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ICANN Approves .IRAN (in Non-Latin)

Posted by timothy on from the but-shouldn't-we-all-be-able-to-read-it dept.

penciling_in writes "CircleID reports that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has announced its approval of non-Latin string evaluation of 'Iran.' This approval will allow the availability of Iran's top-level domain in its own native language, Persian, also known as Farsi (that is, the domain name .IRAN, in non-Latin characters). According to ICANN, there are currently 33 requests for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs), representing 22 languages, out of which 18 countries/territories have so far been approved."

148 comments

  1. Dont do it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Are you serious? This is the exact thing what we are fighting against and now we give terrorists their own ccTLD that allows them to hide behind weird non-latin characters?

    Someone has to do something.

    1. Re:Dont do it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wish I still had modpoints.

      --TSP

      (Captcha: fluffy)

    2. Re:Dont do it by Joebert · · Score: 1

      Don't worry, Apple's lawyers will be all over this iTLD in no time !

      --
      Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
    3. Re:Dont do it by Jesus_666 · · Score: 1

      Someone has to do something.

      Does playing Minecraft count? In that case I'm already on it.

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
    4. Re:Dont do it by sourcerror · · Score: 2, Funny

      ICANN haz non-latin domainz

    5. Re:Dont do it by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      What do you mean, "something"? Just nuke the DNS servers resolving this TLD from orbit, to be sure! ~

    6. Re:Dont do it by yonung-iat.com · · Score: 1

      Don't worry

      --
      http://www.yonung-iat.com Yonung Industrial Automation and Electric Equipment Co., Ltd.
  2. Show me the TLD by mad_ian · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So... what does this look like? I think a lot of us are using OSs that show us Unicode and non-Latin characters, so lets see it.

    --
    ~Donald / Just RTFM
    1. Re:Show me the TLD by MachDelta · · Score: 5, Funny

      Here you go: .????

    2. Re:Show me the TLD by odies · · Score: 1, Informative

      Our computers support it, but slashdot doesn't.

    3. Re:Show me the TLD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Heh, the stupid thing is Slashdot doesn't support it! Just try putting UTF-8 characters in a comment or any of the Unicode symbols.

      Totally broken if you ask me. People have been whining about it for over a decade.

    4. Re:Show me the TLD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All these people can't standardize text streams.
      This is why we need .PNG TLDs. Just draw whatever your language looks like!

      Porn domains can be a .(drawing of a penis) or .(drawing of cartoon breasts)

    5. Re:Show me the TLD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's here:

      http://icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/string-evaluation-completion-i-en.htm#ir

      No image, though. You will need a browser that supports the characters.

    6. Re:Show me the TLD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      An example is several levels deep in the links:

      http://icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/string-evaluation-completion-i-en.htm#ir

      You'll need browser/os support for the unicode glyphs in order to see it (Firefox on Windows works for me.)

      Other countries are there too, like India, China, Egypt, etc.

    7. Re:Show me the TLD by LambdaWolf · · Score: 1
      Or you can copy and paste this into a Python intrepreter:

      '\u002e\u0627\u06cc\u0631\u0627\u0646'

      --
      "This algorithm runs in constant time. Come on, 2,147,483,648 is a constant..."
    8. Re:Show me the TLD by martas · · Score: 1

      ******. that's what i see.

      --
      weinersmith
    9. Re:Show me the TLD by LearnToSpell · · Score: 1

      Paste a link at least, n00b. Here: www.???.????

      --
      Haida Manga
    10. Re:Show me the TLD by mysidia · · Score: 1

      I tried to post it in a comment. But it seems one of those things that couldn't handle Unicode entry is the comment form on slashdot... Anyways:

      try this

    11. Re:Show me the TLD by nacturation · · Score: 1

      ******. that's what i see.

      I guess to register domains, you can visit http://domains.hunter2/ ?

      --
      Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
    12. Re:Show me the TLD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Congraats. you have discovered why the idea is meaningless... at least until all computers support all possible charsets.
      How do an Iranian guy look for sex.iran from a computer outside Iran (with english keyboard).

    13. Re:Show me the TLD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh i just see hunter2

    14. Re:Show me the TLD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How do an Iranian guy look for sex.iran from a computer outside Iran (with english keyboard).

