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ICANN At-Large Candidates Nominated
drbonzo writes: "On Aug. 1, the ICANN Nominating Committee announced a set of 18
nominees for the 5 At-Large Directors of the ICANN Board. For details, see
the announcement and the list of nominees. Note that there will be a member-nomination process that will run through August. Let's get ready to vote, people! But first, let's discuss the announced nominees (who include among them Lawrence Lessig), and consider getting behind one or more member-nominated candidates."
I've got you beat -- I signed up July 14, and still don't have my PIN.
Use http://www.opennic.unrated.net/.
ICANN closed the Membership process.
158,000 people to represent the future of the net as voters... yeah right.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
What I like with the ICANN is their democratic system. To propose a new TLD, you must pay 20 000 $US. How can they stay serious when they speak of democraty ?
ICANN "democracy" is basically a farce, although I wouldn't let that stop you from voting (if you've registered) and getting at least one or two intellegent voices of dissent into the loop.
If you want a truly democratic approach to domain name registration and TLD management, check out
Opennnic.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
As I was reading through the list of nominees I had a horrible thought, could there have been a motive to the overloaded server? Could they have been trying to modify the "demographics" of their voters? Now I know some one will say that they couldn't, but simply put if they had 10,000 members before people could register, and then they let in another 1,000 during the "overloaded server" period they would have essentially kept their original membership with a pretence of an open system. Alternatively, a firewall applying a few rules to decide if you get the "overloaded server" or the chance to register could be quite effective at tweaking the users to (for example) ensure that the voting balance is heavily distrorted to a geographical region (IP addresses means perfection would be impossible but.....).
When a nation has an election, and especially a nation under constant threat (they have only recently been put in power after the old guard was overthrown AND many of the countries are rebeling against them already) the U.N. or someone similar will be having a good close look to ensure the election is legit, and if they say it wasn't the new government will not be recognised. Who was watching ICANN? and where is their report?
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
The ICANN page http://members.icann.org/nom.html at the beginning of this article has links to the self nominated candidates, too.
Here's an interesting platform by an interesting candidate.
His endorsement page is here.
I have a blog.
Another point to add in why there are few female representatives ont the board, dispite the validity of the otehr comments.
Most of the ICANN to Be's are older then most of us, and they have probably been around since the 70's.
Now, even though there were femenists lining the halls of Universitities, I serously doubt that many were there to take Computer Sciences or Electronic Enngineering.
It is not a prejudice. I would say outside factors kept them away, but it did happen. These days, women are more encouraged to go inot the field's that they really like, and more women are finding a place with computers.
Although There might be a lot more women in the industry than the nominations reflect, they only nominated older (more distinguished) individuals.
Bye!
Is there anything at ICANN related to whales? Mascot?
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk
Lessig is formerly Harvard, now Stanford.
I have a blog.
ICANN has been rigged since it's inception. It exists solely to protect Trademark, Government,
and big business interests that conrol the board.
The facts have been painfully documented by Gordon Cook of the Cook Report Here, Here and regularly in his Monthly reports.
Well, I'm registered, I got my PIN, and I've confirmed online.
I wrote a short article pointing out some interesting statistics on Technocrat.net, but didn't get much of a response.
In short, although the US has the largest 'Internet Population', other countries are far overpresented in the ICANN registration.
BTW, Lawrence Lessig seems like the most interesting candidate for N. America, what do you think?
--
The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
I registered online, near the end of the registration period, but I'm still waiting for the package they said they're sending me by snail-mail. Will I get it in time to cast my vote??
Point, and exactly what motivated us to set up OpenNIC. And, contrary to the other reply to this post, you don't need mondo boxes and wide pipes to start out. If you get enough volunteer servers spread widely enough around the globe, you'll never need more than that.
As a resident of Maryland for a number of years, I have watched Donald N. Langenberg do an outstanding job with the University of Maryland System. Another plus is his background in the sciences, and hence the scientific method, which should help cut through some of the political bullshit going on at ICANN. By Ghu, now I've got a reason to join! With no disrespect intended to Mr. Lessig, this man is a more qualified candidate.
