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Boulevard of Broken .dreams 181

Posted by michael from the pornforge dept.
kubla2000 writes "Salon has a fascinating article up examining the detritus of the dotcom craze of registering anything and everything as a domain name. This is, by turns, a tragic and hilarious piece... there's an irrisistable pathos to the fact that "FreeRoofTile.com" has expired as well as an urge to take a clue-bat to whoever "thought" to register it in the first place."
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Boulevard of Broken .dreams More

Boulevard of Broken .dreams

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  • A simple commodity landrush like any other (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @09:38AM (#4004404)
    To be fair, there was a year or so there where you could have made absurd amounts of money selling domain names. You probably still cna make a little scratch here and there - I'm sure the owner of "Slashdot.com" didn't give it away to this bunch for free.

    Otherwise you can apply all of the standard economic models recently applied to tulips, beanie babies, cabbage patach dolls, etc.

    • Yup, certainly some domains were traded for unbelievable, and stupid amounts.

      Reading the article, I spotted this shoddy tabloid journalism:
      {{{
      Assuming annual registration fees between $15 and $30 these days
      }}}

      Grrrr! In bulk (500 or more, ISTR), the domains were registered for about $6 each. However, $6*15m is still a whole load of beer-money.

      YAWIAR.
    • Back in the early eighties a co-worker was scrambling to register as many random trade names as he and his associates could think of. Their hope was that some unwary entrepenuer who actually created value would unwittingly step on their trademark and be forced to pay up. Slimy then, slimy now.

  • Cricket (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Tom Davies ( 64676 )
    Cricket is not a minor sport. Not compared to baseball, anyway.

    Tom

  • But what everyone who reads /. wants to know is (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03, 2002 @09:50AM (#4004429)
    Who registered that damn Goatse site!
    • Sadly, nic.cx's [www.nic.cx] whois query won't retun that information.

    • Re:But what everyone who reads /. wants to know is (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Registrant:
      Web World Services (HICK3-DOM)
      12221 carter street
      Overland park, KS 66213
      US

      Domain Name: HICK.ORG

      Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
      Miller, Matt (MM8608) miller@HICK.ORG
      Hick Organization
      12221 Carter St.
      Overland Park, KS 66213
      (913) 897 - 5980 (FAX) 816-842-9909

      Record expires on 30-Aug-2003.
      Record created on 29-Aug-1997.
      Database last updated on 3-Aug-2002 11:27:39 EDT.

      Domain servers in listed order:

      NS.HICK.ORG 209.242.124.241
      NS1.MWIS.NET 209.242.124.12
      MO.RAYTOWN.COM 209.184.161.83

    • Re:But what everyone who reads /. wants to know is (Score:4, Funny)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @08:47PM (#4006393) Journal
      (* Who registered that damn Goatse site! *)

      Possible leads:

      1. Check medical records for somebody who had an ass-ectemy.

      2. Check Guiness records for pole-sitting accidents.

      3. Look for a shack-like shop with a sign that reads "Over 5 Million Lunches Ruined".

      4. Ask websites that sell jumbo-sized toilet rolls.

      5. Check court records for any bicycle seat lawsuits.
  • reminds me of the old

    blowthedotcomoutyourass.com web site

    some old links to it

    Wired story [wired.com]

    some old pictures [prokai.com]

    They actually registered ijusthadarectalexamonline.com (dead link) got to love the picture
    • (* reminds me of the old blowthedotcomoutyourass.com web site *)

      I wonder if there were names like DotComCrazeWillFall.com and DotComBubbleWillBurst.com registered in the 90's.

      Many people predicted a stock "correction", but it was more focused on stocks than the dot-com fad itself.

  • This stuff isn't funny.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Newer Guy ( 520108 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @09:53AM (#4004438)
    Take the site: civilwarbattles.com. My friend's 13 year old son had to do a school report on the civil war, so my friend suggested they look there. Check it out yourself..then explain what this has to do with the civil war..and why the site owner is so irresponsible in his posting of porn there.
    • Yeah, like the infamous whitehouse.com porn site.
      • That brought about the oh-so-fun porn game that my roommate and I started a couple of years ago. It happens most often with movie websites. If the movie has an unexpected name (like moviename-movie.com or the such), each player places a bet on what kind of website moviename.com is, and the closest person wins. It's usually porn, thus the name =)

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • ...and the reason it was called whitehouse is because it's a dig at an english censor/activist-type lady, Ms. Mary Whitehouse (now deceased, she used to ardently fight against "filth" on TV.) Pink Floyd name-checks her on a song on their album "Animals" and there's a shock-noise group by the same name.

