Amazing Facts About Domain Names

Here are some thought provoking, perhaps even amazing & unbelievable facts about the domain name industry - and they're all true!!

A single individual owns over 200,000 domain names!

This is an astonishing but true story: Dr. Lieven P. Van Neste owns well over 200,000 domain names. He has been in the media several times regarding his collection - and most recently has been making waves with his attempts to sell off his collection at truly fire-sale prices via Afternic and other third party brokers.

The highest publicly reported domain name earned the domain name's owner $7.5 million!

Business.com was sold for $7,500,000 to eCompanies, a business incubator. The company promptly went out and secured over $60 million in venture capital funding, so all things are relative... Note that many sales, particularly high-value ones, go unreported - so this is only the highest publicly known sale.

Technically, you might also consider the $50 million paid by DotTV, inc. to the island nation of Tuvalu for the rights to the ".tv" top-level domain space as the most expensive domain name transaction ever!

There is a top-secret discussion board where key domain players exchange inside information!

For obvious reasons, I am not going to provide details! Let me just say this: the discussion board does exist, and it counts some of the most powerful domain name owners in the world (judging by their domain portfolios) among its members.

Every single 3-character .com domain name has long since been registered!

There are over 50,000 possible 3-character .com domain names (counting a-z, 0-9 and the "-" character). Every one of these has long since been registered; most 3-character .com domains fetch 3 to 4 figure prices at auction.

This is one of the most common questions surrounding domain names, asked on bulletin boards and in chat rooms with almost alarming regularity. The short answer is almost always: "Not as much as you think!" - but there is more to this issue than meets the eye.

Every single "all a's" domain name from a.com to aaa..aaa.com (63 characters) has been registered!

I have no idea who would want them, but every .com domain name from 1 to 63 characters long, consisting entirely of the letter "a", has been registered.

How To Ask For A Salary Increase

HOW TO ASK YOUR BOSS FOR A SALARY INCREASE..?

One day an employee sends a letter to his boss asking for an increase in his salary !!!

Dear Bo$$

In thi$ life, we all need $ome thing mo$t de$perately. I think you $hould be under $tanding of the need$ of u$ worker$ who have given $o much $upport including $weat and $ervice to your company . I am $ure you will gue$$ what I mean and re$pond $oon.

Your$ $incerely,
Norman $oh

The next day, the employee received this letter of reply

NOw the newspapers are saying the world`s leading ecoNOmists are NOt sure if the United States may go into aNOther recession. After the NOvember presidential elections things may turn bad.

I have NOthing more to add NOw. You kNOw what I mean.

Yours truly,
Manager

Can You See The Word ?

Can you guess what's special about this Ad

If you can't find the answer then here it is….
If you observe the word "victory" more closely, you can find the word "defeat" hidden in it….

Can You See Them ?

Can you see the praying woman and child in this picture.

Look closely, they are there.

So You Think English Is Easy Do You ?

You Think English is Easy???

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present .

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it - English is a crazy language.

There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, or meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all That is why, when the stars are out, they are visib le, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. - Why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick"

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this .

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is "UP."

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report ?

We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP . We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP , you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP.

When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.

When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP , for now my time is UP, so........... Time to shut UP.....!

Oh...one more thing:

What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night? U-P

Even More Amazing Facts You Lucky People

• The Nobel Prize's resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered as a propagator of violence-he invented dynamite.
• Whoopi Goldberg was a mortuary cosmetologist and a bricklayer before becoming an actress..
• Guinness Book Of Records holds the record for being the book most stolen from Public Libraries.
• Charlie Chaplin won third place in a Charlie Chaplin look alikecontest.
• Walt Disney named Mickey Mouse after Mickey Rooney, whose mother he dated for some time. Another story states that: Mickey mouse was not named after Mickey Rooney he was made on a train ride from New York after Walt found out he didn't actually own Oswald the lucky rabbit. The mouse Walt drew was originally named Mortimor But his wife Lilly didn't like that name so she suggested Mickey and the name stuck.
• Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he didn't wear pants.
• Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made out of wood.
• A person afflicted with hexadectylism has six fingers or six toes on one or both hands and feet.
• Pamela Lee-Anderson is Canada's Centennial Baby, being the first baby born on the centennial anniversary of Canada's independence.
• Tokyo has had 24 recorded instances of people either killed or
  receiving serious skull fractures while bowing to each other with the traditional Japanese greeting.
• Termites eat wood twice as fast when listening to heavy metal music.
• The cockroach has a high resistance to radiation and is the creature most likely to survive a nuclear war.
• In the southern hemisphere, water always swirl anti-clockwise down into a pipe.
• About 8 million blood cells die in the human body every second, and the same number are born each second.
• Eighteen per cent of all global carbon dioxide emissions are from cars.
• Every year, the Moon moves a further 3.82cm from the Earth.
• It takes about 20 seconds for a red blood cell to circle the whole body.
• 35 meters of hair fibre is produced every day on the average adult scalp.

