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Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_urchin who wrote (14680)	7/9/2002 12:08:17 PM
From: (Bob) Zumbrunnen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82344

I guess you must have had a shock when you read your site was for sale. It's not the first time. A while back, when you'd do a WHOIS lookup at some site (don't remember if it was NetSol or not), and you pulled up investorshub.com, there was a link in there that said "Buy this domain name!" The smaller print indicated you'd be making an unsolicited offer. It was reported that if investorshub.com was trying to sell its domain name, surely the site itself couldn't be of any value. I checked and found that the "Buy this domain name!" thing was an ad that was shown no matter what domain name you pulled up. I did a whois on microsoft.com and, sure enough, the site wanted me to buy the domain name. <g> Since I note you are from SI originally, please tell is there any truth in the idea that SI is due for closure? Of course, I do see that INSP has had a bit of a collapse on the market. That's a really tough one to answer because my thoughts on this can be given more weight than they deserve. At this point, I am just another outsider trying to look in, with only the benefit of past (very remote) association with the company that owns Silicon Investor. But, here're my thoughts: Even while I was working for Silicon Investor, I thought it was on a downward slope into non-existence. However, I did feel that since INSP reportedly has lots of cash and since it shouldn't cost an exorbitant amount to run a message board site, that stagnation would be the biggest enemy; not hemorrhaging of cash. I used to be worried that INSP would jettison SI because they don't want to be in a consumer business. Now that worry has been replaced with the worry that it'll be abandoned in a last-ditch attempt to improve the bottom line and to show a more narrow focus on "core competencies", if you don't mind abusing the term. Or that INSP itself could be taken out. In other words, I used to maintain that SI would be around at least as long as INSP. I'm no longer as convinced of that, though I want to stress that I don't know that SI will ever go away. I think the ship is taking on water and has been for ages (the first holes were put in the hull when GNET bought it, IMO), and the holes are getting larger, but I have no idea the condition of the bilge pumps. I guess, in a way, you can really abuse the analogy and say that I'm steaming along side it with free lifeboats, and have plenty of nicer lifeboats for sale. Oh, why stop there. Let's make the analogy scream in agony! The free lifeboats are available to anyone who doesn't mind a guy with a bullhorn sitting in it hawking products non-stop. Throw some money up to the ship and we'll knock Mr. Bullhorn out of the boat. Edit: I should point out that I DO NOT want to see SI close down. If I'm bitter with anyone, it's INSP; not SI. I feel about SI the way I know Brad, Jeff, and Jill do. It's "our baby" and it hurts every time we see a blunder on it, and the last thing any of us wants to see is any harm come to it. Granted, of the 4 of us, I'm the one running a competing site, but I've always maintained that the pie SI lives on is enormous and will grow, and there's lots of room at the table.