We had the great eircom share sell off not so long ago. What I remember most was the incessant propaganda from every angle all but telling us how stupid we would be if we didn’t buy. Leinster House told us how we would become stakeholders in the state’s greatest corporation. (Well they wanted to offload the company, didn’t they). The banks offered tailored loans. (Well they wanted the interest, didn’t they). The outcome: Thousands lost a fortune.
Then we had the Ryder Cup. Home owners clambered to put their houses up for rent on the Internet. Hundreds of websites on which to advertise your property sprung up over night lunch. (Site creators made a killing on fees, didn’t they). The outcome: One single house that I know of was rented.
We Irish seem to fall for the hype and propaganda all too readily. Or maybe there’s something in our psyche that activates the panic buying gene - a throwback to famine times. Oh look! There’s a spud. Grab it now, you don’t know where the next one will come from.
The latest round is personal .IE domain names. If I get one more email from a two-bit reseller telling me time is running out to pre-register my personal .IE name I’m going to personally (see, I’m keeping it personal) visit the sender’s premises late at night and pour a bucket of giraffe pee* onto the CEO’s new office carpet. I was going to pour scorn, but I think pouring pee would be more satisfying.
Look lads! Leave me alone! I’m a big ape now. I can make up my own mind whether I want a .IE domain. And stop trying to hoodwink me with your special offers. I know how much a .IE should cost. Don’t try make me think I actually have to have a website associated with this address. Don’t try make it sound like a once off payment secures the name for life. Lads, lads, lads! I buy these services all the time. I know this stuff. That’s what I do for a living. Well, that and importing giraffe pee.*
Don’t give me this crap about protecting my name on the Internet and preserving it for children or grandchildren. Think about it - Paddy Mangan in Ballagh gets paddymangan.ie. Will Paddy Mangan in Fethard give a bollix? Will any of the 7,348 Paddy Mangans around the country give a bollix? I doubt there will be many offerings of bollix. And anyway, Paddy Mangan in Ballagh’s grandchild is Sophie so paddymangan.ie won’t be worth squat to her. And your man in Fethard hasn’t a clue about the Internet - he thinks it’s somewhere in America.
But most of all, lads, don’t tell me I can be pre-registered. That’s just baloney Clonakilty black pudding. The IEDR will not be accepting a single application for a personal domain name until October 31. You guys are merely compiling a list and will squirt it at the IEDR on that date. Every reseller in the country will be doing the same - at 1millisecond past 0800 GMT. Mr. Mangan in Ballagh may have preregistered with domains4u 3 weeks ago, but may lose out to his namesake in Fethard who only signed up with domains4me today if the latter’s queue is processed first.
Will the IEDR servers cope? Will it cause the equivalent of a DOS attack? Will the whole system collapse? This remains to be seen. I would hope the IEDR are working closely with the resellers to gauge the load.
Who is being honest about this? Well a few are. I have to say fair play to the folks over at Blacknight - We cannot offer ANY guarantees (neither can anyone else). And to Hosting365 - We cannot make any guarantee that your name will be accepted, but are offering a full refund (or you can choose another name) if it fails. There are others but some are fudging it - By pre-registering now, you will have the best chance of securing your chosen domain name. … The rules of application are defined by the Irish Domain Registry and their decision in relation to an application is final. No mention of queues or what the rules/procedures are exactly.
Oh look. Another email. From ezdomains. Now where did I leave that bucket?
*I got 40litres on the Internet from Universal Urine Suppliers and another 2kg of concentrate from Wees of the World dot com.
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I can’t believe these people think people are that stupid.
Oh wait. People are that stupid.
I just googled my own name and am disgusted to discover there’s a person in Galway with the same first and last name as me. I’d better register immediately.
Fuck you mean I missed out registering PaddyMangan.ie god damn it
You know with the concentrate though you always end up using more than you need. It can be a false economy if not used exactly according to the directions. Try mixing it with a little baking soda and water and put it in a flower sprayer. That’ll really get the stains out of the CEO’s carpet. In fact, it’ll get the carpet out of the CEO’s carpet. And leave a satisfyingly unpleasant aroma. Baking soda’ll make your giraffe pee go further. Take it from a housewife who knows. A housewife who counts CEOs among her mortal enemies.
Caro - You’d better be quick. It’s always best to panic buy you know.
Mac - He might be willing to sell. You never know with the Mangans.
Sam - I’ll try that for sure.
I never even knew that the IEDR was going to relax the rules for personal names, until I read about it here. How come the spammers aren’t targetting me!?
mmmmClonakilty sausages.
I remember that poop over the Eircom shares, every old lad/one I knew was taking money that hadn’t seen the light of day for a decade out to buy ‘em up.
A Chainteoir - Consider yourself lucky! I am wondering if it’s because they think someone called Michal Boleslav Měchura wouldn’t be interested in an Irish domain name? Just wondering.
FMC - Yep. The christening, communion and confirmation was taken out from under the bed, the chickens were tossed out of the ZW reg’ed Anglia and it was off to Dublin to buy shares.