We're through being cool! Eliminate the ninnies and the twits! -Devo
Well, obviously, I think that I'm the most interesting candidate ... ;-)
freebe is a troll.
technos is a karma whore.
Can you even tell the fucking difference? I can't!!
.sig: Now legally binding!
So nominate yourself, James! OpenNIC is aiming to have candidates with a single platform running in all 5 regions and we don't have a Euro candidate yet. Check out our site and then the stuff on my candidacy site. If you agree, jump in and we'll all be publicizing each other. "In unity there is strength" and similar ...
Yup! I got mine. It took about 4 or 5 weeks. I also registered in the very first wave when it was announced. You'll get it eventually, but it might be too late to participate in the nomination process.
"Suppose you were an idiot..... And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeate myself."
I could not register so I think ICANN is a sham. Thats ok with me. I'm just not going to play their game. I will add a top level zone for every TLD they come up with and point it to where ever I feel like so if some large company decides to pay out and buy a top level name they can be assued that their potential customers that use my dns will happly get their competittions web site.
.us domain is made usable by us companies.
I do not support any new TLDs until the
Let's be honest about ICANN: 1. The acronym itself is an ironic pun. 2. ICANN can barely fund itself with its ridiculous requests for fees, 3. ICANN usually proves that bureaucracy is alive and well whenever situations that call for tough decisions arise, 4. ICANN has proven itself absolutely toothless regarding NSI's monopoly. NSI still does whatever it wants, whenever it wants to do it, and ICANN has no power to change that. Even though I'm not in favor of monopolies in general, it was almost better when it was just NSI. --mr
Good Mornings!
Let us not forget the wonderful design of the website and member edit-able fields. Let's see...membership number, 6 char password created by the system, 6 char pin....all unable to be customized by the member. Good Idea Poor Implementation strikes again.. ./bot
If you are in the Australia/Asia/Pacific region and are a geek then you have someone that will listen.
This is my sig, exciting huh!
Yep. I got my snailmail in May.
Steven E. Ehrbar
You've misstated the number who got their memberships by an order of magnitude; 150,000+ people were sent their letters with PINs.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Note: -- I gote the PIN on Friday, August 11.
While they're currently more-or-less running the show as far as the TLD game goes, it's been pretty well proven that anyone can start a competing namespace fairly easily. They may have corporate backing, but corporations traditionally haven't been the ones driving the bleeding edge. Likewise, I don't foresee the ICANN making any major changes, evolutionary or revolutionary. Most likely technology will pass them by and they'll end up being marginalized in a year or two.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Are you kidding? That's way less than it costs to buy a Congressman! It's barely enough even to keep out the riff-raff.
-
-
Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
<sarcasm>
</sarcasm>
Perhaps you meant to put the sarcasm tag around the second as well ? Lessig is a law professor (formerly Harvard, now Yale), famous for:
being appointed by Judge Jackson as a friend of the court in the Microsoft trial because of his expertise in the legal issues of cyberspace (dumped off again by the appeal court);
his book "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" (Sorry about the Amazon link). Well worth a read by ... well everyone really ;)
All round bright guy, and one of the few laywers to have given a lot of thought to internet issues.
Why not elect Cmdr Taco, I think /. has enough votes. Who says you need to be some old Professor - Chancellor? From my experience, academics need to stick to research, not administration.
You want us to try to reach a consensus on /.? You want a majority of the people on /. to pick a candidate and vote for him/her? Boggle!!
/.)
/.
Question: Is this glass half-full or half-empty? (Shows glass, filled half-way with water.)
10%: Half-full
20%: Half-empty (there seem to be more pessimists on
12%: That's not a glass, it's a cup.
15%: MS sucks.
5%: How about a Beowulf cluster of half full/empty glasses?
