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The days when your average net user was a balding academic or a pimply-faced nerd (complete with pocket protector) are long gone.

These days, the average person surfing the web or checking their email is more than likely -- just an average person.

Housewives are doing it, businessmen are doing it, teachers are doing it -- hell, *everyone's" doing it.

But who has the most influence?

Well it could be argued that the "suits" sitting in Telecom's boardroom and in their marketing department have an unreasonably large mount of clout -- but maybe not.

Maybe it's the bankers who not only fund the business ventures from which the Net is built but also lend people the money to buy their flash new PC and DSL modem -- but maybe not.

How do I know it's not the bankers?

Well when an attempt was made to introduce a new second-level domain (2LD) to be known as .bank.nz -- it failed.

It seems the bankers, for all their fiscal clout, carried insufficient weight to get their own 2LD.

So who has got their own 2LD?

Well it seems that only "important" and "worthy" groups have such privilege.

The government have .govt.nz (oh why are we out of step with the rest of the world who use .gov or .gov.whatever???).

Businesses, teaching organisations, ISPs and other net-related groups, non-profit organisations, Maori and other indigenous peoples, the military -- these groups all have their own 2LDs.

And now a new class of elite net users has emerged -- the geeks!

Yes, a new 2LD, .geek.nz went live this week and, according to reports, this has resulted in a wave of new domain registrations by those who are proud of their pocket protectors.

And before I get even more email on the subject, I'm not really into the geek thing (I've never seen that pocket protector before and I don't know what it's doing there -- honest!) so I don't think I'll be registering aardvark.geek.nz

However, I can't help but marvel that, when it comes to getting their own 2LD, the geek is more powerful than the banker.

And that's pretty surprising when you realise that anyone could register the domain name asbbbank.co.nz, build a mock-up of the ASB Bank's own website that would lay in wait for the occasional idiot to blunder along and enter their ID/password.

If all banks were registered in .bank.nz and that 2LD was moderated so that only bonafide banking institutions could register names, the risk of hijacking bad spellers would be greatly reduced.

Still, I'm happy because the launch of the .geek.nz 2LD means there is still a place for the little guys who got this whole internet thing rolling in the first place.

If any Aardvark readers want to share an opinion on today's column or add something, you're invited to chip in and have your say in The Aardvark Forums or, if you prefer, you can contact me directly.

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