Slashdot Mirror
Niue WiFi Network Gone, .nu TLD May Follow
gxc writes "The world's first free national wireless grid is no longer with us, after waves from
Cyclone Heta swept over Niue's thirty metre cliffs, destroying
everything. Although only one person died, the damage is so bad that
there is talk of winding up the country , meaning their fortuitous ccTLD could go the way of .su. Perhaps the easiest way
for Slashdotters to help Niue would be to choose a .nu domain over the dull alternatives."
What will happen to my expensive .nu domain?!
www.slashdot.nu is still available! Only 60euro/2 years! Think of the fun we could have. Uh, we could make, um. hm. A fresh nu slashdot. That'd be fun.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
But I seem to have plenty of free wireless points around here... Just drive around, your bound to find one... :)
That would be a CIA weather generator at work.
Whenever I think of .nu russian kiddie porn comes to mind.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
"The world's first free national wireless grid is no longer with us, after waves from Cyclone Heta swept over Niue's thirty metre cliffs, destroying everything."
A tradgedy, to be sure, but 1. this free wireless network was probably smaller than a few of our free *city* networks, and 2. why is this a separate country in the first place? Admittedly I've only taken a cursory glance at the situation, but it seems like the idea of them being a nation is more *cool* than it is practical or feasible -- especially given the degree to which a cyclone can destroy the place.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
I would highly doubt that the tld will go away, just as I doubt Niue will give up it's independence.
Hey, maybe I should move there and telecommute.
Isn't that something? The country can just close up shop. They just give two weeks' notice to the UN and start planning the retirement party. Will attending nations please contribute five dollars for drinks and a small gift.
What Would Jesus Do
(for a Klondike bar)?
je.suis.tout.nu
King Arthur: .. Ni!
Aide: Nu!
Arthur: Nono -- you're doing it wrong! n_I_
Aide: Ni!
Both together: Ni! Ni! Ni!
</sorry>
US is now divided as the "Red" and "blue" states. Red States = communist countries. Coincidence? I think not
He considered them a threat to his pet project; the good old fashioned wired net...
Just a reminder to those Debian users in Niue, the mirror.debian.nu apt-get server will be down until further notice. It seems we were prepare for the Slashdot effect, but not a big fucking cyclone effect. Thank you, Local Debian Mirror Administrator
They want sovereignty but want New Zealanders
to continue paying all their bills...
Available from the CIA Factbook entry for Niue.
Niue - Cia world factbook info
This link is for people like me who had never heard of this place before and is full of intresting facts such as.
"The sale of postage stamps to foreign collectors is an important source of revenue."
I respect Niue a lot in the respect that they seem to be pretty tech-savvy in addition to respecting and following their past. It's a hard combo to have, but worth the effort in my opinion. This is probably due to the fact that they are such a small nation. They can do things that bigger countries couldn't dream of.
Hundreds of people have their lives destroyed by a cyclone, and Slashdot reports it as a wireless Internet outage. Tsk.
"...as the smallest independent state in the world,..."
Isn't the smallest nation is The Principality of Sealand, which has received coverage on /. quite a few times for the hosting company that runs on it?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I read the several linked articles, and visited the .NU Registrar. I don't see anywhere that suggests buying a .NU domain would in any way help relief efforts.
It sounds like that request might be misguided philanthropy. If you want to help the people of Niue, I'd imagine some sort of direct financial contribution might be more effective.
It all goes downhill from first post
My gallows sense of global warming humor requires I ask: "So what else is .nu"?
--
make install -not war
WTF is Niue??
/ ne.html
CIA World Factbook to the rescue!
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos
To anyone living in that little shithole.
meaning their fortuitous ccTLD could go the way of .su
.nu TLD?
1500 people have had their homes and their community destroyed and the tragedy is that we might lose the
NO CARRIER
I find it hard to believe that I'm even saying this; I would welcome the chance to be an even smaller country of one. But I wouldn't be holding out my hands expecting others to be taxed to pay for it, and I doubt that I would expect other slashtot readers to pitch in to make it happen either.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Um... no .nu's is good news, right?
[ducks]
I don't think there's really a reason that it should solely because of a change in ownership. Hong Kong is now part of China (well, in theory) but still has its own .hk TLD. The .nu TLD already had probably thousands of domains per inhabitant as I'm sure other small countries do as well. It would essentially be free revenue for New Zealand, and could offset the $8M/year in aid.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Here's a another write-up of the incident by ReliefWeb. If you're looking for a place to direct your help to, note that Niue is a member of Development and Economic Policy Division Funding Assistance and Regional Natural Disaster Relief Fund ... so these might be good places to donate.
I suppose you could also just pick a random person, transfer some money and ask them to pass it around, since there are only about 2,000 people there.
