Re: [alac] FW: Review and Recommendations for Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)

[John L <johnl@xxxxxxxx>]

> made by two parts:
> - it can't be technically done

Right.

> - and by the way, you're ignorant and stupid

Maybe this is a native vs. non-native speaker issue, but I know some of 
the people who wrote the RFC and that is not their attitude.

They probably are extremely exasperated at talking with people whose 
attitude is "don't waste my time with this gobbledygook, just make it 
work."

Basically, you can have Unicode, or you can have DNS, but you can't have 
them both at the same time.

> (Actually, pretty anything can be done if there is enough 
> commitment: engineers succeeded in flying, don't tell me that they are 
> uncapable of inventing a Unicode-based lookup system.)

It's easy to invent one, and it's already been done.  Type strings in any 
language you want into Google and see all the stuff it looks up for you.

But since there is no possibility whatsoever that the billion computers 
with DNS software will all upgrade to support a modified DNS, there's no 
point in going down that road.  Since the DNS works end-to-end, even if 
you use DNS++ and I use DNS++, if there are servers or caches in between 
that don't handle DNS++, it won't work.

That's the lesson of EDNS0, which anyone who purports to be interested in 
DNS futures should already know about.  Honestly, anyone who waves his 
hands and says "just change the DNS" is definitely acting ignorant.

> If it really can't be done, a different attitude might do a lot in letting 
> people really understand that.

They're trying, but people would rather shoot the messenger.

R's,
John