
Old Internet Files - fcambus
https://rscott.org/OldInternetFiles/
======
Diederich
Hah, there's my domain, from 1996:

REALMS.ORG

Admin: Diederich, Dana Dana.Diederich@GOLDINC.COM (601)374-6510 ...

I actually started the process of acquiring realms.org in 1994. At the time,
you sent an e-mail to 'a guy' in DC. It took some time, but I finally got it
registered in 1995. It was, of course, a free service.

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smhenderson
Seeing "domain-contacts.txt" reminded how much simpler the internet used to
be. Imagine not being afraid of giving out your contact info to the whole
internet!

I'm not sure if the people who participated at the time would ever have
imagined the need for whois anonymizers and weird tricks to keep your email
address from being picked up by robots and spiders.

~~~
gumby
> Seeing "domain-contacts.txt" reminded how much simpler the internet used to
> be. Imagine not being afraid of giving out your contact info to the whole
> internet!

ARPA (well, the ARPANET NIC at SRI) maintained a printed book of everyone (who
wanted to be listed) on the ARPANET: name, phone number, mail address,
physical address. The first one was about 1/2 an inch thick, the second one
(around 1978 or 79?) about twice that...and then after that they gave up. I
think I still have mine someplace.

(ARPA changed their name to DARPA at some point for reasons unknown to me)

~~~
walrus01
here's a copy of HOSTS.TXT from 1982 and 1983:

[https://emaillab.jp/dns/hosts/](https://emaillab.jp/dns/hosts/)

and from 1985:
[https://emaillab.jp/pub/hosts/19850322/HOSTS.TXT](https://emaillab.jp/pub/hosts/19850322/HOSTS.TXT)

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Ologn
Ah, I remember when you could get a full list of com domains from the
Internic. Hell, I remember when SRI-NIC.ARPA was a root name server. I forget
exactly when they stopped the ability to ftp that.

Interesting looking at the COM zone for August 1995 and June 1996. In August
1995, bulletproof.com, foolproof.com, and fool-proof.com were all registered -
but not proof.com. Proof.com was registered February 3rd, 1996 (I applied for
it the same day but didn't get it, they must have beat me by an hour or two).
By June 1996, not only were all the above registered in the proof.com
namespace, but also babyproof.com, birdproof.com, crashproof.com,
cyberproof.com, digitalproof.com etc.

Of course if I knew back in February 1996 how valuable good .com names would
be in a few years, I would have registered a bunch more.

~~~
samtc
You can still access com.zone [1], you have to fill a form and have a phone
call with verisign and you get access to a good old FTP with a daily dump.

Some other TLDs gives access through Centralized Zone Data Service [2]. Some
deny access, like ca.zone.

But I get what you mean, it was really publicly available.

[1] [https://www.verisign.com/en_US/channel-resources/domain-
regi...](https://www.verisign.com/en_US/channel-resources/domain-registry-
products/zone-file/index.xhtml)

[2] [https://czds.icann.org/en](https://czds.icann.org/en)

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donalhunt
should these be shared with the internet archive?

Would be interesting to fill in the gaps for different countries - Ireland
still has plenty of people around that probably have relevant files from the
late 80s / 90s (if they went searching)...

~~~
NVRM
You can easily submit a link to the archive with a simple url call:
[https://web.archive.org/save/https://rscott.org/OldInternetF...](https://web.archive.org/save/https://rscott.org/OldInternetFiles/)

As a bookmarklet:

javascript:void(window.open('[https://web.archive.org/save/'+location.href));](https://web.archive.org/save/'+location.href\)\);)

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aldoushuxley001
I like how basic his website is. Simple and familiar.

~~~
devmunchies
this trend is coming back in the design world as brutalism (in the same vein
as brutalist architecture).

this site has a lot of examples:
[http://brutalistwebsites.com](http://brutalistwebsites.com) (HN is actually
one of the examples listed)

~~~
anyfoo
I don't think that's the same. The website linked by this post has barely, if
any, design (in form of CSS or otherwise) at all. It's not "brutalist", it's
whatever the default browser layout and settings are.

That's how the web and HTML used to work: Focus almost entirely on content,
semantic markup, the browser mostly decides how to present that information to
you--along with your personal preferences.

So "brutalist" design does not apply, because there is no (visual) design
involved.

~~~
devmunchies
> It's not "brutalist", it's whatever the default browser layout and settings
> are.

Exactly. Just like brutalist architecture, an interior might expose a steel
frame and the pipes, brutalist websites expose the HTML and base structure.
Not all brutalist sites are completely stripped down this much but they have
elements and expand on it.

~~~
speedplane
There are definitely similarities between brutalist architecture and brutalist
web design, but it's more of a comparison rather than an over-arching design
principal.

Brutalist architecture was largely driven by enabling concrete technology.
Concrete was previously used as a purely structural element, but as it
advanced, architects realized it could be used as an aesthetic. IMHO, I
believe that when these architects built these buildings, they were aiming for
something more human, like shaped clay, but their efforts simply failed, and
they created something entirely different. In fact, there was never any
coherent brutalist architecture "movement", most brutalist buildings were
deemed so long after they were built, largely because they appeared
foreboding, intense, and used large quantities of concrete. (yes, there are
plenty of "brutalist" buildings that don't heavily rely on concrete, but
there's no question that many of the most famous buildings do so).

So I don't think brutalist architectural design necessarily means exposing the
"base structure". I would not consider the pompidou center as brutalist.

Brutalist web design is also foreboding and intense, but that is really the
end of their similarities. Many brutalist web designs intentionally create a
disjointed feeling, overlapping text, mismatched fonts, large variations in
color and font-size, are intentionally used to create a particular feeling of
haphazardness and authenticity. I don't think brutalist architectural design
carried that same intent.

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scruffyherder
Don't know why I didn't register until 1997, but I guess by then it'd grown
way too big to keep casual copies lying around.

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kasajian
I was surprised to find my name in the "contacts" list. I guess I'm KK35. Is
that a WHOIS thing or something?

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Jaruzel
It would be fun to run a mini web crawler against these old domains, and see
if any are still hosting circa 1990s content.

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jen729w
SOUP.ORG in the first domain.info file ... anyone know what that was? It now
redirects to an actual soup place.

~~~
djsumdog
Check out the guy who still owns milk.com:

[http://milk.com/value/](http://milk.com/value/)

Jesus.com was once owned by a guy who offered "Showers with Jesus" (he had
long hair). ... or was it baths with Jesus. It was one of those.

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cowmix
Ah. Hello.com

If only I had kept that.

