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ICANN Under Pressure Over Non-Latin Characters
RidcullyTheBrown writes "A story from the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that ICANN is under pressure to introduce non-Latin characters into DNS names sooner rather than later. The effort is being spearheaded by nations in the Middle East and Asia. Currently there are only 37 characters usable in DNS entries, out of an estimated 50,000 that would be usable if ICANN changed naming restrictions. Given that some bind implementations still barf on an underscore, is this really premature?" From the article: "Plans to fast-track the introduction of non-English characters in website domain names could 'break the whole internet', warns ICANN chief executive Paul Twomey ... Twomey refuses to rush the process, and is currently conducting 'laboratory testing' to ensure that nothing can go wrong. 'The internet is like a fifteen story building, and with international domain names what we're trying to do is change the bricks in the basement,' he said. 'If we change the bricks there's all these layers of code above the DNS ... we have to make sure that if we change the system, the rest is all going to work.'" Given that some societies have used non-Latin characters for thousands of years, is this a bit late in coming?
The whole point about this is that it avoids walled gardens, because the DNS records are still held by ICANN. The alternative is that China decides it's had enough, and creates its own root servers, causing a very real split.
And that would be a travesty how? They don't want to have the internet anyway - it has too many things they deem "inapporiate". I think they it'd just be better off if they did have their own internet. Might make the people rebel a bit faster and overthrow that communist government and get something in there that represents real human rights.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
As I mentioned before, with a useful citation you're sure to find in your university library, most people on Earth live in multilingual communities. They grow up speaking the languages of their neighbours--or learn gradually later in life without all the bitching and moaning you show here--and so there is not necessarily a barrier to understanding. The poster to whom I was responding, however, asserts that even this stable multilingualism isn't tolerable, but rather we have to get rid of all languages but one.
What does this have to do with Palestine?
Where were you when the voynix came?
It was just another jab at Dan Rather for his "all the evidence for the story is faked, but I tell ya, it's TRUE!!!!" . Not to mention his insistence that the faked Word 97 documents were real for two weeks after they were proven fake. Not the best way to end his long and quite distinguished career.
Where were you when the voynix came?