10%: Want to open source/copyleft/GPL the glass pouring/emptying mechanism
10%: Karma whores and their supporters/detractors
2%: Want to know if Jon Katz had something to do with this
8%: Hot grits and Natalie Portman
3%: This is an inappropriate topic for
5%: Other inanities
So, to reiterate, you want us to figure out who to vote for. Unless Ms. Portman is a candidate, I doubt you'll have much luck.
I guess I vote for half-empty. (Pessimistic or Realistic? You decide.)
--
'...let the rabbits wear glasses...'
Y2038 consulting
Is the only way to get people to vote a one-click solution? OK, it was a pain to get registered, the whole process is screwed up, but its a first step damnit, and only by showing up in big numbers can we establish that there *is* an interest in the democratization in the first place. ICANN fared poorly in these elections, but I think the electorate (or rather, lack of it) fared even more poorly.
I just cant get past the fact that the IP adress of my kitchen sink warrants a click whereas the future of the internet wasnt worth the 5 minutes it took to register for the majority here... :(
PS: Apologies to those that tried to get registered but couldnt because of the traffic. I had no problem whatsover though.
June 29th and still waiting for my PIN. I'm wondering if ICANN is competent to run anything.
I'm not an actor, but I play one on tv.
This was the classic Slashdot effect. Whenever ICANN was mentioned on Slashdot, I would remember, "Oh yeah, I should sign up" but the server would be too busy. Then there was a period where it wasn't in the news for a while, and I remembered, "Hey, I haven't seen anything about ICANN on Slashdot for a a while" and I popped over and everything went smoothly.
Then I got my PIN via snail mail, and the server was too busy. But then I saw that there was a mention of ICANN on Slashdot or Technocrat or something. So I didn't finish my registation. Then, just yesterday I was cleaning off my desk and there was my ICANN letter and I remembered to try to finish my registration and it went fine.
I'm glad I cleaned my desk yesterday instead of today, since there's an ICANN story on Slashdot today. I bet the server is awefully busy right now.
I'll second that. I'm going to vote, but I don't have a clue who to vote for, yet. Send me a $20 with your favorite candidate's name written on it, and I'll take care of ya.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I nominate CmdrTaco!
If enough people start using a new standard, it becomes The Standard whether the ICANN or Microsoft or any other corporation agrees with it or not.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Lessig seems to be a good guy for the job from North America,
Please don't be serious. Lessig is the kind of guy who would revoke tux.org's domain for not selling dinner jackets.
being from Europe, I'm also curious about the European nominees.
There is that one guy from the UK who has nominated himself for the North America area. I don't quite get that one.
--
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Wrong on both accounts.
Although ICANN is making a concerted effort to have a fair and open election process, they have still come under serious fire form democracy advocates in the actual process of the elections.
The price to apply registrar status of a TLD is $50,000
Bye!
A good analysis of the group of candidates as a whole is in the latest Cyber-Federalist Newsletter (Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility and Internet Democracy Project):u mber_4.html
http://www.cpsr.org/internetdemocracy/cyber-fed/N
How many slashdotters bothered to sign up to be a member?
/.
/. readers are members.
I am an at-large member, as are many of my friends that read
I would say that probably at least 10% of active
-k
Take back your government. Of course, I doubt that ICANN's by-laws will allow you much of a chance. A boycott might be a better approach.
--
-- Slashdot sucks.
As an at-large voter, I will only vote for candidates who are opposed to the ridiculous proposal for TLD expansion. If you want to know my full position, see the earlier ICANN topic.
Supposedly, ICANN is making the final decision on the expansion before the election. So much for democracy at ICANN.
Steve Magruder
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Well, here is the list of "campaign promises" on my candidacy page:
Send me an email if you'd like any of these expanded or if you'd like my position on any other issues.
Thanks for asking. ;-)
-robin
Not sure when you were there, but did you have Zittrain? I'd rather see him. Lessig appears to be too much a poser.
<sarcasm>
</sarcasm>
DrQu+xum: Proof that the lameness filter doesn't work.
