Category Archives: Blotter

The reselling of domain names has become big business, akin to real estate in New York City for the wacky prices paid for seemingly benign addresses. While it’s not surprising that domain names including sex.com ($14 million), business.com ($7.5 million), icloud.com ($4.5 million) and beer.com ($7 million) have sold for premiums, 2013 has already been a banner year for domain name resells including mojo.com ($300,000) and partners.com ($125,000) to name a few of the better ones, or ulive.com ($75,000) or struts.com ($70,000) to name two head-scratching ones.

But don’t be discouraged that you’ve already missed the boat and are priced out of your perfect domain name (get a free appraisal in seconds at valuate.com and estibot.com). New businesses are proving they can make millions for their business by acquiring an unregistered, completely unique one for less than $10. Creative domain generators like dombuddy.com will help you find unregistered domain names so you can avoid paying ridiculous reseller prices. Also, this can be a fun process with the victory of a great domain name at the end of the hunt. Here’s a simple anagram to remember how to get your next D-O-M-A-I-N:

• D – Don’t pay more than $10 to register your domain name, and don’t pay more than $200/year to host your website, including email. Godaddy and other registrars will try to add-on the kitchen sink when you go to buy your domain name. Don’t fall for it.
• O – Owning multiple domain names is a waste of money. Buy a good domain name and you won’t need additional ones.
• M – Make it either as short as possible, or make it as catchy as possible. It doesn’t matter if it’s long when it’s catchy and memorable. StopTheCar.com is a better domain name than csan.com. Don’t use special characters hyphens, numbers or double letters (i.e., playyard.com). Don’t use “the” or “my” articles as a way to substitute an already registered name.
• A – Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act discourages using domain names similar to existing trademarks. But it is largely unenforceable except for bigger companies with lawyers to fight the squatters.  Therefore, don’t get clever with riding on the coattails of bigger company naming; and do expect squatters to register names similar to yours as a matter of their basic business models.
• I – Impress your audience with poetry, alliteration and the use of cliches in your domain name. Rhyming is a great way to do it, so start with the subject of your business (e.g., beach vacations): BeachPeach.com, BeachFeet.com, CompleteBeach.com, OffBeatBeach.com, etc.
• N – Nasty domain names are memorable domain names, but be sure you’re prepared for the consequences: Who Represents – www.whorepresents.com; Experts Exchange – www.expertsexchange.com; Pen Island – www.penisland.net; Therapist Finder – www.therapistfinder.com; Power Generator – www.powergenitalia.com; Mole Station Native Nursery – www.molestationnursery.com; IP computer software – www.ipanywhere.com; The First Cumming Methodist Church – www.cummingfirst.com; Speed of Art – www.speedofart.com

A well regulated Internet, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear smart glasses, shall not be infringed.
(Sign the Pass the Glass Amendment Petition)

This amendment is being proposed in response to the persecution of our rights as individuals to bear mobile devices. The anti-Google Glass movement Stop The Cyborgs was founded in response and has already published a list of demands including that Google never allow face recognition apps and that the company creates a do not track system. West Virginia state representative Gary Howell, a Republican, has proposed a law to outlaw the devices for drivers in his state: “I would like to invite Google to provide a demonstration,” said Howell. Google has also been warned by Las Vegas casinos and a Seattle bar that their product is banned at their establishments. “We will not allow people to wear Glass while gambling or attending our shows,” warned one spokesman for Caesars Entertainment.

Inspiring the recent hardware witch hunt, of course, is the commercial introduction of Google Glass, evolutionary mobile technology showcased in their new video demonstrating the multitude of  ways our life will be improved by its convenient wearability and interface.

The Argument Against Glass
While the United States constitution protects access to Internet tools, many are debating what happens when technology is used irresponsibly. The Boston bombing suspects used their laptops to access bomb-making information that aided them in  acts of terror. Some say it’s time to put a stop to Internet threats compromising our national security. European Union leadership has long advocated for blocking Internet searches using dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism. In January, a Paris court ordered Twitter to identify and hold accountable  users posting “hateful” tweets.

