One of the dumbest things a company can do is pay big bucks for a domain name. (That's CSpan's flower, by the way.)

What does eBay mean? What does Amazon mean? For that matter, what does Google mean? They mean what they have become. There was no intrinsic value to the name when it was purchased.

So why should picturephone.com be worth $1 million? There's no good reason. The fact that the company which owned the name changed its name so as to sell-on the old name is proof of this.

It's also proof that the tech market is about to become another tech wreck. Everything old is new again, including domain name speculation. With tech stocks trading north of 100 times earnings, and greater fools paying big bucks for mere names (and calling it "real estate"), the market's heading for another big fall.

I can't wait.