Internet addresses set for change

BBC ^ | 30 October 2009 | BBC Correspontents

[Cardhu]

The internet regulator has approved plans to allow non-Latin-script web addresses, in a move that is set to transform the online world.

The board of Icann voted at its annual meeting in Seoul to allow domain names in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts.

[Cardhu]

Interesting

[from occupied ga]

Это будет плох

[cmj328]

Thank you Obama. In the pocket of the phishers.

[Cardhu]

Это будет плох

"This there will be [plokh]"

Babelfish did not help very much- I suppose it could be translated into "About time,"

[mefistofelerevised]

This is a really bad idea.So in national security going to have thousands to translators to find terrorist web sites?

[altair]

So in national security going to have thousands to translators to find terrorist web sites?

No. The biggest danger is going to come from phishing attacks. If you do any online commerce be afraid. Be very afraid.

[rdl6989]

Change we can believe in. Mmm mmm mmm.

[mefistofelerevised]

I pay a couple of bills online line and that’s it. I won’t even order anyting online if there isn’t a phone number to call. I get frustrated ordering online, so usually just call to buy something, and I don’t buy much.

[rightwingextremist1776]

Time to by Cisco stock.....

[edh]

That "плох" means "bad". My Russian is terrible though.

[rightwingextremist1776]

Time to buy Cisco stock.....

[edh]

By “My Russian is terrible” I mean that the ending of “bad” should probably be changed since it is a predicate adjective ... I forget if the future tense mangles the ending of “bad” too.

It’s been a while :-)! Russian is a highly inflected language and not for the feint of heart ... even Russians will tell you they make up their own rules for spelling on an as needed basis :-)!

[edh]

Eh, what am I thinking ... bad is still nominative since it is modifying the subject of the sentence which is “This”. Someone cue the scene from “Life of Brian” with the Latin teacher.

You might have found a problem with the Babelfish translator ... When I type “This will be bad.” it translates just as the original poster posted :-)!

[altair]

I agree, but I am highly biased.

Disclaimer: I work for Cisco.

[from occupied ga]

This will be bad

[altair]

I pay a couple of bills online line and that’s it. I won’t even order anyting online if there isn’t a phone number to call.

Phone/FAX numbers can be dangerous too. Once, when ordering plane tickets I mistyped the FAX number when I was sending intimate details of my life & bank account and the fallout from that took a long time to correct.

[altair]

Something like that. You will no longer be able to look at a printed representation of a URL and know where you are going if you click the link. It’s going to be phishing paradise.

[Cardhu]

Other scripts, Arabic or Japanese for example, can be used in the first part, but whatever language is used, the address must end with a small but very important collection of Latin alphabet characters, .com, .gov, .co.uk, .cn and so on.

Without those Latin letters on the end, the website simply will not work. … (snip)

At first, the change will only apply to the lesser-used group of domains known as the country codes.

These are the Web addresses with endings like .uk, .cn, or .kr, for the United Kingdom, China, and South Korea for example, and their assignment is guided by government rules in each country…(snip)

See more here: Web to be Truly worldwide at last

[BunnySlippers]

김정일 북한 국방위원장과 세번째 부

[snowsislander]

Since no one has ever solved the internationalized domain names "homograph attack" problem (see, for instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack), this is a singularly bad idea.

[Cardhu]

You do have a point there, but perhaps, paradoxically, it may solve that problem by displaying the actual character rather than the ASCHII, UNICODE or Puny code equivalents thus alerting you to the fact of a false address.

[from occupied ga]

그것은 무관하다

[sionnsar]

not for the feint of heart

My heart's not dodgy, but faint... *\;-)

[mad_as_he$$]

I have been to that place in Seoul. ;-)

[ShadowAce]

[Cardhu]

Thanks ShadowAce, I would like to know what the techies on FR think of the change.

[tophat9000]

I work for Cisco

Hey can you get me a job? ;>

(going for my CCIE SP by year's end)

[IYAS9YAS]

김정일 북한 국방위원장과 세번째 부

Kim Jong Il North Korea what????

It's been too long since I learnt the ol' hangookmal.

[bamahead]

It will be interesting. Obviously the most visible issue will be that names in alternate scripts will be unviewable on machines that don’t have the character set installed. This disadvantage could be used for fraud and/or trickery. Considering Russia, China, Korea typically host a lot of gnarly stuff. Guess I’ll have to install them all now.

Also I wondered if named, bind, and a host of other daemons and programs responsible for domain name resolution will have to be updated to handle the alternate scripts? I guess it’s all still just ASCII on the backend.

[DYngbld]

جمهوريةحرة.com

That just looks wrong.

[DYngbld]

Some languages read right to left. Would the .com go before or after.