If You Don't Know The Answer, Just Confuse The Questioner

Not only does our technical knowledge help, but also the presence of mind and the ability to deliver the right answer at the right time.

Even if u don't know the answer for a question just confuse the questioner.

Q. How can you drop a raw egg onto a concrete floor without cracking it?

A. Concrete floors are very hard to crack!

Q. If it took eight men ten hours to build a wall, how long would it take four men to build it?

A. No time at all it is already built.

Q. If you had three apples and four oranges in one hand and four apples and three oranges in the other hand, what would you have?

A. Very large hands.(Good one)

Q. How can you lift an elephant with one hand?

A. It is not a problem, since you will never find an elephant with one hand.

Q. How can a man go eight days without sleep?

A. No Probs , He sleeps at night.

Q. If you throw a red stone into the blue sea what it will become?

A. It will Wet or Sink as simple as that.

Q. What looks like half apple ?

A. The other half.

Q. What can you never eat for breakfast ?

A. Dinner.

Q. What happened when wheel was invented ?

A. It caused a revolution.

Q. Bay of Bengal is in which state?

A. Liquid

The interviewer said "I shall either ask you ten easy questions or one really difficult question. Think well before you make up your mind!"

The boy thought for a while and said, "my choice is one really difficult question."

"Well, good luck to you, you have made your own choice! Now tell me this.

"What comes first, Day or Night?"

The boy was jolted into reality as his admission depends on the correctness of his answer, but he thought for a while and said, "It's the DAY sir!"

"How" the interviewer asked,

"Sorry sir, you promised me that you will not ask me a SECOND difficult question!" and he got selected.

"Technical Skill is the mastery of complexity, while Creativity isthemaster of presence of mind"

"START BY DOING WHAT'S NECESSARY, THEN WHAT'S POSSIBLE, & SUDDENDLY YOU ARE DOING THE IMPOSSIBLE"

The Funniest Job Application Ever

This is an actual job application that a 17-year-old boy submitted at a McDonald's restaurant in Florida....and they hired him because he was so honest and funny. I'd give him one too, a job that is.

NAME: Greg Bulmash

SEX: Not yet. Still waiting for the right person.

DESIRED POSITION: Company's President or Vice President. But seriously, whatever's available. If I was in a position to be picky, I wouldn't be applying here in the first place.

DESIRED SALARY: $185,000 a year plus stock options and a Michael Ovitz style severance package. If that's not possible, make an offer and we can haggle.

EDUCATION: Yes.

LAST POSITION HELD: Target for middle management hostility.

SALARY: Was less than I'm worth.

MOST NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENT: My incredible collection of stolen pens and 'post-it' notes.

REASON FOR LEAVING: It sucked.

AVAILABLE FOR WORK: Of course. That's why I'm applying.

PREFERRED HOURS: 1:30 – 3:30pm., Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

DO YOU HAVE ANY SPECIAL SKILLS?: Yes, but they're better suited to a more intimate environment.

MAY WE CONTACT YOUR CURRENT EMPLOYER?: If I had one, would I be here?

DO YOU HAVE ANY PHYSICAL CONDITIONS THAT WOULD PROHIBIT YOU FROM LIFTING UPTO 50lbs?: 50lbs. of what?

DO YOU HAVE A CAR?: I think the appropriate question here would be "Do you have a car that runs?"

HAVE YOU RECEIVED ANY SPECIAL AWARDS OR RECOGNITION? : I may already be the winner of the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes.

DO YOU SMOKE?: On the job, no, on my breaks, yes.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE DOING IN FIVE YEARS?: Living in the Bahamas with a fabulously wealthy dumb blond supermodel who thinks I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread. Actually, I'd like to be doing that now.

DO YOU CERTIFY THAT THE ABOVE IS TRUE AND COMPLETE TO THE BEST OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE?: Yes. Absolutely.

Take Off And Landing At St Maarten Airport From Inside The Cockpit Of A 747

Wow, this is good stuff. This shows the landing and take off at the notorious St Maarten Airport. See my former post about St Maarten Airport Would You Sunbathe On This Beach ?

Would You Sunbathe On This Beach ?

These are some photos of St. Maarten Airport and the planes impress most people on the beach flying over just seconds before touching down at Princess Juliana Airport. This is a just a little too close for comfort.

12 Boeing 747s operate daily to St. Maarten. The heavy jumbo is the most impressive of all and attracts the looks of everybody around...

This photo, from inside one 747 of Air France , it possible to have one idea of the small strip of beachjust before the head of the landing strip for planes in St. Maarten.

Run, Run, FFS !!

