For businesses, it's going to be an expensive mess, too. Instead of focusing on the current (.com, .net, .org, and so on), companies will be pressured to "own their brands" by buying up every custom suffix that might come in handy. If nothing else, they'll want to buy them simply to prevent someone else from doing so.

Would Microsoft, after all, want any other company to own .microsoft? How about .windows, .software, or .clippymustdie? Okay, that last one might be a stretch -- but you get where I'm going here. The point is, no matter how you look at it, this is a Pandora's box with virtually no limits; the only guarantee is chaos, confusion, and costliness.

As users, the one thing we can hope is that this will turn into another Internet innovation the world generally ignores. Past attempts to expand our dot-com-centric society have been forgettable flops (how many people do you know who regularly type .jobs, .museum, or .travel addresses into their browsers?). There's a good chance this could become another revolution in theory that's a failure in practice.

Still, I'm gonna go ahead and grab that dancing-chickens domain just to be safe. If anyone has $185,000 I can borrow, please let me know.

JR Raphael is a PCWorld contributing editor and the co-founder of geek-humor site . You can find him on both and .