[ih] Internet should be in private hands

[George Ross]

> ... And why given the political organizations involved, it was odd that
> someone didn?t catch that GB wasn?t the designation of the political entity.

Not at all, given the confusion by the English establishment among UK, GB, 
England and (Great) Britain.  It persists to this day, though some 
organisations have obviously started to brief their employees regarding the 
sensitivities of those of us from the non-English parts of the UK.  (That 
can lead to over-correction, though, such as describing Elizabeth 1st's 
navy as "British" rather than "English".)

The naming scheme which JANET-attached Universties used did start with "uk" 
rather than "gb" -- we were uk.ac.ed.cs.  That was in place before we 
joined the IP internet and started using the DNS too, and I suspect the 
prospect of sites having two different names or else having to change the 
JANET scheme, which was much more heavily used than the DNS at the time, 
didn't appeal, in addition to the political sensitivities.

We renamed ourselves as dcs.ed.ac.uk shortly after, to avoid confusion in 
the mail gateways, as .CS was a ccTLD.

-- 
George D M Ross MSc PhD CEng MBCS CITP
University of Edinburgh, School of Informatics,
Appleton Tower, 11 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, Scotland, EH8 9LE
Mail: gdmr at inf.ed.ac.uk   Voice: 0131 650 5147 
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