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First New Top-Level Domains Added To the Root Zone
angry tapir writes "The Internet – or at least its namespace – just got bigger. Four new top-level domains have been added to the Internet's root zone. The four new gTLDs all use non-Latin scripts: 'web' in Arabic, 'online' in Cyrillic, 'sale' in Cyrillic, and 'game' in Chinese. In total, the generic top-level domain process run by ICANN will result in the expansion of top-level domains from 22 to up to 1400."
LOL!!!
And phishers everywhere rejoiced
Cyrillic is an alphabet or script; it is not a language. The TLDs written in Cyrillic, when translated into Russian (the most abundant language to use the Cyrillic script) are "online" and "sale".
The root zone is managed by the United State's government, with ICANN providing suggestions. The UN nations should stop this land grab in it's tracks and refuse the right for their domestic DNS providers to resolve the new domains until the issue of international control is settled. Once these TLDs take hold, it will be much harder to go back due to interoperability concerns, so now it's the best moment to FUD their development.
Let's not even mention the few hundred million dollars in TLD fees, that will surely be employed by ICANN to further US control over the Internet and surveillance by gently steering the protocols in the right directions.
These new domains seem to split the internet, unless the pages can be read by the English speaking world. Maybe that's the idea, but it seems to move away from the intent of a universal internet.
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair" - George Washington
The word in cyrlillic ("") is "site", not "sale".
It is actually "site" in cyrillic and not "sale". I would post the cyrillic original but alas no utf-8 for slashdot in 2013.
The new Cyrillic TLD, "", doesn't translate to "sale" in Russian, it simply means "site".
that DNS sits on.
is "network" in Arabic. Not web.
No one should own any of the domains.
Not "sale" in Cyrillic, but "site"
Instant win.
The World Wide Web has officially just jumped the shark.
I submit that Eternal September has now ended as all the Newbies will proceed to drown in an ever-rising sea of spam and phishing. I suspect gTLD expansion will do to the Web community what global warming may do to low lying coastal areas.
Regards, Phil
When I translated "" (which is specified as sale in Cyrillic ) using Google translate, Google automatically detected "Russian" language. And, the translation output is "website" not "sale".
How can you insert Cyrillic letters or IPA symbols on /.?
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
...and Slashdot can't show them to us.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
These would be the first new gTLDs added ... since .aero, .asia, .biz, .cat, .coop, .info, .jobs, .mobi, .museum, .name, .post, .pro, .tel, .travel, and .xxx.
So not really "first".
Is the title supposed to read "first non-Latin"?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Of course they can't post the actual TLDs, that would require unicode support.
Enough said.
Unless there's Chinese and Arabic layout on a standard qwerty keyboard... haven't looked on the back of the dam*d thing lately :-/
Oh, wait! I bet you can always use Alt-Ctrl-<some monstrous code here> to type in a character that's not on the keyboard. Just like in the good ol' PE2 days.
You think I'm kidding - you obviously never had to register an account with German-hosted site on a French-keyboard computer and then use it on your US keyboard in Bulgaria/Russia/some other Cyrillic loving country.
I just tried to post the "strange" characters after the dot in this comment.
Not working, all hail the latin characters!
Pretty sure the French have beheaded more than the "muzzies" but since there were no video recorders it's ok, right? I guarantee they would have been recorded, if the technology existed. But yes, let's hate people because they're different. I hate redheads because of the atrocities of the IRA and that one Heather that turned me down for a date. Who's the Muslim girl that broke your heart? Was it a boy? You in the closet? That would explain your constant need to remind everyone how much you hate the "muzzies" - some Mohammed broke your heart.
I wonder how a browser will display something like .shabakah - will most software have right-to-eft rendering and the ligature support for Arabic?
Also imagine an Arabic TLD that allows Latin domain names - how the hell do you render that..?
Anyway, I'm gonna go kill some time on the shabakaat
Unicode has several combining characters (such as a combining acute accent). There are also lots of single characters which already include an accent (U0225 is an 'a' with acute accent). Will the DNS standard dictate that all be normalized (either all decomposed or all composed; and put in a canonical order), or will U0225 be treated differently than 'a' followed by a combining acute accent?
This will strengthen China's censorship apparatus. They already use linguistic differences to block people from using their resources.
Most of the people on Slashdot can figure out how to type Chinese characters. We're all pretty technically savvy. We can use translators and install internationalized keyboard apps on our smartphones.
Can you defeat simplified Chinese CAPTCHAs? Not easily unless you are a native speaker who is familiar with Chinese calligraphy and typefaces. Chinese top-level domain names numbering in the thousands means you have to read Chinese fairly well to even be able to type them in. Instant CAPTCHA.
If China were Taiwan, I wouldn't have a care in the world, but this country is all about surpressing the rights (workers, speech, redress) of its citizens.
Join me in opening up the Chinese Internet. 1 billion people will thank you.
Does anyone know if they handle the look-alike issue or are we still stuck with URLs that appear to be latin "paypal.com", but with the "y" replaced by a greek lower gamma (Î) #x3b3, "p" replaced with cyrillic Er (Ñ) #x440, or some other equivalent that appears identical?
I understand why it's a hard issue: the cyrillic lowercase Er looks *identical* to latin p so they can be mapped to the same character, but the greek lower gamma isn't the exact same glyph as latin lower y, they just look close enough that a user might not notice. Would it be a slight to greek users to force greek domain names to use a misshapen lower gamma? Then what do you do with greek alpha, where the capital matches the latin glyph exactly but the lower does not?
Then there's the issue that every computer everywhere can enter latin characters, but not everyone has software for or how to use stuff like Chinese characters or Japanese Hirigana. Keeping to basic latin characters makes entering domain names universal, though I understand why that's convenient for an English speaker like me to say. I'd be curious to hear from some people who have non-European first languages how much having to use latin domain names seems to bother the average computer user and whether there is any actual cry for international domain names in their country? How difficult/easy is it to enter latin characters on your keyboard layout? Does it present a barrier to entry for the less educated/literate, or does everyone remember their English classes from school?
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
How does adding 4 domains take the total from 22 to 1400? Shouldn't it be 26?
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Oops I'm sorry email from user@mydomain.enrichicann is not valid.
Hey that new TLD does not work in DNS cuz we are not blindly delegating * to root zones.
Don't allow icann to continue to be enriched at the cost of fucking over the Internet. ICANN does not own you or the network and systems you control.
Doesn't the addition of all these domains mean that companies that keep a tight leash on their trademarking (like Coke, Pepsi, Microsoft, etc.) will have to shell out hundreds of new and ongoing registration fees just to ensure that some obscure domain isn't hijacked with their name? This seems more like a cash cow for ICANN than a thought-out expansion.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!