Happy Birthday Dot-Com

The dot-com era just reached its Silver Anniversary – 25-years ago yesterday the first dot-com on the Internet debuted amidst the beeps and buzzes of dial-up modem users everywhere.

On March 15, 1985, the Symbolics Computer Company registered symbolics.com, making history, changing forever the way we live.

Previously, to go anyplace in cyberspace you had to enter hard to remember Internet Protocol (IP) addresses directly, such as 191.124.1.1. We have it easy now, just think of any company, and generally you can access it simply by typing the company_name.com.

These days, everyone is getting their own names registered as a domain name – there is even a trend among the ultra-nutty-types to register their newborn baby’s name on the Internet within a mere number of days of the child appearing from the womb. You don’t want your son or daughter to grow up not being able to have their namesake online – the horror!

But back in 1985, when big hair bands were rocking out on their synthesizers, while their fans were playing Pac Man, or trying to figure out the Rubik Cube, the Internet was the unimaginable stuff of science fiction.

Development of the Internet was slower than a dial-up connection on a party line, taking over two years to reach 100 dot-com registered names. Within ten years, that number had exploded to 18,000 registered names, in part due to dot-com boom.

Today there are over 80 million dot-com domain names, according to the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) which keeps track of these things. That doesn’t even come close to just how many registered domain names there are in total, when you consider all the dot-ca, dot-org, dot-biz, dot-tv, dot-gov, dot-this-that-and-the-other-thing . . .

Despite the bust of the dot-com boom in the late 1990’s when investors lost billions of dollars, the Internet has been one of the most steadily growing investments in our life time. Most of that growth has happened just after the failure of the initial dot-com boom, occurring within the past ten years.

Which makes sense – investors learned from their mistakes, and began investing in technologies which could actually be proven. Previously, many invested in what became known as vapourware – someone with a lot of drive and ambition sold them on an idea, which had not been turned into a solid product or service. When that idea turned out to be nothing more than just that – an idea -- that investor lost his shirt.

You can’t do business today unless you are on the Internet – all “real” companies have some sort of presence on the international network of computer networks.

Then again, there are always all those pseudo companies or people telling you about your long lost relative that no one has ever heard of, leaving you an inheritance in the millions. All you have to do is email your banking information to some complete stranger in some third-world country to claim your fortune.

As with all things in our world, just as there are honest people online, there are also dishonest ones too. Internet fraud has tripled over the past five years, according to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, which reported over 337, 000 complaints of losses totalling almost $560 million last year.

However shady some are online, the virtual worlds we create for our entertainment and joy, our business and prosperity, and our friends and family are remarkable.

From surfing the net to catch up on our latest television shows, to participating in highly addictive online games, to just looking up how to cook a turkey or build a solar powered home, to checking out our bank balances, to buying just about anything imaginable online, to sharing pictures of your ski trip with your friends and family on a social networking site, the dot-com world – and all of its dot-brothers and dot-sisters – is fundamentally our world.

Happy 25 birthday dot-com!

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Canada’s Solution to Unemployment – Go to the Third-World

The problem: how to keep big multinational companies from shutting down, putting thousands of people out of work and creating a massive public relations disaster for the company and the government?

The Canadian government’s solution is truly mind boggling.

Import workers from poorer third-world countries on short-term visas. Once here, force them to work for multinational companies at substantially lower wages than any one local to Canada would be willing to work that job. Then deny them the fundamental benefits companies provide to their employees and deny them access to the government services immigrants and citizens enjoy -- all while forbidden them from bringing their family so that they can’t make any reas

Image via Wikipedia

onable demands for these benefits. When the gig is over, stuff them on a plane and send them back to their life of poverty and despair.

Sign me up – I want that job!

Apparently there is high demand for these low-paying, family stealing jobs. Recently, the Canadian government announced that there were 251,235 temporary short-term work visa holders last year.

Originally the temporary short-term work visa program was created because of a severe shortage of labor to work the Alberta Oil Sands. These jobs were anything but glamorous – it was dangerous as workers were constantly working with heavy machinery, surrounded by highly flammable, combustible, and toxic petro-chemicals. And the jobs were low paying, and very physically demanding.

Then the Canadian government expanded the program to temporary low-skilled workers, which provided contractual work to third-world citizens in the first world for a maximum of four-years. These jobs typically went to nannies and farm hands, but in recent years, strippers (sorry – exotic dancers for the politically correct), telemarketers, and other practical, highly respectable careers were funded through this government program.

As the definition of “low-skilled” worker is very loose, the Canadian government has been allowing mega large companies in the financial services, pharmaceutical, information technology, and other big business sectors to bring people in from the third-world that aren’t low in skill, but are cheaper than hiring a Canadian-born person to do the same job.

The Canadian government even admits it allows more of these temporary short-term workers into the country, than landed immigrants, although landed immigrants usually become Canadian citizens.

The Canadian government program designed to create jobs actually robs Canadians of good paying jobs.

That’s why if you one of the 43, 200 Canadians looking for work in October, you are probably still unemployed. The jobs are here, but not for us Canadians. You have to be a citizen of India, China, Mexico, the Philippians, or some other country where these big companies recruit.

And recruit they do. Often it starts out harmless enough -- a big company contracts out a handful of projects to a small company in one of these poorer countries. If they don’t mess up, within a year many of the company’s employees are offered four-year contracts based in Canada. They will be given what they consider a good wage – though it is substantially lower than what a Canadian would be paid to do the exact same job – as well as travel and start-up expenses. The only catch is they have to leave their friends and family behind.

But that doesn’t matter, their eyes gloss over, as they think they’ve hit the big time. Instead of living in a crammed one-room house with a mud roof, they get to live in a multi-room one-bedroom high-rise apartment made of bricks and mortar. The fact that their bathroom isn’t in the same room as the kitchen – or that they even have a kitchen – is a selling point in itself.

Although they may be away from their friends and family for up to four-years, they still feel the connection by sending money home. Often this helps them bring their family here – often illegally.

Image by Sweet One via Flickr

Reports of some of these short-term temporary workers paying over $25,000 to sneak their loved ones into the country abound. And despite that huge amount of money, there never are any guarantees. If the family gets caught sneaking into the country, they get sent back, but the sly person who arranged the whole thing keeps the money. There are no refunds.

But that doesn’t matter either, after four-years once the contract ends, these temporary short-term contractors go home.

Just imagine returning to the one-room shack with the mud roof, and sleeping on the ground with a dozen or so close relatives.

Guess that image isn’t too appealing, as many stay, illegally, and continue to work here under the table. They usually have to get lower paying jobs at less than scrupulous workplaces. But don’t worry, the mega large multinationals have already recruited more from the third-world to replace the ones leaving.

It’s a constant river of poor people being brought to Canada, to work at cut-rate wages for multinational corporations, only to end up as illegal immigrants, working under the table for abusive employers. But anything beats sleeping on the floor of that hut with the mud roof.

As for those 43, 200 unemployed Canadian citizens (as of October), maybe you could land a job in India, China, Mexico or the Philippians – I here there are some openings.

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