Category Archives: Internet

I own a very small number of .com domain names, one of which is a very nice memorable English word with no particularly commercial overtones. I use it for a bunch of private servers that handle my news feeds and some other web-based stuff I've set up to make my life easier, all stuff that moving wouldn't be that hard. There is a web page there, but it is just a silly image acting as a placeholder.

Every so often someone offers to buy it. I am amenable, but no one has ever offered serious money — the offers usually top out at the very low four figures — so I have held on to it.

Today I got the most ridiculously low offer yet:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am contacting you on behalf of a small web development firm with which I work.

We have just recently instigated a development plan whereby we are slowly but surely building a large network of simple, information based websites. The intention is to create a Wikipedia style encyclopaedia of information. The difference is however that rather than be located on one central domain, we intend to develop these sites on individual, keyword rich domains. Our aim is to create a network such that if you want information on 'Childrens Birthdays' for example, then you can simply type in childrensbirthdays.com and find all the information you need. At the moment search engines like Google provide an unnecessary middle man. We aim to make finding what you want even simpler than it already is!

We are contacting you with regards to the domain name [NiceWord].com. Having completed a check of the whois database we obtained your details as being the owner/administrator of said domain name. We are interested in purchasing this domain name from you as it is an ideal domain name for our development.

We would be prepared to offer you 50 USD for your domain name. If this is acceptable, please do let us know and we will provide information on how we may proceed. We do not consider ourselves naive or unknowledgeable, and appreciate that some domains are being used for other things than websites: email for example, and again we appreciate that you may simply not want to sell your domain. If this is the case we ask that you let us know such that we can pursue alternative domains.

Independent of your decision, I thank you for your time and wish you all the best. Thanks

Jennifer

I don't know if they are just fishing, hoping to find a deal, if the recession is much worse than I thought, if this a lo-ball opening bid, or what, but the initial offer was so low it almost makes me mad.

On reflection, the “Dear Sir/Madam” bit, given they claimed they looked me up on whois and the nice word isn't in fact all that suitable for a search engine — more the reverse — makes me suspect a form-letter-based attempt to grab (at absurdly low prices) single word domains that don't appear from the outside to be in use for much.

So my reply suggesting their offer is risible probably will not produce anything.

I'm usually not a fan of PR attempts to scare kids about the Internet, as I think the dangers are usually over-hyped. But this think before you post PSA from cybertipline.com seems to me to get the pitch (in both senses of the word) just about right:

Spotted via Smashed Frog

Thanks to Dan Burk, Greg Rutter's Definitive List of The 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced On The Internet Unless You're a Loser or Old or Something.

I'm guessing from the titles that I've seen maybe a quarter of them. I guess I'm something, huh?

Slashdot, False Fact On Wikipedia Proves Itself:

Germany has a new minister of economic affairs. Mr. von und zu Guttenberg is descended from an old and noble lineage, so his official name is very long: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. When first there were rumors that he would be appointed to the post, someone changed his Wikipedia entry and added the name 'Wilhelm,' so Wikipedia stated his full name as: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wilhelm Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. What resulted from this edit points up a big problem for our information society (in German; Google translation). The German and international press picked up the wrong name from Wikipedia — including well-known newspapers, Internet sites, and TV news such as spiegel.de, Bild, heute.de, TAZ, or Süddeutsche Zeitung. In the meantime, the change on Wikipedia was reverted, with a request for proof of the name. The proof was quickly found. On spiegel.de an article cites Mr. von und zu Guttenberg using his 'full name'; however, while the quote might have been real, the full name seems to have been looked up on Wikipedia while the false edit was in place. So the circle was closed: Wikipedia states a false fact, a reputable media outlet copies the false fact, and this outlet is then used as the source to prove the false fact to Wikipedia.

Not a reliable source. Of course, a similar thing happens on Fox 'news' all the time, cf. Echo chamber: Bloomberg “commentary” health IT falsehood goes from Limbaugh to WSJ's Moore and Fox, back to Limbaugh, but that's not a reliable source either.

Fox is united by a top-down intent; Wikipedia is plastic and subject to hijack by almost anyone… So Fox is consciously malign, Wikipedia (small-“d”) democratically inept?

Via Joho the Blog » Wikileaks posts what our Congresspeople knew and when they knew it, a pointer to Wikileaks, Change you can download: a billion in secret Congressional reports.

By “billion” they mean what they claim is “nearly a billion dollars worth of quasi-secret reports commissioned by the United States Congress.”

The 6,780 reports, current as of this month, comprise over 127,000 pages of material on some of the most contentious issues in the nation, from the U.S. relationship with Israel to the financial collapse. Nearly 2,300 of the reports were updated in the last 12 months, while the oldest report goes back to 1990. The release represents the total output of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) electronically available to Congressional offices. The CRS is Congress's analytical agency and has a budget in excess of $100M per year.

…

Although all CRS reports are legally in the public domain, they are quasi-secret because the CRS, as a matter of policy, makes the reports available only to members of Congress, Congressional committees and select sister agencies such as the GAO.

Members of Congress are free to selectively release CRS reports to the public but are only motivated to do so when they feel the results would assist them politically. Universally embarrassing reports are kept quiet.

Regardless of the dollar figure, these are valuable reports to have accessible.

• Alphabetical list of leaked CRS reports.
• Chronological list of leaked CRS reports.