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Massachusetts now the "Dot Commonwealth"
RomulusNR writes "The 'state' of Massachusetts is firing back at years of Siliconia by nicknaming itself the ".commonwealth". (Ya see, MA isn't really a state, it's a Commonwealth, as are KY, VA, and PA, allowing them to come up with this somewhat tacky nickname.)
Boston Globe has a story on this, and there's also the official .COMmonwealth site.
Oh, and another groaner: MA is also now "the state of things to come". " Yes, it is official: Virgina - the .com state and MA are now in competition.
Hello? The whole point about the Internet is that it makes physical location less important, no? I mean, a place can make itself attractive to Internet stuff with lots of good comms and fewer bad laws, but states are very much what the net is Not About, and watching two jockey to be the Internet State is so dumb it's funny.
--
Xenu loves you!
(Warning. Take this post in jest. No offense is intended to all of those I'd otherwise offend. We now return you to your regularly scheduled post.)
;-), I didn't care too much.
OK.
When the Stick became 3Com(soon to rename itself 3.Com, I'm sure
When the Oakland Colliseum was rechristened Network Associations Station, thus making all games there played "At The Net", I shrugged a bit.
I mean heh, corporations do these kind of things--it's just the 90's version of the Commercial Jingle. Who are we to complain.
I really feel for Massachusetts taxpayers, who are funding this...ummm...experiment in corporate sleazification of the government. I feel so much, that I've got a little list for them. Without further ado...
TOP TEN SIGNS CORPORATE INTERNET MARKETING AND GOVERNMENT POLICY HAS HAS CONVERGED A BIT TOO MUCH.
10. www.speedingticket.com
9. No Property Taxes!*
8. New Position: Justice of the Piece
7. New, easy to fake California Drivers Licenses have "hily sek00r" Autobot/Decepticon Authentication Systems.
6. deltree k:\ansas\biology
5. "Superfund 2, brought to you by your friends at McDonalds. Isn't Ronald's hair a special color?"
4. http://www.whitehouse.gov, now with new and improved autopopup windows to http://www.gore2000.com and http://www.whitehouseinterns.com(gotta recruit some stiffs...)!
3. Watch C-SPAN for 20 hours a month and get a check from http://www.capitoladvantage.com
2. [ ] Nuke
[ ] Don't Nuke
[SUBMIT]
1. lobby.ebay.com
* With three years of modem rate MSN at a low low low price of $19.95 a month.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
My employer, Lawson Software, is just finishing its new corporate headquarters in downtown St Paul. The name of this building?
Lawson.Commons. (pronounced "Lawson dot commons")
I kid you not.
I give it five years on the outside for the "." to be quietly dropped from the building's name...
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Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
I've lived here since 1984, and that means:
.commonwealth? Now I'm embarassed! Gawd, I wish I could pimp-slap whoever paid for that clunker!
When the Patriots set a record for worst spanking in a Super Bowl, I wasn't embarassed to say "I'm from Massachusetts".
When the ball went through Buckner's legs, I wasn't embarassed to say "I'm from Massachusetts".
When Mike Dukakis got crushed in the '88 presidential election, I wasn't embarassed to say "I'm from Massachusetts".
When our economy went in the tank in the early '90s, I wasn't embarassed to say "I'm from Massachusetts".
When, in the midst of a boom, all our key local institutions (New England Telephone, Jordan Marsh, Digital, Shawmut bank, and many others) got gobbled by out-of-state companies, leaving us a corporate backwater, I wasn't embarassed to say "I'm from Massachusetts".
When the Sox spit the bit again, to the hated Yankees, I wasn't embarassed to say "I'm from Massachusetts".
But the
For a better view of our fine state, try The Massholes page. Much more appropriate than some lame-ass marketing slogan...
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Massachusetts has called itself a Commonwealth at least since 1780, back when the "Commonwealth" you refer to was still the British Empire, and would be for some time to come.
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery
left as soon as I could because of the ghastly weather.
I mean, how people tolerate this "snow" stuff is beyond me. And daytime temperatures that regularly drop below 60? Like, to 20 and even lower?
I'm surprised anyone still lives there. I live in Southern California now, and I'd never, ever go back.
D
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And what about Rhode Island: isnt that the commonwelth of tabaco growers or something?
...The state of things to come
RI's offical name is "State of Rhode Island and Providence Planitations." You were close.
Well then... Maybe Cuthulu should run for governor there.