      I guess he'll just have to use a Mac.

    15. Re:Show me the TLD by zippthorne · · Score: 1

      Then you need a terminal that supports the characters.

      Which if you have, probably has a direct entry method so you can skip the python altogether.

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    16. Re:Show me the TLD by LambdaWolf · · Score: 1

      True; I should have said IDLE, the windowed IDE, which will render it in all cases as far as I know. I was trying to sidestep the "need a browser that supports the characters" in the GP post. (Also, I believe the code snippet I posted requires Python 3.0 or later.)

      --
      "This algorithm runs in constant time. Come on, 2,147,483,648 is a constant..."
    17. Re:Show me the TLD by takowl · · Score: 1
      For Python 2.x, the following should work:

      print u'\u002e\u0627\u06cc\u0631\u0627\u0646'

    18. Re:Show me the TLD by X0563511 · · Score: 1

      Dang, not a single unsupported character on the page! Heh, and I can't ready a single one of them anyways.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    19. Re:Show me the TLD by X0563511 · · Score: 1

      For those who are curious but lack the font support:
      http: //img257.imageshack.us/img257/2474/tlds.png

      Remove the space in the URL. Inserted in the hopes of not exploding tinyurl, you know how slashdot is.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    20. Re:Show me the TLD by msuarezalvarez · · Score: 1

      As far as I know, no terminal emulator deals with Persian correctly: terminals are block based beasts, and Persian (as Sanscrit, and others) are not.

    21. Re:Show me the TLD by AbrasiveCat · · Score: 1

      ******. that's what i see.

      hey, that's my password!!!

    22. Re:Show me the TLD by Larryish · · Score: 1

      I own porn.iran

      This domain is for sale for $10,000,000.00

      Serious bidders only.

  3. What the internet really needs by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 2, Funny

    Approval of Unicode 1F4A9 as a TLD

    --
    Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
    1. Re:What the internet really needs by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      Slow news night, folks. It's ok to move on to something more interesting.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    2. Re:What the internet really needs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, what the internet really needs is a .Qo TLD planet code... you know... for Qo'noS. Slashdot is much better if you read it in the original Klingon, slashdot.qo

    3. Re:What the internet really needs by mysidia · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Approval of Unicode 1F4A9 as a TLD

      The internet domain name system needs to be re-parented; it's too short sighted and will be quickly obsoleted once we need to interact with aliens, space stations, or colonies on other planets.

      All the existing TLDs should be moved to thid-level domains under .GL.E.MW. (GL for ground level, E for Earth, MW for Milky-Way Galaxy)

      That will provide for proper DNS hierarchy when stations on other planets need to communicate, for example....

      WWW.GOOGLE.GSO15.MA.MW. Referring to a Google site local to the internet community in geosynchronous orbit conduit #15 around Mars

    4. Re:What the internet really needs by fritsd · · Score: 1

      That's bullshit.

      --
      To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
    5. Re:What the internet really needs by John+Hasler · · Score: 1

      We may eventually have to admit that the hierarchical system won't scale sufficiently. Let's go back to bang paths and pathalias.

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    6. Re:What the internet really needs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What I'd really like would be 0x0CA0 0x005F 0x0CA0 as the TLD for all URL direction services.

    7. Re:What the internet really needs by blackraven14250 · · Score: 1

      I think we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

    8. Re:What the internet really needs by tverbeek · · Score: 1

      You're proposing a specific domain level for altitude*, but you want to go directly from planet to galaxy? A domain level for star system (the range at which lightspeed communication methods are possible) would be a bit more meaningful and useful. Think about it: How many planets there are in the Milky Way whose names start with E?) You're also going to have to give up on using 2-letter galaxy codes to differentiate between more than 100 billion galaxies. Something like GOOGLE.US.E.SOL.MILKYWAY would be more realistic.

      *To distinguish surface dwellers from Atlanteans and the Mole Men, perhaps?

      --
      http://alternatives.rzero.com/
    9. Re:What the internet really needs by choongiri · · Score: 1

      ...along with a mandatory .1F648 for all the "think of the children"-safe sites.

    10. Re:What the internet really needs by mysidia · · Score: 1

      You're also going to have to give up on using 2-letter galaxy codes to differentiate between more than 100 billion galaxies.

