Slashdot Mirror
Australian 'Net God' Refuses to Profit From IPO
Lansdowne writes "Robert Elz, a 'mildly eccentric' programmer in the CS department of Melbourne University and the administrator of the .au domain, refused to take part in last week's A$93 million IPO of Melbourne IT, the university's commercial arm. He has been quoted as saying that administrators should not financially benefit from registering domain names. Melbourne IT registers .com.au names as the Australian equivalent of NSI. Read the Sydney Morning Herald's story for the scoop. "
Yes. You could. .com, .net, and .org shared registry system and all the legal bullshit that goes along with it.
.au domains. Period.
And then you would have to put up with the
Read: NSI and it's 'competitors' have no say over
Umm... they aren't being 'sold to the public' for hundreds of millions, they are being sold *by the public* *to the public* for millions of dollars.
ie: The VA IPO was at $30 or so. That was the money VA made. All the rest, trading at $250 and such, was *NOT* seen by VA, and they had no part in it.
This guy has integrity. ESR does not.
Actually, if you have a good look at how modern financial transactions & economics works.... You would find that the money does *not* exist and is mostly fictitious.
One problem with the stock market, see.... let me throw an example.
1) Union workers have an investment plan through their union. (i'm being very generic here, not picking on any group in particular).
2) Big union investor types go out and find things to invest in
3) Big union types invest in other big companies with union workers.
4) Workers demand that their stocks get a good ROI.
5) Big investor types working for union put the pressure on other big copmany to make it's stock go up.
6) other company, of course, has union members in the same boat.
7) Company starts to 'downsize' and 'lay off' worker to 'increase' efficientcy.. in order to drive the stock price and profits UP.
So.. in the end, peoples greed for a 'better' return on investment caused them to get laid off in the first place.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
As far as I'm concerned, Robert Elz is a bum.
.org.au domain the next and then stands up and refuses to take his cut on "philosophical" grounds when the University gets greedy and floats the organisation that puts nice little names in text files.
A bum for the simple reason that the manner in which he delegated names (and the subsequent manner in which he's allowed Melbourne IT to operate) is a poor reflection on the very ideals he's exercised in not taking part in the share offer.
In particular, the fact that the "first in first served" ideal no longer exists is a clear sign of a corporate kissbutt at work. You need to comply with a poorly defined and often ignored policy when composing a domain name, one which rejects certain types of names to small companies based on their "generic word style" but allows things like news.com.au to the Rupert Murdoch organisation without so much as a complaint. It's the same organisation that now does a sanity check of all registration applications against trademark databases, lest the domain registrant try and register McDonalds.com.au ahead of the real company getting off their fat corporate asses and doing it themselves. Why can't the registrant make a statement to the effect that they indemnify MelbourneIT/INA at the time of registration and allow the thing to be open to anybody with any name at any time?
Mr Elz is little more than a selective hippocrite in my opinion, one that panders to corporate interests on one day, takes six months to re-delegate an
Unix god or not - he's a second rate bum...
Anonymous
If you lock most animals in the dark, so that they can't see the sun, they usually wake and sleep on a 28 hour cycle. It is hypothesized that this is because the organism still feels the gravitational pull of the moon (which is on a 28 hour cycle). It is obvious why computer geeks should tend naturally to gravitate toward the 28-hour cycle. :-)
The computer science department at Melbourne University was a very weird place in the late 80s when Robert Elz was getting it connected to the internet; strange people like him flourished. And rightly so - we all know the internet wouldn't exist if it wasn't for weirdos like him (and us?). But his rejection of the IPO really has to be seen in the context of the fact that he is just not that interested in worldy matters - I mean, he really does live on a 28 hour day - just think of the implications of that. He's a kind of ascetic - i just don't think that money means that much to him.
This guy is just stupid. Stupid is as stupid does.
Guys, from what I've seen of JWZ's work (okay, maybe it's not his fault, etc...), I give the guy exactly nil-10 coding cred. Netscape's browser, like Mosaic before it and Mozilla today, is a pile of buggy crap.
I don't know where he walked into the picture, but I've yet to see anything with his name on it that I would be sad to do without.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I've been thinking a lot over the last couple of years about the "Internet boom" in stock prices - wondering when it will end, etc.