    • Re:This stuff isn't funny.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SimplyCosmic ( 15296 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @10:06AM (#4004470) Homepage
      One thing I noticed happening a couple of years ago was that as soon as a domain with even a minimum amount of traffic or visibility in search forums expired, it was quickly purchased by a porn site.

      At one time, no doubt, that was a valid site about civil wars, but the domain owner let it expire, and it was snatched up because it probably came up high on a search engine for it's term.

      I wouldn't be surprised to find out that several of the larger porn site chains either have deals with several domain registars to let them move in pretty quickly on bulk expired domain snatching, or that there's a small company out there that makes money with scripts that watch for new domain expirations, then checks to see what their google.com ranking is, calculates a set fee based on potential "accidental traffic" from people going to the site and then offers a large number of such site names to a porn chain.

      Just more reason for me to go to google first for whatever I'm looking for, rather than bother with a "search by typing a term as a domain". And yet another reason why domain names are rapidly losing their value based on their name.

    • Now *that's* a very "dot-com" strategy... trick people into visiting your site and maybe they'll give you money! The exact opposite of targeted marketing.
    • Check it out yourself..then explain what this has to do with the civil war..and why the site owner is so irresponsible in his posting of porn there. No, what's irresponsible is you adopting the mindset that the domain name system is a keyword search engine.
      • It's not irresponsible to assume that a domain name should have SOMETHING to do with the content of the site, just as you should expect the name of a store to have SOMETHING to do with what they sell.

        Would you be a little surprised to walk into a store called "Barry's Bistro" (expecting a restaurant) and find out they deal in the latest in S&M gear?

        What IS irresponsible and selfish is people who deliberately register domain names that are misleading or are one typo away from a popular site in the hopes of tricking people into visiting and thus boosting their ad revenue. That's the issue here. Civilwarbattles.com should NOT point to a porn site and I think something as blantant as this should be handled by the registrars.
        • One has to remember that the 'net wasn't really designed with that in mind. Keep in mind that it was originally a Department of Defense project - when it was first started, Admiral Random didn't expect that J. Random Civilian would ultimately be using it from his America Online account.

          It also comes back to the purpose of TLD's. .net was for networks out there, .com was for commercial entities, .org was for non profit organizations, .edu and .gov remain to this day for schools and government agencies respectively. Somewhere along the life of the 'net, the lines between .com, .net and .org became blurred - which is why you get domains like "IAmCarbonatedMilk.com". By your logic, I will assume that the registrant of this domain was into some seriously hardcore zen.

          Admittedly, if we harken back to the original TLD logic, my website should be on "northarc.org" as it is clearly not for profit.

          But nonetheless, the respondent to the root of this tree is right - assuming you type "civilwarbattles.com" and you will get data on the American Civil War of the 19th century is just plain dumb and irresponsible. If you want civil war battles, you go to Google [google.com] and type (with quotes) "civil war battles" at the prompt.

          And for the benefit of my readers, this is the results [google.com] of that search.

          • So if the domain name is to mean nothing, why should we even have them to begin with? Why not just access everything by IP address and use a search engine to find it all?

            This won't solve the problem either, as people will just find ways to trick the search engines by putting bogus information in meta-tags and maybe a misleading title to their website.

            The whole point of DNS was for user convenience. We're quickly reaching the point where it is no longer convenient. The whole issue of people ignoring the .com, .net, .org TLD structure also annoys me somewhat, especially when I see stuff like "My First Website" with a .com suffix on the domain name.

            I think many disputes could have been avoided if companies stuck to the .com and .net (for ISPs/backbones, etc) and others used .org or .countrycode appropriately. Let the businesses have their suffix and leave the .org people alone.

            And don't get me started on the individuals who buy up blocks of names of what they think will be popular in hopes of selling them for a million dollars a piece later on. That's greedy, opportunistic manipulation of a system designed in good faith. People like this make me taste ashes in my mouth when I hear the word "capitalism".
            • Imminent death of the net predicted!!!

