'll hear you or people who think like you agreeing to that any time soon.
Objectively speaking, some of this can be said about many countries. The former USRR helped with technology, money and people all of its satelite countries. It has even cut a deal that to this day prevented the US from invading Cuba. But it did it for a price, like everyone else, the US included.
Who is the major funder of the UN? The US. The UN has not had ONE major founder, but many. At least three countries were instrumental to allow its creation, namely the USA, the USRR and the United Kingdom - France, the rest of Europe and some assorted countries elsewhere (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, to name a few) coming in a secondary but important role (as regional powers who eventually dragged everybody else into it).
Who has opened up its markets and technology to the world at the cost of losing its competitive edge? The US. For free? Dont make me laugh. The US opened up its markets and technology so that its corporations could profit. The US, who to this day keeps its agriculture under a heavily subsided environment, keeps getting rid of technologies no longer very profitable and exporting what matters (nowadays, financial and other services). I remember the late 80's scare that Japan would surpass the US in key information technology areas, turning it into a very large agricultural potency. 20 years later, American IT companies are very well, thank you (albeit the same can't said about their former workers, their jobs having flown elsewhere). Be careful reading the globalization as some sort of "gift" - it is completely profit-driven, so don't count it as a "good deed". Who make up the bulk of those who put their lives on the line when the UN takes military action? The US. And a lot of other people. Being the largest power in the world should come with some burdens, no news here. But the US is also keen to prevent the UN from taking action where action should be taken, due to its own interests. And many smaller UN military operation happen all over the world without a single US soldier being involved (Haiti, East Timor, to name two recent ones).
But then again, so what? Some parts of the UN are not working well? Let's reform it instead of destroy or overrun it like the US seems to want. Some other parts of it work pretty well, mainly the less politically sensitive (UNICEF, UNESCO, even the Peace Corps works well most of the time). Others, under constant political pressure, are less efective. And some are probably just irrelevant.
Just a final point: you say Europe, but Europe is not alone. The US is (and btw, just to clarify the point, I am not European).
Don't be funny - we are NOT "using what you paid for", we're buying the service. The Brazilian backbone international connections are provided and mantained by private companies who are paid for the service - we paying to use like anyone else, and your companies are making a profit (nothing wronge there, I am just stating the fact). Under this reasoning you will end up requiring that IATA is put under US control because, after all, to go from São Paulo to Tokyo my plane stops in LA (hint, it pays to stop there like everyone else).
As much as it sounds a sacrilege to you, many very old, civilized and respectful countries imposed limits to free speech - it does not make these countries less democratic than yours, just different. As for global unregulated commerce, it remains yet to be seem if it is good for developing and under-developed nations or just another tool to transfer resources from the poor countries to the rich.
Your description of the UN as [a place] where every crackpot dictator and totalitarian asshole is given a voice alongside the democratically elected crackpots and assholes may sound funny to neo-conservative Bush-loving ears, but it discounts all good the UN and its associate organizations did for decades and still do today. Obviously it is not fashionable to admit certain UN actions are not only good, they are essential where and when they occur (because there is no one else to perform them), but in fact they are. Without the UN the world, specially the worst and poorer parts of the world, would be a far worse place.
As it is, I am all for moving the top domain control to a supranational organization, if only to take it away from a country whose leaders has recently proved themselves to be war-mongering liars. At the moment, the only organization with such reach and resources is the UN, but I wouldn't mind if the "Techies Without Borders" took over.
The US spent billions on developing the internet and infrastructure.
Allright. Exactly how much money did the US (as in the US government) spent in my country's (Brazil) Internet physical infrastucture (I ask so we know exactly how much money we should "fork")? If you don't know yet, the answer is exactly zero dollars, give or take some cents. As for the protocols, I was under the impression they were all public domain knowledge, regardless of who developed it. The same goes for most infrastructure software. What are you demanding to paid for, the idea of an internetwork?
Now, the picture would be different if each country had to ask the Royal Academy for English Accreditation for a permission to use the English language, so that other people would recognize that you are indeed speaking English and answer likewise. Then, when the Royal Academy refused to allow for a NAFTA English, what could the NAFTA countries do short of creating the new Office for English?
So the thing is called "Country Code", then obviously a non-predicted territorial but multi-national entity is NOT allowed to have it, right, since it break rule number...hmmm...I don't quite remember but if it isn't there we may create it. Funny as it may seem, there is absolutely no technical problem in creating the ".eu" as a root domain for all European Union countries TLDs - the system was thought to acommodate this.