Constitutional Right to Bear Arms
There is an obvious parallel between the right to bear mobile devices (e.g., Google Glass) and the right to bear arms (e.g., 38 Special). Gallup polls indicate that while the gun debate simmers, a majority of Americans still support private gun ownership. They also believe the country has an active role in regulating how technology is deployed. Few of us would contend, for instance, that bazookas should fall under the Second Amendment protection laws for private ownership. Likewise, there are no viable movements to ban hunting with guns.

Philosophy Behind the Amendment
Alex Roland is a professor of history at Duke University known for speaking out about the need for society to accept responsibility for how technology shapes warfare. He reminds students that the accelerated pace of technological change in the modern world, however, has little to do with harmful conditions in the world. War is timeless and universal, he says, so there is no imperative for new technology to be used for ill means, by either government agencies or individuals. Roland believes that we, as responsible citizens, have it within our powers to shape technology into mechanisms for good.

An Amendment to Bear Mobile Devices
With these points in mind, we propose the amendment to the United States Constitution, necessary for the purpose of protecting our right to bear mobile computers. We’re sure congress will be forced to take up the issue and eventually ratify a version of our new amendment as it becomes increasingly obvious that our mobile computer devices have the ability to radically improve the way we live our lives.  We anticipate both Democrats and Republicans will rally behind our rights to own and operate mobile devices.

How critics see Google Glass (high res)

There are two reasons we stopped short of calling The Syrian Electronic Army actions organized “terrorist” acts:

• The acts were propogandic, not violent.
• Legitimizing the incident would admit our modern economy’s vulnerability to a new type of warfare we are ill-prepared to fight.

The April 23rd Twitter hack blamed on the pro-Assad Syrian group did nearly as much to destabilize the U.S. economic system as did the Boston Bombers (i.e., the DOW Jones Industrial Average gave up 150 points after the Twitter hack and 180 points after the Boston Bombing). Here’s what caused the chaos following the hijacking of the AP News twitter account last Tuesday:

“Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.”
@AP

In the days following, traditional media outlets considered the incident “below the fold” news despite the $136 billion market collapse. This, following an earlier attack on Saturday by the same group aiming to subvert United States government policy:

“The US government is sponsoring a coup in Venezuela and a terrorist war in Syria.”
@60 Minutes

The CBS News television magazine “60 Minutes” was victim to assorted phony tweets impacting their 320,000 followers on April 20th resulting in a lot of embarrassment. But the U.S. economy should be thankful that the Syrian group’s less-than-strategic execution on the CBS News hack was immediately perceived as phony; more alarming is that they learnt their lesson from that attack and were both emboldened and more strategic and convincing than before when they chose their next target and composition. The AP attack was brutally successful, albeit short lived.

Alert readers wonder why popular news purveyors aren’t more disturbed by the foreshadowing of cyber attacks to come. The soft headlines in the two days following the AP hack had no mention of “terrorists” or “army”, and seemed almost casual in putting the burden on the private sector. Here’s a sampling from April 23rd:

• AP hack proves Twitter has a serious cybersecurity problem (CNN)
• Hackers Compromise AP Twitter Account (TIME)
• False White House Scare Thanks To Hacked AP Twitter Account Feed (FORBES)
• In Hacking, AP Twitter Feed Sends False Report of Explosions (New York Times)

Terrorism is an ill-defined word that is generally agreed to mean “a systematic means of coercion” practiced by “a broad array of political organizations.” Now we have the term “cyber-terrorism” making its rounds. And while most of our popular media will continue to avoid using “terrorism” to describe cyber attacks, a simple web search demonstrates that nearly 13 million bloggers believe the time is now to be concerned and talking about terrorism’s impact on the road ahead.