Problem is their VCs want their money back plus profit, and the quickest way is to go public.
Does anyone know how much VCs invested?
If they have $150 million/year in profit, as is estimated, the VCs are going to get their money back. And they'll get profit. Just maybe not in a week. I know VCs are in it for the money and time is money, but it seems to me that the VCs should be comfortable in that they're going to get their money back if the company is earning $150m/year.
Now it could be they are worried that Google can't sustain $150m/year for X years so they want to IPO now, recover all their money and be in the black, and then it doesn't matter if Google tanks in a year or two.
So it seems to me my original question still stands... Why would they want to IPO? Money? They're already earning $150m/year and it's all theirs. To expand? What kind of expansion plans do they have that require more than $150m/year? It's not like they have to build a new factory.
Really, the fact that they want to IPO worries me. I really don't think they need the money to expand which suggests to me they want to IPO to line their pockets while the company is doing well and/or because they don't think it will last. Good financial planning on their part but it doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling to invest in them or believe the company is going to be doing well 5 years from now.
Google is doing great, but they can't expect to dominate internet searches any more than they do.
I agree. It's also interesting that this article echos a lot of what I said a few days ago. They're talking about a $15 billion IPO and that's just silly on $150 million of profits unless they're expecting a ton of growth to drive up the value of the stock--and I don't see that. They already own the market and they're dependent on ad revenue for the most part which just isn't what it used to be.
Given that they probably can't dramatically increase the value of the company (which would drive up the stock price which would allow me to earn money off the capital gains), they need to keep investors happy with dividends. And those dividends need to be more attractive than other low-risk investments. And with a $15 billion IPO on $150 million in profits my money is going to work harder for me in a saving account than invested in Google.
While it is correct to conclude that climactic fluctuation occurs naturally in the absence of anthropogenic influence, it is extremely foolish for us to thus conclude that the large quantities of greenhouse gases that we are releasing into the atmosphere are having no effect upon global temperatures.
No effect? I'll agree that they don't have NO effect. As the theory goes, a butterfly in China causing a hurricane in the Carribean, etc.
But last I checked we are producing about 6 Gts/year of CO2. Considering the naturally occurring CO2 is in the hundreds of Gts/year you have to admit that our effect is marginal. It's like you've opened the faucet in the bathtub and also have the drain open--if you dump a bucket of water in, yes, there's an effect, but it's not going to overflow the bathtub.
It is well established that we are currently in the midst of a warming trend, particularly in artic and subartic regions. Even if you stipulate that this warming would have occured in the absence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, you cannot ignore the fact that these emissions would excacerbate the problem.
Again, see my above analogy regarding the bathtub. Yes, it probably has some effect. I would debate that the effect is even measureable and that by even making drastic cuts in CO2 production that we'd see any significant change in warming. If nature is in a warming trend we are foolish to think we can counteract that by reducing our own emissions which make up such a small part of the natural CO2 production.
It is worth noting at this point that even British Petroleum has released a statement on the subject of rapid global warming which acknowledges its exsistance and probable roots in greenhouse gas emissions.
That is politics. It is politically correct to acknowledge global warming and you get dragged through the mud if you suggest otherwise. It is in a company's best interest to publically state such things so as to not get bad PR, etc.
I'd rather base conclusions on facts rather than just saying "Well, if it's good enough for British Petroleum..." And while not debating that there has been some warming in the last 150 years (although there has been a bit of a decrease in the last 20), my issue is with the assumption that it is man-made. Again, I refer back to my comments above.
Nature and the sun are both hugely more powerful than us humans and have orders of magnitude more effect on the temperature of the earth than we do.
We actually have access to many thousands of years worth of climactic data, thanks to extracted ice cores, data from the ocean floor, and an number of other sources.
Yes, but most of what global warmer's use for data is surface readings from the last 100-150 years based on "direct observations." That's far too little data to make any conclusions.
And, of course, they normally ignore the thousands of years of data obtained, with varying accuracy, from ice cores, etc. because they show a constantly fluctuating temperature that goes up and down naturally without and before any human influence. This tends to take some of the wind out of their arguments since most people will (correctly) conclude, "Well, temperatures have been rising and falling since the beginning of the planet. Are we really causing it?"
we have maybe 200 years of scientific data (of varying quality) out of the sun's five billion year history. Even W's pollsters would tell you that sample size is too small.