      I'm assuming only a small number of galaxies will be populated and need internet communications; the milkyway only has a very small number of immediately neighboring galaxies, that would have any chance at all of ever communicating with ours.

      I assume that once more than a few star systems are populated, each astronomical body will be expanded to its full name instead of ".E" one letter for earth.

      I admit it's rather Terracentric of me to concentrate on planetary and other astronomical bodies in our local solar system by giving them one-letter or two-letter monikers, but I think it's justifiable.

      And I assume the '.MW.' would be omitted by most people, or trated as implicit (relying on their local resolver's domain suffix qualification to append the .MW.), just like the "." is often forgotten or ignored at the end of domain names, when typing a domain such as http://slashdot.org./ into your web browser.

    11. Re:What the internet really needs by mysidia · · Score: 1

      I think we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

      The same thing was about 32-bits for an IP address and 16 bits for an AS number... look where that got us?

      The problem is sometimes, if you don't build the bridge, by the time you want to build it, the shore's all used up, or people constructed something else with the materials. In any case, it takes a long time to change these sorts of things, so you need to start early, as soon as you can anticipate the need.

      Once your train "gets close enough to the bridge where you notice there is no bridge" its massive momentum will send you hurling into the water (or lava), at such a fast speed, that there is simply not enough time to physically be able to build that bridge in time to even apply the brakes safely, let-alone prevent the ensuing chaos.

    12. Re:What the internet really needs by tverbeek · · Score: 1

      "I'm assuming only a small number of galaxies will be populated and need internet communications"

      Oh, well as long as you're being completely irrational about it, it doesn't matter.

      --
      http://alternatives.rzero.com/
    13. Re:What the internet really needs by mysidia · · Score: 1

      Oh, well as long as you're being completely irrational about it, it doesn't matter.

      There's nothing irrational about it at all. Given the rate of expansion of the universe, there are only a very small number of galaxies that communication with could be measured in quantities smaller than billions of years.

  4. The ccTLDs in question by Looce · · Score: 4, Informative

    Iran, Islamic Republic of. ccTLDs: xn--mgba3a4f16a, xn--mgba3a4fra.

    The Unicode whitelist on Slashdot is preventing us from having the Farsi reading, so see here.

    1. Re:The ccTLDs in question by indeciso · · Score: 1

      I wonder how their keyboards look like.

    2. Re:The ccTLDs in question by ByteSlicer · · Score: 1

      A bit of googling turned up this: http://aramedia.com/kbfarsi.jpg

    3. Re:The ccTLDs in question by X0563511 · · Score: 1

      http: //img257.imageshack.us/img257/2474/tlds.png

      Just in case you lack font support and still want to see it.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    4. Re:The ccTLDs in question by indeciso · · Score: 1

      That's cool. I specially like the "J" alter ego.

  5. What injustice! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I demand .AMERICA as a TLD.

    You can't see it in Slashdot, but it's in 72 point font, bold and blinking.

    Because America is that cool.

    1. Re:What injustice! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not cool enough. The TLD we need, neigh demand, is .U.S.A...U.S.A....U.S.A.USA.USA.USA.USA.USA.USA.USA.USA

      Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING but not the awesome type of yelling that befits the USA.

    2. Re:What injustice! by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Number ONE! Number ONE!

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    3. Re:What injustice! by peppepz · · Score: 2, Interesting

      While you're at it, you can demand that domain in Shavian. It's a script that is native to English and it's already in Unicode; so you can stop using those foreign roman letters with inconsistent pronunciation.

    4. Re:What injustice! by nacturation · · Score: 1

      I demand .AMERICA as a TLD.

      You can't see it in Slashdot, but it's in 72 point font, bold and blinking.

      Because America is that cool.

      Fuck yeah!

      --
      Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
    5. Re:What injustice! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And it will include Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and all this other countries in "AMERICA".

    6. Re:What injustice! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      America is not a country, it is a continent. (We never came up with a real name for our country.) So, our TLD should be .USA

    7. Re:What injustice! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please show me a continent named 'America'.

      Otherwise, you are just one of many nazi neo-cons who want to control what ppl call themselves.

    8. Re:What injustice! by blackraven14250 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, because that's totally accessible to everyone, just the way the internet is supposed to be.