Imagine what their IPO will be like.
-Chris
1900 - My gun is faster than your gun
:-(.
2000 - My nuke is bigger than your nuke
2100 - My AI can run circles around your AI?
Well, politicians have to do something to justify their hefty salaries while the rest of us get on with the real work
LL
I just moved to PA. Coudersport, PA, to be exact. It may be BFE, but if it wasn't for Hell Atlantic, Coudersport would have more DS3s per square mile than Cleveland and Buffalo combined. (Maybe it being the home of Adelphia Communications Corporate has something to do with that? :)
:)
Anyways, Pennsylvania's done something much *much* better than MA. We got new license plates this year. They're blue white and yellow, very tasteful IMO. And at the bottom (in PA, you don't have a county sticker/stamp) is a good one liner.
www.state.pa.us
HA! Touche, MA. God I love living in a state that has a sense of decency and taste.
-RISCy Business | Rabid unix guy, networking guru
your company here.
shelby != ford
The idea is that it is supposed to be a commonwealth of the people. It's all rooted in the whole enlightenment theories about the difference between civilised societies and the "state of nature".
The revolutionary era choice of the world "commonwealth" is supposed to indicate that, as a state, it is a voluntary association of the people formed to pursue the common weal. A run of the mill "state" might be an association forced by a ruler who claimed divine right.
There was serious revolutionary sentiment in Massachusetts at the time. It isn't well known, but after the American revolution, there was a subsequent revolt by farmers who wanted to secede from the mercantile interests in Boston, on the basis that they were running the state for their own private interests. It was put down, but concessions were made and the politics of Massachusetts has never been the same since.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Well, for one things there's a ton of colleges here, some of them are pretty good. This gives you a home court advantage when recruiting, as well as access to cheap summer labor.
:11,400 :12,300 :12,000 :12,900
Boston might not be San Francisco, but it is still a really great place to be a twenty-something; there's plenty going on in the music, art, and geek scene. Just get a nice attic or basement apartment in Davis Square, Somerville, and you're right on the red line to all the action in Cambridge and Boston.
Probably the worst part about starting up a web business is Bell Atlantic, but there are certainly plenty of ISPS around, and a few of them are fairly good.
As for taxes, nobody likes 'em, but you have to figure the total costs of taxes and fees for necessary goverment services (NH doesn't have an income tax, but its property taxes are murder). Anyhow, suppose you're single making about $100K. These are your approximate state and local taxes in several states:
MASSACHUSETTS
MISSISSIPPI
MICHIGAN : 11,000
CALIFORNIA
CONNECTICUT
WASHINGTON STATE:11,800
NEW YORK : 13,600
Massachusetts is about average taxwise, and quite competitive with places like Mississippi in terms of its cultural and educational resources. The weather, or course, sucks.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I can just see Nevada (home of that place called Las Vegas) calling itself the State of Affairs...
The State of Things to Come? That's just... lame.
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If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
Capital- is a place Capitol- is a building A pet peeve of mine. Indiana, PA (home of IUP) has a sign on 422 East saying, "Welcome to Indiana, Christmas Tree Capitol of the World" The sign on 422 West has it spelled correctly Sad times when the home of a major state university has kept a syntax error on their welcome signs for over 10 years now. And I think it's great .Mass does .Com, why not? I need to laugh more anyway.
Kinda like Moe, but just a little more Kool
Comment removed based on user account deletion
MIT. Harvard. Wouldn't have made more "sense" to go with a name like the .edu state?
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
This can mean either one of two things: ;)
.GOV place...?
1. Prostitution is being legalised there
or
2. Microsoft are moving development there
Seriously though, I think these states suddenly "discovering" the internet is not a good thing - they should be spending thier time and money on improving things for the people there.
Calling yourself anything internet related just looks silly, (unless your are "show me" Missouri who need a new slogan), and even then the Missouri Secretary of State's website calls itself "The information place"
How long will it be before DC calls itself the
I'm copywriting these before he does it again.
.massmailachusetts - cyber promotions.
.TandAssachusetts - porn domain.
.sundaymassachusetts - for catholics.
.ACHOOsetts - local clarin distributor.
.yahoochusetts - no explanation needed.
.sadomassachusetts - Local S&M forum.
.criticalmassachusetts - Nuclear Regalutory Board.
.gasachusetts - Amoco domain.
Ah, Noble and Proud Massachusetts, land of many names.
