

100 oldest .com domains - joao
http://www.iwhois.com/oldest/

======
nick_a
8 of the 10 oldest domains can be tied to lisp... and to keven bacon...

1\. symbolics.com: made Lisp machines <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolics>

2\. bbn.com: BBN made BBN Lisp for the PDP-1:
[http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/index.html...](http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/index.html#BBN_LISP_)

3\. think.com: homepage of Thinking Machines Incorporated, the company that
made _lisp<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*Lisp>

4\. ...

5\. dec.com: Digital Equipment Corporation (which got bought by compaq, which
was bought by HP) made PDP microcomputers. The first interactive lisp was
implemented on the PDP-1 in 1963 by Peter Deutsch <http://www-
formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/node5.html>

6\. northrop.com: northrop is still using lisp [http://www.international-lisp-
conference.org/2005/speakers.h...](http://www.international-lisp-
conference.org/2005/speakers.html#rusty_johnson)

7\. xerox.com: xerox made the Xerox Lisp Machines
<http://www.andromeda.com/people/ddyer/lisp/>

8\. sri.com: SRI is still using lisp
[http://www.franz.com/success/customer_apps/it_management/sri...](http://www.franz.com/success/customer_apps/it_management/sri.php3)

9\. hp.com: HP can be tied to lisp... but more strongly to keven bacon...
<http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/90/HPL-90-213.html>

10\. ...

~~~
stcredzero
My coworker has a symbolics.com email address. He has a (sometimes) working
Lisp machine in his living room.

------
mynameishere
"Some companies," I told Jane Hulbert, "are even registering the names of
their competitors."

<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/mcdonalds.html>

~~~
tlrobinson
_"No burger_king.com either."_

I find it sort of amusing people thought we would be using underscores in
place of spaces in domain names.

Also amusing:

 _"The guy in registration? One person is responsible for assigning domain
names on the Internet?

Actually, "We have 2.5 people doing it," Williamson said, meaning that the
half person is really a full person doing it part-time."_

------
dc2k08
<http://symbolics.com/> doesn't look like it's been updated too much since
then either.

Here it is from 98, no divs, no doc-type:
[http://web.archive.org/web/19981207002851/stony-
brook.scrc.s...](http://web.archive.org/web/19981207002851/stony-
brook.scrc.symbolics.com/www/index.html)

------
eventhough
Interesting bit of trivia: nobody can ever have example.com, example.net, or
example.org because it's a reserved domain for the RFC. Check it out at
www.example.com.

------
mattculbreth
Notice that Apple.com is on here, but no Microsoft.com.

~~~
swilliams
I'm not surprised. Microsoft (Bill Gates) didn't see the point of the Internet
for a long time.

------
mechanical_fish
Sometimes it's hard to believe that the oldest domain is still less than 25
years old.

------
decadentcactus
<http://whois.domaintools.com/nordu.net>

------
pmjordan
Hah:

86= 03-Sep-1987 SCO.COM

for how much longer, I wonder?

------
ashleyw
Were there any restrictions on what you could register? (i.e. only domains
related to your company)

I'd have thought people would have registered generic words first...

~~~
gaius
Yeah, people used to care back in the day, like whether you were commercial or
nonprofit, etc. .net was reserved for infrastructure providers, organizations
who actually owned and operated the physical bits of the network. Nowadays
it's a free for all, tho' I think .edu still maintains criteria for
registration.

There was a long-running saga of people trying to register fuck.com and being
told "no" too.

------
volida
anybody knows what was the price to buy 1 back then?

~~~
ars
It was free, you just had to have a reason for it.

~~~
iman
Are they still free? Or are they now paying renewal fees like the rest of us?

~~~
ars
No they pay now. At the time the fees were billed as a way of expiring unused
domains, if you didn't pay, after a while they'd delete the domain.

It didn't work out that way exactly once the company realized how much money
they could make.

I'm still kicking myself for not registering some names. But at the time it
was all ethical and you were not supposed to register something unless you
actually needed it.

~~~
volida
"But at the time it was all ethical"

Similar to that is the impression between people who know each other that is
not ethical to do a similar software business. I assume this is more valid
between programmers than in any other industry because people involved are
more often more nice. But I suppose someone will live to understand that this
is wrong to assume.

------
Jem
Holy crap, the top 6 are older than me.

------
shadytrees
All that work for a yourmom.com joke.

