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ICANN Cancels 'Digital Archery' Program
itwbennett writes "ICANN announced today that it has canceled the Digital Archery contest it had planned to use to decide which gTLD applications would be evaluated first. The organization gave no indication of what it will do instead. In making the announcement, Cherine Chalaby, chair of the gTLD Program Committee, said, 'We will not make a decision in Prague but will take all of the ideas into account and build a roadmap,' adding that the roadmap will detail the next steps and timelines as well as assess implications to applicants and the risk to the program."
This shows that ICANN has no clue what they're doing. All they cared about was getting the huge cash infusion from the application fees. They should at the very least have had the entire process planned out from the beginning.
What would be nice now would be fore a coalition of major ISPs to state that the new TLDs are stupid, and they won't support any of them on their name servers. That should pretty much kill the whole thing. In fact, and association of ISPs could use this as a chance to replace ICANN, demonstrating that their authority is limited based on the extent that the ISPs agree to let them have the authority.
Oh, I don't know if they're actually that competent. But then evil is there because being competent is too hard.
It seems that they have been making decisions of late that come from late nights out at the bar, hookers, and blow.
ICANN VP#1: Hey I have an idea, let's charge 185,000 dollars for these new TLDs - it's the speed of packets travelling down a wire in miles per second!!! ISN'T THAT NEAT?
ICANN BOARD: What a perfectly capital and cromulent idea, old chap!
ICANN VP#2: Hey, we can't decide who should get these new TLDs if more than one entity decides to buy the same TLD. Let's make a game! A flash game that you can't audit! We can have it cheat and give advantage to our buddies!
ICANN BOARD: What a perfectly capital and cromulent idea, old chap!
ICANN TECH: Holy shit guys, someone walked away with the list of bids and bidders!
ICANN FLASH DEVELOPER: This flash game is BOLLOCKS. I can't make a workable game *and* have it cheat without without it being too obvious!
ICANN SWITCHBOARD SECRETARY: Goddamnit, I can't handle all these irate calls!
ICANN BOARD: OH SHIT!
PUBLIC: YOU GUYS ARE IDIOTS!
ICANN BOARD: OOPS.
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BMO
BECAUSE WE ALREADY SPENT IT ON HOOKERS AND BLOW.
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BMO
Chair Cherine Chalaby chats; chooses to chuck chance-based chump-cheating channel; choked by chafed, cheerless chairpeople.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
How did you get the transcript from their meeting?
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
"cromulent"
I say, old bean, this isn't a British word at all. Some American chappie called David X. Cohen came up with this word for "The Simpsons", which is apparently a very popular animated show.
Toodle pip!
Seriously? I mean, seriously? ICANN, even briefly, introduced online gaming into the process of creating new top level domains? I knew that the Internet could resemble a circus, but that really stretches the limits of believability.
Pardon me while I file a registration for .barnum.
"We will not make the decision in Prague ... no, this decision will require at least 15-20 more all-expenses-paid meetings in luxury resorts around the world."
I think it's just a matter of cultural sensitivity. It's against local custom to make any decisions in Prague. If you make an important decision, you may even end up paying a stiff fine to the city magistrate. There is an ordinance against making important decisions here and the city council takes these matters very seriously. If they actually wanted to make a decision at the summit, they'd have to make a phone call to Vienna, Berlin, or Moscow in order not to offend the locals.
Ezekiel 23:20