Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Avoiding goofy character sets

The NY Times reports:
The most widely trafficked search engine in Russia, Yandex, estimated that fewer than 10 percent of the country’s Internet users would favor Cyrillic addresses in the near future. Livejournal, the busiest blogging platform in Russia, said it would not employ Cyrillic domains.

“I really do not see Cyrillic domains being popular,” said Dmitri N. Peskov, a prominent computer consultant who organizes Internet conferences in Russia. “People just do not see the point in having them.” ...

The most widely trafficked search engine in Russia, Yandex, estimated that fewer than 10 percent of the country’s Internet users would favor Cyrillic addresses in the near future. Livejournal, the busiest blogging platform in Russia, said it would not employ Cyrillic domains.

“I really do not see Cyrillic domains being popular,” said Dmitri N. Peskov, a prominent computer consultant who organizes Internet conferences in Russia. “People just do not see the point in having them.”
This is one of those internationalism bad ideas that no one opposes, but no one wants either.

Why would anyone want domain names in Cyrillic or any other goofy foreign alphabet? I hope that I will be able to confure my browser to ignore such domains.

People use the internet as a universal communication tool. English is the universal language. Maybe Russian farmers talk to each other in something other than English, but there is no reason for educated people to use anything but English.

Using a Cyrillic character set for domain names is like using Roman numerals for telephone numbers.

11 comments:

Roger said...

Thanks for leaving your comment in English.

Anonymous said...

Je ne crois pas que vous me comprendriez si j'écrivais dans n'importe quelle autre langue.

Anonymous said...

在别处采取您固执的看法

Roger said...

That last comment just shows up as empty squares in my browser.

Anonymous said...

That's your problem. Works perfectly in mine. Perhaps you should stop staring at your navel, lift your head, and appreciate the huge variety of culture present in our world.

Or you can be like your brother Andy and refuse to admit the use of anything outside America.

Roger said...

You want me to admit the usefulness of posting empty boxes on my blog?

Anonymous said...

They aren't empty boxes, moron. Just because you haven't installed the necessary software doesn't mean the rest of the world is irrelevant.

Anonymous said...

あなたは頑固者とばかだ

Cracker said...

Rog, gimme a call:
(VVV) VVV-VVVV

Anonymous said...

All I see are some weird boxes too. But, I'll freely admit to being almost wholly irrelevant. In fact, one might say that at a certain stage of my development I was impelled to adopt said relative irrelevance as a Basic Working Assumption.

Anonymous said...

Actually, there is not reason for educated people to use anything but Chinese. Don't you agree ?