"nu" means "now" in dutch and a .nu is cheaper than a .nl
From the looks of it, after this event, the entire set of data will have to be overhauled, including:
.nu, we should have a .dc too. It's not a state after all...
Area - comparative:
1.5 times the size of Washington, DC
Now...
Area - comparative:
1.2 times the size of Washington, DC (erosion effect).
Seriously, if we can have a
It says right there in the CIA World Factbook "Natural hazards: typhoons "
Many sites in Sweden use .nu because it means "now" in that language. (http://www.badminton.nu/, for example.)
And you have the gall to worry about Al Qaeda?
In other news, Slashdot trolls hope and pray that the Christmas Islands never get hit with a similarly devastating typhoon.
Rank Presidents by th
This sort of government hand out sickens me.
Just where is personal responsibility these days?
I'm telling you, it's Bill Clinton's fault that this island was supported by New Zealand all of these years.
The island of Niue recently showed up on ebay, and the bids are expected to be in excess of $100 usd... and as a bonus for being the winning bidder you also receive the entire island's population as your own personal servants...
Did you know that "nu" in dutch means "now"? A lot of dutch websites have thus used this TLD as some think it's cool.
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
root@somewhere# grep ^.nu$ /usr/share/dict/words
gnu
Who says theyre witout a wireless setup?
What ive seen theyre wireless, roofless, treeless, homeless..
-- Jim.
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
http://www.nic.su
Actually I prefer Tokelau for my free/cheap domain addresses from a small island nation, mostly because .tk is close enough like "tech" to get a geek like me smiling. However it figures that /. is being used by some idiot who links to a non-existant page, shows off a nice custom 404 on the hosting site tho. Actually I wonder if Tokelau got hit by that hurricane too, nothing on their site about it (yet).
Jonah Hex
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
What are you guys thinking?
.cx belonds to Christmas Island, which you would all know is an Australian. Time they put auDA in charge of .cx and not let the shock sites back in without an Australian Tax File number (AFAIK an Australian Taxation number is a requirement for using anything under .au)
Your taking domains for your own purposes, instead of letting the rightful users of the domain (the people that live on the island) have full rights to it. Thats just utter DNS misusage and disgraceful.
Some applies for *cough*goatse.cx*cough*
nununununu.nu is still available.
I'd better subscribe again...
Consider a comparable situation. Japanese insurance companies run their spreadsheets in the Earth Simulator supercomputer and preemptively wind up the USA, rather than go through all that tedious Greenhouse/cleanup business.
--
make install -not war
is g.nu registered?
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
What is more amazing from all this is the story that the one person who died was cradling her 19-month old son. The son was found alive. SO this could be a thiller with a happy super-man wireless ending if you want.
Yes. Of course, had it not been reported as a tech story, you wouldn't have heard about it on Slashdot at all, this being a site for technical news. Because the poster chose to spin it this way, you now know about it... at least enough to make a snary comment.
IAAFC*, and I know that "nu" isn't slang at all in French, it's the most commonly used word translating "naked" whatever the context, be it pr0n or medecine seminars. Of course, on the Net right now, I think pr0n is bound to dominate .nu, but some ppl like naturalist painters might enjoy a ".naked" :)
.fm ) did sold many domain names to foreigners, for obvious reasons.
For the record, "neu" in German means "again" too. In fact, I suppose there are a lot of languages for which this sound means something as is, so Niue could have good business if they choose to remain independant and have Net facilities. Malaysia (
*I am a French Canadian
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
where what's more important than the fact that a hurricane devastated a country is the issue of what specifically the hurricane did to the country's wifi network and TLD.
What good is the internet and the information age if everything *should* be like the network tv news?
A few minutes of street crime, a few minutes on a local thing, a few minutes on international stuff, some chit-chat, then sports and weather. No thanks.
There's nothing wrong with a 'news for nerds' site and playing the morality card is unconvincing and someone can *always* find a more desperate and dire news item to make you seem like the frivolous type.
According to Netcraft, the last Debian node in Niue was shut down due to the cyclone. This brings the total number of Debian installations in the world to 413, putting them just ahead of Stampede Linux, which has an installed base of 409 machines.
You don't need to be Kreskin to predict Debian's future.
gallows humor: n.
Humorous treatment of a grave or dire situation: "conveying with gallows humor the utter insanity of the nuclear-arms race" (New York).
Or the utter insanity of the Greenhouse effect.
--
make install -not war
Here in Sweden, .nu is outrageously popular--even with respectable entities. .se isn't squatted to hell and back, so, what gives? Why is .nu so popular here?
Surely we could concoct some reason for Bill to want to wipe out the first national wireless network?
[Speaking of which, is there any truth to the rumour that Niue's neighbour Micronesia wants to change its tld to .ms just to cash in on the possibilities??]
