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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."
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 word in cyrlillic ("") is "site", not "sale".
This splits nothing. You can go to a funky alphabeted url just as easily as a latin alphabeted url... Just need the link or to use an appropriate keyboard/on screen keyboard. The internet is pretty split along language lines anyway, if you hadn't noticed. (I do notice, cause I speak 3 languages, and am currently in a country that speaks another.)
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
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.
Right now there are many millions of websites I can't read because I don't speak Chinese, Korean, Russian, etc. etc. etc.... There can be no "universal Internet" unless everyone speaks the same language, which is never going to happen.
is "network" in Arabic. Not web.
You seem to have missed the Montevideo Statement a few weeks back. All of the Internet governance bodies are going NGO.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
Right now there are many millions of websites I can't read because I don't speak Chinese, Korean, Russian, etc. etc. etc.... There can be no "universal Internet" unless everyone speaks the same language, which is never going to happen.
Not to mention there are many in English that I don't understand; on genetic sequencing, quantum effects, plasma physics, etc.
The Web jumped the shark back in the 1990s, shortly after Microsoft started bundling a browser with Windows.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Really, you think these are the fist non-Latin TLDs ? These are just the first more open under the new gTLD process. Non-Latin TLDs have existed for much longer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains#Internationalized_country_code_top-level_domains
Here is the full list in Punycode ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode ) of all the now non-Latin TLDs (as slashdot doesn't do UTF-8):
XN--0ZWM56D
XN--11B5BS3A9AJ6G
XN--3E0B707E
XN--45BRJ9C
XN--80AKHBYKNJ4F
XN--80AO21A
XN--80ASEHDB
XN--80ASWG
XN--90A3AC
XN--9T4B11YI5A
XN--CLCHC0EA0B2G2A9GCD
XN--DEBA0AD
XN--FIQS8S
XN--FIQZ9S
XN--FPCRJ9C3D
XN--FZC2C9E2C
XN--G6W251D
XN--GECRJ9C
XN--H2BRJ9C
XN--HGBK6AJ7F53BBA
XN--HLCJ6AYA9ESC7A
XN--J1AMH
XN--J6W193G
XN--JXALPDLP
XN--KGBECHTV
XN--KPRW13D
XN--KPRY57D
XN--L1ACC
XN--LGBBAT1AD8J
XN--MGB9AWBF
XN--MGBA3A4F16A
XN--MGBAAM7A8H
XN--MGBAYH7GPA
XN--MGBBH1A71E
XN--MGBC0A9AZCG
XN--MGBERP4A5D4AR
XN--MGBX4CD0AB
XN--NGBC5AZD
XN--O3CW4H
XN--OGBPF8FL
XN--P1AI
XN--PGBS0DH
XN--S9BRJ9C
XN--UNUP4Y
XN--WGBH1C
XN--WGBL6A
XN--XKC2AL3HYE2A
XN--XKC2DL3A5EE0H
XN--YFRO4I67O
XN--YGBI2AMMX
XN--ZCKZAH
New things are always on the horizon
Far less if you only include native English speakers: US + Canada + Australia + UK = 317+26+23+63 = 429 million. Add some smaller countries like SA and NZ and reach maybe 500 mln, that's barely 7% of the world's population.
I expected more if you include speakers of English as a second language (like myself).
I see the rise of FaceBook and mobile, roughly around 2007 as a real shark-jumping. This transformed the web into a much more consumer oriented, dumbed down experience. The intelligent stuff is still out there, but new users aren't drawn into it. Even if they would be inclined to Slashdot, they're corrupted and distracted by all the finger-painting pinch-zoom twerking.
People were still building their own web pages in the 90s, still experimenting. It was the fertile ground from which many green herbs were growing... ultimately to be choked off by weeds. Perhaps the rise of MySpace is indicative of that phase. In general, the transition from "you've got to know a little HTML to put up a page" to "just type your life story into our site" is the latest step into oblivion.
Of course everybody has their own take on this, and there have been several stages. The opening of the Internet to AOL users in the mid-90s is the original September moment.
Sorry, I know Slashdot loves to bash MS; but I didn't see the bundling of IE having much impact on the quality of the Web.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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)
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!