I have a bit of a theory that Internet companies like Amazon.com (not talking about VA Linux) will become the norm in the next few years, and people will expect Price/Earnings ratios of a few hundred (or whatever Amazon's is) instead of the tens we see for non internet companies at the moment.
I think that the advantage of the Internet is that it allows very low margin businesses to survive by relying on a large volume of transactions. This leads to very low profits, but domination of the market, which is growing - and will be for quite a while when we take the global market into account.
Take Amazon.com (I have no idea if the figures are right, but follow the example & correct the figures, if you don't mind) - say they sell their books at 5% above cost. Now probably 4.8% of that goes on costs - leaving 0.2% profit. Now because they are so big, and sell so many books, that adds up to a reasonable amount.
While the barriers to entry are low on the Internet, there is now the whole "Amazon mindshare factor" which need to be combatted - with money. The only companies that really have enough money to take Amazon on are the already established companies (except in specilized areas).
Now, obviously, Amazon is overvalued in comparison to establised (non-book) companies. But should the value of the establised (non .com) comapanies go up, or should Amazons go down?
Well, the Internet does allow non - .com companies to cut costs in the same way as Amazon has. When they do this, they might have to cut profits - which reduces the P/E ratio. Now if the company is making very low profits, but is dominating the industry, perhaps it is a good long term bet - those profits allow it to stay ahead of the competition, which has to cut its own margins and profits to even try and compete.
If all companies, in all sectors of the market begin to drift towards this low profit, high volume model, perhaps we will see a correction in the compatitive value of each company and sector of the market.
I know this low-profit, high-margin idea isn't going to popular with those fans of the high-profit, small "one man" company thing, but I don't see it being a long term proposition, except in emerging sectors of the market.
I'd love to hear what someone who knew what they were talking about thought about this - although I guess no one really does.
a saying we used to hear :)
Boojum
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
The false perception that internetworking is something new is forcing companies to concentrate on 'position position position' instead of actually applying the tech to make a buck.
I'm sure I'm not alone, being stuck in a meeting with someone who doesn't understand the value of a network. Someone who, when describing the internet uses words like "exciting" and "new". (reminds me of the old loveboat theme:).
When you find yourself in a meeting with someone who has seen one to many .com advertisements and wants pie in the sky things out of your network, use these little tools to deflate there position and keep them grounded in reality and out of the hype high.
1) Bring several printouts of Hobbes' Internet Timeline to the meeting and let them take it home to read.
2) Use the term 'Internetworking' instead of internet to illustrate that this isn't anything new.
3) Point out this is an evolution of many high minded ideas and compromises that have evolved internetworking to where it is today.
4) Point out the many protocols that have run over IP, each proclaiming themselves to be the new new thing.
I have found these tools to be both educational and informative on many occasions, and it helps bring the discussion down to a real world level where real work can be done. So the next time you find yourself in a meeting with 'consultant-of-the-week'. I hope you find these tools useful.
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If he had half a brain, he would take his share and donate it to his favorite charities -- if he is so against making any money out of the deal.
Hehe. A "little" eccentric huh? Robert's a freak!
the last thing Mr. Greenspan is ever going to do is come out and say that one of the largest areas of the stock market is just so much vapor--because that would send everyone racing to sell their stock and ditch all tech investments, which would kill that sector of the economy.
You seem to be ignoring the fact that Mr. Greenspan has in fact done exactly this on more than one occasion. Remember the 'irrational exuberance' speech? Mr. Greenspan is a firm believer in correcting problems as soon as possible. If he felt that the internet 'bubble' was indeed a severe problem he would come out and say so in hopes of catching things before they turned into a bigger problem.
then give it away to your favorites causes
It strikes me again and again that some people seem to be "intelligent" but not "clever", whatever that may mean.
The whole money issue is part of reality, and will allways be, if we may believe economic theory; so I guess the only way to deal with it, is to confront it the way it is.
In the end, this kind of people tend to become beggars, and then what?
I just don't see it. I just don't understand the growth projections being as high as they are.
...
The people making these projections weren't born yesterday. It is well realized that growth follows an S curve. And it is NOT about company web sites that are merely store fronts. Or ordering books. It's about the fact that consumer use of the internet is now less than 1% every rational estimate of the final equilibrium state, and business use in MUCH LESS than 1%. And that is in the US. The internet is global, and the penetration in countries other than the US is far less. US internet companies are in a strong position to gain a disproportionate share of the value of the GLOBAL process.
