Yes

Surely you don't 'own' anything, you merely know a sequence of characters which allows you to sign a json request which, if broadcast in a certain way, causes clients on a network of hosts to accept that you now want alias X to point to uri Y.

Completely different from owning!

Interesting to see what sort of marketplaces will exist for this though, and how they might operate.

so it seems to me that "the Hive" is to be kept TOP SECRET till the appropriate time.

Not SO much. Instead of paper-signature and/or passport cryptoything like Nxt's alias signed by hashed pass u created. Ofc, someone can copy-cat you (and fraudulence exists) and someone can succesfully bruteforce or steal your pass. No way to get rid of risks completely.

Nxt not forcing you to be anonymous, some big company can just add "2" to some already created (needed) alias and that new "alias2" in people mindes will worth times of "alias" cos of basis under it (with time, ofc). Marketing is a joke without basis under it.

ahh, yes, the hive. it's a personal project i start to built as soon the asset exchange is done.
since it is just a complex concept atm, the best is first to start coding and then showing a
prototype. this way the advanced ideas and features it could add to nxt are more understandable.

And why is my trigger finger itching to push the 'Buy' button all the time, I wonder

Only if they know who you are.

I guess it really makes no sense now holding some other alt-coins for diversification, which really offer nothing unique over bitcoin and litecoin, even BTC and LTC now seem a bit outdated after NXT.

Funny how for most people Bitcoin is still something they haven't even touched yet, and it's already outdated

yeah, Btc seems so foolish now after nxt. it's like investing in T-Bills.