    9. Re:What injustice! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really? What continent is named 'AMERICA'? Personally, I only know of 'North America', and 'South America', but no continent named 'AMERICA'.

    10. Re:What injustice! by peppepz · · Score: 1

      I wasn't seriously proposing the usage of a synthetic script from the 60s to encode a TLD for the USA. I was joking.

    11. Re:What injustice! by Marcika · · Score: 1
      You're a troll but nevermind...

      http://www.solarviews.com/raw/earth/america.jpg

    12. Re:What injustice! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yeah, mostly the south one, actualy

    13. Re:What injustice! by guyminuslife · · Score: 1

      Of course you weren't. George Bernard Shaw wasn't even American. We should be using a synthetic script from the 1830s to encode a TLD for the USA.

      --
      I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
    14. Re:What injustice! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Only mormons could dream up something quite so retarded.

  6. So much AC comments by gagol · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Is it the Anonymous Coward day? Did I miss something?

    --
    Tomorrow is another day...
    1. Re:So much AC comments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Didn't you get the memo?

  7. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  8. So? by Myria · · Score: 1, Insightful

    As a sovereign nation, Iran has the same rights to a top-level domain as any other nation, and in her official language now that it is possible. That she is currently out of favor with the West should be irrelevant.

    Besides, don't we want more Internet access for Iranians anyway?

    --
    "Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
    1. Re:So? by c6gunner · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why in the world would you assume that the article has anything to do with the geopolitical situation? This is like someone writing an article about the price of Viagra coming down, and you yelling "STOP TALKING ABOUT MY ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION!!!". Chill out.

    2. Re:So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seriously.

    3. Re:So? by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why in the world would you assume that the article has anything to do with the geopolitical situation?

      Maybe because even the freakin summary said that 18 other IDN's have already been approved.
      If it weren't for the geopolitical situation, what makes the 18th approval worthy of note?

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    4. Re:So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's called preemptive trolling, same as any other trolling.

    5. Re:So? by maxwell+demon · · Score: 2, Funny

      As a sovereign nation, Iran has the same rights to a top-level domain as any other nation, and in her official language now that it is possible

      I didn't know that Iran is female. Does it need a burqa to cover the whole country , then?

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    6. Re:So? by c6gunner · · Score: 1

      If it weren't for the geopolitical situation, what makes the 18th approval worthy of note?

      WTF?

      I mean, yeah, no, your argument makes perfect sense. I mean, this year was Superbowl 44, and I barely saw any news coverage at all on TV. After the first few, they stopped being newsworthy.

    7. Re:So? by retchdog · · Score: 1

      It has one.

      --
      "They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
    8. Re:So? by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 1

      It used to be standard to refer to nations as "she," like ships. The usage is a bit archaic now, but it's not incorrect.

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    9. Re:So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why are we talking about your erectile dysfunction?

    10. Re:So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's gotta be the weakest, most pathetic comeback ever.
      Douche of the minute award to you.

    11. Re:So? by Crypto+Gnome · · Score: 1

      The usage is a bit archaic now, but it's not incorrect.

      Countries running a theocracy are *all* about archaic, so I guess that's appropriate, really.

      --
      Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
    12. Re:So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So I guess we should refer to the US using female pronouns, with her motto "In God We Trust", her marriage laws based on Christian doctrine, her de facto religious requirements for elective office, etc.

    13. Re:So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I didn't know that Iran is female. Does it need a burqa to cover the whole country , then?

      Burkas are from a different region. If anything, you're thinking of a niqab, but that's more commonly encountered on the Arabian peninsula, too. In Iran, women typically wear a headscarf and eschew make-up, and that's about it.

  9. was .censor taken ? by unity100 · · Score: 1, Funny

    tho there are many contenders for that tld ...

    --
    Read radical news here
  10. non-latin names and whois by MavEtJu · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Who has any clarity / clue on how whois gets implemented for these domains?

    --
    bash$ :(){ :|:&};:
    1. Re:non-latin names and whois by flnca · · Score: 1

      Wikipedia ... the ccTLD is encoded in Punycode ... that makes it easy to use in any type of internet software, since it's just ASCII.

