back to article Russia launches Cyrillic top-level domain

Russia yesterday acquired the Cyrillic top-level domain .рф, as reps from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) handed over the corresponding administration certificate at an internet forum in Moscow. This went down extremely well with Dmitry Medvedev, according to Pravda. The president told the " …

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  1. J 3
    Happy

    And the Google ads at the bottom of this one...

    Ha, 4 out of 5:

    Pretty Women from Russia

    Date Sexy Russian Women

    Ukrainian Women

    Beautiful Russian Ladies

    The 5 one, lonely IT angle of the ad world, was:

    Domain name value

  2. Andus McCoatover
    Coffee/keyboard

    Sure is up-and-running.

    Copy-and-paste президент.рф works.

    But, no fear. Just press the little blue "eng" link at top right. Phew, I thought I was going to have to buy a new keyboard. No need for the Icon, but...

  3. frank ly
    Thumb Down

    Ah, Politicians...

    All you have to do is read his comments to realise that he doesn't have a clue.

  4. Adrian Jones

    Hmmm

    In Firefox that becomes: http://xn--d1abbgf6aiiy.xn--p1ai/

    1. heyrick Silver badge

      I get that too...

      ...the problem is, while I'm all for countries with non-Latin having TLDs in their own language (I'm surprised the Chinese weren't first here), the problem with this politician's statement is how will they become an IT superpower when much of the rest of the world will not have a clue how to access these domains?

      I'm using a British eeePC 901. I have four options:

      1. Follow a link somebody has already created.

      2. Cut'n'paste it

      3. Play around with Character Map to find the relevant squiggles - may be feasible with Russian and Greek, but try it with Kanji/Chinese where there's at least a thousand things that look alike.

      4. Give up.

  5. iamapizza

    Had to be done

    In Soviet Russia, websites launch YOU.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Great

    It'll be wonderful to be an IT superpower if nobody else can read your domain names.

    Then again, some of us tend to assume that all the world speaks English because it's true on the part of the internet we can understand. We'll have to wisen up to the fact that it just ain't so.

  7. noreg

    but no browser is ready...

    Sad, but true, for now only Opera displays those URL's right

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/fail_32.png

  8. DavCrav

    It is a trendsetter

    "But if Russia could become a trendsetter in the field of IT technologies, it would be good."

    It already is. Well, at cybercrime, anyway.

  9. Blake St. Claire

    prezident?

    президент.рф = president.rf?

    Google thinks that's prezident.rf

    Are you certain it isn't пресидент.рф

    1. Thorsten
      FAIL

      The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

      Instead of relying on Google for a translation you could just try pasting президент.рф into your browser's URL field and see that it's in fact the correct name of the domain.

      1. It's a voiced s, "з", not a voiceless s, "с". Google gives you the anglo-saxon phonetic equivalent, "prezident", while the Reg article gives the translation of the word, "president".

      2. Never rely on automatic translation unless you have a clue about the original language as well as the target language.

    2. CT

      transliteration

      re president vs prezident - you pronounce both the English and the Russian word with a voiced S (English Z) sound, so the Cyrillic character is right. Give 'em some credit.

    3. Rumcajz
      Boffin

      Foreign languages...

      Uh, I think the Russians would have wanted to use the Russian word for President, and they probably got it right.

      If you are still not convinced, say 'president' (in English) and pay attention to the sound corresponding to the 's' - it is a 'z' sound, not an 's'.

  10. nfs
    Stop

    FIrefox

    Except that firefox displays the punycode because they don't trust the Russians

  11. Anton Ivanov
    Flame

    Oh well, lots of phishing ahoy

    www.НSВС.co.uk or maybe not. Actually it is Cyrillic N, S, Cyrillic V, Cyrillic S.

    1. Jonathan Richards 1
      Boffin

      Don't click on the link

      If you want to go to hsbc.co.uk, adopt the following technique:

      Place cursor in cleared address bar, press keys on your keyboard labelled

      H, S, B, C, ., C, O,.,U, and K, in that order, successively. Now press the bigger one on the right, often labelled with a left-pointing arrow, and known as the return key for obscure historical reasons which are unlikely to become clear again any time soon.

      Log in with confidence.

      1. Tim Elphick
        Go

        My arrow points right.

        Is that okay?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    Google Translates it

    Google translates "флаш" into the verb "flush". That's what we have to do: flush away the Flash. The Russians got it.

  13. Etrien Dautre

    It's, блять, precedent.rf!

    Дима, ты сюда вообще почаще заглядывай, тут весело.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well, actually

    The correct transliteration for flash is Флэш

  15. Mips
    Jobs Horns

    How can one tell?

    What does applause sound like in Cyrillic?

    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      Coat

      Easy answer.

      Like several hundred thousand people clapping spontaneously in a carefully orchestrated, well drilled and uniform manner.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Do it properly?

    президент.рф is all very well, but are new versions of browsers going to take aliases for protocol names, so you don't have to write a mixed-script http://президент.рф/ but can write хттп://президент.рф/ (or even translate "HyperText Transport Protocol" into Russian (Google Translate says "Гипертекстовый транспортный протокол" / Gipertekstoviy Transportniy Protokol) and take the inititals of that)?

    And if you start typing in Mongol Bichig, does the URL bar re-orient itself for vertical scripts? Enquiring minds want to know.

  17. John Sturdy
    Joke

    CRLs

    If you type an address in Akkadian, Assyrian, etc, does that make it a Cuneiform Resource Locator?

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Wonderful

    Now tell Adobe to get their hyperlinks to work with them.

    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      Thumb Down

      Re: Adobe

      Nah. Adobe's people will blog about Russia deliberately b0rking the web to fuck it up for everyone else. This'll be immediately followed by Adobe's department of cockup limitation taking full-page ads everywhere saying how they loooooove Cyrillic so much that they want to have its babies and offering a free blowjob with every copy of CS5 sold^H^H^H^Hpirated in Russia.

  19. Jim Wilson

    Kirillitsa

    The Russians could have insisted on predsedatel,rf; they are being very reasonable here.

  20. Someone

    First?

    You’ve got to love that Russian propaganda. That’s ‘first’ as in a week behind Egypt.

    http://blog.icann.org/2010/05/idn-cctlds/

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