[governance] Re: The nice thing about China...

[David Allen]

At 2:21 PM +0100 2/5/07, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
>... is that you can say a lot about what is or isn't done there, with little chance of contradiction :-)

Unless of course you are among the 1.3 billion (at least) who are born and live there ... a few of whom anyway will be reading these lists.

>
>On Sat, Feb 03, 2007 at 05:38:56PM -0500,
> David Allen <David_Allen_AB63 at post.harvard.edu> wrote
> a message of 87 lines which said:
>
>>At about that time in fact, some three years ago, China was rolling out a fully ML root, to resolve fully Chinese URLs. And it operated seamlessly with the root for the other, Roman-based 1 billion. About a year ago now, the Western world was more than surprised to learn of that development, by then at least a couple of years underway, with by now many tens of millions of users. I was familiar, since I was at least one of those who broke the news to the Western press at the time.
>
>Since you read Chinese, and I don't,

Interesting, isn't it, trying to get information when the language you must use seems, for you, like no more than so many squiggles on a page?  Imagine if the 'Net had been invented in China and we had to get our computer to put a Chinese character in the browser address bar.  You and I may find our way to it.  Imagine what it's like for your taxi driver or doorman or building custodian ... or your parents or ... when they would sit down at a machine to get access.  Of course, France does have a wonderful education system ...  Imagine, more, if the Roman characters we use with ease might actually have been enabled seven years ago, in this counterfactual scenario ...

>would you be kind enough to translate in French or in English actual *detailed* documents about this so-called "ML root" (which is a nonsense, I assume you mean a "multiscript root")? I would be very interested to read detailed documents about how it works. Until now, I've just seen three-sentences claims, without little practical details.

I could give you an, authoritative, three-sentence overview (have just done so offlist to a query) - but as I read here, that would not be satisfying in the instance.  There were some links, back about a year ago when I played my small part bringing the news to the West.  I went to dig that out; here you will find one of the better pieces of detective work, still looking in from the outside, so not everything.

http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2006/03/01/new-chinese-tlds

Certainly, saying "nonsense" is a surefire way to get help, bound to make others think highly of the request. ;-)  Yes, ML root is a bit of a shorthand description.  Which goes to the overview description we are not doing here.  Neat though, isn't it, this confederation of roots with seamless flow between and seamless cross-resolution?  In our local library, Concord, MA, USA, for example, my Barbara's head of technical services is native mainland Chinese.  She sometimes wants to, and does, connect to fully Chinese domains, from here.  _And_, now, 1+ billion more folks don't have to sweat what are in fact for them funny squiggles at the end of the address ...

No, I do not speak Chinese either, unfortunately - it is on the list.  However as already offered to those interested offlist, the connection will be made to folks with answers in utter detail, the inventors and implementors.  That includes for you too, Stephane, coming in a little.

>
>>Along this way, once the reality of the Chinese implementation could not be denied
>
>:-)

Indeed. :-)

David
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