Catastrophes revisited

This is indeed a year end post, but don't worry, it won't be as long as the title & the past year's history might suggest, nor was the past year really that bad for me.

This story (via Samizdata) about ICANN's apparently clandestine factual handover of control over national TLDs (.ch etc) to governments is currently ruffling my feathers a bit. As I said in another blog earlier, I prefer the US' control over the internet to an international body's control as long as the administration doesn't actually exercise that control. That's why I was quite happy, albeit a bit surprised, with the outcome of the recent negotiations where the US retained its control. Now The Register's story explains (indirectly) why those governments were suddenly not so keen anymore to actually obtain formal control - they already received it informally! That's bad & disappointing.

In other, far more personal news, the Xmas desaster found a satisfactory resolution! I discovered a public pool which is not much further away and is similarly agreeable: Spiegelfeld.

Another thing I was rather unhappy with was the massive delay on my flight to Brussels. While the delay could not be undone of course, Swiss has taken care to put things right: they refunded almost the whole ticket, gave me a free upgrade and sent me some bottles of decent bordeaux dating back to the previous century. Everybody has a price, right? Or am I cheap?

So much for my 2005 review. Overall, it wasn't the most satisfying of vintages. But I am a positively minded person: It could have been worse. So, I hope that the coming year MMVI will be better for everyone - Cheers to that!