[Happy2BMe]

The internet is the last great bastion of the world economy for China to conquer. They already make the large majority of hardware that uses it.

[sandviper]

Its sad that most don't understand that we are headed to second rate status at breakneck speed. Time to start teaching the kids Chinese.
Wonder what the Mexicans are going to do when we sneak across their boarder looking for work?

[humblegunner]

.com

[Alas Babylon!]

All the Internet is is a vast collection of routers and networks, mostly owned by American and European companies. It is not some natural resource. These companies provide the connectivity that makes up the Internet because it is profitable for them to do so. However, their routers and networks and the talent necessary to support them are costly. If these companies cannot make a profit then they will not be able to afford the routers and networks.

The Internet started in the USA as a Department of Defense project, in collaboration with various universities and colleges, called the Arpanet. The military side was called the Defense Data Network (DDN) and Milnet. I worked on those two in the early to mid 80's (at the Pentagon). Because memory and disk space was very expensive (per bit/byte), we used ASCII, developed to translate any character into a single byte. Chinese, Kana, Arabic, etc characters would have taken many more bytes each, and for Chinese, there are about 3,000 separate characters. Therefore, there was no bias to project English/Western languages, just the NEED to conserve memory (else the whole thing wouldn't work!).

If the Chinese want a world-wide network than they are free to make one. Good luck finding all the money and companies that are going to support such an endeavor!

[dog breath]

Conquer is the key word, I wonder if this relates also a urge to control content. The free flow of information on the net continues to be a threat to the Chinese government. If the Chinese government controls which sites respond to searches from Chinese computers it would be a way of limiting access. I am thinking that the government would try to have the right to license and therefore control which international sites can join the Chinese version. Maybe I just see a problem where none exists, could one of you with more computer and legal expertise tell me if this is a possibility.

[John O]

English is the language of business. If you want to succeed in global busisness, especially on th einternet, you need to learn how to do it in English.

This really, really, really ticks off the french. And anything that ticks off the french MUST be the right thing to do.

America's role as superpower is not just military. Our culture will vanquish the inferior, non-freedom loving cultures out there. As bad and twisted as it may be, the American cultue is still the best one around

[Slyfox]

Mr. Ballmer, now we still have to type in 'weather.com.cn' to check the weather. Most Chinese people can't do that.

Well, gosh darn, I have to go to Walmart to buy their stupid products. But, I DO make the effort.

[Tribune7]

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[jokar]

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