26 April 2005. Al Asad, IRAQ. It's a wall of sand traveling at 60 mph.

......and some lunatic stood there photographing it !!

This picture was taken 1 min later and its dark as night.

A Call To Hewlett Packard

Call to technical support:

Caller: Hi, our printer is not working.

Customer Service: What is wrong with it?

Caller: Mouse is jammed.

Customer Service: Mouse? And how it is related to printer?

Caller: Mmmm.. Wait, I will send a picture.


SCROLL DOWN TO SEE THE PICTURE OF HOW THE MOUSE IS JAMMED !!!

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Well They Sure Know How To Decorate Their Planes In The Far East

Well I've Seen Some Things In My Life But These.........

...........just about take the biscuit !!

Some More Rather Interesting Little Nuggets Of Information

1. The first product that Sony came out with was the rice cooker.

2. The first domain name ever registered was Symbolics.com.

3. The most dangerous job in the United States is that of an Alaskan Crab Fisherman.

4. Business.com is currently the most expensive domain name sold for $7.5 million.

5. An apple, potato, and onion all taste the same if you eat them with your nose plugged.

6. All babies are color blind when they are born.

7. There is a giant mushroom in Oregon that is over 2,400 years old, covers 3.4 square miles of
land, and is still growing!

8. A volcano has enough power to shoot ash as high as 50 km into the atmosphere.

9. Bill Gates' house was designed using a Macintosh computer.

10. SONY was originally called 'Totsuken'.

Some Pretty Amazing Facts

If you're bored, then here are some amazing facts to keep you amused.

1. The Statue of Liberty's index finger is eight feet long

2. Rain has never been recorded in some parts of the Atacama Desert in Chile

3. A 75 year old person will have slept about 23 years.

4. A Boeing 747's wing span is longer than the Wright brother's first flight.(the Wright brother's invented the airplane)

5. There are as many chickens on earth as there are humans.

6. One type of hummingbird weighs less than a penny

7. The word "set " has the most number of definitions in the English language - 192

8. Slugs have four noses

9. Sharks can live up to 100 years

10. Mosquitos are more attracted to the color blue than any other color.

11. Kangaroos can't walk backwards

12. About 75 acres of pizza are eaten in in the U.S. everyday

13. The largest recorded snowflake was 15in wide and 8in thick. It fell in Montana in 1887

14. The tip of a bullwhip moves so fast that the sound it makes is actually a tiny sonic boom.

15. Former president Bill Clinton only sent 2 emails in his entire 8 year presidency

16. Koalas and humans are the only animals that have finger prints

17. There are 200,000,000 insects for every one human

18. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery had in it to begin with.

19. The world's largest Montessori school is in India, with 26,312 students in 2002

20. Octopus have three hearts

21. If you ate too many carrots, you'd turn orange

22. The average person spends two weeks waiting for a traffic light to change.

23. 1 in 2,000,000,000 people will live to be 116 or old

24. The body has 2-3 million sweat glands

25. Sperm whales have the biggest brains; 20 lbs

26. Tiger shark embroyos fight each other in their mother's womb. The survivor is born.

27. Most cats are left pawed

28. 250 people have fallen off the Leaning Tower of Pisa

29. A Blue whale's tongue weighs more than an elephant

30. You use 14 muscles to smile and 43 to frown. Keep Smiling!

31. Bamboo can grow up to 3 ft in 24 hours

32. An eyeball weighs about 1 ounce

33. Bone is five times stronger than steel.

How The Tech Companies Got Their Names

Apple - for the favourite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs and/or for the time he worked at an apple orchard. Apple wanted to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by other computer companies at the time.

eBay - Pierre Omidyar, who had created the Auction Web trading website, had formed a web consulting concern called Echo Bay Technology Group. “Echo Bay” didn’t refer to the town in Nevada, “It just sounded cool,” Omidyar reportedly said. Echo Bay Mines Limited, a gold mining company, had already taken EchoBay.com, so Omidyar registered what (at the time) he thought was the second best name: eBay.com.

Google - a deliberate misspelling of the word googol, reflecting the company’s mission to organize the immense amount of information available online.

Hotmail - Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service he tried all kinds of names ending in ‘mail’ and finally settled for Hotmail as it included the letters “HTML” — the markup language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casing.

Yahoo - a backronym for ‘Y’et Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle. The word Yahoo was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver’s Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and barely human. Yahoo! founders David Filo and Jerry Yang jokingly considered themselves yahoos

And my personal favorite and most fitting: Lycos - from Lycosidae, the family of wolf spiders.

The Day Niagara Falls Froze

This pictures was taken when niagara falls was completely frozen in the year 1911. A Very rare photo. I read of this but never saw the photos before this. Makes you wonder just HOW COLD and HOW LONG it was that cold.