"And that solves the mystery of the missing ring" - Bender
Sorry, not [cia.gov] even [cia.gov] close. [cia.gov]
Actually quite close, the Vatican just barely nudges under with 911 people vs. Niue's 1100. (San Marino and Monaco are an order of magnitude larger.) But the article predicts that the population may now fall to only 500, which would be -- populationwise -- the smallest independent country in the world.
Cheers,
-j.
Perhaps you should RTFA and use your brain before opening your mouth.
Let's start off showing you how far off-base you are by providing a quote from one of the articles linked to in the story summary:In case you're too stupid to understand what "economic and administrative assistance" means, I'll translate it for you: it means that when they need help, New Zealand is obliged (morally, if not contractually) to provide it.
Secondly, let's point out the bloody obvious: in an environment that's subject to weather extremes, such as hurricanes and cyclones, putting up telegraph poles isn't the best way to provide connectivity because telegraph poles and lines tend not to stay standing for long in those conditions. And of the alternatives, wireless is by far the most practical (cheaper, easier to implement and upgrade), especially on such a small scale.
Thirdly, NZ$8 million equates to US$5.45 million. (NZ$1 = US$0.6815.) So that's US$4,500 per native Niuean. Contrast that with the US$3-4 billion pa in military aid alone that the US gives Israel (population, 6.5 million), which works out to be US$615 per Israeli.
Now, what's the more ethical:
A. New Zealand giving Niue $5.45 million of support, money that it would have to pay out anyway if Niue was to cease being an independent nation and return to being a part of New Zealand? or
B. The US provinding Israel with $3-4 billion of military aid every year, some of which is spent oppressing and killing innocent Palestinean civilians, as well as Western observers (including US and British aide workers)?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Gallows humor, n.: Humorous treatment of a grave or dire situation.
Hope that helps.
Hmm, maybe I'll move in and turn the country into a Kingdom. King Me of Niue. Hoorah! Of course, I'll need to have a referendum first. I should get at least 1 out of 1 votes. Whatever will I do with all the taxes?
It's sad that so many people are not homeless. It looks like a really beautiful place to live too. If they survive this they should treat this as an opportunity to do it right the next time. The island should seriously consider using Monolithic concrete dome structures. Due to their shape they are not as effected by hurricanes and clyclones and have a good track record of surviving them. They are also cheap, and well insulated.
OHOH I really don't know the availiblity of concrete in Niue. It may be prohibitive to build these structures if the concrete has to be imported.
War is necrophilia.
DC isn't a state, it's an experience...
Similar to that of being beaten with wet newspaper for days on end...
Anyway, DC isn't a nation, Niue is/was. If you start letting capital cities have their own TLDs then sooner or later some crackpot is gonna want to make a TLD for every county in the US... Where will it end?
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
The word "nu" (depending on the nuance) in Mandarin Chinese (ie: that spoken in Mainland China and Taiwan, ROC) is "woman" (or, more generally, Female).
Nu.
fifth sigma, inc.
Sounds like an idyllic place.. 1 TV stations, 2 radio stations (1 AM, 1 FM, maybe it's they broadcast the same content?), no worrying what's on the other channel..
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
For those of you thinking of registering a .nu domain to assist Niue, don't. First, because there are better ways to fund your donation dollars, as has been pointed out by other posters.
.nu ccTLD. While both sides have their versions of the story, a telling fact is that the UN recognized government is locked out of their own web site (www.gov.nu). They can be found instead at www.niuegov.com. You will note that the updates on the gov.nu site stopped in October and continue on at the niuegov.com site, which is hosted by a UN agency (UNDP-APDIP to be exact).
.nu ccTLD registrar will reach the government. The registrar may assist in other ways, but it will not likely be through official channels.
The second reason is that there is a dispute going on between the government of Niue and the companies that control the
Because of this, I truly doubt that any money spent with the
One version of the dispute between the government and the registrar can be found here.
G.nu is Not Usable
:-/
".NU Search Results for "g.nu"
Your domain name, including ".nu", must contain between 6 and 65 characters. "
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Christmas Islanders will be scenting a business opportunity...
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Is instead of helping these gentle peace loving people:
0 0. html
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2778134a10,
HETA'S VICTIMS: Cathy Alec is dead, found cocooned around her 19-month-old son Daniel who is seriously injured in Auckland Hospital.
We're spending $166 Billion on a bunch of ingrates in Iraq who's religion advocates war.
I couple of years ago I was hunting around for a cheap place to register my domain...I had a poke around the local area (I'm in Australia) and consider Christmas Island, Heard and McDonald Island, and then noticed the Cook Islands was _really_ cheap and thought hey that's neat...turns out the Cook Islands follow the same naming convention as New Zeland and the UK: .ac.ck for ACademic institutions .net.ck for NETwork types
.co.ck for COmpanies
:-)
and then it hit me why they were so cheap...
