>..before they have to learn the lessons of internationalisation
Bridget,
I can relate to what you are saying. I used to run the Australian/NZ software support centre for a US computer company. We had support analysts available to cover the working hours of customers across five time zones every day, unless it was a public holiday in ALL locations (about 6 days/year). Our US support headquarters - which provided "next level" support to us - worked 7.00am to 4.00pm only, and closed on every public holiday in their state.
It also used to irk me that they would use the names of northern hemisphere seasons for software release dates and on product catalogs. Use of the word "fall" just reinforced the impression that their world stopped at the US border.
Incidentally, that's also where I first came across the horrible "words" i18n and l10n for internationalization and localization respectively.
