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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.
That would be a CIA weather generator at work.
"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)?
...perhaps a good reason to seek professional help.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
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
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
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."
Hundreds of people have their lives destroyed by a cyclone, and Slashdot reports it as a wireless Internet outage. Tsk.
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
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]
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.)
Well, Sealand doesn't exactly qualify as a recognized nation in the international scene. For smallest official independent state, I think Vatican City (Holy See) qualifies for that award.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
In other news, Slashdot trolls hope and pray that the Christmas Islands never get hit with a similarly devastating typhoon.
Rank Presidents by th
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
Who says theyre witout a wireless setup?
What ive seen theyre wireless, roofless, treeless, homeless..
-- Jim.
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
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
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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."
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.
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
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.
Nope, the winner is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Note that while Sealand IS internationally recognized, thus should be in the running, SMOM is still the smallest "real" country.
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
"New Zealand (which still maintains Niue's defense)"
Alright. So... um... who maintains New Zealand's defense?
The CIA Fact Book also includes this wonderful and, now topical, nugget about Niue.
Natural hazards: typhoons
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
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
...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.