    2. Re:non-latin names and whois by ZWNJ · · Score: 1

      Try it now: whois xn--mgbbgcw7khi.xn--mgba3a4f16a.ir

    3. Re:non-latin names and whois by MavEtJu · · Score: 1

      Then the next question is of course, how are the maintainers of whois-servers.net going to handle this?
      I'll drop them an email I think!

      Edwin

      --
      bash$ :(){ :|:&};:
    4. Re:non-latin names and whois by flnca · · Score: 1

      Works for me, I'm using RHEL5 (RedHat Linux). It shows a domain name in Arabic or similar script belonging to a guy in Teheran. I don't know if the rendering is correct, but a guy speaking Arabic once told me the letters need not be connected ... they show up as individual letters in my console, but that could be a bug in the whois program or in the console app.

  11. Re:http://www.jerseys-2010.com by Looce · · Score: 2, Funny

    I believe you meant http://www.jerseys-2010.xn--mgba3a4fra/

  12. uhh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Happy?

  13. Re:Dibs by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

    Dibs on flockofseagulls.iran.

    Yeah, but I got "and.iran"

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  14. Iranian font? by oldhack · · Score: 1

    Is that nastaliq?

    --
    Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
  15. New namespace? by Animats · · Score: 1

    Is this a new namespace, or an alias for the old one?

    1. Re:New namespace? by tverbeek · · Score: 1

      I don't think it will be an alias for .IR, because the purpose of it is to ditch the Latin alphabet altogether, and there are truckloads of Latin domains registered there. Having URLs such as http://www.mfa/gov.#%23%23%23 wouldn't accomplish that.

      But Iran currently maintains .####.IR (with the just-approved TLD as a second-level domain), which is used for domains spelled in the local alphabet, and this new TLD might be an alias of that.

      --
      http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  16. Re:Dibs by goodmanj · · Score: 1

    God dammit! I came here specifically to post that joke! I HAD DIBS!

  17. ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by mykos · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I am all for giving people resources in their own language as a stop-gap measure, but in the big picture, it would be nice if we didn't re-segregate the world by language?

    1. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by martas · · Score: 1

      uhh yeah, but good luck getting everyone to agree on what the common language should be.... if it was up to me, i'd vote to eradicate not only all but one language, but all but one culture (don't really care which one, as long as it's compatible with western individual freedoms, and, of course, places scientific advancement high up on the list of priorities). obviously, i'm in the minority...

      --
      weinersmith
    2. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      you mean, rather than forcing billions of people around the world to continue using domain names in a foreign character set that they can’t read? “stop-gap?” Until what? Until English takes over the world? News flash: won’t happen. Along with lots of other people, a billion Chinese say otherwise.

    3. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by mysidia · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You have a problem with making Persian the one language used by the whole world?

    4. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by mykos · · Score: 1, Interesting

      My main concern is just about where we're going as a human race. I mean, nobody really thinks of aliens speaking separate languages when you read sci-fi.

      I like to think that most people would agree that a single language would be one less roadblock in an advanced society. Not trying to westernize anyone...hell, I'd even accept Chinese dialects since they're the most spoken already.

    5. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by peppepz · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Being able to speak your own language has nothing to do with not being able to understand others' languages.

      I believe computers should adapt to people's customs and not the opposite; current technology gives us the opportunity for this to happen more often than not, and localised domain names are a step in that direction.

    6. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by peppepz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Eradicating languages and cultures" is not "compatible with western individual freedoms".

    7. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      You can argue as to whether computers evolved to fit English and similar languages, or the fundamental characteristics of those languages facilitated the development of computers.

      But it's a plain fact that some languages and writing systems - Chinese being the obvious one - aren't particularly well suited to computer input.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    8. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What people seem to think as a Chinese uniform spoken language is actually more often the uniformity created by the written language. Mandarin Chinese is the most widespread (but also split to rather different own dialects, ~900 million in total), but the other dialects of Wu (think Shanghainese), Hakka, Min, Xiang, Yue and Gan Chinese that can be considered their own spoken languages written on the same system, yet have combined native speaker base of hundreds of millions. US-centric view of the world easily causes very strange quantitative and qualitative distortions of perspective.

