Archive: March 12, 2008

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denial by idiots

Wednesday,  03/12/08  09:03 PM

Every once in a while I glance at my server stats - it is fun to see how many referrals I've gotten, page views, stuff like that.  So today so far I have received 7,726 page views, about three times as many as normal.  Or should I say page hits, because nearly all of them are 404s - page not found.  Looking at my logs, I see someone from an ISP in Italy (host116-35-dynamic.2-87-r.retail.telecomitalia.it) and another someone from an ISP in Belgium (189-79-73-228.dsl.telesp.net.br) are whacking away at my server, requesting page after page with invalid URLs. 

Nice work, idiots.  If you're going to scrape a site, can you please test your script first before turning it loose?

 

 

Googling meatspace

Wednesday,  03/12/08  09:29 PM

Have you ever had the experience of trying to Google a physical object?

So today I’m thumbing through my JPEG2000 Image Compression book – which is massively dog-eared by now – trying to find something (and no it isn’t in the index, I checked), and I absent mindedly Googled for it.  This was done without any conscious thought on my part, just like if you want to find something, Google it.  After I did it, I sat there amazed, for two reasons; first, how stupid was it that I thought I could Google a physical object like a book (!), and second, it worked (!!).  

Turns out Google actually scanned this exact book and indexed itHow golden is that?

I wonder how long it will be before Google indexes everything?  Of course they're indexing this page even as I create it, and you read it...

 
 

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