Do you realize that in any manufacturing company in the US, G&A counts for something like 30% of the cost of production? And what is this G&A? It's accounting, accounts receivable, payroll, and innumerable other tasks where people STILL handle and pass pieces of paper around! It costs most companies between $50 to $100 to handle each and every purchase order and requisition. There is NO NEED for this.
Ditto the stuff you get in the mail every month. In the US something like 40% of the cost of your long distance phone service is the cost to send your bill, and process the check that you send back in the mail.
The internet has JUST STARTED making an impact, and it is already affecting the entire US economy.
The impact potential is in the HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS PER YEAR just in the US. World wide it is probably more than a trillion per year.
Companies like AT&T are not spending $2000 per house that their cable goes by just for internet shopping. It's about telephone + videophone + interactive video + all sorts of ecommerce + telecommuting + banking +
The projections are based on:
1. Existing growth rates.
2. Amount of capital being invested in infrastructure to feedd future growth.
3. Existing penetration into the world economy.
4. Potential economic efficiency improvements. .
5. The immense synergy that is finally available because nearly everyone is being connected. While internetworking isn't new, the universality connectivity is very new. I am sure the you know as well as I do that the potential value of a network is of order N^N.
I think VALinux is Proof that the tech sector is overvalued by people not close to the tech
I am sure that there are any number of stocks that are overvalued. VALinux is probably one of them - along with RedHat and Corel AOL and Amazon. However many of these, like VALinux are not internet stocks.
The point that I am making is that there are a lot of very careful thinkers who believe that the internet sector AS A WHOLE is NOT overvalued. It is not a matter of engineering; I personally think engineers are not in a position to judge the economic impact of what is happening. They are looking at the implementation, not the social and economic impact of the implementation.
But, now that's he's been mentioned on Slashdot, it might be appropriate to blow his trumpet a little bit. He did a whole lot of interesting things for Unix during the 70's, including the first disk quota implementation, and was apparently very important in the early years of AUUG (the Australian UNIX Users Group).
Australia, including Elz, played an important part in the development of the Unix culture. There's a book called Twenty-Five Years of UNIX which discusses some of this.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
People may abuse NSI for stuff ups in Domain Name Allocation but we Australians have a person to abuse. Robert Elz has in the past made up Domain Name rules whenever he felt like it and enforced them whenever he felt like it. Example a company called Reveal Software applied for the domain reveal.com.au. They were told they could not have it because the domain reveal.com was already taken. And nowhere on the site did it have this rule explained. He also had the rule that you could not register common words, but has allowed gold.com.au and news.com.au (Rupert Murdoch owns that one). Maybe he's upset that now it's a corporation he can dictate naming policies the way he wants to.
Dunno, I think if that I was offered legal money that I considered dirty for my own reasons, I'd take it and make a point of donating it all to worthwhile causes. Sticking with your principles and doing nothing is fine, but leeching off the evil bastards to make the world a better place is even better.
Yes I think that's the way to go! Never let the evil win!
> It is a mathematical law that the connectivity
> of a network is in fact O(N^N). These
> connections are the generators of value on
> the net.
The number of connections in a network is O(N^2). To be precise, there are N(N-1)/2 connections among N nodes. This is not even close to N^N (for 100 nodes there are 4950 connections, N^N would predict 10^200 connections)
You forgot:
1(a). In the US at least, they don't have to pay taxes. That's right! Just like a church, except they get to participate in business ventures, some of which are *very* lucrative, up the wazoo.
spawn_of_yog_sothoth
spawn_of_yog_sothoth
I know of a number of cases where this person's rudeness and lack of professionalism when dealing with commercial domain name registrations has caused material damage to ISPs, generally through loss of business. I have personally experienced the hypocracy of Melbourne IT and Elz, and so have many of my colleagues.
Elz probably has his reasons for not participating in a share offering (perhaps he wasn't invited!) but he is definitely no God.
"...they invested there life savings in a Pentium II on a fractional T1 in the university janitors closet."
:P
:D This is so close to the truth it's scarey. I've seen where my local POP for compuserve is here. It's in this pretty run down trashy building down in this gross basement that's so dirty... well, nuff said. yick...
"I can be self-referential if I want to," said Tom, swiftly.
I think that was in the Ethics, actually... could also be wrong.
