Public Wireless internet

[Peter Corlett]

andrew Black <andrew-li at black1.org.uk> wrote:
[...]
> PS - before we start the UKP v GPB debate, I notice that the chip'n'pin
> machine in smuggs debited my card by 10 _GBP_.

It's GBP because currency abbreviations are the two-letter ISO 3166 code for
the country the currency is from, followed by the intial letter of the
currency name. So, GB + P = GBP. There are also special codes starting with
X, e.g. XEU for the now dead ECU of the 90s. One other exception is EUR for
the Euro, since there is not (yet!) a country code EU.

As to ISO 3166 itself, Both the UK and the Ukraine wanted UK, so rather than
start World War III, we were assigned GB and they UA.

Domain names are also based upon ISO 3166 but by the time they decided this,
the Internet had already taken off in the UK and so .uk was kept. Australia
wasn't so lucky - it had .oz, but because there were few users, that was
changed to .oz.au.

Why do I remember this sort of trivia?

-- 
Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love.
							- Albert Einstein