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More About The .org Reassignment
Joel Rowbottom writes: "After ICANN 'awarded' ISOC with the running of .ORG in the Draft Staff Report, public comments regarding the process are starting to come out of the woodwork. Eric Brunner-Williams has commented on the flawed scoring and ICANN allegedly using the process to financially shore up ISOC and Afilias; the dotORG Foundation have posted some comments and questions (quote: 'we are perplexed by the Academic CIO Team's rating of
our bid's technology as marginal'); Carl Malamud has posted the IMS/ISC response; and Organic have posted a rather damning indictment of the process as well (disclaimer: I work for Organic Names). For the $27,000 it cost each bidder to 'participate' (and that's just the entry fee), we'd have expected a little more professionalism than just getting some 'free' t-shirts! Comment to ICANN today org-eval@icann.org and make a difference."
We see this with every decision made in the computing world. When Rihndael won the DES competition, a small horde of Bruce Schneier fanboys began instantly to shoot their mouths off about conspiracies because Blowfish didn't win, never mind that it was last in the running.
Like it or not, ICANN's decision was entirely sensible. It may not sit well with the free software community, but it isn't at all surprising that someone would prefer to give this job to a for-profit company. The first reason is that companies are better at looking after their infrastructure. The question posed by the dotORG Foundation regarding technology is loaded with half-truths. Certainly, they are using the same software platform as the registerORG bid, but commercial bids are more able to guarantee stability and scalabilty in hardware terms as demands increase. Open Source simply cannot do this.
A second reason is that ad-hocracies, which are what all well-meaning but informal NGOs are, are not reliable. ICANN could have gone with dotORG, only to find the principal operators of the registry losing interest over the next few years and handing the system over to college freshmen to run. They could change the primary operators of the system at random, in response to lame-brained internal pseudo-democratic structures. ICANN wants to have solid certainty that the guy the spoke to yesterday will be their contact tomorrow as well.
The internet isn't a toy for the geek community anymore, and it's time we faced up to this. The people who run the internet do not share our agenda, and for very good reasons.
SATELLITES SHOW OVERALL INCREASES IN ANTARCTIC SEA ICE COVER
s ea ice.html
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020820south
Even in the story about the electric cars, so many were wetting their pants about greenhouse gases and how all the ice is melting. Lies all lies.
Why don't you come up with a different acronym so people don't confuse it with Attack of the Clones? Your sig looks like a fucking eBay auction title. "4 Channel PCI Sound Card (Not Creative Labs Audigy Live)"