I'm really surprised that no-one has registerd
www.big.co.ck etc.
One person died, but most people lost their homes. That's what they meant by 'lives destroyed'. They lost like everything they own.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The article linked talks about $50m worth of damage. I'm assuming it's $NZ as it's a NZ site. That's around $US34m. According to the CIA Factbook there is a population of 2145, but I've heard numbers as low as 1200. Let's assume 2000. Also on the CIA site is a GDP of $US3600 per capita. I read somewhere (can't find a reference) that a few hundred houses were destroyed.
So, $50m sounds like an awful lot - I'd like to know where that number comes from.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
The story didn't interest me much, but I had to read the article just to try to figure out what on earth that was supposed to mean. Can we try not to use country specific phrases and idioms please? Some of us are stupid Americans. . .
Even if New Zealand assumes soverign control, Niue will probably retain its ccTLD.
When I was there (in 1999) there was talk of the government more or less forcibly changing the registrar in order to change the policies. I don't know if anything happened.
.se domain.
Changed last year to a free-for-all landgrab with after-the-fact conflict resolution model. Anybody (I don't think you have to be Swedish, even) can register a
In related news, the admins also slashed their domain prices 40% this year due to the overwhelming increase in registered domains. They didn't need as much money to admin the TLD as they were getting.
OK, does anyone else notice they are sending HOUSEHOLD CLEANING SUPPLIES? why would they need that? everything was flattened!?
Actually, the status of .su is debatable -- IANA froze the domain so that no new .su domains could be created, but it was reopened by .su administrators a few years later, even though IANA & ICANN didn't recognize it as an active TLD. .su still isn't listed on IANA's public list of ccTLDs, but it's listed the in whois.iana.org database because .su's administrators are too stubborn to give up. (The .su root servers are also .ru root servers, which makes them hard to ignore.)
.cs in 1995 and .zr in 2001. (Also, I'm told .dd was dissolved when the two Germanies unified, but I'm not sure .dd was ever active to begin with.)
.nu, depending on how active it remained and who was willing to keep managing it.
Using the ccTLD of a "deleted nation" is kind of iffy. The ccTLDs are supposed to be based on ISO 3166-1, and the ISO is allowed to reassign old codes to new nations. If IANA let ccTLDs outlive their nations, they increase the chances of having two claims to one ccTLD. Sooner or later, somebody would get accused of ccTLD-squatting.
For the record, ccTLDs have been sucessfully dissolved before:
If the end of Niue's independence led the ISO to drop nu from ISO 3166-1, IANA and ICANN probably would try to freeze or delete
Keep in mind, though, ISO 3166-1 doesn't require political independence for a region to have a geographic code, because it's still useful for "distant regions" to have their own codes for non-Internet purposes (like air travel and shipping). There are completely uninhabited islands that still have ISO codes! As long as people are living on Niue (and New Zealand doesn't ask for deletion), the ISO will probably leave nu on the list.
Proud to be / Smiley-free / Since Nineteen / Ninety-Three
If there ever is a .dc, will someone please call be so I can buy ac.dc before it is taken :)
"There is no substitute for thinking" - Bjarne Stroustrup
Why don't you tell that to the AC who chose to focus on one small part of my original post?
My point was that New Zealand's financial assistance to Niue in't that great (despite what the person I was originally replying to believed) and that other countries benefit from similar assistance to a much greater extent. Providing an example is hardly straying off-topic.
It wasn't me who decided to focus on that one example (and thus stray off-topic) but I'll defend my right to explain what I said (and the point that I was trying to make) to ACs and anyone else who can't read English.
If you want to bust somebody's balls about straying OT, why don't you go bust his instead?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
In Danish, 'nu' means 'now'. So a fair amount of their income has come from Danish traffic. Too bad about the behaviour problems at .nu TLD mentioned otherwhere.
-Lars
Such a sentimental headline... yikes you guys!
Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.
"nu" in both Hebrew and Yiddish is used as a prompt: "so, nu, hurry up!" "nu, what did she say?"
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
"New Zealand (which still maintains Niue's defense)"
Alright. So... um... who maintains New Zealand's defense?
Ohh and that's not the 'geek' mind. Imo/imx most geeks/hackers I know actually have a lives and (gasp} do have a sense of proportion in thier lives. Too bad /. doesn't seem to reflect that.
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD
First the Governemnt of Niue is not winning any of its court cases against the .nu. They are presided by NZ judges.
.Nu pays several thousands of dollars a month for an 128kb/s (I think) link to the Internet
.nu until they saw it was making real money.
.nu will give free access to the Internet for the people of Niue?
