y, where old-fashioned "bricks and mortar" businesses would fall to new competi- tors. But a more realistic view was that it meant an economy where suckers could be parted from their money without any of the traditional fundamentals that normally make a stock attractive. The story of the dotcom companies is a long and, in some respects, a sor- did one. It is not the primary focus of this account; the dotcoms are primarily important here because they generated demand for Internet and telecom services and equipment. As the dotcoms grew, SO did their suppliers; as the dotcoms fell, SO did the fortunes of companies that had invested heavily to support them. As with most new industries, of course, the dotcoms were not all failures. Some, like eBay, proved to be long-term profit generators, whereas others, like Ama- zon, appear to be survivors, if not terribly profitable. But the failures were spec- tacular. Companies founded by recent graduates in 1997 were worth tens of millions of dollars by 1999, resulting in the "dotcom millionaire" phenomenon. Most were worth zero by 2001. The dotcoms got that nickname because SO many of them put ".com" into their corporate names. This was itself turning the Internet's previous norms upside-down. The Domain Name System [28] (DNS) created a hierarchical network database to identify Internet nodes. The ARPAnet had previously used a flat name space, wherein every host computer maintained a HOSTS table giv- ing the numeric address for every named node on the network. Computer names were unqualified, such as DECVAX and RUTGERS. DNS created the .com space for commercial ventures, alongside other top-level domains such as .edu for higher education, .gov for the U.S. government, .org for noncommer- cial organizations, and .mil for the U.S. Department of Defense. Other top-level domains were later added, including two-letter domains based on ISO country The Great Telecom Meltdown codes, but .com was by far the most popular address space, and the only real home for an on-line merchant. Alt