What I like with the ICANN is their democratic system. To propose a new TLD, you must pay 20000 $US. How can they stay serious when they speak of democraty ?
[shameless plug]
.org, etc.) and Opennic domains (.opennic, .null, .oss, .paroduy). Opennic has cooperative agreements with other alternative domains heirarchies as well, allowing those who use their root servers to resolve their TLDs as well (such as .xxx, .biz, etc.). It is a far more equitable and democratic arrangement than what ICANN is doing (e.g. anyone can start a TLD by submitting a proposal to the mailing list and getting more than 50% of the vote), and worthy of support by anyone who values the freedom and liberty of the internet, particularly those of us in the free software and open source communities.
Note: I am an Opennic user and supporter, but not an ICANN candidate.
Opennic, an effort at democratizing the management of domains and TLDs, is putting forward ICANN candidates as well. I strongly urge everyone to support their efforts, as they are truly trying to make the entire domain management issue more equitable and democratic.
We are using Opennic root servers where I work -- allowing us to resolve both ICANN domain names (.com,
[/shameless plug]
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I am a europian, so reading the list of people I get to choose from...
Looking at the pool of people we get to pick from One professor, 2 telecoms people, 1 leader of a chamber of commerce (seems to specialise of being on advisory boards) and 1 domain name registar.
And there was me thinging this was to stop big businesses having complete control...! France and Deutsche Telecom hmmm...! I think the tables are stacked enough already...!
I guess Oliver Popov (professor) and Maria Livanos Cattaui (chamber of commerce and only woman canidate have my vote). As the look the most independant of a bad bunch.
I WANT A VETO VOTE! At university we had a canidate called RON, Re Open Nominations..... very useful...
I guess though we only have ourselves to blaim, just who can possibily afford to go to the meetings if you do not have outside backing to cover the costs and a flexible work to allow you the time.. Answer pretty much companies with visted interests! Fortunately the other Zones seem to have a better spread of acedemics who are the other group of people with the time....
James
Information is available on The Register.
Or, if you are reading the 'alternative' conversation, see the BigBrother website. [smile]
One for each of the regions/continents. Kind of like the US primary elections. Then we let the candidates know that they are "Slashdot-endorsed" and they can put that on their lawn signs.
More seriously, while it is obvious that no one candidate can adequately represent everyone on slashdot (since Natalie Portman was not nominated), if a large group "gets behind" a candidate that every one agrees is "not too bad" they stand a much better chance of not having someone they hate elected. It sucks that it works this way, and this is the main reason that first past the post elections suck. But it's what we've got, so let's use it.
--
--
E_NOSIG
I've got email confirmation, too-- but no snail mail. They were almost certainly unprepared for the load (wusses) and either:
A. They're just behind on snail mail, or
B. Their registration system managed to get us in, but failed to get us in the queue for snail mail, or
C. They just don't like us.
Would 'predictions and ruminations on how
--
Oddly, ICANN and the press appear to just shrug and let the matter drop. I'm sure that the same would happen if, say, my and 10,000 others' voting registrations placed in July wasn't processed in time for the November election due to load. </sarcasm> ICANN should really have extended the process to allow all people interested to register prior to this vote; maybe make sure the server is running smoothly, and allow 2 weeks for people to reregister their information making sure that everyone gets to make their voice heard.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
From the bios, it seems like this Professor Oliver B. Popov may be a good candidate:
I mean, being label as enthusiast when it comes to the internet usually means you are a geek, right?
And, as I've called for before, any /.ers for member nomination? You've got 4 days...
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
It hasn't loosened up. It has gotten worse.
North America can only let three people into the ballot, so if four people ran, and I got 20% of the electorate to vote for me, I still might not get a space on the ballot of the three others got 25% each.
It is even worse in Europe. They only have two spaces on the ballot open!!
Bye!
I signed up. It was a painful wait.
Now, I'd like to think that being an ALM counts as being "politically active", but right now it still feels pretty hollow. More like being politically contained.