              Look, I'll leave it at this: no matter how you work it, it is still a dumb and irresponsible idea to rely solely on domain names. I don't know about anyone else, but most people I know, the first trip is to the search engines if they need to research anything.

        • It's not irresponsible to assume that a domain name should have SOMETHING to do with the content of the site

          Yes it clearly is. At least, unless you WANT to be inundated with porn! :)

          just as you should expect the name of a store to have SOMETHING to do with what they sell.

          Completely different case. A domain name is far more analogous to a street address.

          In the old days (before the steaming pile of groat clustards we call the World Wide Web appeared), if you wanted info on Civil War battles, you'd go to sci.history.civilwar, check the FAQ, and find a referral to (say) thompson.unc.edu:/pub/civilwar. (Note that the domain name has nothing to do with the civil war.) Nowadays you go to Google and type "civil war battles". At no point in time was typing "www.civilwarbattles.com" ever a recommended search method. The fact that it may have worked for you once or twice simply shows that some SITE OWNERS misunderstood the purpose of DNS, which is what lead to your misunderstanding.
    • Complain to the owner [mailto]:
      Registrant:
      Lonnie Martinez
      524 Asquith Ave.
      Unit 22
      Ames, MO 68950
      US

      Domain Name: CIVILWARBATTLES.COM

      Administrative Contact:
      Martinez, Lonnie admin@civilwarbattles.com
      524 Asquith Ave.
      Unit 22
      Ames, MO 68950
      US
      267-612-8897

      Technical Contact:
      Martinez, Lonnie hostmaster@civilwarbattles.com
      524 Asquith Ave.
      Unit 22
      Ames, MO 68950
      US
      267-612-8897

      Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
      Record last updated on 20-Mar-2002.
      Record expires on 01-Mar-2003.
      Record Created on 01-Mar-2000.

      Domain servers in listed order:
      DNS1.BELENT.COM 207.96.133.10
      DNS2.BELENT.COM 207.96.133.11
      And there are laws [state.mo.us] that prohibit and punish The Missouri Attorney General [state.mo.us] might be able to help.
    • why would your friend's 13 year old son be using a '.com' site for civil war research? .org, .gov, .edu would be a better search.
  • I like the ILoveClaireAlways domain in the picture. I guess that little affair lasted as long as some of the lifetime free email accounts.
  • See my journal [slashdot.org] for a discussion of this very topic, including a domain much more exciting than freerooftile.com. :-)
  • Back in the early days of high school thinking of names for porn sites was a common lunch table activity... the two I thought of that I most liked where habersnatchery.com and ithinkimgoingto.com.
  • >What service was going to be offered at Thepenismightier.com?

    What do you think was going to be offered at The Penis Mightier website?

    Evidently the author of this story has an incredible spam filter ;p

  • Gordonisamoron.com (Score:4, Informative)

    by seanyboy ( 587819 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @10:06AM (#4004468)
    Not the best article in the world. If there was any substance hidden in the 1000 something domain names, I didn't find it. The only interesting thing was that with "...Such emotion may well have lead to IDislikeRob.com, GordonIsAMoron.com, IHateAdamOliver.com, and HeatherThompsonIsABigDork.com" he missed the cultural significance of www.gordonisamoron.com [liquid2k.com]. (A major cultural event from the Eighties in Britain. If you're 25-32, you'll probably have chanted this at schoolmates at some time in your life.) I'm wondering how much else he missed, and how many of the funny domains were automatically registered by automated robots.
    • Personally I thought it was an absolutely hilarious article, and being within the age span that you indicated, let me say that I have never in my life heard the term "Gordon is a moron" (is it a British thing? Here in Southern Ontario it wasn't in any of my schools).

    • Re:Gordonisamoron.com (Score:2, Informative)

      by awrc ( 12953 )
      I'm surprised you're saying it's an 80s thing - wasn't the original "Jilted John" single from like 1978? At which point a 25 year old would be approaching their first birthday, and wouldn't have been capable of chanting much at anybody. Gurgling, possibly. I'd reckon anyone who was between 5 and 15 in 1978 and called Gordon had a pretty miserable time of it though.

