Re: [xml-dev] RE: Encoding charset of HTTP Basic Authentication

[Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie>]

On 03/02/12 11:03, Pete Cordell wrote:
> Welcome to XML Celebrity Slamdown!
>
> I'm giving the contestants 1 point each.
>
> One to Michael for mentioning American purchasing systems. I'm amazed
> that very large American companies' purchasing systems still require you
> to enter a US State and a phone number in the North American numbering
> plan format. Lack of international awareness (or lack of international
> concerns) is not a 20 year-old historical artefact.

It's not really surprising, no matter how annoying it is. The US 
internal market is so large, and American SMEs (and some even bigger 
ones) do so well out of it, that they have no need for foreign clients. 
Not only do they not know where Europe is, but they actually don't give 
a damn anyway.

There are also the barriers erected to cross-Atlantic business by the US 
government *and* the EU authorities. US companies can't just ship goods 
out by taking a parcel to the post office and sticking a stamp on it. 
There are forms and rules and regulations designed to make it hard.

The well-known US multinationals do of course know all this, and happily 
sell abroad, often well-disguised by localisation, but they still make 
the same mistakes. Fortunately their forms are easy to fool.

> One to Len because I don't believe Unix would have got us to where we
> are today.

Unix as it was certainly never would have:fragmented, expensive, and 
laughably incompatible with everything except itself. And fat and 
self-centred and complacent: they never saw Linux coming.

///Peter