Anyhoo, let's hope we elect decent reps. I personally hope that a good number of member-nominated candidates win, or else I'll lose lots of faith in this whole At Large stuff.
--
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
When those of us (and I'm sure many are) who are At Large Members of ICANN get the voting stage, I hope that we are able to make the best of the limited voice that we are given.
Firstly, I would recommend that the idea of supporting the NOMCOM-nominated candidates be disposed of. I see no reason to support any candidate that was not chosen by the membership through a popular process. (Shameful that there was no popular nomination option, but self-nomination should provide enough of the same benefits of that.)
Of course, ICANN does not seem to be performing much in the way of filtering this list of self-nominators. Amazingly, the list is fairly short, but I wouldn't be suprised to see it get immense over the weekend, as everyone and his brother decides that "if that guy can run, so can I". So, to avoid having to do that weeding out later, I'll go with the names that were on that list this morning (it has grown by four names in the past two hours).
Secondly, we need to dispose of the notion that we can choose a candidate "who will represent all the users". This doesn't work. It doesn't work in government politics. It won't work here, and for the following reasons: One, who are "the users?" Are they everyone on the Internet? Everyone in the Internet technology field? Or everyone on the ICANN ALM? If you imagine a "user representative" being someone who periodically kibitzes with the userdom, and then returns to policymaking sessions armed with the opinions and decisions of the constituents, you are being far too idealist. (Even if such a situation were feasible, and desirable, we could do away with all representative government and replace it with direct democracy.) Besides, the only group which the ALM reps could realistically do this with would be the ALM membership.
It remains then, that the best method of approaching representative elections is from the standpoint of which candidate is best able, without discussing it with me, of representing my views. In other words, choosing the person I most agree with.
Furthermore, in terms of the effectiveness of the ALM voice, I think it's important that the candidate is selected by as close to a simple majority as possible -- i.e. agreed upon by as many people as possible. An election by plurality will weaken the effectiveness of the vote, as well as weaken the winning candidate's ability to say that s/he is representing "the users". I personally would want to see the winning candidate speak from as powerful a representative position as possible.
Now, I don't know if anyone will agree with my opinions on the world of DNS, but I hold the following views about the domain naming system:
1. The DNS registration system needs to be more tightly regulated -- i.e. certain restrictions should be made on the use of the existing domains. This includes gTLDs as well as national TLDs.
2. The "domain name drought" is entirely imaginary, brought up only by marketers of large corporations who are simply jealous of those who had the sense or foresight to register similar names first, and themselves are too unimaginative to come up with, and market, other names.
3. The development and cultivation of new domain names should be done by a thoughtful and open process by which a new TLD is approved solely on its merits as a categorizer of Internet sites (not just of Web sites). Such TLDs should also be added to the gTLD pool, not granted as exclusive property to individual registrars.
4. We cannot dilute the TLD pool into a free-for-all, as it would make the TLD structure meaningless.
5. Currently, ICANN is letting the DNS system fall apart into a big irreconcilable mess in these and other regards.
(No, I am not a candidate.)
In general, the perspective I take is one in which the current system has been allowed to be abused, and is leading into disarray. I want to see some better order in the DNS system, and I want it done with technical insight as well. I doubt many people share the above views, but I think in essence the perspective is shared.
Going over the list of self-noms, I've done an assessment of how well each of these candidates are in tune with this perspective.
I've skimmed lightly over most of the employment, qualification, and official status details, since although evidence of their technical expertise is important, their actual perspectives on the DNS system are most important to me. A lot of these candidates are saying boastful things like "I was here before there was TCP!!!", but that has no bearing to me on their perspective on ICANN. This information is best found in the Background sections.
A few don't give anyone any reason to select them. The best example is Daniel Bowers, who offers the world nothing except becoming the first ICANN electoral troll in history. And Eric Lee lives in Europe, not North America, so I consider him disqualified for the North America position.
Robin Bandy speaks in grandiose terms, referring not to personal views but to "the last remnant of a democratic system" on the Internet. She believes in the ideal direct-representation view I dismissed above; while its a nice idea, as all ideals are, I'm positive that Robin will fail in trying to meet this ideal, as so many others have.
