ICANN Welcomes the World

[MAllie]

Actually, I can trace my roots back to Ireland as well and I have nothing against the Irish, but when you are talking about developments in the World, Ireland is never going to be deserving of much more than a foot note. The whole of the population of Ireland would fit into a Chinese City that none of you have ever heard of or me neither come to that.

Numbers were never a good indication of ability - look at the Spartans. Perhaps you don't consider American presidents as more than footnotes to history? Those of Irish descent: James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, James Knox Polk, David Riche Atchison, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S Grant, Chester Alan Arthur, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G Harding, Harry S Truman, John F Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, William Clinton, George Bush (both, obviously) & Barack Obama. Three signatories to the American Declaration of Independence were Irish-born - James Smith, George Taylor and Matthew Thornton.

At least nine of Australia's and New Zealand's prime ministers have also been of Irish descent.

Other famous people who made their mark on the world and are either Irish or of Irish descent:

Writers: William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift, John Millington Synge, Brendan Behan, Raymond Chandler, Robert Graves, Eugene O'Neill, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith, Liam O'Flaherty, F Scott Fitzgerald, Sean O'Casey, the Bronté sisters & Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert & Sullivan; Soldiers and revolutionaries: The first Duke of Wellington; Bernardo O'Higgins, Che Guevara and John Reilly; Actors/Media people: Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, Harrison Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Kevin Kline, Martin Sheen, James Cagney, Phil Donaghue, Anthony Quinn, Peter O'Toole. Boxers: Muhammad Ali, Jim Braddock, Gentleman Jim Corbett and John L Sullivan; Scientists: Boyle of Boyle's Law, Beaufort of Beaufort's Scale, 1951 Nobel Physics' Prize winner Ernest Walton; Industrialist Henry Ford, both of whose parents were Irish; Explorer Ernest Shackleton.

Among the songs written by people of Irish descent: The Star Spangled Banner and The Red Flag.

I guess you could call that punching above your weight.

[Rubber Duck]

You missed my point entirely, Duck. The specifications document is the kind of mumbo-jumbo best bypassed in order to get to the substance. And the substance is, that ".ελ" is a shorthand of something used only - well, guess where: specification manuals. It's an ISO code that means nothing "on the street". How do you expect every Registry to market their country code in the native language? Although I *might* set China aside, if those 2 letters spared for the TLD truly represent the name, instead of a shorthand of it. And regardless, the exception does not make the rest look too appealing.

Well, maybe but you cannot blame ICANN for that. Its Governments, bless 'em! But if that's what they want then that is what they will get. More power to IDN.com! But they will spend big budget on this and they will raise awareness of IDN long before theirs hit the street, providing Verisign with a perfect window of opportunity to clean up.

[Acro]

In other words, you're saying that being hypocritical is justified - as long as one is part of a government entity.