Tag Archives: ICANN

.music gTLD Free-For-All

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There are eight companies currently vying for control over the new gTLD (generic top-level domain) .music. Here they are sorted in alphabetical order by parent company—not by the subsidiary that submitted the application:

  • Amazon
  • Donuts via subsidiary Victor Cross
  • Famous Four Media via subsidiary dot Music Limited
  • Far Further via subsidiary .music LLC
  • Google via subsidiary Charleston Road Registry Inc.
  • .MUSIC via subsidiary DotMusic Limited
  • Radix via subsidiary DotMusic Inc.
  • Top Level Domain Holdings Ltd. via subsidiary Entertainment Names Inc.

Interestingly, Donuts, Inc. icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12 also owns the .band gTLD through its Auburn Hollow, LLC and the .rocks gTLD through its Ruby Moon, LLC.

On a somewhat related note, the .game gTLD is owned by Uniregistry, Corp icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12 while the .games gTLD (note the addition of an ‘s’) is owned by Donuts through its Foggy Beach, LLC. The costs for a domain from these companies are about $500 and $15 per name per year, respectively, so I guess Uniregistry gets to mark up its names by 3333% for having a gTLD that is only one letter shorter.

Amazon and Charleston Road Registry Inc. (Google) also applied for the .game gTLD and were denied, while Foggy Beach, LLC (Donuts) was the sole applicant for the .games gTLD. Google did file an objection to the .games name, claiming that it was too similar to the .game gTLD and would confuse Internet users. This is funny.

Creative Writing for Assholes 101

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From: INSPECTOR.GRANT WATSON <4w3@lalllaaa.ee.tn>
Subject: YOUR CONSIGNMENT BOXES DELIVERY.
Reply to: inspectorgrant945@gmail.com
To: Recipients <4w3@lalllaaa.ee.tn>

INSPECTOR GRANT WATSON
UNITED NATION INSPECTION AGENCY
HART FIELD-JACKSON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
ATLANTA GEOGIA,

I am GRANT WATSON Inspection Agency in Harts field-Jackson International Airport Atlanta, Georgia. During our investigation, I discovered an abandoned shipment through a Diplomat from FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA which was transferred from Murtala International Airport. To our facility here in Atlanta, and when scanned it revealed an undisclosed sum of money in 2 Metal Trunk Boxes. The consignment was abandoned because the Content was not properly declared by the consignee as money rather it was declared as personal Effect/classified document to either avoid diversion by the Shipping Agent or confiscation by the relevant authorities.

The diplomat's inability to pay for Non Inspection fees among other things are the reason why the consignment is delayed and abandoned. By my assessment, each of the boxes contains about $4M or more. They are still left in the airport storage facility till today. The Consignments like I said are two metal trunk boxes, the details of the consignment including your name and email on the official document from United Nations' office in NIGERIA where the shipment was tagged as personal effects/classified document is still available with us. As it stands now, you have to reconfirm your Full name, Phone Number, full address so I can cross-check and see if it corresponds with the one on the official documents.

It is now left to you to decide if you are the beneficiary and still need the consignment or allow us repatriate it back to NIGERIA (place of origin) as we were instructed. Like I did say again, the shipper abandoned it and ran away most importantly because he gave a false declaration, he could not pay for the yellow tag, he could not secure a valid non inspection document(s), etc. I am ready to assist you in any way I can for you to get back this packages if only you are willing to work with me with trust. You can either come in person, or you engage the services of a secure shipping/delivery Company/agent that will provide the necessary security. That is required to deliver the package to your doorstep or the destination of your choice. I need the entire guarantee that I can get from you before I can get involved in this project.

Best Regards,
MR GRANT WATSON
INSPECTION OFFICER.
Email :{inspectorgrant945@gmail.com}

The sad thing is that spam mail like this wouldn’t exist if there weren’t people out there that believed everything they read. The MR. GRANT WATSON INSPECTION OFFICER shtick convinces enough dummies to respond with their personal information, and this is why it is worth somebody’s time to write such duplicitous drivel.  Meanwhile, the rest of the world suffers.

It kinda makes you wonder how 999 out of every 1000 emails are about Viagra and penis enlargement, and yet it’s not difficult to infer why this happens: lots of men—and zero women, I should add—actually respond to these messages and divulge their personal details and credit card numbers. If this wasn’t the case then a significant number of crooked schemers on the Internet wouldn’t have anything to show for their efforts. Instead of sending spam mail, they would try to discover a new way to trick people out of their money, or order a Little Caesar’s pizza for breakfast, or watch a Pawn Stars marathon… or maybe apply for a job at ICANN?

You Can’t Put Autocorrect Everywhere (Or Can You?)

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I very much dislike it when computers attempt to correct what I type. Sometimes it can be handy, but other times it can be infuriating. Texting on a cell phone is of course the best example of this: almost every single text message is altered by the phone’s computer software in one form or another. This is something that I only recently noticed: I had disabled texting on my phone in the past because I didn’t want to give certain people yet another way to selectively communicate with me (and further empower these same people to get away with the obnoxious behavior towards myself and others that comes along with such selective and one-sided discourse). Eventually I relented, but only because you can’t be part of a baseball team in the present day and not use text messaging.

The experience so far hasn’t been too bad. I completely ignore people who really should be calling or visiting me and instead use text messaging almost exclusively for work- and baseball-related activities. What really drives me up the wall, however, is that every time I type in a word that could potentially be deemed offensive, my phone changes it to something different. “Shit” is changed to “shot”, “hell” is changed to “he’ll”, and even “fart” is changed to “cart”. Needless to say, I shut this feature off as soon as I was able to dig up the associated setting on my phone.

But autocorrect isn’t always so bad to have around, and some people clearly need it more than others. An unfiltered Google search for “comptuer”, a common misspelling that typically occurs from typing too fast on a keyboard, yields the following results:

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Interestingly, the first entry is from LinkedIn for the Top 15 Comptuer Programmer profiles icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12. Apparently this spelling error occurs frequently enough that the site automatically generates a separate category for a special group of programming professionals who are very impatient typists:

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This misspelling is so common, in fact, that some asshole in the Cayman Islands icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12 thinks that he’s going to get $15,000 for the domain name COMPTUER.COM:

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The sad thing about all this is that we wouldn’t have most of these problems if people learned to spell, didn’t get so bent out of shape over strong or vulgar language, and were more considerate and earnest when communicating with others. Is autocorrect going to help us with these problems and eventually save us from ourselves? Only time will tell….

On a related note, ICANN icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12 really sucks.

The Internet, In a Nutshell…

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Since all of the good .COMs have been used up, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (or ICANN for short) decided it was finally time to give the world some options. As one would naturally expect, .wtf was chief among the new top-level domain names to be made available to aspiring registrants and was added in 2014 alongside others such as .ink, .ninja, .kim, and .sexy. Supposedly, .ink is for tattooing, .ninja is for people with special expertise and skills, .kim is for people named Kim (huh?), and .sexy is for really good looking people. Of course, the name .wtf was taken from an improper Internet acronym that would never be repeated on this website.

Here is a glancing view of the World Wide Web in 2015:

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It’s so nice to see the Internet taking bold steps forward. Personally, I can’t wait to register the domain CHADSPACE.POS as soon as it becomes available. I just hope that somebody doesn’t snap it up before I do!!