On Friday, 8 December 2017 at 22:22:14 UTC, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:
> On 12/08/2017 05:53 AM, Chris wrote:
>> [...]
>
> Speaking as a US citizen, it's long been my observation that americans (and I only mean collectively, of course, it's difficult to generalize down to individuals since that varies greatly) tend to be far more conservative than one would assume them to be.
>
> [...]

this is exactly my observation on HN.

On Sunday, December 10, 2017 04:02:46 Nick Sabalausky  via Digitalmars-d- announce wrote:
> On 12/09/2017 07:58 AM, wobbles wrote:
> > On Thursday, 7 December 2017 at 14:31:01 UTC, Chris wrote:
> >   I didn't know Ireland was so
> >
> >> unknown, unless, of course, I'm supposed to choose "Great Britain".
> >
> > I also hated myself for clicking Great Britain :-)
>
> As an outsider, I'm curious about this. My (perhaps innacurate?) understanding was that "Great Britain" was more a geographical term referring to everything on the islands rather than a political boundary (as opposed to "UK" which is purely a political concept and includes some, but not all, of the countries on the same islands). Is that not enitrely correct? Or is that exactly the the part that's uncomfortable - that it's a "Country" field which lacks the actual country name and only offers a geographic collection in its place?

Well, the wikipedia entry for Great Britain takes the clear stance that it's the island that's Great Britain, and that when Great Britain is referred to politically, it's the 3 countries on the island and does not include any part of Ireland. It also lists the full name of the UK as being the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom

So, technically, Ireland is not part of Great Britain at all, but sometimes, folks do end up including Northern Ireland in what they mean when they use the term - and plenty of folks outside of the UK probably get it wrong all the time.

- Jonathan M Davis

On Sunday, 10 December 2017 at 09:02:46 UTC, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:
> On 12/09/2017 07:58 AM, wobbles wrote:
>> On Thursday, 7 December 2017 at 14:31:01 UTC, Chris wrote:
>>   I didn't know Ireland was so
>>> unknown, unless, of course, I'm supposed to choose "Great Britain".
>> 
>> I also hated myself for clicking Great Britain :-)
>
> As an outsider, I'm curious about this. My (perhaps innacurate?) understanding was that "Great Britain" was more a geographical term referring to everything on the islands rather than a political boundary (as opposed to "UK" which is purely a political concept and includes some, but not all, of the countries on the same islands). Is that not enitrely correct? Or is that exactly the the part that's uncomfortable - that it's a "Country" field which lacks the actual country name and only offers a geographic collection in its place?

I am half English and half Irish (Kilkenny).

The English occupied / (occupy) Ireland and it was / (is) very unpopular. Hence an Irishman will not enjoy having to associate himself with his (former / current) occupiers.

On Sun, 2017-12-10 at 04:02 -0500, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) via
Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
> On 12/09/2017 07:58 AM, wobbles wrote:
> > On Thursday, 7 December 2017 at 14:31:01 UTC, Chris wrote:
> >   I didn't know Ireland was so
> > > unknown, unless, of course, I'm supposed to choose "Great Britain".
> > 
> > I also hated myself for clicking Great Britain :-)
> 
> As an outsider, I'm curious about this. My (perhaps innacurate?) understanding was that "Great Britain" was more a geographical term referring to everything on the islands rather than a political boundary (as opposed to "UK" which is purely a political concept and includes some, but not all, of the countries on the same islands). Is that not enitrely correct? Or is that exactly the the part that's uncomfortable - that it's a "Country" field which lacks the actual country name and only offers a geographic collection in its place?

The UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Well for now, let's see what happens come 2019-03-30.

Great Britiain is technically the geographical thing, the island and surrounding islands that are politically Scotland, Wales, and England. Wales was effectively annexed by England long ago. Scotland joined with England via the Act of Union 1707.

Northern Ireland is the result of the termination of the English occupation of Ireland. The 1921 separation of Ireland that allowed the Irish Free State to form in 1922. Basically it separated the unionists and the republicans so the republicans could get on with life as a self determining political entity.

Many international organisations have confused everyone about the labels, UK, Great Britain, GB, GBR, especially in Internet circles and in sport.

Wikipedia is mostly not entirely wrong on this stuff.

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder     t:+44 20 7585 2200   voip:sip:
russel.winder@ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road   m:+44 7770 465 077   xmpp:russel@winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK  w: www.russel.org.uk skype:russel_winder

On Sunday, 10 December 2017 at 13:06:34 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>
> Well, the wikipedia entry for Great Britain takes the clear stance that it's the island that's Great Britain, and that when Great Britain is referred to politically, it's the 3 countries on the island and does not include any part of Ireland. It also lists the full name of the UK as being the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom
>
> So, technically, Ireland is not part of Great Britain at all, but sometimes, folks do end up including Northern Ireland in what they mean when they use the term - and plenty of folks outside of the UK probably get it wrong all the time.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis

There are two political entities in Ireland, the Republic of Ireland (which is a member of the European Union) and Northern Ireland (which, being part of the UK, will leave the EU after Brexit). Thus, to use only "Ireland" would be wrong (it has to be Republic of Ireland), but how the ROI could be left out is a mystery to me.

Anyway, I know that people in the Americas (including Latin America) are usually faster to pick up on things like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc. But these are backend technologies, if you wish. It seems to me that at the moment companies and programmers in the USA are much more reluctant to adopt or explore new paths as regards the front end (the programming language in this case). I don't think it is to do with political / social conservatism, as this didn't stop engineers in the US to explore new technologies in the past either, and the Nazis were big into technology too. There is not necessarily a link between political / social conservatism and lack of technological progress (there can be).

Maybe it is a certain laziness / complacency, since the USA no longer feel the pressure of having to be "the best" as they did during the cold war. Maybe this sort of complacency also has to do with the fact the for decades the US would make sure that their allies would only buy their technologies, so there was no real competition, no real challenge there (which partly explains the success of Microsoft). But now with China and other big players having entered the pitch, there is more pressure again, and if anything, a more "conservative"* approach that tries to relocate companies within the national borders might actually give innovation a boost.

*It's not so much being "conservative" as an understandable reaction to globalization gone out of hand.