True, but that doesn't stop people from going on and on about global warming based on even less data.
Unless you're talking about an aurora borealis, which is not said to be going to happen.
Hello, McFly? Have you not been paying attention to the news and pictures of the last week. These flares are shooting straight towards earth and have been producing auroras unusually far south. I believe Spaceweather.com said this morning they'd been seen as far south as New Mexico, Texas, and even Florida.
So yes, I think he's talking about auroras and, yes, it has been said that they're going to happen. The only real question is how far south.
Pardon my language, but yours is the most polished piece of shit post I've read in a long, long time.
Thank you, I was sure I'd ruffle some feathers and was surprised how much time went by without a reply and, even more suprising, being modded into oblivion.
What kind of sad, dreary life would brand a geek website a partisan politics? Your words make you sound terribly paranoid, nothing more.
That first sentence was a little hard to understand. But I've been here for years and consistently the articles themselves are written in a way that show a liberal bias. And the comments? Just read them. If you forward an idea that suggests that oil isn't so bad, you're toast. If you suggest that Bush isn't so bad, you're toast. If you suggest we shouldn't force a switch to alternative energy until a viable one exists, you're toast. If you suggest that maybe global warming isn't a result of human actions, you're toast. The list goes on.
I hate to break this to you, but Slashdot is about as capable of projecting a political statement as our political system is at regulating technology.
I'm not saying this site is run by a political organization. But its members and, thus, the stories that are posted are usually liberal. Examples provided above and in my previous post. And, thus, to answer the original question--it should not be surprising that so many stories are YRO. YRO stories here are usually a technical spin on what is otherwise a political or legal debate.
Yes, the liberals here usually don't make their case any better than liberals in general--but the predisposition of people here to mod posts down just because the post doesn't agree with the liberal party line is very predictable.
Try posting a message supporting Bush in some way. Provide facts. Generally what happens is that your post will be modded insightful and go up to about +2 or +3. Then, by the next day, it usually has a dozen liberal replies calling you a Nazi, a slave of the oil industry, and you've been modded down to 0 or -1. Try it some time and you'll see where I'm coming from.
That said, I don't really care. I come here to relax and occasionally tweak a few liberals. But it would be nice if there was a technology-site like Slashdot that was more about technology and less about politics.
Is this a news for NERDS site, or a political statement?
Some would answer that the large amount of YRO stories is because our rights are under assault. However, the reality is that this is essentially a liberal bastion--so yes, in great part it is a political statement.
This site can be a mouthpiece echoing blogs from Democrat in stories such as this.
This site is alarmed over some melting glaciers, with the implication it's global warming (even though glaciers melted just a bit more many times before humans arrived).
This site often slams the oil industry despite the lack of any viable alternative at the current time.
This site suggests that abundance is bad, equating spam, overeating, and traffic jams (due to urbal sprawl, of course). Our problem is having too much, apparently.
That's what I'd like to know, too, but as far as I can tell no-one knows until it hits us. At which point I can look outside myself and determine if they are visible.:)
I'm in Northern Mexico just south of San Antonio. I'd really like to see some. They say the great solar storm of 1859 sent the Aurora's down as far as Rome and Hawaii so there's always a chance... but I'm not holding my breath. Well, maybe a little.:)
Having an abudance of money might be a bad thing, but what about an abudance of happiness, or love?
What a crock. This is part of this new-age psychobabble where suddenly material success is somehow a bad thing.
"Having an abundance of money might be a bad thing"??? There is absolutely nothing wrong with an abundance of wealth. Perhaps what you do with it is the subject of debate and whether you do anything productive with your life once you have that wealth could be an issue. But that success and wealth are somehow now bad just goes to show how backwards values in this country have become.
Is money everything? No. But to suggest that having money is *bad* is nonsense. Argh!
Anyone that disagrees with me can feel free to send me their money. I'll be happy to reduce their personal wealth burden.