      They released the original album (_True Love Stories_) on CD a year or two back, just under eight quid from Amazon UK. Includes two cash-in singles recorded by "Gordon The Moron" but, sadly, not the "Gordon Is Not a Moron" single (despite what the track listing on Amazon UK says).

      • Re:Gordonisamoron.com (Score:2, Informative)

        by awrc ( 12953 )
        I suppose that, other than correcting some dates, my post doesn't actually shed any light on the "Gordon Is A Moron" phenomenon.

        The year 1978. In the wake of the whole punk thing, 18-year old art student Graham Fellowes adopts the persona and haircut of Jilted John and pens the lightweight pop-punk novelty hit "Jilted John", a tale of "teen angst, rejection and confrontation", in which the hero-protagonist, John, loses his girlfriend Julie to the villain, Gordon, "just coz he's better looking than me, just coz he's cool and trendy." The song is best know for the memorable chorus in which our hero gives vent to his despair, chanting "Gordon Is A Moron. Gordon Is A Moron. Gordon Is A Moron. Gordon Is A Moron." It reached number 4 in the UK singles charts. There was an album too, which was all much in the same vein.

        So, there.

  • ambiguous spacing (Score:5, Funny)

    by kisrael ( 134664 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @10:12AM (#4004483) Homepage
    Odd that she mentioned thepenismightier.com, since a version of it it [penismightier.com] is a fairly thriving site, and they like the ambiguity of the name.

    One my favorite tech info resource sites [experts-exchange.com] has to have a dash in its name, otherwise it might look like "expert sexchange" instead...
  • I guess the all forgot to use the Evan's system [afternic.com] when they registered there domains :)
  • There are no free roof tiles? I thought that was an AOL project, and that was why they keep giving me reflective roof tiles.
    • You know, that sounds kinda silly, but at one point I was seriously considering shingling a outdoor UPS Battery storage shed that I am planning to build with AOL CDs. I figure it will be great for reducing heat build up due to the sun.

      I better keep it in the back yard though, I can see explaining to the people that crashed into my house blinded by the sun about the AOL cds.
  • I'm assuming that most slashdotter's are too busy snatching up these wonderful steals...

    With all the potential troll site names, I'm seriously afraid to know how many of these will be registered in the next day or so.

  • on the same topic... (Score:3, Informative)

    by AnonymousCowhand ( 186416 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @10:42AM (#4004542)
    this article found at LATimes.com, 29 Jul 2002:

    http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.j sp?slug=la%2Dfi%2Dnetnames29jul29 [latimes.com]

  • Keyword stuffing (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bsd-mon ( 515734 )
    LOL. I'm the (former) dns master of ChristmasTree-ChristmasTree-ChristmasTree-Christma sTree.com, and our company specializes in search engine rankings, so let me tell you about keyword stuffing. Of course no one expects to type this domain in, but when it comes up 1 or 2 in $search_engine_of_choice, they just click the returned result. Then I'm the poor sap who also has to re-register said domains. (And you want to talk about niche markets? How about 2brsanibelislandfloridabeachfrontmidpricedvacation condo.com?)
  • When I registered namtog.com all my buds thought is was a real big hoot. Dumbest name ever. Who could ever remember it.

    Look at where the site is at today. Nowhere. Nothing. Na DA.

    Chuck stops now to beat himself with the clue-bat.
  • I did a search for expired domains containing the word 'slashdot'.

    Guess there is no hope for us since slashdotsolutions.com went under.

    Wonder what bizarro-slashdot.org would have been like? A bunch of healthy fashion designers whining about switching to Windows or trying to post sheepchastity.org links as last post.

  • billromanowskisucks.com (Score:3, Funny)

    by presearch ( 214913 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @10:55AM (#4004576)
    Hey, that's my name! I take great offense at that article.
    I'd sue Salon but they probably don't have any money left anyway....

    Bill Romanowski
    TQworld, LLC

  • So given the everexpanding reach of porn versus the unfailing WIPO trampling of corps interest against the individuals, what will win out in the end?

    more than likely it'll be 99% porn, 1% big corp.

    but wait.. that's already happened..

    maybe the best chance I can hope for to get any kind of a decent domain name that catches my fancy like the good ol virgin net days will be day of the "great pr0n meltdown"..

