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Kiwi Geeks Seek Domain
Codeine writes "A group of professional Internet engineers and technicians from New Zealand are following the published procedure to obtain the delegation of GEEK.NZ from the NZ Domain Name Commissioner (DNC). If successful, GEEK.NZ would be New Zealand's twelfth second-level domain."
Why is this such a big issue? Well the "12th second level domain" phrase surprised me. This reminds of the recent Australian IT minister's speech, which was discussed (mercilessly) at slashdot. Looks like the NZ internet situation is even worse than the Australian situation. Anyways, I hope these geeks succeed.
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"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Wow. Upon reading the summary, my first thought was "Why do I care?" I mean, geek.nz... they're just going to put up a website or something, right?
.org.nz, .net.nz and .co.nz. (I don't know whether I should blame the story submitter, the Slashdot editor, or the guys who wrote the webpage for the completely ordinary, ho-hum writeup, since all of them seemed to assume that we understood exactly what they were trying to do.)
.co.nz, .net.nz, and .org.nz based on the criteria in the linked PDF above (namely, that they have a long-standing common interest and should get a second-level domain for it.)
Actually, they're trying to get a domain extension of sorts, much like the pre-existing
From what I gather, the domain name commissioner of New Zealand is in charge of approving second-level domains. There is a list of criteria for these domains here (which is linked from the geek.nz website.) These people are trying to put geek.nz in the same realm as
The linked website is pretty terrible in terms of explaining to the rest of the world these geeks' true motivation to do this. Okay, you want a second-level domain, and you meet the criteria... and? Is this to make your government open up its domain name system to anyone who has a legitimate interest? Is it just a cool project? Unfortunately, the website that they made shows none of their motivation for doing this.
As it is, it seems to be a cool novelty, but these geeks failed to express any sort of goal for this project. Interesting? I suppose. Slashdot-worthy? Not really.
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Echoing the above (as of my writing, of course -- things may have changed as of your reading) comment: what is the big deal? Not trying to troll, but as a site looking for community support, there isn't an easily-accessible, clear condensation of the issue in getting a second-level .nz domain. It seems to be a case of getting approval by a controlling body, which can be swayed by public opinion to a certain extent. I think their campaign would be more successful if they made it clear why support of other wordly geeks is a good thing (sorry Martha).
Secondly, from a geeky perspective, geek.nz would be wickedly, uber-cool. Unfortunately I think it may be also possible to have the other, non-geek part of the population to look at the whole operation with a little disdain or perhaps disrespect (insert faviourite geek stereotype). I can certainly see some people (those outsiders) losing/not having respect for a project or company because it's on the geek.nz domain. That said, as an internal (within the geek community) testing ground, as was somewhat suggested on the site, it'd be pretty darn cool.
Does anyone else have their site read by Bert? They seem to be on Bert's good list. Care to make a few spurious correlations?
"this is a really good piece of cantoloupe."
I realize as a web programmer I'm in a "geeky" line of work, but it never occurred to me advertise myself as a geek. I don't like it. I mean I'm no stud, I don't sport Olympic wood, and I not better than you, but I consider geekiness a rung on the totem pole I don't want to be below. Not to rant really, but I just consider the term "geek" to be derogatory.
apparently the world does, since most of the stories posted here are US centric and this site is world renowned.
it must be tough facing those facts.
Sounds like the eu.org domain, which is a free-to-register one used by European people. Go geeks!
bash$
Well.. it would be yourname.geek.nz - not directly under .nz.
.co.nz being "nz's .com". We're not the only country to do that - co.uk, com.au come to mind. .Nz is more important to us than .us is to Americans, because it contains "mainline" domains as well as oddball.
Unlike the US, we have second level that are our own "versions" of the top level - such as
So as a white fella from nz (pakeha if you must, but i prefer the term "new zealander"), can i go and register www.ac.maori.nz or whatever? Or do i have to be maori to do so? if i do, isn't that, um, a completely RACIST policy?
and the "bi-cultural" rubbish has got to go. sometimes i feel like if you're not maori, you're not worth shit here. try "multi-cultural" instead! how about a chinese.nz domian, samoan.nz or maybe moriori.nz, or possibly a onequartermaorihalfirishandabitofspanish.nz?
why cant we just be one country and leave this racist crap in the past where it belongs.
This is New Zealand we're talking about. There's gotta be a LoTR related domain. Something like hobbiton.nz or shire.nz should do nicely.
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To be perfectly honest the press release id the FIRST place I look to get information about a particular organization. Think about it: A press release is a carefully worded document that has been (hopefully) written and rivesed over a long period of time, and can explain "why should I care" to the press.
I agree that if you really want to ensure that your purpose is well understood you should have it in bold, in your face, on the front page, style; however, you should also go looking for information where it is obviously residing.