On Sep 30, 2005, at 8:36 AM, John Nall wrote:

>>  or we may see two incompatible systems at
>> some point in the future... The US versus the rest of the world :)
>>
> Yes, that is what worries me.  The present administration seems to be
> awfully prone to bite off their nose just to spite their face, so that
> they could indeed "go it alone."

Ah.  Poor memories.  The rest of the world wasn't very enthusiastic to
participate an "american controlled" set of protocols in the first 
place,
resulting in the mutually incompatible ISO protocol stack (at great cost
to everyone involved, including the US, since they couldn't ignore an
international standard even if they had their own protocols.)

Cynically speaking, the ISO stack failed, and now the "rest of the 
world"
wants an opportunity to screw up the american stack.

On the other hand, perhaps I should look more carefully at what sort of
"control" we're talking about here.  Administrative control?  Control
of the protocols (it's not like there hasn't been a lot of international
participation in IETF already, for instance)?  Getting even more 
cynical,
I think perhaps anyone who believes that "the internet" is controlled by
the US government... just isn't paying very much attention!

BillW
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