> > Already today, people can register domainnames with characters which look > "similar" like 'o' and 0, or '1' and 'l'. I.e. this is not a new >problem.
I have been discussing my Supreme CDN system offline and have come to the conclusion that it will *never* become a standard because it is simply not interoperable with existing systems. But as I have said, that is okay as I believe all along that all the other CDN systems (although not as perfect as mine) are absolutely 100% fine exactly the way they are. Offline, I have gotten less then pleasant remarks about why "some people are trying to cause trouble/delay the progress/make things more difficult then they really are/etc, etc." Those remarks are made *not* because of a lack of respect for people's contribution to this WG but simply because of a lack of understanding of the Chinese culture and why TC<->SC is so important- which can lead to fustrations that are fully understandable. Although we may never come up with a solution that will be agreed upon by the majority of this WG, the fact remains that TC<->SC is of paramount importance to the users of CDNs... and the above 'O', '0','1','l' issue just gave me a good idea on how to explain why it is so (not sure if this analogy had ever been made before, but it shouldn't hurt to repeat it.) At first, the '1','l' may not seem like a good analogy for TC<->SC conversion because we definitely do *not* want to map 'l' with '1'. However, the confusion of '1' and 'l' does illustrate why TC<->SC is so important. For example, when a person is given 'l.TLD', he can easy type in '1.TLD' instead and have absolutely no idea why he cannot reach the intended website. In English the chance of such a confusion is only limited to a few cases (such as '0' and '1') where as for Chinese, *every single* Chinese character poises the opportunity for such confusion. Remember, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese are indistinguishable to many users of CDNs of certain backgroud/education/location/culture. (Given certain Chinese characters, even someone as educated in Chinese as I, cannot tell you whether it is traditional Chinese or simplified Chinese.) Thanks Ben Chan
