Okay, I have a confession: I continue to write Python programs thatdeal with text (to some degree) but which are not Unicode-aware in theapproved manner. One of the reasons that I do this is that I can getaway with it, but another reason is that not doing Unicode is easierthan doing Unicode.

I don't mean this in the sense that there's less code if you don'tdo Unicode. I mean that doing Unicode confronts you with moredecisions. When

From one perspective, ideally SSL would be split apart into encryptionand trust, with the goal of letting you have encryption withouttrust. In theory you could achieve this with a different handling ofhttps , but lately I have come to think that the user expectation problems of such a solutionare insurmountable at this point; too many people just know what httpsin URLs means for its meaning to change (in a subtle way).

(My personal feeling is that it is pointless and even undesirable to gothe other way