Can I have his share? :)
Well, I dunno about that. What is so wrong with making money? I know I don't work because I really just love it.. I work to make the greenbacks to pay my bills. If I were to end up with even $1 million I would be set for years and years to come. I could live just fine off of the interest of $1 million tax free. :-) Then I could go do what I wanted. In fact, I think the government should give everyone in the country $1 million so we don't have to work anymore and can live off investments or interest.
2 highly principled people (within weeks), with the will power to actually stick to their principles when HUGE wads of cash are dangled in front of their noses. My belief in humanity is slowly coming back
-- .sig files go when they die?
Child: Mommy, where do
Mother: HELL! Straight to hell!
I've never been the same since.
Just like driving a car:
(D) to go forward
(R) to go backward
Anyway, this guy's goal should be to have the profits put back into the university to improve learning. New computer labs, new courses, more faculty, smaller classes. It's okay for profit money from the community to flow into the university just make sure it goes right back into the community to help everyone.
Now I can see that it's not just the USA stock market that laughably overvalues it's internet stocks, in fact, the entire world overvalues anything that has to do with the practice of internetworking computers (a 30+ year old technology).
The internet bubble will adjust it's valuation (read:crash) and people will wake up to find they invested there life savings in a Pentium II on a fractional T1 in the university janitors closet.
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it all comes down to making your politics personal... if you espouse something, personalize it, live it, make others understand that you truly believe it
i have nothing but respect for RMS for his stand... he drew a line in the sand and he's sticking to it!
What bothers me about this whole thing is that a lot of people, RMS included, are acting really high-and-mighty and ripping on people like ESR who made money in the last few weeks. Now, personally I think ESR's post-wealthy statement here was completely unneccesary and more than a little bit on the arrogant side, but it's still nobody elses business how you conduct your finances.
We all know that ESR made a bunch of money with VA, and I think that's really what counts. If we see him wearing "VA Linux Rulz U" shirts on the circuit from now on, we'll know why. The act of making money shouldn't put someone's credibility into question, it should be a question of if they sell out afterwards. Look at JWZ -- he must have made some money from Netscape; if I were unemployed this long, I'd be searching through garbage cans for tomorrow's meal. Despite this, he has still been wonderfully critical of the hand that feeds him.
That said, remember: Being a one of the three-initial gang never included a vow of poverty. If any of them want to take advantage of the opportunity to live comfortably for the rest of their lives, that's their business. We shouldn't sweat it; if it ends up effecting the way they act or if they start doing something stupid (mindless disto-specific boosting in public, etc), the same community which lends them credibility can take it away.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
One thing to note, with the currency rates, $125 AUD==$80.31 USD.
.com, .net, or .org address for cheaper, and without having to type in three little extra characters.
The article claimed that they had set up "a commercial margin, but a very small one". Now, who exactly do they go through? With our competitive brokers in the US, Joker.com costs $37 for two years, while OpenSRS claims to cheapen even that by a little.
Just seems to me, that maybe they're overpaying. Heck, you could just as easily get a
I'd say what he did was right. Principles are worth more than money. =P
"Failure comes only when we forget our ideals and objectives and principles." -- Jawaharal Nehru
I remember back when being a member of the TLA crowd just required a vow of lunacy. With all the mainstream attention and respect these people are getting, now, that committment to insanity seems to have been severely undermined.
At least we know we won't be seeing RMS promoting electric shavers any time soon, eh?.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Robert Elz has walked away from a fortune, wanting no part of the second-biggest Internet float after Kerry Packer's ecorp.
Wow, what a schmuck!
Sorry, it had to be said.
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
And who said that talent and hard work don't go together ?
[1] historical reference (it might have been plato) about a greek philosopher who was challenged by local merchants that he did nothing with his life and could never make money. He proved them wrong by carefully analyzing the market and then buying out olive production in the area. Next spring olives were in short supply due to a dry spring and he made a killing. Feel free to correct me here, I'm sure I've made some minor factual errors (I didn't spend as much time awake in philosophy class as I wanted to).
