The First 100 Dot Coms Ever Registered 290
roman1 submitted an interesting list containing the first 100 .com domains registered. Many of the names you haven't heard of, many you have. What was interesting to me is that it took 2 years just to get 100 domains on-line.
Why? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Odd that they'd bother with access controls. Apple allowed anonymous FTP back then, with which you could download system-software updates, tech notes, and whatever else would've been on there at the time. ftp.apple.com [apple.com] is still up and running and still accepting anonymous logins, but most of its contents got moved to their websit
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
Symbolics ... (Score:5, Informative)
http://home.hakuhale.net/rbc/symbolics/20041113/20041113.html [hakuhale.net]
CC.
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Re:Symbolics ... (Score:5, Informative)
Mitre.org was the fitst domain registered.
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Another registration that caught my eye:
Doctor: "It's a PRIME Computer! The most sophisticated computer ever!"
Rommana: "Ask it what to do with a woman Doctor."
PRIME: "MARRY HER"
Doctor: "Oh-"
Rommana: "Clever PRIME"
Doctor: "You can say that again..."
Rommana: "Clever PRIME"
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Re:Symbolics ... (Score:4, Informative)
Symbolics was basically out of business in about 1988. (A very small, as in no more than 2 full time people, company of that name existed until a year or two ago, but all they did with hardware was to maintain what had been manufactured by the original Symbolics.) 2004 is simply the year these photos were taken.
You're right that the very first models -- the LM-2 and 3600 -- were refrigerator-sized, but it wasn't long before they also started building some smaller models. The 3640 was very roughly 20"w x 30"h x 36"d, and the 3610/3620, which used gate arrays, was about 10"w x 24"h x 30"d -- this is the model pictured in the center and center-right photos on that page. Finally, there was the Ivory chip, which powered the MacIvory coprocessor card (this is what's being shown in the upper left photo) and the XL and UX series. I still have a working XL-1200; it's about the size of two Sun "pizza boxes" stacked vertically, maybe 16" x 16" x 8"h. I believe this machine was out in 1987.
(All dimensions guesstimated from memory -- figure a 20% margin of error.)
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As a hardware company. They had some serious comp sci types in their consulting practice that continued on until around the mid 90s. One of the principle consultants explained their practice this way to me: "We figure out how to do things that others have tried to do and failed at -- repeatedly." Ironically, this skillset only applied to computer science problems. They didn't know how to make a sustainable business out of having a bunch of hugely sm
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Layne
I remember when.... (Score:5, Interesting)
anyway....get off my lawn!
Re:I remember when.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I remember when.... (Score:4, Funny)
Why you young insensitive clod, I'm gonna sma.....ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz whut?
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Anyway, one night the ring was hit by a glitch which reset the plugs back to factory defaults - this turned on automatic echoing, which led to the classic situation of the VAX sending 'Login', to which the
Internet connections (Score:4, Interesting)
-S
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Re:Internet connections (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like they went to the Yahoo! Small Business website and registered the domains on their credit cards for $7.99.
Whoever was maintaining the canonical copy of the hosts file had plenty of other stuff to do, this was just a minor chore for them. So it's reasonable to think that updates would get bunched up and made whenever he happened to have some free time.
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Re:Internet connections (Score:5, Informative)
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Let's keep things in context (Score:4, Informative)
Remember that this took place during the time frame of the transition from a research oriented network (the ARPANET) to a larger, more production oriented network. The World Wide Web in it's current form had not even been invented yet. The creation of the .com domain was driven by a technical requirement to switch to a hierarchical based system, replacing a flat name space. The first step was to adopt the temporary .arpa domain name. Most companies then switched from the .arpa domain to the .com domain when their technical staff was ready to make the transition.
In other words, registering for a .com domain was an administrative necessity for the relatively small number of companies that were connected to the DARPA Internet at that time. It was not a business decision.
Putting this in context, during this same time frame lot of universities were connected to a different network, called CSNET. BITNET was also very active during this period. Although there were interconnections between the DARPA Internet, CSNET, and BITNET, each was a truly independent network. A lot of companies with Unix installations were on UUCP (which did not use a domain based name system).
Considering the market segments that companies like Microsoft were involved with in the mid 1980's, it should not surprise anyone that they were not among the first to register for .com domains. It would not have made any sense for them to do so.
Re:Let's keep things in context (Score:4, Insightful)
As compared to Apple, a massive old-school defense contractor that's only recently transitioned from nuclear guidance systems to MP3 players.
Re:Let's keep things in context (Score:5, Funny)
"And I'm a PC!"
Re:Let's keep things in context (Score:4, Insightful)
First virtual real-estate goldrush (Score:3, Interesting)
And here's the ironic bit about all of this... (Score:2)
So, they tried to figure out what domain names you might want, BOUGHT THEM from under you for pennies, and now are trying to sell them back to you for piles of money...