    I wonder if that'll ever happen...

  • comment on Thepenismighter.com (Score:5, Funny)

    by bons ( 119581 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @11:16AM (#4004657) Homepage Journal
    Probably from this old Saturday night live skit [jt.org]Alex Trebek: Mr. Connery, why don't
    you pick?

    Sean Connery: Ah! Well met! I'll take Months That Start With Feb, Trebek.

    Alex Trebek: For how much?

    Sean Connery: Suprise me, you filthy bastard!

    Alex Trebek: Okay, that's completely unnecessary. Months That Start With Feb for $800. This is the only month that starts with Feb. [ Sean Connery buzzes in ] Mr. Connery?

    Sean Connery: Febtober!

    Alex Trebek:No. [ Calista Flockhart buzzes in ] Calista Flockhart.

    Calista Flockhart: What is.. Febturday?

    Alex Trebek: No.

    Sean Connery: She said turd!

    Alex Trebek: I hate you! The answer was February. That's the month that starts with Feb. It was last month!

    Sean Connery: Aha! A trick question!

    Alex Trebek: Yeah, it was a trick question, Mr. Connery. Why don't you pick a category?

    Sean Connery: I've got to ask you about the Penis Mightier.

    Alex Trebek: What? No. No, no, that is The Pen is Mightier.

    Sean Connery: Gussy it up however you want, Trebek. What matters is does it work? Will it really mighty my penis, man?

    Alex Trebek: It's not a product, Mr. Connery.

    Sean Connery: Because I've ordered devices like that before - wasted a pretty penny, I don't mind telling you. And if The Penis Mightier works, I'll order a dozen.

    Alex Trebek: It's not a Penis Mightier, Mr. Connery. There's no such thing!

    Nicholas Cage: Wait, wait, wait.. are you selling Penis Mightiers?

    Alex Trebek: No! No, I'm not.

    Sean Connery: Well, you're sitting on a gold mine, Trebek!

  • ...or aficionados of lesser-known sports (IPlayCricket.com, ILoveIceFishing.com)...

    Interesting... over one out of every 6 people in the world is a cricket fanatic (world population = 6G, India's population = 1G), and this guy has the gall to call it a "lesser-known" sport?

  • It seems every god damn journalist or wannabe journalists comes out after it's really evident that the dot com crash has occurred and starts to preach to us about how stupid that whole episode was.

    Well my question is, where was Heather Cochran PRIOR to the dot com heyday? Where were all the stock analysts telling us of the impending doom? Fact is, either they were too cowardly to stand up and tell us then, or they too were sucked into the trap.

    I'm so sick and tired of these types of articles.

    And the author isn't very knowledgeable about domain names either. Ever heard of search engine seeding using keywords in domain names? Next time do a search on Yahoo for "free hosting" and see what the first few results say. Don't be surprised to see sites like "www.free-web-site-hosting.com", "www.free-web-page-space-hosting.com", etc... listed at number one!

    • Where were all the stock analysts telling us of the impending doom?

      Actually, Warren Buffet refused to invest in a single tech stock during the 90s because he saw the dot-bomb coming (although he invested in Level 3 communications this year). Many of his investors were angry with him for doing so, especially in light of the outrageous gains some of the stocks had seen. After the crash, the same investors thanked the hell out of him for being wise and prudent.

      • (* Actually, Warren Buffet refused to invest in a single tech stock during the 90s because he saw the dot-bomb coming *)

        IIRC, he initially said that he avoided the sector because "somebody should not invest in a sector they don't understand." I don't know if he ever indicated they were overvalued, or simply ignored them.

        (* Many of his investors were angry with him for doing so, especially in light of the outrageous gains some of the stocks had seen. *)

        That would be great to walk into a room with all those investors after the melt-down and see them cringe.

        Buffet had the last laugh.

        Mr. Metcalf (forgot first name), part inventor of the Internet, kept predicting a stock meltdown. He kept getting the date wrong, and thought it would be a single-day crash, though. But he got the essence right.

        I also avoided any dot-com purchases in my stock portfolio because I considered them overvalued then, investing instead in things related to the boom, such as UPS (for all those petfood.com deliveries). I did invest in some non-dot-com tech stocks that went south though. Overall my portfolio got dented rather than killed. But, whose didn't?