... take a look at this article. This highlights the contrast between the traditional bread earners and the so called new IT revolution. One needs to question what is wealth creation or even the definition of profit. The capitalisation of a company is nothing more than the expected discounted income stream plus expected growth. Hence if a company is valued at say $1 billion, shareholders expect a company to earn at least that much in profits (or revenues in the case of .com fluff) over a period when it is deemed to have a competitive edge. For some strange reason the assumption is that share price is roughly analogous to dominance in market share (ie the number of customers you "own") which seems a little presumptious considering that with the reduction in transaction costs, there may be multiple paths/sources to obtaining the same good or service. Thus as soon as a new competitor arrives, the share price drops to indicate a dilution of the market. Why would an IT cartel have such a high "value" compared to a farm which produces so called essentials. Basically it relates to the laws of supply and demand and people mistaking a trajectory which they assume continues forever. Domain name registrations will slow down once every business and person has an account (or we run out of recognisable letters). Once the marginal costs reduce down to the actual operating costs of renewing a site, then you will see some serious cash-flow hiccups along with brutal competition to keep others from poaching your customers. and then maybe it might be smart switching your vaporcash into a real farm. IT companies only have growth potential so long as their products result in improved productivity and capabilities. Once the stress and pain becomes too much (as in the case of a not-so-popular OS) then people start resisting. The real competition to software is not other players but your historical software and customer habits. People tend to underestimate the risk premiums in share prices and until a crash or two happens to kill off the ignorant, rationality won't return to the share-market. Also, it would help if politicans kept their meddling hands out of the pot.
LL
I didn't see anyone saying this before I did; in fact someone said it again after me further down the line (his is #35, mine is #23), and then #41. I didn't see this suggestion in any posts before, so what made what I said "redundant"?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Last thing first, like Mores law, Metcafs law (N^N) is a self serving observation of a trend, not a scientific fact. This trend is directly related to how open the network is, and is based on a trust model. As more companies are added, look for companies/governments to set barriers to connectivity (Read:AOLs IM, .AUs oppressive laws, proprietary broadband boxen..ect.)
US internet companies are in a strong position to gain a disproportionate share of the value of the GLOBAL process.
I'm sure many over the border users will attest to the fact that there isn't much global about the internet today. A(merican)SCII text being pushed from domain to domain registered by NSI.
If our good friend Mr. Berners Lee had chosen to name his approach to hypertext "European Wide Web" (EWW just doesn't have the same ring to it:) ) would you be toughing the eventual penetration in the EU community instead of extrapolating projections globally?
I would put forth that the reason the global penetration is so low is because there's nothing world wide about the world wide web. It's very American, and it's growth should be extrapolated as such.
It costs most companies between $50 to $100 to handle each and every purchase order and requisition. There is NO NEED for this
I can assure you there is a need for this. ISO 900* certification is just one example of the many G&A tasks that can benefit from automation, but never be replaced by it. The question still on my mind is how much of the ~30% G&A cost is expected to be resolved be increasing connectivity? 2%? 5%? maybe 8%? connectivity and convergence is a communications evolution, *not* to be confused with revolution. We have been in the midst of the evolution for over 30 years, and it will continue to evolve. Some examples:1)wearable computers =your beeper
2) Instant global communication =Iridium
3) Computing extending human capabilities =Palm Pilot
4) Wireless Computing extending human capabilities =Palm 7
Again, note the emphasis on evolution, not revolution.
All of these solutions were achieved because the capitol and technology just happened to be around at the time. Where would the Palm7 be without a well distributed PCS network? Where would PCS be with out a well distributed Cellular network . . Again, note the emphasis on evolution, not revolution.
So to sum up the act of internetworking is in the midst of a 30 year evolution and will continue on that path. Just because 95% of people are just waking up to that fact does not mean we should loose our heads with over speculative projections. I thank you for your time and attention and welcome any comments.
Oh!. and one more thing: Companies like AT&T are not spending $2000 per house that their cable goes by just for internet shopping. It's abouttelephone + videophone + interactive video + all sorts of ecommerce + telecommuting + banking + ...
Take the $2000 and extrapolate that over the life of the twisted pair phone network in the USA and it's a trivial investment. Fact is, this is the first time AT&T has actually has been asked to increase bandwidth to the end users (something that shouldn't be shocking and amazing), So this particular out-pouring of capitol should be spread over the life of the network they are upgrading.
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.com.au domains are actually verified. You can't just register any old name in .com.au - the domain has to have a reasonable relationship with a company or business name. The .com.au registry actually verifies this - they will check that the company or business name exists and that the person is authorised to register things for it. Aside from taking time, they actually have to pay fees to check the databases that contain this information. This means, among other things, you can't do domain speculation in .com.au
Yes, a 2 second search in a database, man thats $90 worth of man hours....