"Hey, new mothers! After you have your baby, we're gonna take it, then sell it back to you for a FOOLISH DISCOUNT! Woo woo!"
This was the 80s (Score:5, Interesting)
The internet was but a dream. It was something that a few research companies, some universities and maybe even the ARPA cared about. Nobody had internet at home. If anything, we had modems to dial into BBSs.
Does it make sense to register a COM domain? As in Commercial?
Some companies realized that this will be the future (and I'm honestly surprised to see Siemens on the list, they must've had better and more visionary people in their upper echelons back then), and they registered their trademark as a com domain rather than fighting a lengthy battle with domain grabbers as many have done later. Cisco and a few others on the list make sense, since they are pretty tightly coupled with the success of the internet, being more or less networking companies.
But, bluntly, why should any flower shop or manufacturer of beer bottles register "his" domain in the 80s? It was hardly their topic, and hardly any sensible way to sell their goods without an audience willing and able to buy via the net.
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Back in those days there was a widespread belief (correct or not) that the internet could not be use for commercial purposes (the main argument being the US government's funding of the backbone). Sure, there was a "COM" TLD, but that was really just a basket for outfits that didn't fall into one of the main TLDs: GOV (government agencies), NET (infrastructure providers), EDU (colleges), ORG (non-profits), and MIL (military). If a commercial entity wanted on the net, they were welcome, but the assumption among most netizens at the time was that they were doing it to participate in the net's non-commercial activities.
Yep. The first time I connected to the Internet (through Delphi - anybody else old enough to remember that one?) I had to sign a usage agreement. It basically stated that commercial activity was strictly prohibited. The only allowed activity was education, research, government, and "incidental personal use".
At the time, the entire thing was government funded.
This was way before HTML and NCSA Mosaic. The "cool" browsing application was gopher. Direct connections! Links from one site to another!
Re:This was the 80s (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This was the 80s (Score:5, Funny)
That was until FTP was discovered.
The Flower Transfer Protocol changed the internet forever.
Re:This was the 80s (Score:4, Interesting)
You could either send snail-mail, call the university (or Pentagon) and hope somebody knew where the person you wanted to speak with were... or you could register on the net and send him an e-mail... and remember, this was the pre-cellular era.
DEC was btw. very much involved in the whole (d)arpanet project (many universities used DEC computers to power the net back then).
IBM was big iron for big business and tried btw. to build a global network based on SNA (read your SNA manual again, if you don't belive me).
...and yes you are right... the only reason for a pizzeria in Palo Alto to have a registered domain was for all those guys from HP, DEC and Cisco to order pizza by email... daily... tons of pizza every day... well, somebody just didn't see that option back then.
Siemens, a bit of history (Score:4, Insightful)
At the time we (I speak as a Siemens employee about the time) were developing a Unix based minicomputer systes based around National Semiconductor chips - the MX range of computers which were widely used by the German State (post, trains, work service etc). We then moved onto an i386 architecture, first with a port of SCO Unix then we did the actual Intel port of Unix 5.4 for AT&T. Our customers were pretty heavy users of TCP/IP - for network printing and file sharing.
I don't know who registered siemens.com, we also had siesoft.co.uk for the UK. However the Unix visionary was Hans Strack Zimmermann. I don't recall the research headquarters in Munich having great connectivity at the time. I seem to recall most traffic went via UUCP via Dusseldorf university and was charged by the kilobyte but we did have ftp access by about 1988. I ran up a 70,000 DM bill with a colleague downloading stuff like the King James Bible!!!
Siemens was a founder member of the OSF so has pretty good credentials.
What? (Score:4, Funny)
SCO before Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
Be glad you didn't. (Score:3)
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But I guess there was a MICROS~1 on a SMB/NetBIOS domain controller on an IPX/SPX network all along
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Actually, Microsoft probably hooked up their Xenix [wikipedia.org] machines to the Internet for better inter-company and company-university communications. Believe it or not, Microsoft couldn't really run itself on DOS machines at the time. Xenix was used to provide the various networked services (like email) necessary for day-to-day operations.
McDonalds (Score:4, Interesting)
Symbolics! (Score:2)
I don't remember the fist web site I visited - but I remember it was using Lynx. I used gopher all the time, though. Turbogopher ran a lot better on the Mac LC3s at the University computer lab than the pre-beta of Mosaic.
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There was
the meaning of TLDS (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the ubiquity of bookmarks, hyperlinks and google, do we even need catchy domain names any more? I might have paid over the odds many years ago to get an easily remembered one, but now? who cares, people will find you with google anyway right?
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I might have paid over the odds many years ago to get an easily remembered one, but now? who cares, people will find you with google anyway right?
"I need a new basketball. I know! I'll order it from that sports site I went to a few months ago, they were pretty cool. Damn, I didn't bookmark it. What was it... qwomnx.com, something stupid like that. Ah well, I'll Google for 'sports', I'm sure it'll turn up."
