North American Network Operators Group

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Re: black hat .cn networks

  • From: Adrian Chadd
  • Date: Wed May 09 12:42:40 2001

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
<[email protected]>	  what we want?
			 	   Sex _IS_ what we want!" -- Fraser