Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/06/man-waited-9-years-to-pounce-o.html
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Now stop a minute and think about how Mr. B. Boing feels today.
Probably even more frustrated.
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“If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.”
― Sun Tzu
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He has a good tip about not using a whois website unless you’re sure that it’s not ratting out your inquiries. Or use the whois command, if your OS has it. More daring would be to do whois checks against the registered name servers for the domain. It might give you a speed jump, but they might log the requests.
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Does anybody actually care about personal domain names anymore? Unless you’re marketing yourself as a personal brand I don’t even notice if you have a vanity website or not.
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After 21 years, Mr. B. Boing might be dead. Besides boingboing.org is probably available.
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I hope a lot of people lost a lot of money on domain name speculation.
I had “reddishorange.com” and let it lapse since I wasn’t doing anything with it. A bit later when I went to activate it again I discovered a bot had snapped it up and probably wanted a couple hundred dollars for it. So instead I just registered “radishorange.com”.
Which, if I’m being honest, I think is better anyway. Thanks, stupid bot!
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But the Boings have always been known for their long-lived hardiness.
Just look at old Beriah Elijah Boing. The first one in the water and the last one out at the community pool at the grand age of 102.
I’m sure people would talk about him more, if he hadn’t been shadow-banned by the rapscallious Internet Domain Registry working hand-in-glove with Big Boing.
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I had someone swipe mine due to lapsing on payment during unemployment. Frustrating. I got it back a couple years later.
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Mine lapsed in 2001 and got picked up by some rando. Someone still has it.
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The thing is, if you are a registrar domain squatting is nearly free. They can afford to be way out on the long tail because they barely have any skin in the game. The registrar business is one of the shadiest parts of the internet.
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Can registrars squat on domains though? That seems like such an obvious conflict of interest that it wouldn’t be allowed.
Also, “All bleeding stops, eventually.”
— Doc from Deadwood
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Nobody ever accused the registrars of being ethical.
The advice for registering your account is to not search for it before you attempt to register it, because the bots will see that and squat on the name instantly.
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I’ve been waiting about 7 years for mine after it’s been snatched up after the previous owner let it expire. Once it expires it goes to auction, which I documented on my blog the major events of a domain going to auction after it expires: https://eschrader.com/2018/03/08/godaddys-domain-expiration-process-explained/
Like… electing a President who doesn’t follow the restrictions of the emolument clause?
I had a domain for years that I let lapse around 2011. It was scarfed up by a squatter as well. Then on a whim I checked it last year and it was available, so I grabbed it for the normal price.
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Ooh. I own corporate-sellout.com because some squatter grabbed the unhyphenated version (I once asked if I could buy it; the squatter quoted a price that led me to respond “Keep it, you’ve earned it”).
I see it expires in January. I should mark my calendar.
There’s no content on my website at all. There wouldn’t even be a website if I wouldn’t host pics independently from eBay and Dropbox.
However, in my circles we use email a lot and having a domain to my last name makes it a lot easier. And I absolutely refuse to host my email on the Google or even iCloud. There’s no feature I find worthwhile, I very much prefer my own scripts accessing imap hosted in my country.
So yeah, I have my own domain, can use catch all addresses as I wish. Technically, any domain name would do, but if I need one anyway, why now your name?
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If nothing else, you could prevent somebody from setting up a website that trashed you, using a domain matching your full name.
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