.org was always a catch-all (Score:5, Informative)
.org was not created for non-profit organizations, it was originally created as a catch-all for organizations that didn't meet the requirements for the other gTLDs. PIR's History Page [pir.org], RFC 920 [ietf.org], RFC 1591 [ietf.org]
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It all depends on what you mean by "non-profit". How about just a simple personal domain? Although most of these are de facto non-profits, common usage reserves the term non-profit for organizations that explicitly fall under IRS code section 503. So there are potential entities that fall under .org that do not fall under the rubric of "non-profit" organizations.
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I probably should stop myself from counter-nitpicking this particular nitpick. The important fact here is that RFC920 has never been enforced and wasn't all the realistic to begin with. To argue about the precise meaning of rules that have never been enforced (Does Slashdot violate the RFC by being commercial or by being not a non-profit?) is kind of silly.
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How much did it cost? (Score:3)
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I found this on Wikipedia.. It says the same price was in effect in 1985
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com [wikipedia.org]
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(The grammar error is the responsibility of the wikidork who made the entry.) I wasn't in early enough to get a domain for free, but I do have one for which I paid a one-time fee.
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For all that, it wasn't all that far removed from "Hey Jack".
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Where's the last bunch? (Score:5, Funny)
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Why? Do you need more V1@grA?
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Checklist... (Score:5, Funny)
#10: Visit 1985 and buy up all 18,252
Dan East
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OMG -- Tandy! (Score:2)
Ugh, my eyes. (Score:5, Funny)
I was worried there for a second... (Score:2)
I was worried until my conscious mind had the time to process the fact that TimeCube [timecube.com] != Datacube [datacube.com].
I think we should all be glad that TimeCube took much longer to arrive.
Fanboyism (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft is not
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But soon they won't be...
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wiki (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com [wikipedia.org]
Commercial traffic and the early internet (Score:2)
Our old friends... (Score:2)
Such a shame it had to come to this...
And some sites still have 80's design (Score:4, Informative)
Simple and to the point.
BTW this is the guy who can't fly because he refuses to get a government issued ID. Interesting stuff.
My favorite (Score:2)
Now there's a visionary.
More Interesting.... (Score:3, Funny)
Talk about the old days... (Score:2)
ccTLD? (Score:2)
This seems to imply the possibility of a domain named 'whatever.cctld'. They should have just come out and listed the ccTLDs available at the beginning (UK, SU, etc.)
.com-to-.com email forbidden (Score:3, Interesting)
In those days,
In theory, it was OK to send email from a
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Coincidence ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Conspiracy (Score:4, Funny)
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DEC (Score:2)
And that was AFTER Ken Olson had gone senile!
IDE.com registration and use of email (Score:5, Interesting)
Although we were 78th on that list, I believe that we were among the very first to place an ad that used an email address as a contact point. I was able to find an ad from the August, 1987, issue of Unix World, where we gave our email address as ucbvax!sun!ide!sales, using the UUCP format. Our customers were developers and early adopters, mostly on Sun workstations, so we actually got some email and some sales leads in this way. Of course, we switched to the "@ide.com" format as soon as we were able to do so. (Please post a reply if you are aware of an earlier use of an email address in a published ad.)
Fun times....
Re:IDE.com registration and use of email (Score:5, Interesting)
In 1988 I worked at Sales Technologies, which went by
It gave us huge geek foo, though.
Nasty site.. (Score:3, Interesting)
1985 - that late ? (Score:3, Informative)
We had names the other way round in those days, most significant bit first: uk.co.phcomp
3COM broke the rules for DNS names (Score:3, Informative)
"The labels must follow the rules for ARPANET host names. They must start with a letter, end with a letter or digit, and have as interior characters only letters, digits, and hyphen. There are also some restrictions on the length. Labels must be 63 characters or less."
I remember wondering how 3COM got away with it.
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An estimated US$23 billion were secretly spent for research and development on the B-2 in the 1980s. An additional expense was caused by changing its role in 1985 from a high-altitude bomber to a low-altitude bomber, which required a major redesign. B-2 in flight over the Mississippi River (St. Louis, Missouri) with the Gateway Arch and Busch Stadium in the background.The first B-2 was publicly displayed on 22 November 1988, when it was rolled out of its hangar at Air Force Plant 42, Palmda
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There *is* an
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When the ARPANET started implementing the DNS,
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Pyramid was a hardware manufacturer, Vortex was (is) Lauren Weinstein's consulting company (I believe), Portal was an early (arguably the first) commercial USENET provider, and Rosetta was (is) Scott Warren's consulting company.
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Did anyone happen to visit Stargate.com before the movie???
Looks like Stargate.com is now a Co-location company in Chicago.
Re:The First Post Registered (Score:4, Funny)