    • I posted the article precisely because I didn't think it was "holier than thou".

      The article is funny. It's also imbued with a sense of sadness that a lot of people's dreams and desires were contained in those expired domains (a lot of stupidity too).

      I don't think the author was trying to show that she's more clever than anyone else ... just making an insightful sociological observation.

  • What does it say about me that after viewing the 'newly abandoned' list on deleteddomains.com I thought "wouldn't it be cool to register 4bud.com and 4weed.com" even if I have no relevant content....

    Bad late-dot-commer-wannabe. Bad.

    Ineverlearnmylessonuntilitstoolate.info
  • I know that, though ultimately unexpressed, each expired URL represents a discrete idea deemed good, or at least good enough, at the point of inception to justify its registration fee.

    We've always known that salon doesn't really understand the internet, but here is proof. If you fall into the trap of thinking that the only thing the internet is good for is commerce, then you are practically guaranteed to lose money.

    Not only that, but an expired domain name can mean that it has served out it's usefulness. Sites don't have to live forever. Who said that that an expired domain means that some idea went unexpressed. Hell, most of those domains were probably registered by some idiot taking part in the domain name "Land Grab", and was hoping to resell them later at a huge markup. Most names were probably registered because the random collection of letters happened to make some sense in english, and contained a buzzword (like "free"). There were no broken dreams here, just idiocy, and I don't feel too badly for the greedy bastards who blew $200 million trying to make a quick buck with something they couldn't even bother to take the time to try and understand.

    Now I remember why I usually don't even bother reading salon.
    • Did you read the article? The author *knows* that not all the domains were registered with the intent of business. "Iloveclaire.com", etc. was obviously registered by some geek who had a crush on some girl named Claire -- and clearly it didn't work out -- it is funny and pathetic at the same time.
    • I suspect the only point being missed here is the point of this article. It's a joke, kids. Do let it be a joke. Did everyone read the whole thing? There was a mixture of disdain, and tenderness. There was indeed a time when people just sucked up domain names willy-nilly (myself included). They were heady times. But now we are in different times, on the brink, it seems, of a little more maturity about the internet, and its uses. In the meantime, people did some stupid things, but there is a sort of irresistible humanity about stupidity, a certain Forest-Gump charm about thousands of people purchasing domain names for their current sweethearts. So awful, so wonderful, such is the human.

      The best thing about Slashdot is that it lets anybody with keyboard say anything they want.

      The worst thing about Slashdot is that it lets anybody with a keyboard say anything they want.

      Of course, the above statements go equally well for the internet as a whole, and that, I would argue, is the real point of the article. There was something very human in lapsed domains. So as we leave those times behind, we take a humorous back at that foolishness with a sense of fondness but relief that those days are passing, and not (I would hope) pretend that we're somehow superior to those attitudes, which some posters on this forum seem inclined to do. BuyClamsOnline.com is funny. JanLovesJim.com is sweet. IamCarbonatedMilk.com is curious. Leave them that way.

      We are passionate, silly things. Let's laugh at eachother.

    • We've always known that salon doesn't really understand the internet

      Speaking for all of us, are we...
  • I believe that article forgot to mention YoureTheManNowDog.com. Oh wait, that one's still there.

  • In an alternate universe, not too unlike our own (Score:5, Insightful)

    by guttentag ( 313541 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @11:56AM (#4004783) Journal
    Aug. 5, 2003 | It's late afternoon, you're thinking about dinner, and you realize it's been a long while since you had a good perm. Do you (a) head to the hair salon in your local strip mall and ask your beautician if she thinks you could use another or (b) sign on to Salon.com?

    I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you chose Curtain No.1. Fact is, you'd have to; the Web site Salon.com doesn't exist -- never did, so far as I can tell -- and the domain name expired on April 12. But the very fact that Salon.com has expired means that someone, maybe a year ago, maybe two, registered it. Someone out there, someone living among us, chose to bet that the road to online success would be paved with women who wanted their hair colored online.

    The arrogant fools.

    • Re:In an alternate universe, not too unlike our ow (Score:5, Informative)

      by kisrael ( 134664 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @12:47PM (#4004940) Homepage
      Cute point.

