On the subject of verisign's wildcard search hijacking...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32946.html

The document suggests VeriSign's "wildcard" service goes against "two basic principles of architectural design which have served the Internet well for many years": the Robustness Principle and the (splendidly named) Principle Of Least Astonishment, which says a program should always respond in the way that is least likely to astonish the user.
sheer brilliance!