and of course, mac, un*x and linux users would be right out, unless they plan to serve that market with "patented technology" as well.

Don't need to, most companies don't bother and we get by

whatever you may think of ICANN, this concept is still fairly brain damaged.

For a land grab you only need those windows users with a plug in or on ISPs that have bought in to it (could be lots of people), the others without are part of your grab, you get them to hassle their ISP "why can't we get to hot.xxx", some ISPs will add the new root, repeat until owned or laughed off the net. Failure to get critical mass is probably the main reason none of the other alternate roots have grown. There's ICANN frustration, if you deliver what people wanted from ICANN the public may adopt it. brandon