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Comment by wand3r | Hacker News Reader

> Expert Sex Change

You may want to edit...

Edit: Well; that explains why the service didn't take off

And I may not. That was the constant nickname back in the day, occasioned by the fact that their original domain was "expertsexchange.com". They later moved to one with a hyphen, but by then the damage was done.

(Edit to your edit: It did take off! It was the best we had for years. That best was just very, very bad.)

Remember joking with colleagues back then about sourceexchange.com and how that sounded out loud.

penisland was another famous site from the time with this property.

Edit: It was a site that sold pens; I think the alternative pronunciation of their domain name was unintentional.

Edit 2: I think I was wrong. Snopes says they did sell pens but they chose the name intentionally: http://www.snopes.com/business/names/domains.asp. Some other such names from that link: powergenitalia.com, molestationnursery.com, and whorepresents.com.

Pen island? What was it supposed to be?

A joke - a "domain hack" avant la lettre.

penis land

Did it ever actually sell pens? I always understood it to be a joke; if it's been anything else, I'd love to know more.

And http://www.bigbustycoons.com

Snopes talks about penisland.net, which is still up now and clearly a joke - a rather disappointing effort, in fact, with a few rather broad double entendres and nothing further to offer.

I was curious about the (presumably) original .com, which is now squatted, and about which there seems no historical information easily to be found.

don't know about the website, but "Pen Island" is/was a small shop on Regents Street in London (not far from Picadilly Circus tube station) that sold high end fountain pens, mechanical pencils, etc. Don't know if it's still there, but it was list time i was in the UK (2007)

Here's Peter Norvig explaining this stuff: https://youtu.be/yvDCzhbjYWs?t=24m37s

true . Other such nameswere therapistfinder -> The Rapist Finder Whorepresent -> Whore Present

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