.nu
d ex.php?p age=Niue
Secondly, Internet is absolutely free in Niue, except that people are obliged to pay a metered local phone call to the government telecom company, therefore the Wifi network to make it absolutely free.
Thirdly,
Fourthly, the gov did not care about
Considering the other stories in the Pacific, will a government run
The best way to help Niue is by directly providing relief support to the Internet User Society of Niue.
Telecommunication is back to Niue. The Internet may be the last one to recover, because of this fight between gov and
Read the other side of the story:
http://www.internetforce.org/tiki/tiki-in
Sure, a tragedy that happened to them more than sixy years ago justifies their own atrocities today and exempts them from any criticism, however valid it might be! That's just the way it is for GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE.
Me too. Niue sucks. There are a bunch of psychic hotlines based there.
-
"Vengeance is fine," sayeth the Lord.
... the people running the .nu tld were complete and total idiots. I dropped my .nu domain a year after getting it because I didn't want to deal with them anymore. This was back when they were first starting up, though, I suppose, so perhaps they've been doing better as of late.
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
you assholes, an entire island community wiped out, and all you can do is make stupid jokes. Grow up, /.
The CIA Fact Book also includes this wonderful and, now topical, nugget about Niue.
Natural hazards: typhoons
If Niue loses its "independence" from NZ, that will have no effect on .NU Domain or on the continued registration and management of .nu domain names.
.PR (Puerto Rico), which is a US territory, .AQ (Antarctica), which "belongs" to no country or government, .GM (Guam), a US military base, and .HM (Heard and McDonald Islands), a New Zealand territory near Antarctica which has *no* occupants except penguins.
.PM, the St. Pierre and Miquelon islands, which uses the Euro as currency and who's residents carry French passports.
There are scores of top level domains that have no "country" associated with them including
Not to mention France's territorial possession located off the coast of Nova Scotia in N. America,
The citizens of Niue have always actually been citizens of NZ (call it joint citizenship if you will), and carry a New Zealand passport - there is no such thing as a Niuean passport, and Niue uses NZ currency and stamps as well, since it has none of its own.
And, finally, ccTLDs are based on the ISO-3166 code system, which, again is not based on sovereign nationhoood but on geographic location as defined by the ISO code
Pacific Islanders have a high level of resilinence.
Niue was populated thousands of year ago. People from the Pacific do not leave their island like that...
They were here before
They will be here after
Apparently EVERYTHING on the island got wiped out. How about if a Hurricane wipes out you town/city, with only 1 casualty but every building destryoed, and all anyone can talk about is weather or not your phone service is down?
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
Wah, wah, wah! I guess you and the Government of Niue aren't exactly libertarians. Maybe a shady group of profiteers did usurp Niue's ccTLD: Does that make it right for Niue to take it back? No! It's an axiom of libertarianism that private enterprise is more efficient than the state, and now these genius entrepreneurs have made the .nu ccTLD more profitable than a dinky island nation ever could!
I'm really tired of all these left-wing radicals coming to Slashdot, telling a sob story to try to persuade everyone that the free market isn't always right. If the Government of Niue were in the right, the market would find a way to correct this error! Don't you see?
I'll break out of libertarian ideology for a moment, though, and engage in a small amount of socialism: I believe the Government of Niue should be able to apply to the IANA for a new ccTLD, maybe a long ccTLD like .niue as punishment for not protecting their valuable asset in the first place. Note I did not say the IANA has to grant the GON's wish.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
...just about everything on the island was destroyed. Wodul you like if if your town/city got wiped out by a natural disaster and all anyone could talk about was the fact that the phone service was down?
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
While it is true that nu means naked in French, it is the masculine, singular form. This would work for domains like homme.nu, I suppose; but it would not be in gender agreement with feminine nouns: belle-femme.nue.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
For the record, ccTLDs have been sucessfully dissolved before: .cs in 1995 and .zr in 2001.
.yu is supposed to be replaced by .cs (ISO 3166-1 changed from yu to cs), but the progress is rather slow.
.dd was dissolved when the two Germanies unified, but I'm not sure .dd was ever active to begin with.)
.dd domains in 1989, but only a year later there was the German reunification, and .dd went away.
Note, however, that
(Also, I'm told
According to this Usenet posting (in German) there were a few
Note, however, that .yu is supposed to be replaced by .cs (ISO 3166-1 changed from yu to cs), but the progress is rather slow.
.su where you have a lot of new .ru domains (and domains from other countries that were created after the Soviet Union ceased to exist).
Sorry. What I really wanted to say (searching for the links somehow made me forget that) - yu to cs is another case of changed ccTLDs, where acceptance of the new code or at least removal of the old one is doubtful. Just like
I'm currently working on an open source library (LGPL) written in Java called XOM, http://www.xom.nu/. Its package name is nu.xom (a new XML Object Model) and I have registered xom.nu to stay out of the clutches of NSI. Now I'm wondering if I should change that, for reasons of both stability and good karma.