      An outsider might, with a bit of a stretch, claim that mapping between written and spoken English is almost as unclear as it is on logogrammatic writing systems - there are certainly vast amounts of languages, even prominent ones, that have much more consistent mapping between the two. Think Spanish for instance. So, I question the "obvious practicality" of English you're promoting so much. Other part that makes English pretty hard is the large, historically multilayered vocabulary. There are lots of languages where one can cope quite perfectly with a basis of couple hundred words and the combinations of those, and where etymologies of words are not so completely opaque to average speaker as in English. Finnish is my preference in this regard, but I might be a bit biased as a native speaker.

    9. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by martas · · Score: 1

      *woosh*. that was a "if i was god, i'd make boobs grow on trees" kind of statement. i wasn't suggesting genocide would be a good idea.

      --
      weinersmith
    10. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by mischi_amnesiac · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but with just one language you lose so much cultural difference. In danish, "sild" means herring, but can also be used to refer to a hot girl. "Skat" means tax, als well as treasure and can be used as "min skat" - my dear. In icelandic, the word for computer is composed of an ancient word for witch and the word for number, so a computer in icelandic literally means "number witch". Even english has so many words borrowed from other languages, like Zeitgeist, Angst, Kindergarten or Leitmoti(f/v). Studying foreign languages gives you so much insight into the cultural differences if you think about how certain words are used. I think that english already is the standard language that you use on the internet, but I don't like the idea of forcing everybody to use one specific mother tongue. There are too many languages already dying out today. Every language has word plays that you can't translate which would be lost. In german we have "Widerstand ist zwewcklos", which means "Resistance is futile" but also "Resistor is futile". I think you can come up with an idea for a T-Shirt with that sentence in german yourself.

      --
      "Die endgueltige Teilung Deutschlands - das ist unser Auftrag." - Chlodwig Poth
    11. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I like to think that most people would agree that a single language would be one less roadblock in an advanced society. Not trying to westernize anyone...hell, I'd even accept Chinese dialects since they're the most spoken already.

      Differences in language didn't just come out of nowhere, though. Languages change - just read some Chaucer if you don't believe me -, and if two groups of people aren't interacting, then their respective changes WILL eventually reach a point where the languages aren't mutually comprehensible anymore.

      Put another way, you can't DECREE that we should have a single language; having the necessary social infrastructure to keep this sort of diversion from happening is a necessary precondition. It's not sufficient if you already have different languages, like we do, but instituting a common language without having the mechanisms to keep it from fracturing again is worthless.

      Of course, actually going from "many languages" to "one common language" is going to be nigh impossible, too. Language is tied to culture as well, and people will object to being required to learn a new language all of a sudden and use that... and understandably so, too.

    12. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But it's a plain fact that some languages and writing systems - Chinese being the obvious one - aren't particularly well suited to the western keyboard which is the only kind of input device I'm capable of imagining.

      There, fixed that for you.

    13. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But I don't want to learn French!

    14. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by _merlin · · Score: 1

      Wubizixing is the fastest way to type simplified Chinese. It's based on breaking the characters down into radicals. Oh, you thought pinyin romanisation was the only way to type? Silly American boy hasn't ever seen a real Chinese keyboard.

    15. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by John+Hasler · · Score: 1

      > "if i was god, i'd make boobs grow on trees"

      That's a fetish I'd never heard of. The images it calls up are not exactly erotic...

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    16. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by John+Hasler · · Score: 1

      > ...I'd even accept Chinese dialects since they're the most spoken already.

      More likely English. 1.8 billion people around the world speak it as a second language while Chinese is concentrated in China. There may be more Chinese speaking English as a second language than there are non-Chinese speakers of Chinese.

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    17. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by mrsquid0 · · Score: 1

      I do not understand? How can there possibly be anything outside of America? Yes, there are rumours of some igloos to the north, and cheese somewhere to the east across some big river or ocean or something, but that is just crazy talk.

      --
      Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
    18. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by squiggleslash · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yes and know. Languages also converge given the right circumstances. That's what's terrifying some French culturalists, for example: when English words started to creep into generic French some decades ago, there was a pushback by those worried that ultimately the French language would become diluted, and ultimately redundant. Laws were passed to protect the French language.

