Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Boulevard of Broken .dreams

Posted by ryuzaki0 on 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."

6 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. A simple commodity landrush like any other by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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.

  2. Re:Why no, I'm not by AyeRoxor! · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I can't even get in to see the article, because it appears to use flash to show ads, and I refuse to install flash. Flash lets them send images all over my screen that I can't close, and make sounds that I can't silence.

    As I said in the letter I wrote to salon, "I'm sorry, but you'll have to treat me like a human with rights and let me close the ads that I so choose."

    So, I just don't get to see the article, and I tell everybody I know that

    Salon treats you like a monkey in a cage, beating you over the head with ads. If you think you don't want to see an ad, they know better, because you're just a monkey.

  3. This stuff isn't funny.... by Newer+Guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:Why no, I'm not by AyeRoxor! · · Score: 2, Insightful

    My complaint was not that I have to see ads. I apologize for not making that clear. I totally understand and respect that model. But also, they have to respect that once I see an ad, if I choose to skip it because it doesn't interest me, I should have that right. It's just wasting their bandwidth and my time if it's not something I'm interested in pursuing.

  5. In an alternate universe, not too unlike our own by guttentag · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

  6. Re:This stuff isn't funny.... by dacarr · · Score: 2, Insightful
    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 and type (with quotes) "civil war battles" at the prompt.

    And for the benefit of my readers, this is the results of that search.

    --
    This sig no verb.