Laying some fat fiber along highway rightaways would be a fairly inexpensive thing to really improve net performance in a given state.
States could link up all the major population centers and also provide grants to carriers to increase coverage in the smaller towns if fiber isn't justified to that area. Local governments could issue bonds to chip in their part. If a small town wanted their own fiber connection to some major hub, there could be matching funds made available or something.
Doing this could really improve intrastate net performance and if the lines were located strategically, could link up with major arteries going out of the state to various high bandwidth destinations like Silicon Valley, Seattle, etc.
It's the kind of thing that is ideal for Government to consider as it requires huge capitalization up-front, but by selling line time to the carriers, at discounted commercial rates, it could be recouped over time. It might also increase the demand for new line construction so dramatically, that the companies that lay fiber could gain huge economies of scale and the price of new lines construction would go down.
Eventually, when the installation was paid for you could give the line time away to carriers based on their ability to provide high bandwidth out-of-state. The carriers who are investing a lot in laying lines now might react negatively at first, but really it's very complimentary to their services as they are generally laying the Extra-state lines that will be big connection points for these lines. Really, if states want to start providing information and services over the net, like they seem to be saying they do, they kind of have a responsibility to make sure their citizens in smaller towns are covered well too.
Having this is justified just for Schools and Universities alone, and would benefit Industry a great deal too. It also would allow Intrastate eCommerce a leg up over eCommerce from far away. I've always thought that regional eCommerce makes a lot of sense in that you can combine the benefits of eCommerce with more efficient distribution (warehouses closer to the customer). A lot of communities are concerned about eCommerce taking serious retail sales away from their local merchants.
Where would Interstate Highways and Hydro-electric power be if we had to wait for Industry to provide them?
Does that preceding dot mean that it's hidden?
Maybe they don't want anyone to find them (unless they know about the -a option :)
I think this story is a good enough reason to ask you folks to implement a new feature: statea-moderation. Could somebody please take some points away from Mass so they don't get past my hard limit of one?
I thought it couldn't get any worse than Sun's last ad campaign. I thought wrong.
*sigh* Is there no end to this kind of crap? I'm just of sick of clueless suits aimlessly tacking on buzzwords and other crap to generate interest. The worst part of the whole internet revolution is this whole buzzword trend thats come across. Seems like everyone's adding "Cyber-", "E-", "-Online", or "-.com" in a pathetic attempt to cash in off the web. The sad part is even the government has been induced into all of this mindless drivel, passing various "Cyber-" bills and what not, and now the state of Massachusetts is pulling this crap. I'm not questioning Massachusetts' status as a top technology state, but all this method of advertising it is pathetic. You're not going to win many people over with this, because nobody cares about how witty and clever your naming ability is. Concentrate on proving that Massachusetts is a real legitimate place to locate a technological business. In fact, I bet the majority of skilled engineers and programmers Mass is trying to recruit will probably be turned off by this blatent act of shallow self-promotion and head back to the Silicon Valley. And just another hint Massachusetts, you do have one of the top tech schools in the nation (MIT of course), why not focus on getting all those promising students to continue their work in MA instead of trying to flash around a punned logo.
Boston, BTW, is often referred to as the Hub: that too could be changed perhaps to something more modern. Yes, a switch might very well be just the thing.
Oh, and lookee here: slashdot has the word "dot" in it. What suit came up with that, and isn't it making you all sick? Maybe lame dot signatures would be a better name for this site judging from all of the rip-snorting good humor I see here. Of course, theah in New England, John Hancock will always be THE dot signature guy for being first to add his public, key, authenticating mark on the Declaration of Independence, giving us all a general public license to speak our minds.
Of course, they do pronounce open source as open sawce which sounds just like free beer to my ear.
For several decades, the word "Commonwealth" has referred to the 54 nation alliance of former british colonies, much like the word "America" refers to the US. Die hard Commonwealth countries like Canada and Australia still consider the Queen of England to be their leader (a dubious sense of judgement, but oh well).
The other commonwealth is the CIS - Commonwealth of Independent States, a horrible name chosen for the group of nations which were once part of the USSR. Not sure if the CIS still exists in theory, or if they even care.
And now comes Massachusetts, kinda late to the party of entities vying for the moniker "commonwealth", but then it has the advantage of a ghastly URL...
I'd say they're too late to form a name brand at this point, but then, they are too clueless to care.
Wooly Mammoth.
-- I'm not a freak show, I'm a mammal. --