As for "unproven reliability and unproven interoperability", this is more bs. The software to do this is free and the hardware is quite standard. Competent technical people to configure and manage the servers exist almost anywere in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Van Zant, Celine Dion, and Neil Diamond
They should have left the rootkit in place so we could download some good music directly to these misguided buyers' hard drives.
Unless they go for Unicode, 26 letters plus 10 digits ("1.com") times 14 top-level domains (com, .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .net, and .org, .biz, .info, .name, .pro, .aero, .coop, and .museum) gives you only 504 unique possiblities. 540 if they include .xxx when the US stops being a Christian Fundamentalist Republic.
If you multiply that by the number of country codes (248) you still get only 133920 unique addresses.
Regardless their misguided motivation, it will be funny to see Microsoft, McDonald's and Motorola expending millions of dollars and years of Court time to decide who's the rightful owner of "m.com".
During the last days of Netscape, the early days of Firefox and any day with a Mac it was pretty useless to complain to anyone (person or company) about their IE-only/Windows-only sites. Usually people would ignore your complain or send an answer that in the end amounted to "We think you should try IE, billions of us can't be wrong - and by the way, there is no way in hell we will change our site just because some hippies here and there have an irrational hatred for Microsoft". But recently I've been seeing some change. Nowadays, besides those who have already gone and changed their sites right away, companies started answering apologetically and stating they were looking into it and would solve this problem Real Soon Now.
I think Firefox may have crossed the threshold where companies, specially the ones trying to do business in the Web, can't ignore it anymore, so things are bound to change and the odd IE-only site will soon be a thing of the past.
IE View is a Firefox extension for Windows that opens the current page in IE. It usually solves the "last site" problem, when all arguments contrary to Firefox have been shortened to "But I must use site xyz and Firefox breaks it" (still a fairly common situation specially with Internet banking applications).
Depending on the kind of DRM enforcement they choose, the movie itself won't explode but it may well render your computer open to all sorts of nasty things. Including, but not limited to, forms of hijacking that allow the attacker to burn your monitor.
"In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena."
So in your state, science now searches for non-natural explanation of phenomena. As in God created Adam out of mud and here we are. As in Pluto being aligned to Mars, you will meet a charming stranger. As in faith cures cancer, gayness and aby wife's tendency to be ebaten by her husband.
You "newspeak" cannot foul a small child in a foggy night. The "people opposed to thinking independently" are the ones trying to destroy all scientific education in the name of their particular superstition.
Maybe in the hands of ten Kansas politicians! Who else would represent our best hope for a sound, fair and balanced definition of Science!
It's very hard to possess the long-term vision to say, "we cannot violate this patent, and so patients who could have been saved by doing so will die."
The point here seems to be how many patients have to die before this reasoning ceases to make sense. One? Ten? A thousand? A million?
I believe you lost your perspctive somewhere - the Spanish Flu in the late 1910's killed tens of millions around the world. The scientific community has been estimating that a new epidemic derived from the bird flu virus has a much more lethal potential since the virus would be able to spread throughtout the whole world in a matter of weeks.
So, we are talking here about breaking a patent because whole countries could be wiped out if the medicine is not available, not "some patients".
I mean, just when everybody start thinking they've finally became just another big evil corporation, they go out there and do something good. And then everybody's confused again.
A statement from the bipartisan "National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States" (also known as the September 11 Commission):d ers/CommissionStatement15.pdf>PDF link - page 5, fourth paragraph: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."
d ers/CommissionStatement16.pdf>PDF link - page 8, second paragraph: "We have examined the allegation that Atta met with an Iraqi
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/shoul
Another statement from the bipartisan "National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States" (also known as the September 11 Commission):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/shoul
intelligence officer in Prague on April 9. Based on the evidence available--including
investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting--we do not believe
that such a meeting occurred"
George Bush, President of the United States, 31 Jan 2003, at a press conference with Tony Blair:
"[Adam Boulton, Sky News (London):] One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?
THE PRESIDENT: I can't make that claim." (White House transcript
I could go on, there are many more sources for this. But I believe this should be enough as public available evidence goes.
I urge everybody here who thinks Bit Torrent is the best idea since Ethernet to download the iso images via torrent and leave their clients open until the share ratio is at least 100%. Remember, more people sharing means smaller download times for everybody (and incidentally, more instance of Bit Torrent being put to good, legal uses next time somebody asks).
While downloading it, I am trying to determine what makes Edubuntu a better choice for a school environment (in order to be able to convince some schools admins I am in contact with to migrate from Windows) - specially, what features and packages are found in Edubuntu that would be required/nice to have in a school lab. Either I failed to find the links or their website is too incipient yet. Any pointers?
