Masataka Ohta and Vernon Schryver make excellent points in favor
of the domain name status quo. I agree that IDN should be frozen
for at least a few years to see what local domain admins and
application vendors tend to do, especially since the pieces of
the likely solutions (such as the competing UTF-8 encodings) are
so still so new and somewhat under development.
I don't know why ICANN would want to bring such a heavy burden
upon themselves in an area of such flux so soone, when they have
so much else that they have already committed to do.
This thread reminded me of these news items, only two days apart:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/travel/DailyNews/FrenchintheSkies000404.html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/travel/DailyNews/BacktoFrenchinSkies000406.html
Cheers,
James
P.S. By the way, on my usual topic of wireless asynchronous voice
messaging, here is a news article in which Qualcomm founder and chief
Irwin Jacobs asserts that "voice-enabled capabilities" "could prove
popular" on third-generation mobile phones:
http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/001206/hkg15073_2.html
I suppose Irwin Jacobs is the person to ask for MIME audio attachment
record and play in Eudora email on the PalmOS. Please ask in person
if you see him in San Diego!