      And for a long time, salon.com was the site of some kind of resource for hairdressers (one that seemed to be pretty content light and coming soonish) and salon had to use salonmagazine.com. (That url still works, actually...they had better maintain it or the pornlords would swoop down.)

      And "salon" isn't just a random name. It's an old fashioned term for a conversation group-- well, m-w.com says " a fashionable assemblage of notables (as literary figures, artists, or statesmen) held by custom at the home of a prominent person", but I remember the liberal rag Utne Reader was trying to start a kind of grassroots "salon revival", and I think this was a few years before the site, might well have been an inspiration for the name; there's overlap between the general feel of the two publications.

      I'll miss Salon if it goes the way of Suck.com.

    • Re:In an alternate universe, not too unlike our ow (Score:4, Informative)

      by Robotech_Master ( 14247 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @12:50PM (#4004951) Homepage Journal
      You're closer than you think. Salon Magazine used to be stuck with the longer salonmagazine.com, and some hairstylist' collective site had salon.com. Then Salon Magazine worked out some kind of a deal to get the domain name, and they wandered off to salon.net or some such.
  • Now you know somebody is going to go register heathercochran.com now, just because she mentions it at the bottom of the story. And it's probably going to be one of you. You fucking geeks. :)
  • I always preferred the Boulevard of Broken Limbs [quakecomics.qc.ca], myself.

  • And it's killing Verisign (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @12:26PM (#4004880) Homepage
    Look at Verisign's stock. High of around $200, currently around $5. Domain names are not being renewed, they have heavy price competition from other registrars, and growth is negative. Verisign's current rate of losses is around $120 million per year. I had Verisign on Deathwatch [downside.com] years ago. Their cash position has improved since then, but they've downsized. They now have more than a year of cash, so they can probably hang on for a while. But if you invested in Verisign stock, you lost most of your money, so they belonged on Deathwatch.

    GreatDomains (a Verisign acquisition) is a joke. As I've mentioned previously, there's a huge difference between asking prices (often five figures) and actual sales prices (a few hundred dollars). Right now, you can probably buy almost any unused domain on the Internet for under $200.

    Back when there was the big push for additional top-level domains, I pointed out that they were unnecessary. And, in retrospect, we didn't need ".biz", or ".info"; we had ".com" and ".net", and they did the job. Having more TLDs was just a moneymaker for registrars, not something useful.

    It's all Esther Dyson's fault. She insisted, when she headed ICANN, that there had to be more TLDs, and that whether there should be more TLDs wasn't open to discussion. She was wrong.

    • You're forgetting those lame phuqs that like to register 10,000 domains and give them to people for about 200 times what they paid for them. That's why I have my .info domain. .com, .net, and .org were all taken. I wasn't about to pay $600 for my personal domain when I could get a .info for $30 for two years :P

    • Verisign's still worth $5? Obviously Esther Dyson didn't push hard enough if Verisign's still alive. At this rate, the company might still be around when the market comes back, and then we're stuck with them.

      Friends, Countrymen, Romans. Lend me your domains and I will dump them on your behalf. Together we can stamp out this Verisign scourge.

  • s14shd0t.org (Score:2, Funny)

    by dacetone ( 177878 )
    I registered s14shd0t.org a couple years ago, hoping to make:

    News for H@x0r5, stuff that r0x0r5.

    I let it expire. I don't know what I was smoking when I registered it, but I hope I come across some more of it.
    • Chuckle. I registered hashpot.org a couple of years back. I was going to do a parody, but got about halfway done and got bored. And no, I wasn't smoking anything. I think.

      Actually, I don't remember. I'll have to dig up the site again. It's here somewhere on one of these hard drives....

      And yes, I too let it expire.

      "Brews for stoners, stuff that pipe."

  • I really despise the type of people who register a domain name in hopes that some company will want it. And I think it's hallarious that register.com, along with other registrars, will help you pick an alternate name if the original is already taken.

    Hmmm ... should I pick a slightly different domain name and advertise it to my clientel and potential clientel, or go through the hassel of arguing with some 14 year old about how $4K is absurd to buy. Basically squatters became screwed when register came out with its "alternative name engine". And here's what's left of it.

