Wanna free web domain for a year? Hey, it's not rocket .science

This morning has seen the launch of the dot-science top-level domain – and one registrar at least is offering them for free. That's right, AlpNames is offering one year's registration for zero dollars. The typical price for a dot-science domain will be $40 per year, but in order to give the launch a boost the registry owners …

[Christoph]

Bother!

mad.science has already gone

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Bother!

boffin.science is available

Surely the Special Projects Bureau would be interested?

[diodesign]

Re: Bother!

Yoink! We were born for this gTLD combo.

C.

[Swarthy]

homeopathy.science is taken.. I thought for sure that would break something.

[Anonymous Coward]

My first thought was creationist.science but I like your thinking!

[Ken Y-N]

Fortunately, http://homeopathyisnot.science is still there!

[Swarthy]

As I write this

I see xkcd.science is still available.. Someone want to let Mr. Munroe know to grab it?

[Destroy All Monsters]

Potato

Get aperture.science then install a portal on it!

[foo_bar_baz]

Re: Potato

crowbar.science was gone too :)

[Mark 85]

I'll be curious to see who grabs trick-cyclist.science.

[StephenH]

sheblindedmewith.science is taken

[Scott Pedigo]

sheblindedmewith.science is now being shown as "available", as a "premium" domain, with a "Make An Offer" button. So domain squatter hoping to cash in. What a surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tried to get womenin.science, but I doubt I'll get many visitors.

[Havin_it]

Root down

Hoped I'd be in time to bag dropping.science for my Beastie Boys fan site, but it looks like those pesky coprologists beat me to the punch again.

[xperroni]

Re: Root down

Well, sh!t.

[DavCrav]

I know this is all a bit of a laugh, but is any actual science going to really be on .science? I seriously doubt any actual scientists will bother with it because they have real stuff to do. Leaving only the...interesting...people like this dude:

http://www.jainmathemagics.com/default.asp

[Groaning Ninny]

Everything I've tried so far is gone :-(

Even things like: redfgrgrnot.science and ngvjtmbjimrftyhtt.science

- apparently more than three people are looking at these right now.

So, was it a scam or real?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait-and-switch

[Christoph]

Maybe they wanted to see what is most popular so they can charge more for them or reserve them?

[Ben Bonsall]

Omni.science is gone :(

[Anonymous Coward]

ehhh

dfg4rfdsdkj35nbs.science

is unavailable

[DreadPirateRobot]

Because they are free I expect the random strings will be being snapped up to be used as C&C DNS addresses. I can see that leading to some network security bods just blanket banning *.science in a few months.

However, chemtrails.science is free - anyone want to put a static page saying "Chemtrails = Contrails. Deal with it." up? Not in the mood to create another login for anywhere today.

[Faye B]

Got One

Yay, I managed to get FABakerBooks.science for my book website domain. Now I can put up my book The Search For Cern on my new website. Hopefully it will be a bit better than my WIX website http://fayeb767.wix.com/fabakerbooks

[Corp-Rat]

Oh Dear!

It would seem they didn't put enough science into their server design, looks like the site has gone down.

[Phuq Witt]

2 months later...

10th April: Somehow I managed to click on this article today, thinking it was a current one and registered a silly domain, 'for a laff'.

Several hours later, my account is still showing as "Pending Payment" on alpnames website. In fact I've now paid them twice, as I thought at first PayPal might have screwed up, as I was using it on mobile. So sent payment through again from my laptop. Both payments are marked as 'completed' on PayPal, but no movement from alpnames [or response from their support people].

OK. So it's only a piddling 35p [twice]. But 35p from several thousand people would amount to a tidy sum, so I'm starting to wonder is this a scam.

Did anyone else play the dot-science game and, if so, did you ever get your hands on your domain?