Re: black hat .cn networks

[Scott Francis <scott () virtualis com>]

On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 12:26:00AM +0800, Adrian Chadd exclaimed:
> 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".

And are _any_ of those technical standards written in a language other than
English? Think about the acronyms we use in network-speak every day - how many
of them stand for phrases in a language other than English?

I'm not saying that it's good, bad or indifferent that English is the primary
language of the Net, but I _am_ saying that we need to be realistic: the Net
was created as an American project, by American engineers, on American
dollars, and likewise for the protocols and standards that run it. I'm 100% in
favor of internationalization, but at a certain level, there must be an
agreed-upon standard of communcation - BGP needs to be BGP everywhere in the
world, not some other acronym depending on whatever the operator's local
language happens to be.

Again, I'm not saying that communication shouldn't (or cannot) be attempted or
encouraged in a multitutde of local language - I'm just observing that those
who try to deny the English basis of the Internet and the protocols that drive
it are ignoring its history.

-- 
Scott Francis                scott@ [work:] v i r t u a l i s . c o m
Systems Analyst          darkuncle@ [home:] d a r k u n c l e . n e t
West Coast Network Ops                           GPG keyid 0xCB33CCA7
               illum oportet crescere me autem minui

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