get your own free root certificate at christian barmala's free ca. a very exciting idea. nevertheless, we definitely need a better infrastructure of trust to beat the bigcos like verisign et al. they have a much too strong position regarding allocation and verification of identity – issues that formerly belonged to the government. i don't like the idea at all that such power is in the hands of a few private and commercial organisations.

btw. at christian's site you also can dump a certificate to take a look at its contents in cleartext.