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Robust Hyperlinks: The End of 404s?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the interesting-idea dept.

Tom Phelps writes, "URLs can be made robust so that if a Web page moves to another location anywhere on the Web, you can find it even if that page has been edited. Today's address-based URLs are augmented with a five or so word content-based lexical signature to make a Robust Hyperlink. When the URL's address-based portion breaks, the signature is fed into any Web search engine to find the new site of the page. Using our free, Open Source software (including source code), you can rewrite your Web pages and bookmarks files to make them robust, automatically. Although Web browser support is desirable for complete convenience, Robust Hyperlinks work now, as drop-in replacements of URLs in today's HTML, Web browsers, Web servers and search engines."

6 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Not unlike Freenet by Sanity · · Score: 3
    I am working on a project that will do something like this - and a whole lot more. The primary intention is to create an information publication system similar to the world wide web, but where censorship is much more difficult or impossible. However there is more to the system than that, it incorporates intelligent decentraised caching making it much more efficient than the world wide web, and also intelligent mirroring meaning that information on the system will never be slashdotted as this site appears to be! The homepage may be found at http://freenet.sourceforge.net/. We are looking for testers and developers right now in preparation for our first release which will happen in the next few weeks.

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  2. Re:Wasn't this what URI's were supposed to address by SimonK · · Score: 3

    You're not wrong. There is in fact a proposal about the form and resolution of URNs (which are location independent) from the IETF. I don't know its status.

  3. Dynamic content by Hard_Code · · Score: 3

    As far as I can tell this scheme relies on checksums of the static content of web pages to find the correct web page. So what does this do to dynamically generated content?

    Also, somebody else mentioned that they had a project on SourceForge which was basically like the Web, but in a completely distributed manner. This makes a lot more sense to me. The notion that my bits must cross a continent to retrieve data on a certain TOPIC seems a bit archaic. I shouldn't know or care where the data of the topic is stored...I just want it. Also, having a distributed web like this, as the person suggests, will make it a lot harder to invade privacy or censor material.

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    It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
  4. Hijacking redirectors ?? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 3

    Will this still work even if someone tries to add lots of context words to the search engines so it comes to their page instead?

    Don't mean to be the Devil's Adocate, it is just my game programming / design skills kicking in. Whenever someone adds a usefull feature, you must look at the ways people will try to exploit this.

    "Live free or Die" - Ironically, seen on a license plate.

  5. Replacing a broken link with a Google search? No. by rambone · · Score: 3
    Like any search, the search that tries to reunite your 404 error with the correct address is going to be wrong quite often.

    Frankly, I'd rather just get the 404 than waste time digging through erroneous links.

    By the way, there are hypertext systems that address this issue in ways that actually solve the problem - the now defunct HyperG system was very intelligent about redirecting requests.

  6. Try ftp'ing instead by EricWright · · Score: 5
    From the freshmeat announcement, you can ftp it from here. I was able to connect just fine...

    Eric