Yep, par for the course. Point out the fact that this whole nonsense was started by a Democrat.org blog just so people here can weigh the value of it and get modded as a troll.
Slashdot... where truth and logic never get in the way of liberal preconceptions...
Google doesn't spider every day. There can be a substantial gap between when a site is changed and when Google's cache is updated.
So? All the more reason to ALLOW Google to spider those directories so that they get "changed" to reflect the "new" version ASAP.
2. www.archive.org, not google.
Again, so? If their function is vigilance of U.S. Government websites to verify that the Administration isn't modifying their previous statements then by all means they should ignore robots.txt.
It simply is a non-issue. Robots.txt is not required by law and many spiders don't even pay attention to it. So to act like this is some kind of force shield that prevents companies or individuals from downloading the entire whitehouse.gov each night and check for differences is silly.
Believe me, everything the Administration has said is duly noted by news media around the world. You are all fooling yourself if you think the Administration can rewrite history by updating a webpage.
And while not all are related to Iraq, they're all related to politically sensitive issues where Bush has an iffy record at best.
So now the implication is that the Administration has a laundry list of all the areas they are "iffy" on and they are trying to cover it up... by publishing it as the robots.txt file???
Example:/climatechangefactsheet/text
Ah, but the fact that/climatechangefactsheet (without the/text) is NOT in the robots.txt doesn't suggest to you that perhaps they want robots to spider/climatechangefactsheet instead of/climatechangefactsheet/text?
Really, some suspicion and vigilance of any government is a good and healthy thing. But it's amazing that supposedly technical people here at Slashdot can look at the robots.txt file in question (assuming they looked at it) and not see that it's an obvious scripting or search/replace error and are trying to turn it into something sinister.
It's really sad, because it cheapens the value of VALID suspicion and vigilance when such suspicion and vigilance is warranted. "Call wolf" on stupid things such as this and you will be ignored when, perhaps, you stumble upon something of importance but people realize you are known for calling wolf and will ignore you when it really matters.
No, they're going to obscure future changes from all but the most sophisticated (and generally media-inaccessible) users. Everyone else will just see today's approved version of the message.
If Google spiders WhiteHouse.gov and then--under your theory--they decide to change something, Google will just recrawl the new version thus making the new version part of Google's copy of the page. If they disallow it with robots.txt either Google drops it completely or the old version remains in their database. Either way, disallowing pages that have already been cached is counterproductive.
Plus Google doesn't build a history of all changes to documents. It just keeps the latest version. If what you're worried about is them making changes after they are published then Google isn't going to help you other than during the few days between the website changing and Google recrawling.
If you are suspicious of the White House changing information previously published on their website--which is silly in itself since you can certainly find copies of everything they publish elsewhere, including the Federal Register--just monitor it with a robot that ignores robots.txt. It's that easy.
To suggest this is some intentional conspiracy or cover-up when the means to "circumvent" it are so trivial is absurd.
Tell you what... If you find evidence that the White House is intentionally changing material previously posted on their website with the intent to mislead someone, bring that to Slashdot and we'll talk about it. Bring me the Disallows of a robots.txt and I'll continue to consider you comic relief in the absence of George Carlin.
I'm not sure if I'd consider a deliberate act to prevent search engines to access anything related to Iraq on the White House site to be "humor."
Please look at the robots.txt file. Do it right now.
Now... look at all those links. Does it look like a deliberate act to remove Iraq from search engines--something which would be useless to do anyway since the information is in many other places anyway--or does it look like somebody's script got away from them?
Your highlighting of the most absurd-looking decontextualized details overlooks the possibility that the webmonkey was told "Make sure that no search engines archive any page on the site called 'iraq'."
With what goal?
So... the White House publishes a ton of information on Iraq and a dozen other topics on their website. The information is available to anyone that goes to the website. And they think by disallowing it to robots (which may or may not pay attention to the robots.txt file) they're going to hide that which is already public by following a few links?
In the worst case--that what you said is true--they're not even deleting it or making it inaccessible to crawlers (which they could do with cookies to prevent deep linking), it's still a non-issue.
Do you really think these directories actually existed?