The only thing I'm sure of after reading this thread, and the references linked from it, is that there are at least two sides to this story, and it's not at all clear to me who, if anyone, is in the right. It's possible the administrators of the .nu domain are scamming greedheads trying to make a buck off a resource they don't own without feeding anything back to the people who do own it. It's also possible they're benevolent men of good will who are trying to provide free Internet access to the entire nation in the face of government demands for bribes. I do not know. In my usual cynical nature, I tend to suspect both sides may well be in the wrong.
Regardless of who's the good guy and who's the bad guy, I'm not sure I want to get tied up in this dispute. I'm now wondering if nu.xom is an appropriate package and domain name. Would anyone care to comment? If anyone is more familiar with the issues involving the .nu domain name, I'd love to hear about it. Also, would anyone like to suggest a different non-NSI affiliated top-level domain XOM could use? I haven't declared alpha yet, but I'm very close, and I'd prefer not to make such a major change after that point.
As much as my love of democracy goes and the capabilities of commerce are strong, This type of ideal is the reason many people hate capitalism.
What you fail to pay attention to is the fact that Niue is a sovereign country and it's laws differ from ours. This includes it's methods of commerce. If you walk into another country and demand they live by your laws then your the criminal not them. Do they have the right to take back there own Domain? Yes. You have to live by their standards not them by yours. When the net became something for everyone it didn't mean something for everyone who wants to exploit.
Our own history is rife with these types of exploits, and every single one is considered in an after the fact fashion as callous, cruel, and criminal. So with all politics aside, history has proven this method to be wrong.
The original poster of this article shows a concern for the state of the country rather than a desire to make a profit, however if this is duplicitous than there is a greater issue at stake and the current plight of this situation would be best served in a court.
Now, All i see in retaliation is an attack of posters beliefs. By using terms such as liberal and left-wing radicals, in a goal to discredit the poster and not the subject of a post tells me that your more afraid of what the poster represents than the post itself. People who disagree with your form of exploiting economy are considered enemies. Your attack is an effort to keep their views from being heard by reducing the value of them as a person. This is the first rule of debate broken. Never attack a person who disagrees with you, attack their argument. Attacking the person will give you a very temporary victory and damage your whole strategy. If you believe in something than please try to stand on the grounds of your faith in the righteousness of your argument and not on the body of your opponent.
This being said, what arguments have you other than I am some pink-o, freaky San Francisco marching, anti American, ignoramus, of a (pick some wing) who doesn't see right? To the allegations that this issue needs to come under the scrutiny of a criminal system capable of handling the claim fairly and impartially?
A countries wealth should benefit the people of the country it is in and not only a national or citizen of a more economically powerful nation. If you want to make a million on a countries resources, then bring the country in question into your profitable position and live by their standards and rules.
And for Pete's sake. (sorry Pete)Try to have an argument that doesn't make you look like someone who can't defend themselves
Hesperant
???
I'm trying to decide what that post is. So far my choices are:
1) You're a real whacko, and actually believe that garbage
2) You are being subtle, and trying to discredit libertarianism, by exaggerating way you understand it's position to be
3) You are being subtle, and trying to discredit socialism, by exaggerating the way you understand it's position to be
4) You're a troll
5) You're a high school sophmore, or possibly freshman
These are hard possibilites to disentangle, due to your initial error of presumption: That everything should be done as efficiently as possible. This is something that I can't think of anyone I've ever met believing. And I've known some stupid people with some wierd ideas.
Sorry if that seems gratuitously snippy, but I can't think of a more polite way to say it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Is the perhaps apocryphal headline from a local paper - in Aberdeen. The accident was the Titanic sinking. Slashdot's locality is more nebulous, but its interests are still specilalised.
Did anyone notice that the former name of this Island was Savage Island. This seems like a good time for a futurama and simpsons reference about places with f*dup names.
Up first, Futurama:
Leela: Uh, Professor are we even allowed in the Forbidden Zone?
Farnsworth: Why of course! Its just a name! Like the Death Zone or The Zone Of No Return. All the zones have names like that in The Galaxy Of Terror!
Leela: Uh, Professor...
Farnsworth: Off you go, pleasant trip!
And now, the Simpsons:
Left FBI Agent: We have places were your family can hide in peace and security, Cape Feare, Terror Lake, New Horrorfield, Screamville...
Homer: Oooh, Icecreamville!
L FBI Agent: No, screamville. (Homer screams)
music lover since 1969
So, Let me see if I get this right. You actualy don't have a point on the subject in this post, a single actualy disagreement or opposing position. You merely decided to push the attack on the poster rather than the content of the post. Point proven, thank you for your assistance. Hesperant
select name, top_level_domain from countries where top_level_domain is not null and sovereign = 0;
/. filter doesn't let me.
on this data yields 98 records for non-sovereign countries / territories with top level domains. I can't list them here, neither as text nor as HTML table, because the
Just because a country changes doesn't mean the TLD has to.