Terry Calhoun seems to espouse the same ideal, but more vaguely, with an added feelgood platform reminiscient of "Personal Power" tape #1. And Rick Wesson says the same thing, but almost as if transcribed from an grade school student council election. speech.
Others don't espouse any viewpoint at all. Martin Goslar (Ph.D., that is) and Alan Herrell seemingly leave the question open. Leland Hardy, Sondlo Mhlaba, and Christopher Stewart don't mention anything at all about ICANN in their background explanations (though Chris does mention all the awards he won in high school). Teri Powell's reference page crashes my browser, so I don't know what he thinks -- but if his web page isn't reliably sound, I don't expect his ICANN views to be sound either. Finally, Robert Alberti talks mostly about MUDs, IRC, RPGing, and aikido, and only refers to "embracing change", without mentioning what change he has in mind.
We're down to 3 candidates with something resembling content in their expression. Michael McNulty endorses gTLD dilution, and cross-TLD domain name exclusivity, which are both in opposition to my own views, but invalidate each other.
So my decision (and recommendation) comes down to Karl Auerback and Daniel Chemko. Both seem to espouse an organized and logical-development view of DNS structure. Both seem to believe in ICANN fairness, responsibility, and egalitariance. They both seem to offer the viewpoints which can help keep ICANN on track and resist the current movement towards DNS chaos.
Now, if you've not totally lost me so far, my recommendation is for Karl Auerbach. Daniel has a good platform, but is less technically experienced than Karl, and lacks any evidence of ability to handle organizational politics well. Karl shows both the ability and intent to act as a reasoning force on the ICANN board. Coupled with the fact that he shares some of my viewpoints, he's the best person to represent me.
You of course, have to assess what is important to you in ICANN leadership and direction. Maybe you are AlterNic or OpenNic and you would love to see total gTLD deregulation, allowing the floodgates of meaningless TLDs to confuse the Internet. Maybe you are an executive of a large Internet corporation who wants the exclusive freedom to snatch up any domain associated with the name you happened to choose for your business. (Or maybe the idea of a lawyer-turned-geek warms your heart so much that you fall for Larry Lessig's act.) Regardless, there are still only a very few to choose from.
I'm not going to argue the merits of my ICANN / DNS views over anyone else's, but I do hope that those on Slashdot, and those who joined the ALM, are able to have a coherent sense of what DNS structure would benefit the Internet as a whole the most. And I hope we can send a clear, strong message to the ICANN board when we choose a person to represent our views among them.
--
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Every time that something on /. would remind me about ICANN, I'd say, "Oh, yeah, while I'm thinking about it...," and try to register. And it would always be overloaded.
/. (i.e., /. was not the referring site), it worked.
The first time that I tried going directly to members.icann.org without proceeding from
Naturally, I'm still waiting for the password and whatnot to arrive in snailmail.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Here I go again! Here's my reasons why TLD expansion is a shitty solution to a nonexistent problem:
Steve Magruder
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
I signed up on July 14th and still don't have the PIN either. Since I'm a candidate as well, I sent them an email asking about it and basically was told not to worry. Heh.
Heh. Mine came in today, about 15 minutes after I'd mentioned here that I signed up on July 14th and hadn't received it yet. Nice timing.
I got my PIN yesterday and have completed the online activation process. Yippee.
The first registration period to be a Member-At-Large of the ICANN closed recently. Although their server was overloaded almost constantly, it seems they were continuously registering people slowly.
/. will let the voting members know how to vote. Lets try to keep the internet open and free of total corporate control. Sound off here with well reasoned research into each of the candidates background and corporate leaning.
How many slashdotters bothered to sign up to be a member? That is the only way to vote on who you want to represent you in the wolves den of ICANN politics. Even though the whole process has been corrupted by greedy corporatism, a few good members elected could help a great deal to knowing what is really going on behind the scenes in ICANN meetings.