      It's hard to believe now, but in Britain as recently as fifty years ago, people in many parts of the country couldn't understand the dialects used in others, and vice versa. As mass audio mediums, from TV and radio to pre-recorded audio, have spread, dialects have slowly merged together. In the mean time, in non-English speaking countries, the prolific audio cultural output of the English speaking world, in particular the US, has meant that many have effectively gone bi-lingual, especially throughout Europe.

      I don't think a common language will happen overnight, but I think that unless somehow the English speaking world's movie, TV, and music producing machine somehow loses its dominance, a huge portion of the world will be English speaking by the end of the Century, if not earlier. There will be push-back, as we've seen in France, but it'll happen, because an increasing number of the voices people want to hear will be English-speaking.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    19. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think we (as /. geeks) need to start using one programming language (instead of C, C++, Java, C#, Lisp, ...) before we try to decide what the whole human race should do!

    20. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by tverbeek · · Score: 1

      I mean, nobody really thinks of aliens speaking separate languages when you read sci-fi.

      That's a failure of most sci-fi authors. Or more to the point, it's a reflection of their view of the world, as something that should eventually be unified by some means (early sci-fi writers tended to think in terms of imperialism, later ones in terms of federalism based on the UN) into a single culture. So they present that as the norm for any other advanced civilization. I remain unconvinced. Diversity of culture –including religion, language, cuisine, government, economic policies, etc. –seems to me like a good thing, in the same way that biodiversity is.

      --
      http://alternatives.rzero.com/
    21. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Brains develop different with different languages and cultures, (not better or worst, just different)

      Strange but true everybody has its own version of reality.

    22. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by rockNme2349 · · Score: 3, Funny

      I mean, I don't want to be pompous and promote my own language, but it seems obvious if you look around and see what people are speaking everywhere. The world would be better off if everyone just learned French.

      --
      Sewage Treatment Facilities - "Our duty is clear."
    23. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by msuarezalvarez · · Score: 1

      You should try to find out why Chinese URLs have so many digits in them: it is not because they know how to pronounce latin letters and words...

    24. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not if you live in the last century and all you have is a keyboard. But here in the 21st century, we have handwriting and voice recognition, both increasing in power and precision every day.

    25. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by R.Mo_Robert · · Score: 1

      I like to think that most people would agree that a single language would be one less roadblock in an advanced society.

      Warning: actual linguist ahead.

      You must be from the US (so am I, so I'm just sayin'). The majority of the world is multilingual. Try it--it's good for you. :)

      In fact, having only one language would be worse for "an advanced society." How are we supposed to figure out how the mind works in terms of language (e.g., why are there language universals? what are they? what is the nature of language impariment?) when we only have one to study? Moreover, the goal itself is also slightly unrealistic: languages have a tendancy to change as the current generation acquires a grammar (in the lingustic sense, not the prescriptivist English sense) that does not converge exactly on that of the previous, which is exactly how we get different languages (although some probably arose independently to begin with, unless you subscribe to the Nostradic Hypothesis) as well as historical language change in the first place. In other words, it wouldn't work.

      --
      R.Mo
    26. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah, the lingua franca!

    27. Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? by martas · · Score: 1

      to each his own, i guess...

      --
      weinersmith
  18. Re:http://www.jerseys-2010.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ho my, ho my. The only girl in slashdot had to be a spammer.

  19. Re:Dibs by BancBoy · · Score: 1

    Keep it up boys...this joke could run all night and day.

    --
    [UID-HeinzIntel]
  20. Why not .arabic? by blind+biker · · Score: 1

    Farsi uses the arabic script - in fact, farsi and arabic written languages are indistinguishable. If the whole point of .IRAN is to support the farsi script, then why have it as a separate entity from an arabic TLD?

    --
    "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
    1. Re:Why not .arabic? by k8to · · Score: 1

      Yeah, why not just put all western domains under .latin. (uhhh....)

      --
      -josh
    2. Re:Why not .arabic? by tonique · · Score: 2, Informative

      FYI: Persian alphabet is derived from, and looks similar to, the Arabic script but the written languages are certainly distinguishable. Being able to distinguish might require some expertise -- I can't do it anyway. Also, the Persian (or Perso-Arabic) script is used by many other languages.