No, definitely not. I looked at the robots.txt file quickly and saw it alternating between/text and/iraq and offered the above confusion. But upon closer inspection I saw the exact same thing you did.
The funniest thing now is to see directories such as/goodbye/iraq and/firstlady/recipes/iraq in the robots.txt file and see the liberals going bonkers because they think they've discovered the Administration trying to hide stuff from them.:)
I'll tell you... When there's not a good George Carlin show at least we still have liberals to keep the humor going.:)
You know... the liberals that are going bonkers looking for a conspiracy here are just plain comic relief. It is 100% obvious that someone made an error when building the robots.txt file. Or do you think there is a lot on the topic of Barney for Kids in Iraq? Or an Iraqi don't call list? Or the problem of illegal logging in Iraq? Or the history of African Americans in Iraq? Or how about Easter in Iraq?
Come on knee-jerk liberals... This time your knees jerked your feet right into your respective mouths.:)
Better explanation: Someone screwed up a search-and-replace in a major way. Many (most?) of those pages with "iraq" in them don't exist.
Even better, logical explanation. All the directories listed in robots.txt probably used to exist and perhaps they don't now. So rather than having robots crawling pages that no longer exist and getting 404's, you just list them in robots.txt. A single hit to robots.txt and Google (and everyone else) has a list of obsolete directories it doesn't even have to crawl anymore.
Very logical. Of course, that goes against the general Slashdot mentality that everything that Bush (or his webmaster) does is evil. So we can't attribute to logic that which can be used to bash Bush.
Slashdot Mirror
Does anyone know how much VCs invested?
If they have $150 million/year in profit, as is estimated, the VCs are going to get their money back. And they'll get profit. Just maybe not in a week. I know VCs are in it for the money and time is money, but it seems to me that the VCs should be comfortable in that they're going to get their money back if the company is earning $150m/year.
Now it could be they are worried that Google can't sustain $150m/year for X years so they want to IPO now, recover all their money and be in the black, and then it doesn't matter if Google tanks in a year or two.
So it seems to me my original question still stands... Why would they want to IPO? Money? They're already earning $150m/year and it's all theirs. To expand? What kind of expansion plans do they have that require more than $150m/year? It's not like they have to build a new factory.
Really, the fact that they want to IPO worries me. I really don't think they need the money to expand which suggests to me they want to IPO to line their pockets while the company is doing well and/or because they don't think it will last. Good financial planning on their part but it doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling to invest in them or believe the company is going to be doing well 5 years from now.
I agree. It's also interesting that this article echos a lot of what I said a few days ago. They're talking about a $15 billion IPO and that's just silly on $150 million of profits unless they're expecting a ton of growth to drive up the value of the stock--and I don't see that. They already own the market and they're dependent on ad revenue for the most part which just isn't what it used to be.
Given that they probably can't dramatically increase the value of the company (which would drive up the stock price which would allow me to earn money off the capital gains), they need to keep investors happy with dividends. And those dividends need to be more attractive than other low-risk investments. And with a $15 billion IPO on $150 million in profits my money is going to work harder for me in a saving account than invested in Google.
No effect? I'll agree that they don't have NO effect. As the theory goes, a butterfly in China causing a hurricane in the Carribean, etc.
But last I checked we are producing about 6 Gts/year of CO2. Considering the naturally occurring CO2 is in the hundreds of Gts/year you have to admit that our effect is marginal. It's like you've opened the faucet in the bathtub and also have the drain open--if you dump a bucket of water in, yes, there's an effect, but it's not going to overflow the bathtub.
It is well established that we are currently in the midst of a warming trend, particularly in artic and subartic regions. Even if you stipulate that this warming would have occured in the absence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, you cannot ignore the fact that these emissions would excacerbate the problem.
Again, see my above analogy regarding the bathtub. Yes, it probably has some effect. I would debate that the effect is even measureable and that by even making drastic cuts in CO2 production that we'd see any significant change in warming. If nature is in a warming trend we are foolish to think we can counteract that by reducing our own emissions which make up such a small part of the natural CO2 production.
It is worth noting at this point that even British Petroleum has released a statement on the subject of rapid global warming which acknowledges its exsistance and probable roots in greenhouse gas emissions.