Even if you didn't sign up, then making your voice loud and clear on forums such as
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
To get to the point, projects will always get to the "business" point sooner or later, and one has to be prepared and have that in mind. Nothing will go anywhere in North America (well widely distributed) without it. TV and the NET will only go so far, so learn to live with how projects will go. If you can work with the consequences (as Carmack and Gates have seen), and I use the word consequences because most hate all the legal BS, we might get somewhere and get through all the complaining about this-and-that.
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk
| Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
Anyways, the fucken ICANN needs a good lawyer on the board, as does every company in the fucken world. Only lawyers understand Tha Law, man. And, as the Holy Bible says "Those lesser breeds without the law, they are fucked".
Larry L for president. Hip Hurray Hahvud!
-- the most controversial site on the Web
The glass isn't half-empty, and it's not half-full either.
Come on. We're all engineers, engineer wannabees, or computer heads. What does this mean? You have twice as much glass as you need![*]
Of course, this would fall under the 50% that complain about poll choices... you need to redefine your options to include that.
[*] Unless you work at (NASA, a nuclear plant, pick one). Then it's a safety margin. If you work at Microsoft, you leave the glass the way it is but put holes in the side, hiding them with advertisements.
--
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
If you would like a detailed analysis of the nominees, I strongly suggest you read this link. It is on Dave Farber's site, and the link is to an email Dave received from Hans Klein of CPSR, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.
To quote the introduction of the message:
"The ICANN Nominating Committee recently announced its nominees for the At Large elections. Here I offer some analysis of the nominees' backgrounds and assess their qualifications to represent Internet users.
"In what follows I consider the following issues:
I. Nominees' Technical Expertise
II. Nominees' Qualifications to Represent Users
III. Regional Breakdown and Gaps in the Set of Nominees
"Let me first offer the conclusions: based on the limited information available to date, it seems that most of ICANN's proposed candidates reinforce the perspectives already present on the Board. Most come from the Internet supply industry, the intellectual property community, and the R&D community. Individuals from these groups possess impressive qualifications -- but not to represent Internet users. Only seven of ICANN's nominees seem appropriate to represent users, i.e. they offer perspectives that complement today's Supporting Organization directors. Some regions, most notably Europe, have *no* nominees with a clear user perspective. "
Yes -- I received my PIN in the mail early last week. It worked fine.
I'll see your C Shell, and raise you a Korn Shell.
(Insert sound of a thousand slashdot readers groaning here...)
Free BeOS, runs from a Linux partition
My wife and I both have received our snail mail confirmation. It took about two weeks.
ICANN has made it as hard as possible for anyone to join. I only today completed my registration, after months of problems and waiting. What other organization expects you to have a Membership #, a password (chosen by them), and a PIN that they send to you...and then expects you to use them EVERYTIME!!
They're clearly hoping that most of us will be too lazy or forgetful to sign up and participate consistently. The at-large memberships are for show only, so that they can pretend to be running it impartially.
What a load!
www.niceFire.com
Funnier than a speeding bullet
I was pleased to see that the criteria for member nomination (once referred to as 'self-nomination') has been loosened up. 2% is still an onerous burden when you remember that you can't find out who your constituents are due to privacy rules, but it is much better than it was.
Frankly, ICANN is at sea. We all know the issues they are facing, but I think we need to start thinking about the people from our community, and who can best represent North America in ICANN.
Since I suspect that a large proportion of ICANN @Large members read this, I think we have a good chance of nominating and electing someone with the administrative skills, technical knowledge, and political savvy to really get something done out there.
After about two weeks of trying I actually managed to get registered... I got the confirmation email, but am still waiting on the snailmail portion. Has anyone received this yet?
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not plane, nor bird, nor even frog...
I want Mel to win - mainly so I can see more of her nakkid on the webcams... I also wanted her on the ICANN board (see this _is_ on topic), but only 96 other people backed me up. Not a large enough percentage apparently.
Here here, I second that motion. I like seeing her boobies to on the cams.