      Wikipedia knows these things:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perso-Arabic_script
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet

    3. Re:Why not .arabic? by wmac · · Score: 1

      In case you are interested, genuine alphabet of middle history Iran has been Pahlavi

      http://www.omniglot.com/writing/mpersian.htm

      and the more older one (i.e. thousands of years of history) is Mikhi alphabet:

      http://www.persiancalligraphy.org/History-of-Calligraphy.html

    4. Re:Why not .arabic? by Crypto+Gnome · · Score: 1

      Nuclear Weaponry?

      OOPS, I mean peaceful generation of electricity for civillian uses, by nuclear means.

      --
      Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
    5. Re:Why not .arabic? by jeaton · · Score: 1

      Not quite the same script. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perso-Arabic_script for details, but there exist letters in Farsi that do not exist in Arabic.

      Also, it would be like saying "why give the United States .us? They use the same language as England, why can't they use .uk?" This is a county-code TLD, just represented in the native script of the country.

    6. Re:Why not .arabic? by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      in fact, farsi and arabic written languages are indistinguishable

      This is simply false. They are two very different languages using the same alphabet.

      If the whole point of .IRAN is to support the farsi script

      No, its point is to provide convenient access to Iranian resources in Farsi to people who only speak that language (and not English).

  21. Domain Mix-N-Match by DavidD_CA · · Score: 1

    icame.isaw.iran

    icrawl.iwalk.iran

    any others?

    --
    -David
    1. Re:Domain Mix-N-Match by sourcerror · · Score: 1

      That's what you thought at Afghanistan too.

  22. Domain Mix-N-Match by sempir · · Score: 1

    How bout icame.isaw.iconcurred. next?

    --
    A closed mouth gathers no foot.
  23. Re:http://www.jerseys-2010.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Shut the fuck up, idiot.

  24. Huh?! by linumax · · Score: 1

    Just because two things looks similar doesn't make them the same. For starters, Arabic alphabet is 4 letters short of Farsi. Then there are letters (and even digits) that are written, pronounced and even used in different ways.This is quite like saying "To me, as a third party Japanese and Chinese look similar, so they should use the same TLD" which is very very wrong.

  25. You have a point, but only just by theolein · · Score: 1

    The increasing tendency for languages to use their own script on the internet not only on websites, but also in TLDs does lead to people who have no knowledge of that script being less and less able to access it, as they can't even input the characters for the domain any more. That said, how many people were looking at foreign websites in any case? Non-English speaking people were used to accessing English websites, as the biggest majority of the web was in English, but English speakers, who are notoriously bad in foreign languages weren't doing that so much.

    English was more or less an internet common language and that is now changing again, so yes, I do think the web is currently being segregated by language again.

    IMO the best bets for enhanced international web understanding lie with things like Google's translate, which will hopefully improve over the years. This because I don't see people being able to cope with all the myriad languages on the web.

  26. Re:Dibs by tverbeek · · Score: 1

    When musicians try to teach geography, you're just asking for trouble. While A Flock Of Seagulls' "Iran so far away" is true in most of the English speaking world, there's no telling how much educational damage has been done by Simon and Garfunkel singing "I am Iraq; I am an island."

    --
    http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  27. Would it kill you to just put Unicode in TFS? by Ant+P. · · Score: 1

    Seriously. The 1990s ended over a decade ago, yet we're still stuck with 7-bit ASCII on /.

  28. Gimme a straight alphabet, and I'll learn Farsi by tepples · · Score: 1

    If Iran were to simplify the Arabic script first, or perhaps adopt Latin like Turkey did, I wouldn't have a problem learning Farsi as a second language if the major developed countries agreed to teach it.

  29. Re:Dibs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and.iran/~sofar/away.html?

  30. So now who has full control of proxies? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    One of the ugly secrets is whoever controls DNS controls much more.

    When a government with an agenda to control all of its people the ability to insert tricks into the DNS lookup can let them do almost anything. We do it inside many schools and companies and call it net nanny and giggle at it. The ability to insert a proxy or false site and do almost anything should not be minimized because the damage is a major risk to security and privacy.

    Given this I can see why a responsible nation would be paranoid and not trust DNS to the other guys. Responsible need not equal good or even well intentioned.

    Within limits responsible individuals need to pay attention too. This does get complicated with the tangle of CCS, highly available, high traffic web sites and all the tricks they pull behind the curtains to get the job done.

    This will only get more tangled with IPV6 ;-)