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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."

4 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. Very cool. by jericho4.0 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    One of the press releases on the linked page answers 'why?'.
    "GEEK.NZ defines a distinct community of interest, just as other second-level domains do," explains Andy Linton. "However, GEEK.NZ also provides an opportunity for deploying additional, more experimental services such as DNS Security (DNSSEC) and IPv6, which are many years away from deployment in other registries, like CO.NZ." Linton sees GEEK.NZ performing a role for DNS service which is analogous to the role the high-speed, optical research network, "Internet2", provides for ISPs.
    Cool! I want one. It would be cool to have an 'anything goes' kind of area on the net. No production servers, just experimental services, protocols, etc. Or how about a domain in which hacking (cracking) was allowed/expected? We would learn a lot about security.
    --
    "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
  2. Terrible summary. by SlashChick · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    Actually, they're trying to get a domain extension of sorts, much like the pre-existing .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.)

    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 .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.)

    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.

  3. Sounds like eu.org! by MavEtJu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sounds like the eu.org domain, which is a free-to-register one used by European people. Go geeks!

    --
    bash$ :(){ :|:&};:
  4. What 'bout LoTR domains? by ryochiji · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.