As a matter of fact, even the White House has already given up linking Hussein and al Qaeda. It was never a good link (Hussein was perhaps the most secular leader in the Middle East and had extreme allergy to all things fundamentalist - you're talking about the same guy who, in the 80's fought a proxy war for the USA against the fundamentalist Iran).
When you say Yet there seems be enough evidence of some ties to at least investigate the possibility. you leave the reader under the impression no investigation was conducted, when in fact a very extensive investigation was conducted and returned no evidence whatsoever. Hence, misperception. The same goes for the most impressive instance of misperception, the WMDs thing.
So you really mean the US will invade and depose the brutal dictators of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Kwait and Egypt and apologyze for supporting in the past the brutal dictators of Iran, Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Brazil, South Africa, Iraq and a list too long to keep listing? We'd really like to see that.
English as second language has its disavantages - I've read "founder" instead of "funder" and in the heat of the moment went on from there. My bad... :)
On the real subject of funding, I'd say that the US co-authored and signed the UN Charter, that clearly establishes that each member State's contribution is calculated on the basis of its share of the world economy. Want to pay less? Become poorer...
That's excessive credit claim for technologies that were being researched all over the world. At that stage, 1962, what eventually became the Internet was not yet even techonology development, it was just plain scientific research. The Soviets were doing it. The Western Europeans were doing it a lot. The Japanese were not yet doing it but eventually they would, as would the Chinese and even the Brazilians. As it is, TCP/IP eventually became the basic set of protocols, but they could easily have been surpassed by something else.
But all this is irrelevant. Nobody is dismissing American contribution to Science and Technology development. But you can't control everything forever - specially the most important communication network ever created. Every globally relevant invention followed down this path - invention, local adoption, world-wide adoption, huge international treaties creating huge international bureocracies to deal with the said technology. Navigation, aviation, broadcasting and every other relevant technology has its use controlled by international bodies, bodies who are themselves regulated by treaties. Eventually the Internet has to follow.
OK, wait, let me see if I got this right -- free speech (I assume we're excepting yelling "Fire" in a crewded theatre and such) is not necessarily a good thing? OK, I guess you can have that "different" view, but when you try to impose it on everyone else's internet, then that's when we have a problem
I CLE_ID=42088>rape the children and steal oil-for-food money?
I haven't said that - I have said there are a whole scale between a contitutional mandate free speech right and a dictatorial information control. Many important European countries (UK, France, Germany, for instance) don't have this absolute right and they are, in some aspects, more democratic the the USA.
The internet wasn't designed to be, nor should anyone try to mold it into, something that is "good for developing and under-developed nations." Oh, and how in the hell is the internet "just another tool to transfer resources from the poor countries to the rich?" That's so out there you've just got to back it up with something. Please.
Now that is just cute - under what logical falacy you change "global unregulated commerce" (what I said) to "the internet" (what you said) and pretend to make any valid conclusions about anything? I was clearly answering to the top poster, I quoted the text I was answering to, and yet you choose to leave the reference out and just make up something that wasn't there. Cute, indeed.
Well, to these left-wing liberal Bush-hating ears it sounds right about spot on. And it doesn't discount any of the (few, but notable) good things that group of crackpots and assholes has done. Right. Without the UN who would http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ART
Exactly what and how I was saying - you concentrate on your government (very small, very petty) marketing hotspots and forget the UNESCO, the UNICEF, the Peace Corps and a miriad of other actions that do not interest you. Because they are geared toward giving a better life and a better chance to very poor people in coutries you don't even know exist. But, hey, the agenda says "The UN is bad" so all of it must be bad.
Enjoy your web censored by China and Syria. We'll be here having fun here on the web as it was meant to be. Free.
Is your web free? Interesting, mine is too. But I don't think I have to thank the USA for it. I also happen to live in a democracy, with regularly elected leaders and its own approved laws. That was one of my points: if all you can say is "Syria will control the Internet!!" you are largely off-base. Syria won't control the Internet. Neither will China. But the USA won't either.
So, objectively speaking, the same can be said of the US, but I doubt we'll hear you or people who think like you agreeing to that any time soon.
Objectively speaking, some of this can be said about many countries. The former USRR helped with technology, money and people all of its satelite countries. It has even cut a deal that to this day prevented the US from invading Cuba. But it did it for a price, like everyone else, the US included.
Who is the major funder of the UN? The US.
