The Shop (Stephen King)

The Shop is a fictional, top secret United States government agency, with seemingly well-meaning, but actually evil, intentions and motivations in the writings of Stephen King. It is similar to the Syndicate in The X-Files. It plays a central role as the antagonist in the novel Firestarter, the miniseries Golden Years, and the film The Lawnmower Man. It is also an element of the novel The Tommyknockers. In addition, an offhand reference hints that it may be at least partially responsible for the events of the novella The Mist. In the miniseries adaptation of The Langoliers, Bob Jenkins tosses out a government conspiracy-based theory for the conditions of the plane and refers to the theoretical agency responsible as "The Shop." In The Stand, The Shop is tasked with stopping the superflu outbreak, which it utterly fails to do. The Shop is interested in the scientific research of what might otherwise be considered paranormal phenomena, such as aliens, immortality, and paranormal or psychic powers.

.shop

.shop is a proposed top-level domain (TLD) for the Internet, submitted to ICANN for approval as a sponsored TLD (sTLD). Nine companies including Google, Amazon and Famous Four Media have filed applications for this TLD.

History

The idea of a .shop generic top-level domain was around since at least 1999, when an attempt to register it with IAHC was made. Its proposed usage is similar to current endeavors: to provide a dedicated space for ecommerce on the Internet. In 2000, Commercial Connect, LLC requested to operate a .shop registry from ICANN .

Commercial Connect's application from 2000 was well-received, but other domains were prioritized. It is still considered by ICANN to be pending. Japan's GMO Registry also expressed interest in the top level domain name space in late 2009, though Commercial Connect was the most vested candidate that had taken prior steps towards attaining delegation. In 2011, Commerccial Connect was reported to have the support of ecommerce companies, with its completed application awaiting final approval as of June 2010. To further this support, Richard E. Last of the National Retail Federation and shop.org joined the board in late 2011.

Shop

Shop may refer to:

ITV Granada

ITV Granada (formerly Granada Television or Granada TV) is the Channel 3 regional service for North West England. The licence for the region has been held by ITV Broadcasting Limited since November 2008. It is the largest independent television-franchise producing company in the UK, accounting for 25% of the total broadcasting output of the ITV network. It had been held by Granada Television, which was founded by Sidney Bernstein and based at Granada Studios on Quay Street in Manchester since its inception. This was the only surviving company of the original four Independent Television Authority franchisees from 1954; Granada Media Group (parent company of Granada Television) merged with Carlton Communications to form ITV plc in 2004. It covers Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, northwestern Derbyshire, part of Cumbria and North Yorkshire. On 15 July 2009, the Isle of Man was transferred to ITV Granada from ITV Border (even though the Isle of Man is a British Crown Dependency and is not part of the United Kingdom).