Universal keyboard layout?

This one is gonna be short as I am typing it from a publicly accesible iMac in the Air France lounge at the Paris airport. Let me apologize now for any mis-spellings as either the French or Apple or both hqve decided that the keyboard layout the rest of the world uses is insufficient in France. This is an ‘azerty’ keyboard that you have to use the shift key for to get the ‘.’….very internet friendly.
Anyway, this issue of different keyboard layouts also caused me to loose my ATM card in China. I was used to the pattern of my PIN rather than the actual numbers so after 4 trys with the right pattern on ‘inverted’ keyboard (the ‘1’ key was in the upper left corner) the machine ate my card. I am now firnly convinced that the next great leap in productivity will come not from faster networks or computers, but rather standard or at least configurable input devices.
BTW – this post took me almost 15 minutes to write. My most used key – the backspqce. At least that was in the right place.