I've never met a Mexican or Canadian who was offended by referring to citizens of the USA as "Americans".
I have. She lives in Mexico and preferred to call the folks north of the border "USians". Not sure what they're called in Mexican, we were talking English...
Once I have been there a couple of times, I can usually remember the route and drive without GPS. I still use GPS when driving on the highway so I don't miss the exit, but if the receiver was not working, I still could go to my destination
Same with me. An additional reason for me using GPS on long distance trips is traffic jams, or rather, getting warned of them in time, getting them evaluated about impact on route, and if necessary get an alternative routing.
At least I can complain to my own government and vote out politicians. Where do I go to complain against the UNs policies?
In theory? Also to your government. It's their job to try and keep the UN from issuing bad policies.
In another theory, if you're not a citizen of the US? Well, your government has less weight now than it would if the net were under the UN...
In practice? As another poster said, nowhere - working as intended.
Ulli
I agree in principle. But if the US told ICANN to try and shut down the net, what do you think would happen? I'm not up to date on the operation of the root nameservers, but I suspect there would be trouble.
Ulli
You will hate it, because all of a sudden all that freedom, all that flexibility, you'll find it shipped away for one good reason after another,' Schmidt said. 'I cannot be more emphatic. Be very, very careful about moves which seem logical, but have the effect of balkanising the internet,' he added, urging everyone to strongly resist the moves.
Just curious - in what way would that be different from the situation we have now? I didn't RTFA, but IMHO, such a move is long overdue.
IMHO, handing over the governance of the internet to some UN mandated body would probably be a good idea, further removing the net from the influence of a single nation. I'm not sure the ITU would be a good body, since I think they have a history of being a body to regulate in favor of the large telecoms providers (in fact, I think that's what the ITU is made up out of).
Anyone care to shed some light on this?
Ulli
I guess I should mention Little Brother by Cory Doctorow.
It describes a very similar scenario. Has a happy ending, though.
They do, at least partially.
I didn't read the patents themselves, but what tomhudson is saying about them. Now I did, at least in part - replacing 682 by 652...
682: a small application I had on my desktop (ctwm, I think) in 1994 to automatically raise a flag when mail arrives in my mailbox.
The patent is narrower, though, including the ability for the sender to specify the importance as well. I don't know if xbiff could do that. A whole bunch of RSS readers should be able to do it.
314: (this is about a device not necessarily connected to the computer) what about a cellphone stand beside your monitor, with a cellphone sitting in it, the cellphone lighting up when a text message arrives?
507: Slashdot. However, the patent seems to describe how to automate the process.
What the patents describe is something I can't see on the various websites - no idea how they got the idea the other companies might be infringing. If they do, it's hidden pretty deep, IMHO.
I could have misunderstood the patents, too - maybe the same happened to the examiner that granted them.
Ulli
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the `social sciences' is: some do, some don't. -- Ernest Rutherford