    What would have been even more interesting is to see how many of the expired domains were listed on EBAY. I can still today see domains on the auction block for over thousand dollars, it's insane. The only time that I've ever heard of ANYONE buying a domain is when two companies basically had the same trademark (usually acronyms) and the one with more flash money bought it from the other. Any other time I've just seen them sued away.

    So I guess it's gone from squatting to "potentially going to court!"

  • The domain name of the form firstnamelastname.com, where firstname and lastname are my actual names, was registered by someone a couple of years ago, and for a while there was a "This domain name is for sale for $250" site there. Then the design of the page changed and the request was for $500. A few months ago, the requests for money for the domain name vanished, and if you go to the site now you are forwarded to an anti-abortion site with pictures of aborted fetuses on it. This is really quite disturbing.

    (I haven't provided a link to the page, and I would prefer it if people do not figure out the URL and go there. I am hoping that sometime soon the domain will expire and I can then buy it, and if the page gets a lot of hits, that might make the present owners realise that someone wants it and encourage them to renew it).

    • I just put a bid for it in on namewinner.com. Too bad for you!!
    • IIRC MSNBC.com had a story a while back about anti-abortion activists buying up expiring domains and forwarding them to gruesome sites... kinda nasty.

  • One made laugh.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by MADCOWbeserk ( 515545 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @01:22PM (#4005061)
    I would think that Ceilinghooks.com was an artistic bondage site.
  • The scary thing is, I know the people who would probably have registered "rentachicken.com" if they thought about it.
  • Portal of Evil [portalofevil.com] has a great selection of totally arbitrary and utterly silly domain names [evilemail.com] at which you can get email addresses

    Favourites include

    Chlamydia-is-not-a-flower.com

    IAmOffended.com

    IFuckedSteveJobs.com

    and

    Bottomless-Abyss-Of-Suckitude.com

    I, myself, chose an address at YouEatPoopy.com.

  • Hold down the character 'w' in the address bar until it crosses 1/4 to 1/2 the screen (mine runs at 1600x1200) and type ".com". I can almost guarantee a trip to a porn site and a screen covered with popups (and popunders).
  • The inverse of deleteddomains.com is netcraft.com [netcraft.com] (well known from the BSD troll), which can search in the list of the *active* domains list. Someone should make an article about the funny domains she finds there.
  • Finally... we are starting to clear out the DNS cruft!
  • And countless, surely, just never made it to step two, "Build Wb site" remaining uncrossed off the weekly to-do list, somewhere below "Dust" in priority.

    Sadly, the Salon.com writers never made it to step three, "check your damn spelling." (And don't tell me I never made it to step two... it's built, just not open to the public yet)

  • In about a one-week period during late September 2000, some group of people went and registered every available three-character name combination in .com and .net. The only reason I knew was because I had a 3-character .com name (picked at random using a Casio calculator's random number function and a lookup table) and one day I noticed the .net got registered. Then I looked at "nearby" names and noticed they were all recently registered too.

    As I expected, they didn't get renewed.

  • Even for those sites that survived, I notice that the look and feel changed after the melt-down. The boom look had a kind of psychodelic melted plastic goo look to it. Salvador Dali meets punk rock. But after that the sites went "corporate" in their look. They are now kind of boring looking, but a least they load faster because there is less layout graphics.

    I am surprised that techiegold.com has not changed its look much though. It still has an electric-guitar-shaped logo and that damned goldfish. Although there are more rectangles than there used to be IIRC.

    The most dramatic change I saw was in Xdrive.com. They used to have tons of melting green goo all over the place. Now they are pure corporate.
  • Allyourbasearebelongto.us [allyourbas...elongto.us]. If I had that, it would keep most people away from my site, unless they had half a clue about internet culture (is that an oxymoron?)

    Anyways, kredal.allyourbasearebelongto.us is mine now. Muahaha!

  • How many of you guys have put something like a product name (as opposed to a company name), and expected a hit?

    With the failure of any reliable default search, what we have is search through urls... If we had some sort of alternate commonly used search, the search-by-url may not have been needed.

    An alternate would be to set up some default alias where people who wanted names could buy it, and forward it onto their URL.

    But then that's just another domain, a la .com, .org.

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