A 10:48 2002-02-27 +0100, Marco Cimarosti a �crit : >What beats me, is how this discussion mutated to Canadian ethnology!
[Alain] Since I started this sub-threa[d|t], it was to say that initial Canada, in the case Qu�bec would become a country (something which is not impossible), would no longer, even partly, be part of Canada, then. This example may not be unique... By the way even Qu�bec itself, now part of Canada, at some point, was much bigger than initial Canada and was also comprising many American States of today... Another map: http://iquebec.ifrance.com/cyberiel/quebec1774.gif (by curiosity see where Louisiana is on this map (!!! ... and it then belongs to Spain after having been part of New France down to the Gulf of Mexico [the capital was then the city of Qu�bec too]). Canada and Qu�bec are indeed good cases in point if you want to talk about fuzziness of borders... So the discussion started with stability of "country" codes... If a code represents a political territory, it can NOT be stable by nature, whether it is alphabetic or numeric. The only stability you can expect has to do with the non-reassignment of a code within a reasonable period, to a different body. Alain LaBont� Qu�bec
