Government URLs that don't end in .gov

Re:Government URLs that don't end in .gov by evanb on Sunday July 23, 2023 @02:05PM (#36837946)

The UK doesn't put the country of origin on their postage stamps, because they invented them [1], so there were no ambiguities to lift.

That's the same reason the US is +1 country code and holds .gov

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postage_stamps_and_postal_hist...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Government URLs that don't end in .gov by N19PEDL2 on Monday July 24, 2023 @02:57AM (#36843973)

Also the same reason, I guess, English-speaking countries have 0 and 1 as country codes in ISBN numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBN & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISBN_registration_grou...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Government URLs that don't end in .gov by JNRowe on Monday July 24, 2023 @03:42AM (#36844285)

There was an interesting use case for the early zero language code. It allowed the checksum to remain intact when switching from early SBN to ISBN, all you had to do was prefix with zero. It isn't quite so simple today, if you find an old British book you can't simply tack a zero on the front.

It is mentioned in the Wikipedia link, but buried a little. I realise ISBN history is the epitome of super-nerdy, but the evolution path from $just_some_retailer through to the Bookland "country" is really quite interesting from an interoperability perspective.

[ Parent | on HN ]