Fur brigade

Fur brigades were convoys of canoes and boats used to transport supplies, trading goods and furs in the North American fur trade industry. Much of it consisted of native fur trappers and fur traders who travelled between their home trading posts and a larger Hudson's Bay Company or Northwest Company post in order to supply the inland post with goods and supply the coastal post with furs.

Travel was usually done on the rivers by canoe or, in certain prairie situations, by horse. For example, they might travel to Hudson Bay or James Bay from their inland home territories. This pattern was most prevalent during the early 19th century.

Canoe

Fur brigades began with the need to transport furs trapped during the winter to markets where the furs could be exchanged for European trade goods. They evolved from small brigades of canoes from native villages travelling to meet fur traders at pre-selected meeting places to traders going out in canoes to meet the trappers in their home territory with forts or posts being established along the way.

Fur

Fur is used in reference to the hair of animals, usually mammals, particularly those with extensive body hair coverage that is generally soft and thick (as opposed to the stiffer bristles on, for example, pigs). The term "pelage" (French, from Middle French, from poil hair, from Old French peilss, from Latin pilus; first known use in English c. 1828.) is sometimes used to refer to the body hair of an animal as a complete coat. Fur is also used to refer to animal pelts which have been processed into leather with the hair still attached. The words fur or furry are also used, more casually, to refer to hair-like growths or formations, particularly when the subject being referred to exhibits a dense coat of fine, soft "hairs."

Animal fur, if layered, rather than grown as a single coat, may consist of short down hairs, long guard hairs, and, in some cases, medium awn hairs. Mammals with reduced amounts of fur are often called "naked", such as naked mole-rat and naked dogs.

An animal with commercially valuable fur is known within the fur industry as a furbearer. The use of fur as clothing and/or decoration is considered controversial by some people: most animal welfare advocates object to the trapping and killing of wildlife, and to the confinement and killing of animals on fur farms.

Furö

Furö is an island located in the Baltic Sea five nautical miles (about 6 miles) off the east coast of Oskarshamn in Sweden.

History

Historically the island has been used as base for fishing (mainly cod, herring and flounder). Today there are no permanent fishermen on the island.

Pilot and lighthouse

In 1874, the Swedish authorities located a lighthouse and a pilot station to Furö. The lighthouse was built at the north-western end of the island. The building was also used as accommodation for the pilots. In 1921 a new, more modern, lighthouse was raised at the reef Finnrevet just south-east off Furö. Today there are no pilots left on Furö, but their latest red wooden building from 1933 still exists, and is now used as a summer cottage. The island is today mainly used for recreation.

Shipwrecks

The waters around Furö are quite shallow. Many ships have run aground near the island. On the night of November 28, 1949 the British steamer Britkon ran aground at Furö during a heavy gale. The fully loaded ship was stranded on the reef Finnrevet just off the island. Eleven men and women reached the shore by lifeboat. The remaining 27 of the crew was rescued by the pilots on Furö. The Britkon was hard stranded and broke in half two days later. Today nothing is visible above the surface since the wreck has been partly broken up and salvaged.

OpenNIC

OpenNIC is an alternate network information center/alternative DNS root which lists itself as an alternative to ICANN and its registries.

As of 2006 users of the OpenNIC DNS servers are able to resolve all existing ICANN top-level domains as well as their own.

Like all alternative root DNS systems, OpenNIC-hosted domains are unreachable to the vast majority of the Internet. Only specific configuration in one's DNS resolver makes these reachable, and very few Internet service providers have this configuration.

History

On June 1, 2000, an article was posted on kuro5hin.org advocating a democratically governed domain name system. By the end of July, OpenNIC root servers were operating and several top-level domains had been introduced as well as peering of the AlterNIC namespace. In March 2001 peering began of Pacific Root and in September a search engine was announced which was dedicated to the OpenNIC namespace.

OpenNIC restructured its architecture to improve scalability and avoid single-point-of-failure issues. Each TLD has its own policies regarding acceptable use. New TLDs may be created subject to OpenNIC stated policies.