It is not a technical necessity. It's more a matter of politics.
Hmmh. Your parody was ALMOST funny. Keep on working on libertarian parody, make it bit more subtle, and it'll be a riot. For now it's just half-way between a troll and insightful for most moderators...
If you were running a Yiddish web site, that would be a perfect TLD.
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* daring code hacker by night *
http://www.silent-tristero.com
You can buy it from the same guy that is selling the brooklyn bridge and parts of the moon.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
So, basically, you are saying that any country's sovereign property is open for any capitalist to take and manage if they are able to make more money from it. Even if they take that property through deception?
I have a bridge to sell you.
...what happens to quite a lot of Pacific islands in John Barnes' Mother of Storms .
Relating to another thread, if global warming is a reality, regardless whether humans have caused it, we may be seeing much more of this kind of thing.
A nineteen month old boy is orphaned and severely injured, found under his mother's body where she'd shielded him from the waves that destroyed their house, and all you care about is a bunch of psychic hotline numbers?
You suck.
I did not say that I read the article. I just reserve a strong dislike(read:hate) for anybody that wants to shelter psychic scamlines.
I also reserve the right not to grieve for strangers. I feel sorry for the kid, but shit happens. I won't invest my emotions in someone I have never, and probably will never, meet.
I realize that probably makes me a dick, but I can accept that.
-
"Vengeance is fine," sayeth the Lord.
is still available to any malaysian slashdotters...
For great justice take off every sig.
I'm not sure what sovereignity has to do with how a TLD is used outside the boundaries of a state.
I'm sure that the government can attempt to legislate how the internet works within their borders, but since all of the relevant DNS information is located on servers elsewhere in the world, as well as the vast majority of all internet users, they're kinda up shit creek without a paddle.
Unlike conventional resource-pillaging, the value of a TLD isn't 'in' a country. It's an arbitrary construct which derives meaning from the value that the internet as a whole assigns to that TLD.
Hell, I'd argue that if anyone is ripped off by enterpreneurs buying TLDs, it's the organization which assigns TLDs in the first place, and in this case Niue and the enterpreneur collaborated in ripping them off.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
You found me!!!
I happen to live right in front of waterbed.nu in Rotterdam...
... in the world as the article says. First of all, it is not an independent state. It is a self-governing territory in free association with New Zealand. This relationship is similar to that between Puerto Rico and the United States. Secondly, a number of real independent nations are smaller than it such as the Holy See, Monaco, San Marino, Nauru, Tuvalu (home of the .tv TLD), Liechtenstein, and the Marshall Islands.
Man: In that case I sentence you to a lifetime of horror on Monster Island. [to Lisa] Don't worry, it's just a name.
[Lisa and others are chased by fire-breathing monsters]
Lisa: He said it was just a name!
Man: What he meant is that Monster Island is actually a peninsula.
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.
You have a few good points.
.NU might have received rights to the name under false pretenses and in this case, the country does indeed have a right to dispute a claim on the naming. Regardless of who started the process by using the name you imply ownership of the resource.
.nu just sue the country for the name because they aren't really using it. Now this is an extreme, but not out of the realm of possibility.
The big question is what can we consider as belonging to a nation and what is not. When you use a nations name, are you responsible for the proceeds to the country? There is such issue with this type of problem in copy write law and infringement.
At issue, the holder of
Many poor schmoe's lost out because of this very concept. Work hard to build your name then have it taken away because someone else has a similar name and more money to sue with. I digress.
The big key is how far can something like this go?
I personal get angry when a subculture is exploited even in a minor way, and feel that duplicitous acts such as the start of this thread should have consequences.
Why doest the owner of the
Hesperant
Personally, if I had the cash, I'd offer to buy the entire country, lock stock and soaking barrels.
As the owner and untoppleable leader of an entire country, there's got to be a lot of fun legal freedoms open to you. Travel around under diplomatic immunity. Set up an embassy in your favorite other country and live there for most of the year. Operate under whatever tax (and other) laws you feel like.
Heck, turn the place into a tax haven and live off the profits. Walk around telling the RIAA and DMCA-loonies that their rules don't apply to you.
What else can you think of?
I am worried about this. That paper was very one-sided, but it made serious allegations. I would like to see the .nu domain owners post some kind of rebuttal on their site for my peace of mind and that of other .nu owners.
.nu domain going away if Niue ceases to exist, that would seem less likely to happen if .nu has as little connection to Niue as this paper claims.
As far as the
I mean, really.
Need Mercedes parts ?
