Skip to main content

CIRA IDN Consultation

I may update this with further thoughts later, but I wanted to get this up so people became aware of it....

Check it out, get a chance to have your thoughts heard:

"When a domain name works with any character beyond the a-z alphabet, it's called an Internationalized Domain Name (IDN). CIRA is considering the implementation of French character IDNs so that .CA domain names can be written correctly in French. Find out more about IDNs and about our proposed launch policy."

While I think this is an interesting idea I see lots of problems with implementing this change.

  1. Lots of software will have to be updated to accommodate the change (DNS server software, DNS client software, all kinds of security packages [AV, FWs, IDS, IPS, etc])...

  2. Adding other characters to DNS just BEGS FOR ABUSE. Think of the phishing possibilities using Domain Names with accented characters?

  3. The change requires user education that will NEVER happen. it's hard enough to get users to pay attention to standard English domain names...

  4. Companies will now have to pay for and maintain registrations for even more DNS entries for actual translations of their name and the numerous misspellings (assuming they care that a malicious individual may squat on such and ruin their name etc).


I haven't been able to find out but I doubt that anyone has actually done any analysis vs. Canadian HoneyPots/HoneyDNS to see if users are actually trying to use accented characters for DNS. It seems like this is going to "fix" something that isn't broken or add support for something that the community doesn't really need or want.

If the greater community actually wants to do this why don't we go full foreign character support at the same time? Fix/enhance software to handle all characters at the same time (instead of piece-meal), etc.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Something that perplexes me....

I just came across this bit about asteroid Apophis and the chances of it impacting earth . "NASA scientists have recalculated the path of a large asteroid known as Apophis and now say it has only a very slim chance of banging into Earth.. The Apophis asteroid is approximately the size of two-and-a-half football fields, and updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036 for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a million, NASA stated." So here's the bit that rubs me wrong: "four-in-a million". Why not say "one-in-250,000". If the authors are really stuck on the whole "four-in" thing then they should have said four-in-180,000 to start with. I really find inconsistencies like this baffling, I wish I knew the author and could understand what they hoped to gain by reporting the number in this way.
4 comments
Read more

Techno-Idiots (Part 1)

Yes this is part one, I don't have a plan for Part 2 but based on the things I've encountered in this world I CAN NOT fathom that I won't come up with something else. So I ran across this "Zune Team Getting Amnesty for iPod Use" article on slashdot. Following the obvious set of links . The comments on the Flickr photo page just amazed me. By Flickr user ariel_waldman: "I wonder how many iPods Zune bought to make a marketing point. Notice how all the iPods in there are the same generation." WoW! Did she even read the story? Zune is a product, an in-animate object it can not possibly purchase anything. How could someone claim to be such a fan of Apple's iPod (see her other comments) and have NFC that Zune is a Microsoft product meant to compete with Apple's iPod. Hey Ariel has your iPod made any purchases lately? /sigh I know that in the grand scope of things this is a minor grammatical issue but seriously people, at least engage part of your bra...
4 comments
Read more

Coming to a flight near you....."What to do when your aircraft is hit by flaming space junk"

And you always thought flying was the most safe form of travel. "'The pilot of a Lan Chile Airbus A340 ... notified air traffic controllers at Auckland Oceanic Centre after seeing flaming space junk hurtling across the sky just five nautical miles in front of and behind his plane...'" Space Debris Narrowly Misses Airliner That's just messed up, I mean I knew that space junk posed a threat for our satellites, rockets, the shuttle, ISS, etc but having to worry about it entering the atmosphere just sucks. I mean yay one less thing for our extra-atmospheric endeavors to collide with but still messed up. I wonder if my house insurance covers "impact from flaming space debris". I know I get most bizarre "act of god" type things but that's pushing it.
2 comments
Read more