Most internet mail adresses & informational web sites that I know to come from other countries have a code for the other country at the end. This raises a few questions:
Is this a requirement for sites from other countries?
If so, would all sites not so designated be from US sources?
What is the country code for your dominion, Opal?
Sue from El Paso
members.aol.com/majormd/index.html
I can only assume that the recent “deregulation” of domain registration does not only apply to us, but as your topic points out, americans have a way of viewing our own ways in the brightest light. It isn’t too difficult to imagine that would simple delegate other domains by their counties, but I have a feeling many do it by choice. Not everybody wants to look american.
The only thing a nonconformist hates more than a conformist is another nonconformist who does not conform to the prevailing standards of nonconformity.
I also couldn’t help but notice your place of residence, and offer my condolences. I too hail from that bleak portal through the mountains, and am no better for it.
That’s all I have to say about that.
The only thing a nonconformist hates more than a conformist is another nonconformist who does not conform to the prevailing standards of nonconformity.
I would guess that the explosion of sites in the U.S. in the earliest stages of the WWW probably outpaced setting up rules, here. (I have heard of movements to bring “everyone” into some sort or world-wide compliance, but I don’t know where those efforts have gone so far.)
OTOH, have you found every foreign site to have a country domain node? Or only those from universities? I have noticed that a lot of U.S. schools are tagging .us onto their sites and pages.
For those who are interested, here are some sites that list the possible domains by geopolitical region. The ISO3166 list is the common international list for post offices, EDI transfers, etc. outside the WWW and/but the WWW has (with one big exception) adopted the ISO3166 2-letter codes.
(The ISO3166 folks looked at the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and assigned a code of GB. The WWW folks looked at the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and assigned the code .uk.
The sites are
http://info.ripe.net/ (home page of RIPE: sets and maintains the ISO3166 codes)
http://www.centr.org/tld.html (RIPE’s list of domain codes with hyperlink contacts for more info)
http://www.indigo.ie/egt/standards/iso3166-en.html (A list of all the ISO3166 codes)
http://fotw.digibel.be/flags/iso3166.html (A bit off-topic, but related to the ISO3166 stuff: a site that displays each nations flag, with a description of the symbols on each flag, organized by ISO3166 code)
Tom~
I communicate regularly with friends overseas. They tell me that my e-mail address in their “Sender” box always has “.us” tacked onto the end, although I never put it there. Similarly, their addresses have country codes appended, even though they do not type them themselves.
Seems to be an automatic feature.
This must be some strange and weird special case (or it’s some proprietary function of the ISP/mail software you use). I’ve never heard this before, and I’ve been using the internet on an international basis for over ten years now.
Anyhow:
There is a .us domain. The .com TLD is not a subdivision of the .us TLD; they’re completely seperate (there’s no reason that you couldn’t make www.straightdope.com.us an alias for www.straightdope.com, but in general it’s not done).
The .us domain is mainly used for local (county and/or city) governmental bodies, such as city councils, chambers of commerce, and primary school districts, though in theory it’s open to any US citizen.
Also, the .com domain is not restricted to the United States. Neither is .edu (I know there are some schools in Canada that are in the .edu TLD; they may be in .ca as well). The .gov TLD, on the other hand, probably IS restricted to the US.
The “links” in my message above weren’t supposed to be; UBB tries to be too smart for its own good sometimes.