Ave1

I've been investing a lot of time¹ into The Republic and it's products to date. And now it seems to be dead in the water.

Reading the logs, reading trilema.com, researching the FFA code, all these activities have helped to eradicate some of the cockroaches in my mind. A big step, setting up this blog, has been a victory. Sloppy thinking simply presents itself once layed down in written sentences, if not immediately then after a re-read or after comments by Stanislav. Also, not all thoughts can be put to paper, how is that²? So all this time has not been wasted.

But with the most probable demise of the BingoBoingo ISP, the whole republic is on very shaky footing.

Last Friday (or Saturday morning), Mircea Popescu correctly pulled the plug. Of the various reactions to be expected, we got none. Well, one!, Stanislav wanted to maybe take the business, but luckily he retreated^{3 45}.

In the mean time Mircea Popescu has fired off a number of put downs in BingoBoingos' direction, in what feels to me to be an attempt to get same BingoBoingo of his ass. Unfortunately only self lamenting comments have been coming back⁶. Let's assume you want to stay in Uruguay, probably under another lords directions. You would want to show off that you can get busy⁷. Start working on a few issues;

• Make a list of what has been done, was is to be done and was is being done⁸.
• The rack contains one server so test and publish speeds for upload and download, sustained and peak etc.
• Go online and figure out the import tariffs, yes on somethings you may need to play ball with the local government⁹.
• Make a list of the local costs / delivery time for some of the parts and publish this¹⁰.
• Read up on tax law in Uruguay, especially VAT etc, make some post about to show your understanding.
• And think about this, once back, was the 1 BTC a loan? how would you pay this off? Or will this be a write-off on Mircea Popescus' side?. Simply the cost of doing business, or something.

As for the lords, "and now?", currently there is a rack¹¹, there is a willing boy on the ground¹², there is a bank-account, there is an office. A company is almost to be had for a given amount of coin¹³. I had every faith in being a client of an ISP business that is run / financed in some form by Mircea Popescu¹⁴, as he is committed to go for the long run. So, I hope the Lords will get of their asses.

1. Considering that I've been reading the logs for about 1.5 yr, and increasing my meager involvement in little steps over the same period, I would say about 6 months. This is but a drop compared to the the investments made by the lords. [↩]
2. This is from a comment by Mircea Popescu either on trilema or in the logs. This needs be linked, and will be, but later [↩]
3. From my understanding of the logs and his blog, Stanislav is an Engineer. Brilliant in most things he will set out to do. However in the little of successful businesses I've seen, the great leader, the starter, the one who makes it a success, has a completely different character. As the starter you'll have to (what seems to an engineer) over-estimate the proceeds and about right estimate the costs. The engineer by definition has a keen feel for the costs but not so much for the proceeds. Or differently, the costs is something you can calculate now to a good certainty, the proceeds not. Taking risks is probably another factor. Also, a business starter without the sense to involve one ore more Engineer(s) is stupid and will fail. I fall in the same category as Stanislav, only I'm less brilliant and not so well educated, so I do have to work in the mines (but I do my best / most interesting work with men that have some sort of vision). [↩]
4. It must be noted that Stanislav is still the only one of the lords whot tries to stick his head out. [↩]
5. One of the first comments Stanislav makes is that he does not know how to run a VPS server, somehow supposing this is going to be the main business. If I would like to run a VPS server, I would like to do so with an expert or someone smart enough to either hire one or simply not be providing a VPS server. Instead of a VPS server, I would gladly pay money to run on a shared gentoo server managed by Stanislav (with users from the wot only). The possibilities of having an ISP with people you trust! But we digress [↩]
6. Yes, own up to your failure, but after that, start moving [↩]
7. And not by taking night time pictures of the local orc carnival [↩]
8. This has value even if you fly back [↩]
9. did you know this orcistan is in a free-trade zone with four others?. Governments are even known to publish exact tariff tables etc [↩]
10. It may not be worth sourcing locally, but how to figure this out? [↩]
11. at least partially paid for [↩]
12. Who is in the wot and even a lord! [↩]
13. Negotiations are possible. Or maybe to lords are such a wise bunch that they can think to pressure Mircea Popescu by letting time run out and so devaluate the whole business [↩]
14. And who is to say he will not be willing to provide key insights to help make this adventure into a success [↩]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 13th, 2018 at 10:53 and is filed under ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.