A Private European Internet? 697
jakemk2 writes "Bill Thompson writing in The Register advocates a private European Internet to stop the fact that it has "been so extensively abused by the United States and its politicians, lawyers and programmers that it has become a serious threat to the continued survival of the network as a global communications medium"
Read it here" His logical fallacy is , of course, thinking that the US has a monopoly on this kind of thing.
What a hypocrit! (Score:3, Informative)
The USA Register (Score:5, Informative)
The story is available on the US site [theregus.com].
I doubt Slashdot can Slashdot the Register, but it might help American readers, especially those who missed the creation of the USA Register. The USA Register is basically the same content as the Register, but it drops some of the UK specific news (as in, UK elections and other events that are unlikely to matter to people who don't live there). As far as I know, there is no US-specific content, but several of their writers turn out to live in the US - so who knows...
Re:Yeah that's right (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bill Thompson (Score:1, Informative)
Re:But there _is_ a private French internet (Score:4, Informative)
Funny thing is: it did turn into the WWW in Europe. The WWW was developed at CERN, which is in Switzerland.
Re:I can understand where he is coming from (Score:3, Informative)
They were BRITISH CITIZENS and they took up arms and killed HER MAJESTY'S soliders."
A few things:
1.) In the late 18th century, they were his majesty's soldiers. Haven't had that talk with your parents about birds and bees I see...
2.) If you care to notice there were repeated efforts to resolve our disputes with London diplomaticly. For various reasons, those broke down. Thing might have ended differently if we actually had representation in Parliament...
3.) Even after the fighting began (around 1774 IIRC) the Continental Congress was still interested in ending things amicably. It wasn't until 1776 that they finally gave into the extremists and sought independence.
4.) On 4 July 1776 they sat down and and wrote a big fuckin' grocery list of complaints against King George II and the policies of his government. Some of them were a bit extreme, but most of them were not.
5.) Congress and the higher-ups in the Continental Army never sanctioned attacks against civillians. Ever. Though I can't say for sure I wouldn't be surprised if such instances when caught were punished severely (ie. firing squad).
6.) The cause itself had many supporters in Great Britain. To them, George Washington was an English nobleman leading a fight against a German pretender to the throne.
Now if you want to talk about state-sponsored amoral acts, would you be interested in talking about some of the history of the British Raj? How about the Opium War?
Re:Yeah that's right (Score:3, Informative)
However, the first paper that actually used the term "packet switched networks" was by Don Davies, working at the UK National Physical Laboratory.