Speaking of alternative registries, I was looking for travel information about Luxembourg and hit the lux.aero site. The domain name is reserved by the registry -- and live in the TLD zone file -- and presents this message to the reader: "If you are the holder of this industry designator and would like to take active control of this domain name, then please visit our registration page here or contact SITA at aero.enquiries@sita.aero for further information." Now that's an interesting response to the trademark/"industry designator" issue.
And here's the most interesting registry message of all: "Use of this page and all DoD NICservices constitutes consent to monitoring." Wow. Just browse the web page and you consent to allow the Department of Defense to "monitor" you. I guess it's a good thing I logged in from Starbucks. I wonder if they'll follow me home.
Press Release from the European Commission: "The final countdown to the advent of Europe’s own '.eu' internet identity, by the end of 2005, has begun. In the coming days, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) will put the .eu top level domain in the Internet root, further to a 21 March agreement between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the .eu Registry."
No .EU in the IANA Directory yet.
ICANN on the .NET Registry Contract: "ICANN and VeriSign have reached agreement in principle on all substantive terms."
Google says that this site is authoritative for "popesquatting." Cool. Speaking of the Pope, if you missed the "sin binge" piece on The Onion, it's worth a chuckle or two.
Dave Winer: "For what it's worth, and seriously, no joke -- I don't think Rogers should give benedictxvi.com to the Vatican. I think the domain should be used for an independently - authored weblog about the policies and actions of the new Pope by someone who is expert in the papacy and independent of the Catholic Church."
Here's one of the small miracles of ICANN Staff Support: an action point summary of this week's Whois Task Force conference call. It may not seem significant, but it really enhances the ability of volunteer participants (or, at least this volunteer participant) to make a contribution within the limited time available.
In some post-Mar del Plata discussions with members of the ICANN community who were not physically present at the meeting, several people expressed surprise that the Strategic Plan was not adopted. It wasn't. That fact wasn't widely reported in the post-meeting press. You can find the Board discussion in the real-time captioning, beginning with this quote from Vint Cerf:
I'D LIKE TO MOVE ON NOW TO ANOTHER SUBJECT WHICH HAS ALSO BEEN OF
CONSIDERABLE INTEREST AND CONSUMED A FAIR AMOUNT OF TIME THIS WEEK, AND
THAT'S THE STRATEGIC PLAN. AND I'D LIKE TO CALL ON PETER TO INTRODUCE A
DISCUSSION ON THIS SUBJECT SO THAT WE CAN GET FURTHER CLARITY AS TO
WHAT WE WILL DO NEXT.
No resolution was introduced on the Strategic Plan. It's gone back to Staff for another, significantly shorter, draft.
John C. Dvorak and Chris Ambler agree: It was a bluff. And Dvorak adds: "My question is how can the professor be so careless as to leave a laptop with all these state secrets unsecured and laying around." Right.
My laptop, by contrast, is fairly disposable, from a data perspective, even though it would be expensive to replace. First, the important data lives on the firm's server, not my laptop. Second, it's an IBM Thinkpad (X31), with top of the line security (which I've implemented), so it's essentially a fancy paper weight for anyone else.
And here's a cartoon on the UCB Stolen Laptop.