The idea that Niue (or however the bloody place is spelt) will have to close because it might have only 500 people left is ridiculous. There are smaller places, and they're viable. Pitcairn, for example, has a population of "less than 50" (source: World Factbook 2002). The people are largely subsistence farmers, with most of the island's revenue coming from the sale of postage stamps.
Obviously we've been trolled. However the troller is better than I thought. I checked up on it, and the 'standard' norwegian word for now is n*oa* with the *oa* being replaced of course with the proper 'a with an o on top' character that for some reason slashdot won't print whether I enter it directly or use html escape codes for. One of the fairly rare cases where Norwegian disagrees with both Danish and Swedish usage.
Nonetheless, the line about there being no such language as Scandinavian is clearly crud. I've been to two linguistics conferences up here, and I haven't met a single linguist that would disagree that Swedish/Danish/Norwegian are dialects of Scandinavian, in scientific terms if not political ones. People from all three countries converse in their native languages and understand each other fine (although there are the occasional jokes, particularly about the Danes with their glottalisations.) Even I, with my limited Swedish, can and have communicated with Danes and Norwegians just fine without resorting to English. The differences between spoken Swedish Danish and Norwegian don't seem to be any more drastic than between many dialects of spoken English - but of course the written forms tend to converge in English and diverge in Scandinavia.
BTW, the 'reconstructed and now dead language' would be Old Norse, and it's so close to modern Icelandic that I know a few linguists would argue it's not, in fact, dead. But it is significantly different from the language(s) spoken in Scandinavia today, in particular it preserves a rich inflectional system that's almost completely extinct in modern Swedish/Norwegian/Danish.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
It's been down due to frequency licensing problems since around October, apparently as a result of cajoling from the (IIRC) organisation supplying them with (IIRC) the Internet feed to some if not all of the wireless points. As for the .nu ccTLD possibly being hijacked by Americans, it may be that Americans 'power' the backend, but I personally know at least one of the Internet Users Society Niue people living on Niue, and I know for a fact that real Niuean residents (i.e. New Zealanders and long term residents; all Niueans being New Zealanders as part of their independence/free association deal) actually administer it. Administration and Technical backends should not be confused. Incidentally, on a related subject, quite a lot of .nu sites based on Niue itself (I assume so as a large number of websites has gone down), such as Stafford's excellent Weekly Niue News (the mailing list archives have a later copy than what Google has), so there's no independent news written by a local Niuean at the moment. :( (Hence why a lot of links here are to Google, BTW.)
Jonathan Ah Kit - Lower Hutt, New Zealand - jonathan@metalab.unc.edu
Somebody award this brilliant man a prize!
2) You are being subtle, and trying to discredit libertarianism, by exaggerating [the] way you understand it's [sic] position to be
Yes!
3) You are being subtle, and trying to discredit socialism, by exaggerating the way you understand it's [sic] position to be
Yes, my exaggerated libertarian persona is trying to do a poor job at discrediting a rival ideology.
4) You're a troll
That hurts! You're right again, though. I guess it was more than a bit of a troll. The problem was I hadn't seen any stupid libertarian responses to this article yet that invoked the sanctity of the free market.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
I heard an interesting article on NPR in the US about NAURU (also a Pacific island nation) as being the center of money laundering. you can check it out at thisamericanlife.org -- they have a search engine
Hi all:
.nu in a first-person story by Rich StClair, the man who built the network, should pick up a book I edited called "Addressing the World: National Identity and Internet Country Code Domains" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003)
.se and Niue's .nu. (as well as the US's .us, China's .cn, Chile's .cl, India's .in, Malaysia's .my, Moldova's .md, East Timor's .tp, Australia's .au and Swaziland's .sz)
.nu domain, but I found it really interesting working with StClair on his chapter and I think that his vision to use the code as a public service is both credible and consistent thoughout.
Those who are interested in learning about the history and development of
The book looks at the history and development of several codes, including the interplay between Sweden's
I recognize there is dispute among certain groups about the commercial interests in the
For those who are interested, the book's companion website is http://www.addressingtheworld.info
Erica
Erica Wass
So shut up foreigner. I was born in Norway, grew up in Sweden, and have now moved to Denmark as an adult. I know what I'm talking about.
The word for "now" in Norwegian is "naa", or "na", with a circle above the A. There is no "oa" in Norwegian.
And it is crap that everyone understands each other. Swedes have difficulties understanding Norwegian because they aren't as exposed to the language. Norwegians understand Swedish well because they watch Swedish TV.
Read this, ignorant fool: THERE IS NO, AND NEVER WAS A, LANGUAGE CALLED "SCANDINAVIAN"
According to this article, Niue shut down the wireless network because it was interfering with the government's ability to gouge citizens with insanely expensive phone service.