ICANN Approves .IRAN (in Non-Latin)
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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."
Dont do it (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.
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Does playing Minecraft count? In that case I'm already on it.
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ICANN haz non-latin domainz
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What do you mean, "something"? Just nuke the DNS servers resolving this TLD from orbit, to be sure! ~
Show me the TLD (Score:3, 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.
Re:Show me the TLD (Score:5, Funny)
Here you go: .????
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******. that's what i see.
I guess to register domains, you can visit http://domains.hunter2/ [domains.hunter2] ?
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Our computers support it, but slashdot doesn't.
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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.
Re:Show me the TLD (Score:4, Informative)
It's here:
http://icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/string-evaluation-completion-i-en.htm#ir [icann.org]
No image, though. You will need a browser that supports the characters.
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'\u002e\u0627\u06cc\u0631\u0627\u0646'
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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.
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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.)
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print u'\u002e\u0627\u06cc\u0631\u0627\u0646'
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Dang, not a single unsupported character on the page! Heh, and I can't ready a single one of them anyways.
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For those who are curious but lack the font support: //img257.imageshack.us/img257/2474/tlds.png
http:
Remove the space in the URL. Inserted in the hopes of not exploding tinyurl, you know how slashdot is.
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An example is several levels deep in the links:
http://icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/string-evaluation-completion-i-en.htm#ir [icann.org]
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.
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I own porn.iran
This domain is for sale for $10,000,000.00
Serious bidders only.
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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 [lmgtfy.com]
What the internet really needs (Score:3, Funny)
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Slow news night, folks. It's ok to move on to something more interesting.
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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. Ref
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We may eventually have to admit that the hierarchical system won't scale sufficiently. Let's go back to bang paths and pathalias.
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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
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"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.
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The ccTLDs in question (Score:5, 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 [icann.org].
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http: //img257.imageshack.us/img257/2474/tlds.png
Just in case you lack font support and still want to see it.
What injustice! (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.
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Of course you weren't. George Bernard Shaw wasn't even American. We should be using a synthetic script from the 1830s [wikipedia.org] to encode a TLD for the USA.
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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! [youtube.com]
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Number ONE! Number ONE!
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http://www.solarviews.com/raw/earth/america.jpg [solarviews.com]
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Dibs on flockofseagulls.iran.
Yeah, but I got "and.iran"
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God dammit! I came here specifically to post that joke! I HAD DIBS!
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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."
So? (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?
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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.
Re:So? (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?
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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.
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I didn't know that Iran is female. Does it need a burqa to cover the whole country , then?
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It has one [wikipedia.org].
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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.
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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.
was .censor taken ? (Score:2, Funny)
non-latin names and whois (Score:3, Interesting)
Who has any clarity / clue on how whois gets implemented for these domains?
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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
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Iranian font? (Score:1)
New namespace? (Score:2)
Is this a new namespace, or an alias for the old one?
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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 [www.mfa] 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.
ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? (Score:5, Insightful)
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> "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...
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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.
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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.
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Wubizixing [yale.edu] 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.
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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.
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Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? (Score:5, Insightful)
You have a problem with making Persian the one language used by the whole world?
Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day? (Score:4, 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.
Gimme a straight alphabet, and I'll learn Farsi (Score:2)
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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.
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> ...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.
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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
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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
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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.
You have a point, but only just (Score:2)
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
Why not .arabic? (Score:2)
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?
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Yeah, why not just put all western domains under .latin. (uhhh....)
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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 [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet [wikipedia.org]
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http://www.omniglot.com/writing/mpersian.htm [omniglot.com]
and the more older one (i.e. thousands of years of history) is Mikhi alphabet:
http://www.persiancalligraphy.org/History-of-Calligraphy.html [persiancalligraphy.org]
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OOPS, I mean peaceful generation of electricity for civillian uses, by nuclear means.
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Not quite the same script. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perso-Arabic_script [wikipedia.org] 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.
Huh?! (Score:2)
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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).
Domain Mix-N-Match (Score:2)
icame.isaw.iran
icrawl.iwalk.iran
any others?
Domain Mix-N-Match (Score:1)
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That's what you thought at Afghanistan too.
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I believe you meant http://www.jerseys-2010.xn--mgba3a4fra/ [www.jersey...mgba3a4fra]