I learned the Internet in the early 90's. I remember typing in IP address to telnet into different places, and when the WWW came into main stream, I still typed in the ip address to get the sites. Do all Domain Names still have an IP address attached to them? or did the technology skip me again? I should be relatively easy to see what ip address are assigned to what ISP.

[bamahead]

All DNS names resolve to an IP, or alias to another domain name that resolves to one. The IP is the guts of how traffic gets routed.

And your question about the languages that read right to left is an excellent one. I have no idea how that will work.

[Cardhu]

I think it would be a good idea to install those fonts.

[DYngbld]

I thought so but with the way things change, and I am less Nerdy now then I was in high school. Things tend to change around and I miss them. Who would have thunk that 640KB was not going to enough memory to run a computer. I remember an engineer telling me back in the early 90s when CPU's hit 50Mhz, that there was no way they were going to go much faster, "electrons just can't go that fast."

[altair]

Obviously the most visible issue will be that names in alternate scripts will be unviewable on machines that don’t have the character set installed.

Correct.

Considering Russia, China, Korea typically host a lot of gnarly stuff.

You mean Chinese, Japanese & Korean. Russian is straightforward.

Also I wondered if named, bind, and a host of other daemons and programs responsible for domain name resolution will have to be updated to handle the alternate scripts? I guess it’s all still just ASCII on the backend.

Named is bind. Yes and no. Mailer backends (sendmail, M-SEXCHANGE, etc.) and web browsers will have to be able to tolerate it, as will anything else that deals with internet URLs. No, it cannot remain ASCII on the backend. UTF8 makes the most sense, but MS doesn't deal with that well.

(From the article) There are those who worry that it might lead to a kind of ghettoisation of the internet, with language communities operating entirely within their own languages cut off from the rest of the web.

That would include me and I've been working on the programming side of these issues for over a decade.

[LonePalm]

Некультурные интернет-Крестьяне

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[DigitalVideoDude]

English: I can eat glass and it doesn't hurt me.
Anglo-Saxon: Ic mæg glæs eotan ond hit ne hearmiað me.
Québécois: J'peux bouffer d'la vitre, ça m'fa pas mal.
Spanish: Puedo comer vidrio, no me hace daño.
Icelandic: Ég get borðað gler, það meiðir mig ekki.
Polish: Mogę jeść szkło i mi nie szkodzi.
Czech: Mohu jíst sklo, neublíží mi.
Turkish: Cam yiyebilirim, bana zararı dokunmaz.
Greek: Μπορώ να φάω σπασμένα γυαλιά χωρίς να πάθω τίποτα.
Russian: Я могу есть стекло, это мне не вредит.
Armenian: Կրնամ ապակի ուտել և ինծի անհանգիստ չըներ։
Georgian: მინას ვჭამ და არა მტკივა.
Hindi: मैं काँच खा सकता हूँ, मुझे उस से कोई पीडा नहीं होती.
Arabic: أنا قادر على أكل الزجاج و هذا لا يؤلمني.
Hebrew: אני יכול לאכול זכוכית וזה לא מזיק לי.
Yiddish: איך קען עסן גלאָז און עס טוט מיר נישט װײ.
Vietnamese: Tôi có thể ăn thủy tinh mà không hại gì.
Farsi / Persian: .من می توانم بدونِ احساس درد شيشه بخورم
Thai: ฉันกินกระจกได้ แต่มันไม่ทำให้ฉันเจ็บ
Chinese: 我能吞下玻璃而不伤身体。
Japanese: 私はガラスを食べられます。それは私を 傷つけません。
Korean: 나는 유리를 먹을 수 있어요. 그래도 아프 지 않아요

[snowsislander]

You do have a point there, but perhaps, paradoxically, it may solve that problem by displaying the actual character rather than the ASCHII, UNICODE or Puny code equivalents thus alerting you to the fact of a false address.

I looked around, and I didn't see any solution to this problem --- apparently, it's simply going to be ignored by ICANN.

You are in trouble either way: if the application displays Punycode rather than the actual characters, then (most) humans are not going to be able to check correctness by eyeballing the Punycode. If the application shows only the interpreted Punycode, then the classic example of "раураl.com" using Cyrillic letters for the first five letters is virtually identical to the eye to "paypal.com" all in Latin letters. (I am using Firefox 3.5 on a Fedora 11 machine using Century Schoolbook as my font, and those two are indistinguishable when viewed on my monitor; however, if you do a "View Source" on your browser, you can see that they are different encodings. The Punycode for the bogus paypal works out to something like xn--l-7sba6dbr.com)

Showing both simultaneously would at least ameliorate some of the problems, but I doubt that any browser is up to that yet.

[mefistofelerevised]

I misunderstund what was going to happen. thanks