the 404 error ~ island Nation New Zealand missing !!

Every day – we search for things – be it the specs, vehicle keys, office keys – then you start searching for that all important mail, file and more … not a day passes out without googling – when in doubt ‘google’ is the mantra.

As you make a web search – you get so much of unwanted information, not able to pick on what you wanted; then there is the error [not the days of dialer connections, when pages would not open at all !] – it is the error message of ‘page not found – the page that you are searching for is not available – either it is no longer there or you type the web address again !’

When communicating via HTTP, a server is required to respond to a request, such as a web browser request for a web page, with a numeric response code and an optional, mandatory, or disallowed (based upon the status code) message. And there comes the unique ‘404’  .. .. ..  the 404 or Not Found error message is a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) standard response code, in computer network communications, to indicate that the client was able to communicate with a given server, but the server could not find what was requested. The web site hosting server will typically generate a "404 Not Found" web page when a user attempts to follow a broken or dead link; hence the 404 error is one of the most recognizable errors encountered on the World Wide Web.

Now read this interesting piece found in Daily Mail.  A screenshot purporting to be from the New Zealand Government website's 'Page not found' 404 error screen has surfaced on the internet to the delight of many. The screen shows a map of the world, accompanied by the headline 'We're sorry, something's missing'. The screenshot first appeared on the Tumblr and has been viewed by over a lakh of people.

What most found so humorous, was the actual map of New Zealand was left off. Not sure whether it was consciously done ! or just another mistake.

Daily Mail adds that it  could not verify if the Tumblr post is real or fake, the founder of Tumblr site, 'World Maps without New Zealand' claimed the error message was indeed correct and was taken in September.  The blog's founder, Arnold from Wellington, New Zealand, compiles a list from around the world of other instances where New Zealand has been left off the world map.  'It’s quite amusing to not find New Zealand not there half of the time,' he said.

While he started with just a handful of maps, he has now been bombarded with submissions - with examples including everything from tattoos to children's playground and even world map puzzles. The 4.4 million person, 268,000 square kilometre, island nation has a landmass bigger than the size of Great Britain, and was voted the 'best travel destination' by Lonely Planet two years in a row. Auckland based producer, Tessa Mitchelson, told the Daily Mail about a time when she attended a geopolitics talk where the lecturer's power point left New Zealand off the map.

'As a Kiwi, I'm used to people leaving New Zealand off the map, but not in a university lecture. When traveling I constantly get mistaken for an Australian. It's like we don't even exist sometimes.'  

Interesting !

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

24^th Dec 2016.