The UN has not had ONE major founder, but many. At least three countries were instrumental to allow its creation, namely the USA, the USRR and the United Kingdom - France, the rest of Europe and some assorted countries elsewhere (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, to name a few) coming in a secondary but important role (as regional powers who eventually dragged everybody else into it).
Who has opened up its markets and technology to the world at the cost of losing its competitive edge? The US.
For free? Dont make me laugh. The US opened up its markets and technology so that its corporations could profit. The US, who to this day keeps its agriculture under a heavily subsided environment, keeps getting rid of technologies no longer very profitable and exporting what matters (nowadays, financial and other services). I remember the late 80's scare that Japan would surpass the US in key information technology areas, turning it into a very large agricultural potency. 20 years later, American IT companies are very well, thank you (albeit the same can't said about their former workers, their jobs having flown elsewhere). Be careful reading the globalization as some sort of "gift" - it is completely profit-driven, so don't count it as a "good deed".
Who make up the bulk of those who put their lives on the line when the UN takes military action? The US.
And a lot of other people. Being the largest power in the world should come with some burdens, no news here. But the US is also keen to prevent the UN from taking action where action should be taken, due to its own interests. And many smaller UN military operation happen all over the world without a single US soldier being involved (Haiti, East Timor, to name two recent ones).
But then again, so what? Some parts of the UN are not working well? Let's reform it instead of destroy or overrun it like the US seems to want. Some other parts of it work pretty well, mainly the less politically sensitive (UNICEF, UNESCO, even the Peace Corps works well most of the time). Others, under constant political pressure, are less efective. And some are probably just irrelevant.
Just a final point: you say Europe, but Europe is not alone. The US is (and btw, just to clarify the point, I am not European).
Don't be funny - we are NOT "using what you paid for", we're buying the service. The Brazilian backbone international connections are provided and mantained by private companies who are paid for the service - we paying to use like anyone else, and your companies are making a profit (nothing wronge there, I am just stating the fact). Under this reasoning you will end up requiring that IATA is put under US control because, after all, to go from São Paulo to Tokyo my plane stops in LA (hint, it pays to stop there like everyone else).
As much as it sounds a sacrilege to you, many very old, civilized and respectful countries imposed limits to free speech - it does not make these countries less democratic than yours, just different. As for global unregulated commerce, it remains yet to be seem if it is good for developing and under-developed nations or just another tool to transfer resources from the poor countries to the rich.
Your description of the UN as [a place] where every crackpot dictator and totalitarian asshole is given a voice alongside the democratically elected crackpots and assholes may sound funny to neo-conservative Bush-loving ears, but it discounts all good the UN and its associate organizations did for decades and still do today. Obviously it is not fashionable to admit certain UN actions are not only good, they are essential where and when they occur (because there is no one else to perform them), but in fact they are. Without the UN the world, specially the worst and poorer parts of the world, would be a far worse place.
As it is, I am all for moving the top domain control to a supranational organization, if only to take it away from a country whose leaders has recently proved themselves to be war-mongering liars. At the moment, the only organization with such reach and resources is the UN, but I wouldn't mind if the "Techies Without Borders" took over.
The US spent billions on developing the internet and infrastructure.
Allright. Exactly how much money did the US (as in the US government) spent in my country's (Brazil) Internet physical infrastucture (I ask so we know exactly how much money we should "fork")? If you don't know yet, the answer is exactly zero dollars, give or take some cents. As for the protocols, I was under the impression they were all public domain knowledge, regardless of who developed it. The same goes for most infrastructure software. What are you demanding to paid for, the idea of an internetwork?
As soon as Google buys del.icio.us... :)
There are very, very few nations on Earth who are not UN members. Short of Taiwan and the Vatican, all other 191 countries are UN members.
Now, the picture would be different if each country had to ask the Royal Academy for English Accreditation for a permission to use the English language, so that other people would recognize that you are indeed speaking English and answer likewise. Then, when the Royal Academy refused to allow for a NAFTA English, what could the NAFTA countries do short of creating the new Office for English?
So the thing is called "Country Code", then obviously a non-predicted territorial but multi-national entity is NOT allowed to have it, right, since it break rule number...hmmm...I don't quite remember but if it isn't there we may create it. Funny as it may seem, there is absolutely no technical problem in creating the ".eu" as a root domain for all European Union countries TLDs - the system was thought to acommodate this.
As for "unproven reliability and unproven interoperability", this is more bs. The software to do this is free and the hardware is quite standard. Competent technical people to configure and manage the servers exist almost anywere in the world.