The internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is the implausibly named company (horrible acronym award 2011: Icann) in charge of coordinating unique internet addresses. I'm sure that this is a very proud and strong organisation that takes its work very seriously indeed and employs a vast array of highly skilled and dedicated professionals. I however cannot shake the mental image of a pair of apes (morning shift and evening shift) wearing glasses, listening to The Funky Gibbon sat in front of two massive buttons, one saying yes and the other saying no clubbing wildly in time to the intoxicating seventies beats that rock their office in the penthouse of a state-of-the-art megabuilding in London, hewn from a single lump of tax-payers graft.
Behold the shit-stained Icann Multi-Stakeholder Model graphic thing. This makes me hate them, but I digress.
http://www.icann.org/en/about
Today's incredible news is that this fine institution has given the go ahead for a Historic change to the internets domain name system in that their board has voted to launch new generic top-level domains. DON"T FALL ASLEEP - this doesn't sound like it but it is in fact AmAZiNg! What it means is that gone are the old .co.uk .org .net and .com (there's 22 + 250 country-based ones) restrictions established in the 20th century (the decadent fools) and in comes a whole new world of possibility and amazement. Icann rather enthusiastically states:
"Icann has opened the internet's addressing system to the limitless possibilities of the human imagination," said Rod Beckstrom, president and chief executive officer for Icann."
The limitless possibilities of my human imagination do not deviate far from the smutty in truth, but I'm sure there's room for a development in the way URLs are written as well, really? Here's another quote from the button mashing apes;
"No one can predict where this historic decision will take us."
I can, Icann - it'll take most people to Explorer or a few others to Safari, Firefox and maybe even Chrome if you're that way inclined.
In short what this will enable companies to do, is to apply for the rights to purchase their own suffix. The examples given are .google and .coke but anyone can apply for the reasonable price of £114,000 and it seems to me that a wise thing to do would be to speak to the bank manager or your mum/favourite uncle to bank roll your own purchases as soon as possible so that you can hold some of the biggest corporations to ransom and make a tidy profit.
.apple
.microsoft
.theBeatles
.sony
.bbc
.theSun
.49thfloor (do one, that's ours muthahubbards)
It appears there's a rigourous set of 50 questions (2-3 pages per question) that those applying for one of the suffixes have to wade through. Surely they only need one though;
"Have you got £114,000 which we intend to use to gold plate our breakfast cereal and build Scrooge McDuck style swimming pools"
If Yes - have you name and enjoy the limitless spoils of human imagination (sucker)
If No - Jog on peasant
The original story is here if you are interested. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13835997
If you aren't here's my top ten list of the best suffixes that will almost certainly never be purchased - at a combined value of £1,140,000.00
1. www.conservatives.cunts
2. www.mcdonalds.healthy
3. www.marksandspencers.utterlyRepellent
4. www.LennyHenry.funnyasrabies
5. www.BP.whoops
6. www.lutonTown.champions
7. www.microsoft.apple
8. www.monday.win
9. www.HMRC.thieves
10. www.Leagrave49ers.slowdown
