Slashdot Mirror
Boulevard of Broken .dreams
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."
Otherwise you can apply all of the standard economic models recently applied to tulips, beanie babies, cabbage patach dolls, etc.
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.
Who registered that damn Goatse site!
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.
See my journal for a discussion of this very topic, including a domain much more exciting than freerooftile.com. :-)
Works for me in Mozilla ... looks like you need to switch your browser. Complaining about simply fixed problems on Slashdot, which is read by techies (at least used to) is a pretty lame excuse.
If you want later, we can send someone over to your house and show you how to use your mouse too.
Yeah, like the infamous whitehouse.com porn site.
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. (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.
Training monkeys for world domination since 1439
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.
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.
Odd that she mentioned thepenismightier.com, since a version of it it is a fairly thriving site, and they like the ambiguity of the name.
One my favorite tech info resource sites has to have a dash in its name, otherwise it might look like "expert sexchange" instead...
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
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 =)
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
I guess the all forgot to use the Evan's system when they registered there domains :)
- Sam
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.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
this article found at LATimes.com, 29 Jul 2002:
j sp?slug=la%2Dfi%2Dnetnames29jul29
http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.
--- Ask me about my Sig -- it's a 9mm.
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?)
To read makes our speaking English good. - X. Harris
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
It is hilarious though...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Odd...I was able to read the article with no Flash and images from Salon blocked. Then again, I didn't see any "Get this plugin" boxes either, so maybe I just didn't get the Flash ads this time...
What did the page do to you? The only time I have trouble with having no Flash plugin is when stupid webmasters insist on making their only navigation system in Flash. Sites with Flash ads or extraneous components have never caused a problem. Do you use IE? I've seen IE harass users endlessly when it encounters content for a plugin like Flash it doesn't have. Moz and Netscape just replace the content with a "click here to get the plugin" box and go on their merry way, though...
DennyK
Probably from this old Saturday night live skitAlex 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!
No Zen is good zen
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.
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.
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
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.
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.
I always preferred the Boulevard of Broken Limbs, myself.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
(* 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.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
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.
Just follow the day, and reach fo
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.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
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.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
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!"
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
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.
I would think that Ceilinghooks.com was an artistic bondage site.
And you were surprised they were laughing ...?
-Martin
SoftMaker Office for Windows|Linux|Android
Portal of Evil has a great selection of totally arbitrary and utterly silly domain names 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.
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.
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.
No pun intended I presume.
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.
...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.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
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)
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
(* 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?
Table-ized A.I.
As I expected, they didn't get renewed.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
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.
Table-ized A.I.
Anyways, kredal.allyourbasearebelongto.us is mine now. Muahaha!
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
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.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
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.