That is politics. It is politically correct to acknowledge global warming and you get dragged through the mud if you suggest otherwise. It is in a company's best interest to publically state such things so as to not get bad PR, etc.
I'd rather base conclusions on facts rather than just saying "Well, if it's good enough for British Petroleum..." And while not debating that there has been some warming in the last 150 years (although there has been a bit of a decrease in the last 20), my issue is with the assumption that it is man-made. Again, I refer back to my comments above.
Nature and the sun are both hugely more powerful than us humans and have orders of magnitude more effect on the temperature of the earth than we do.
Yes, but most of what global warmer's use for data is surface readings from the last 100-150 years based on "direct observations." That's far too little data to make any conclusions.
And, of course, they normally ignore the thousands of years of data obtained, with varying accuracy, from ice cores, etc. because they show a constantly fluctuating temperature that goes up and down naturally without and before any human influence. This tends to take some of the wind out of their arguments since most people will (correctly) conclude, "Well, temperatures have been rising and falling since the beginning of the planet. Are we really causing it?"
True, but that doesn't stop people from going on and on about global warming based on even less data.
Hello, McFly? Have you not been paying attention to the news and pictures of the last week. These flares are shooting straight towards earth and have been producing auroras unusually far south. I believe Spaceweather.com said this morning they'd been seen as far south as New Mexico, Texas, and even Florida.
So yes, I think he's talking about auroras and, yes, it has been said that they're going to happen. The only real question is how far south.
Thank you, I was sure I'd ruffle some feathers and was surprised how much time went by without a reply and, even more suprising, being modded into oblivion.
What kind of sad, dreary life would brand a geek website a partisan politics? Your words make you sound terribly paranoid, nothing more.
That first sentence was a little hard to understand. But I've been here for years and consistently the articles themselves are written in a way that show a liberal bias. And the comments? Just read them. If you forward an idea that suggests that oil isn't so bad, you're toast. If you suggest that Bush isn't so bad, you're toast. If you suggest we shouldn't force a switch to alternative energy until a viable one exists, you're toast. If you suggest that maybe global warming isn't a result of human actions, you're toast. The list goes on.
I hate to break this to you, but Slashdot is about as capable of projecting a political statement as our political system is at regulating technology.
I'm not saying this site is run by a political organization. But its members and, thus, the stories that are posted are usually liberal. Examples provided above and in my previous post. And, thus, to answer the original question--it should not be surprising that so many stories are YRO. YRO stories here are usually a technical spin on what is otherwise a political or legal debate.
Yes, the liberals here usually don't make their case any better than liberals in general--but the predisposition of people here to mod posts down just because the post doesn't agree with the liberal party line is very predictable.
Try posting a message supporting Bush in some way. Provide facts. Generally what happens is that your post will be modded insightful and go up to about +2 or +3. Then, by the next day, it usually has a dozen liberal replies calling you a Nazi, a slave of the oil industry, and you've been modded down to 0 or -1. Try it some time and you'll see where I'm coming from.
That said, I don't really care. I come here to relax and occasionally tweak a few liberals. But it would be nice if there was a technology-site like Slashdot that was more about technology and less about politics.
Some would answer that the large amount of YRO stories is because our rights are under assault. However, the reality is that this is essentially a liberal bastion--so yes, in great part it is a political statement.
- This site can be a mouthpiece echoing blogs from Democrat in stories such as this.
- This site is alarmed over some melting glaciers, with the implication it's global warming (even though glaciers melted just a bit more many times before humans arrived).
- This site often consists of sour grapes, people bitter that someone besides themselves are doing well.
- This site often slams the oil industry despite the lack of any viable alternative at the current time.
- This site suggests that abundance is bad, equating spam, overeating, and traffic jams (due to urbal sprawl, of course). Our problem is having too much, apparently.
- Some people here even go so far as to say "Having an abudance of money might be a bad thing". WTF?
Yes, it should come as no surprise that Slashdot is often just a political statement. A very leftist one.No, these go to 11... :)
I'm in Northern Mexico just south of San Antonio. I'd really like to see some. They say the great solar storm of 1859 sent the Aurora's down as far as Rome and Hawaii so there's always a chance... but I'm not holding my breath. Well, maybe a little. :)
What a crock. This is part of this new-age psychobabble where suddenly material success is somehow a bad thing.