Its a small margin because.... $600k salaries to fat cats... and others...
What do you expect from HUGE costs...
Its like any university, if its given $10 million budget, it will spend every penny. if its given $200 million, it will spend it all, they never run on large margins.
I'm currently worth several million on paper, and I plan to use that so I *can* do the interesting things. You only need a few million to do that. The people who get a few million then get obsessed with turning around and converting it into a few hundred million or a few billion have missed the point entirely.
Also, his sense of humour is definately acquired - reas his "humorous" RFCs if you want an example :-).
Your quote of the 1st. point he made, I agree with completely " The internet is having a measurable and strong effect on improving economic efficiency and worker productivity in the US". Email instead of faxes, the publish/subscribe information model, and the low barrier to entry result in measurable increases in productivity. However, these advances in the business model are only advances while a difference between companies exists. It's the last point, the low barrier to entry, that will render this market influence ineffective. Even the most casual enterprise (read:the late 90's .com rush) will dilute the .com brand name, and the marketing buzz that goes with it.
On the 2nd point: "It is quite clear that the internet is in its very early stages..." is exactly the kind dangerous thinking that leads to overvaluation. Pump it out on TCP/IP and buy a little advertising time for your domain and you're at the forefront of a new economy? I just don't see it. I just don't understand the growth projections being as high as they are. maybe I'm to close to the tech to see the big picture, but I just don't understand the value of a companies IT department taking the company BBS and slapping a HTML front end on it accounts for "having an inevitable impact in the shape of the economy for many years to come."
The 3rd point: "... and may in fact be undervalued." are based on future projections of internetworking penetration and usage. It's an interesting observation, and may well be true, but there's that old market warning "past performance is not indicative of future performance" that could be aply applied in this case.
I think VALinux is Proof that the tech sector is overvalued by people not close to the tech, overvalued by people not even vaguely familiar with the companies ability to make a return on there investment. It's like betting on a horse based on his position in the starting block. The false perception that internetworking is something new is forcing companies to concentrate on 'position position position' instead of actually applying the tech to make a buck.
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Instead of refusing to take part in a IPO, why not take it and donate a hefty amount of money to some cause you feel is worthwhile?
The immoral powers that be rarely give the good people any chance to inflict change. Refusing their bounty is one way to send a message, but the most effective way to fight is to take from them (especially when they foolishly offer it to you) and give to the 'good guys'.
Just an idea..
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Has anyone noticed the stark parrallels between todays stock market conditions and those of just pre-great depression conditions? Stocks that are not actually making any money and usually are losing it are being offered to the public and being sold for hundreds of millions of dollars... It's pretty common knowledge, in the geek circles I move through at least, that pretty soon somebody is going to realize that none of these companies are making money, and pretty soon everybody is going to realize it, and then what happens? The soaring stock market begins to drop, like an investor out a window. Also, just before the big crash back then, all the analysts were saying things like 'This is the most prosperous time in America ever! By the looks of things, this upswing will never end!'. But it did. And I think it's going to again. So in a round about way, it's probably just as well that Elz didn't take the money, it'll probably be worthless in 3 or 4 months anyway.
I know this is off-topic but the article said something about him living on a 28 rather 24 hour cycle. Could someone point me to some info on what that is about?
Speak truth to power.
You're kidding, right? I've always figured MelbourneIT are already making a fortune. I work at a pretty average-sized ISP, and we could be registering three or four .com.au's a day.
.au namespace, making MelbourneIT an even more attractive proposition.
Multiply that by the number of ISPs in Australia, and you start seeing just how much money MelbourneIT could be making on new registrations alone, not even counting existing registrations.
And it's not like domain names have a huge overhead. You can do 95% of the processing automatically, and running the root nameserver for the TLD would cost many orders of magnitude less than the per-domain fee.
Meanwhile, there are no plans for any competition in the
The more I learn about the Internet, the more amazed I am that it works at all.
Piet Beertema never asked for compensation either. The registration he set up in Holland was seen as an example in several other European countries.
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Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
I forgot to mention that he got knighted, since that's what the article (in Dutch) I refered to was all about.
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Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
7) Company starts to 'downsize' and 'lay off' worker to 'increase' efficientcy.. in order to drive the stock price and profits UP. So.. in the end, peoples greed for a 'better' return on investment caused them to get laid off in the first place.
The flaw in your reasoning is that any company that does not operate efficiently gets run out of business by those that do, resulting in no profits, no employees and zero stock value for the investors.
Companies cannot be charities or welfare agencies.
While Moore's law is an empirical observation, Metcalf's law is not. It is a mathematical law that the connectivity of a network is in fact O(N^N). These connections are the generators of value on the net.
Now perhaps someone will try to restrict access for political reasons. The Chinese certainly already have. But the Chinese are having to back away from their access restrictions because the economic consequences of these restrictions are so severe. There is an empirical law about the internet routing itself around such restrictions which I think will in the long run hold true.
One person here commented on using the Hobbes timeline. I found it very interesting that none of the curves shown there had inflection points (second derivatives = 0); that is growth of the internet is still accelerating.
Take the $2000 and extrapolate that over the life of the twisted pair phone network in the USA and it's a trivial investment.
Corporate capital investments are not made this way. AT&T could put this money in the bank and get 8% or so. It is having to borrow a considerable amount of capital to make some of these acquisitions at 8%. In order for this to be profitable an/or be worth the risk of the investment, AT&T is going to have to make a profit in the range of 10-12% at least on this $2000 investment.
As far as the global nature of the internet goes, right now North Americans are SLIGHTLY more than 1/2 of the people on the internet. Projections are that this will reverse next year, and eventually the proportion of Americans on the internet will parallel the proportion of the world economic activity - about 22%.
A lot of people talk about the internet as a 30 year old phenomena. But the fact of the matter is that for most of this time the internet was a defense project accessable only to research scientists at well funded universities. The internet as a world-wide web accessable to anyone with the scratch to pay for an ISP has only been around for about 5 years.
People talk about internet time. And overvalued stocks. And draw parallels to the roaring 20's. Well, I do not think this is a good parallel.
There are other times in American history where the stock market grew at a rapid pace. Without a following bust. In the very early part of the 20th century there was a boom in the stock market occasioned by another technological invention. The automobile. There were some 300 automobile manufacturers in the US, and many had crazy stock valuations. Most failed. But those that succeeded made some people very rich.... And then there was the 50's and 60's. All the technologies that had been held back by World War II came onto the market. Companies that took advantage of technologies like television again made some people very wealthy indeed. Ther other examples - railroads is one that comes to mind immediately.
FUCK ALL HUMOR-CHALLENGED MODERATORS.
Now *that's* offtopic.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Did anyone else (particularly Aussies) think that we could have cost price domain names by simply forming an association and registering domains for free (not including Internic fees or whatever).
Judging by Elz's attitude that the net should be free, would it seem feasible that he would allow a second organisation to register names? I know there was the whole .au.com fiasco, but that was another commercial venture. Imagine the share prices for Melb. IT plummet if it was allowed.
is this idea feasible?
if the week before's articles are still available there was a nice story on John Lions you might wanna check out.
I will assimilate you -- see my announcement at www.bestbuy.com -- I'm taking over everything, and no one can stop me! Bwaahahahahahah!
I will make ALL the money, and register ALL the software, hardware, and bandwidth!
No one will will ever need more than 128 kb/s! If you ask me about that claim in two years, I'll say I meant "Bytes", not "Bits"!
If you ask me in five years, I'll say I meant I meant "Kilo-Bills", an incredibly large (and innovative) number that scales in such a manner that I can never be proven to underestimate the computing needs of the global populace again!
----------------------------
Bill "King of BestBuy" Gates
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
According to the article, he is still the main administrator for .au, and Melbourne IT only has a 5 year license. In 2001, it expires, and it would serve them right for him to grant the contract to someone else, since they have since disobeyed his explicit wishes and raised prices on these domain names. Or at least renegotiate the contract so they have to follow his wishes about pricing.
I find it ironic that Gerrand "thinks Elz should be honoured" for his position, but won't honor Elz with his own actions. What an ass.
Communication is only possible between equals
Look, the money is out there. It exists, and it won't go away.
The question is, who gets to be the custodian of that money?
If you think, if you feel, if you have any ideas in your head, if there's anything you believe in... having money and using it purposefully can bring the world just a little bit closer to the way you'd like it to be.
All the more so if you're an outspoken public figure... how can you solicit donations for a cause, and then walk away from the opportunity to make a giant donation yourself?