"Having an abundance of money might be a bad thing"??? There is absolutely nothing wrong with an abundance of wealth. Perhaps what you do with it is the subject of debate and whether you do anything productive with your life once you have that wealth could be an issue. But that success and wealth are somehow now bad just goes to show how backwards values in this country have become.
Is money everything? No. But to suggest that having money is *bad* is nonsense. Argh!
Anyone that disagrees with me can feel free to send me their money. I'll be happy to reduce their personal wealth burden.
Slashdot... where truth and logic never get in the way of liberal preconceptions...
There is nothing to see here! But it's fun watching liberals go apeshit over it anyway. :)
Uhm... There ISN'T a disallow on /iraq at all. None. Zip. Check the robots.txt file yourself.
They have nothing to hide/distort, right?
How would I know? Perhaps they do. But if they have something to hide they are NOT going to hide it with robots.txt. That's just silly.
So? All the more reason to ALLOW Google to spider those directories so that they get "changed" to reflect the "new" version ASAP.
2. www.archive.org, not google.
Again, so? If their function is vigilance of U.S. Government websites to verify that the Administration isn't modifying their previous statements then by all means they should ignore robots.txt.
It simply is a non-issue. Robots.txt is not required by law and many spiders don't even pay attention to it. So to act like this is some kind of force shield that prevents companies or individuals from downloading the entire whitehouse.gov each night and check for differences is silly.
Believe me, everything the Administration has said is duly noted by news media around the world. You are all fooling yourself if you think the Administration can rewrite history by updating a webpage.
So now the implication is that the Administration has a laundry list of all the areas they are "iffy" on and they are trying to cover it up... by publishing it as the robots.txt file???
Example: /climatechangefactsheet/text
Ah, but the fact that /climatechangefactsheet (without the /text) is NOT in the robots.txt doesn't suggest to you that perhaps they want robots to spider /climatechangefactsheet instead of /climatechangefactsheet/text?
Really, some suspicion and vigilance of any government is a good and healthy thing. But it's amazing that supposedly technical people here at Slashdot can look at the robots.txt file in question (assuming they looked at it) and not see that it's an obvious scripting or search/replace error and are trying to turn it into something sinister.
It's really sad, because it cheapens the value of VALID suspicion and vigilance when such suspicion and vigilance is warranted. "Call wolf" on stupid things such as this and you will be ignored when, perhaps, you stumble upon something of importance but people realize you are known for calling wolf and will ignore you when it really matters.
If Google spiders WhiteHouse.gov and then--under your theory--they decide to change something, Google will just recrawl the new version thus making the new version part of Google's copy of the page. If they disallow it with robots.txt either Google drops it completely or the old version remains in their database. Either way, disallowing pages that have already been cached is counterproductive.
Plus Google doesn't build a history of all changes to documents. It just keeps the latest version. If what you're worried about is them making changes after they are published then Google isn't going to help you other than during the few days between the website changing and Google recrawling.
If you are suspicious of the White House changing information previously published on their website--which is silly in itself since you can certainly find copies of everything they publish elsewhere, including the Federal Register--just monitor it with a robot that ignores robots.txt. It's that easy.
To suggest this is some intentional conspiracy or cover-up when the means to "circumvent" it are so trivial is absurd.
Tell you what... If you find evidence that the White House is intentionally changing material previously posted on their website with the intent to mislead someone, bring that to Slashdot and we'll talk about it. Bring me the Disallows of a robots.txt and I'll continue to consider you comic relief in the absence of George Carlin.
Or sarcasm, but I forgot that goes right over the head of people here at Slashdot.
Please look at the robots.txt file. Do it right now.
Now... look at all those links. Does it look like a deliberate act to remove Iraq from search engines--something which would be useless to do anyway since the information is in many other places anyway--or does it look like somebody's script got away from them?
That dog don't hunt. In fact, the dog is dead.
With what goal?
So... the White House publishes a ton of information on Iraq and a dozen other topics on their website. The information is available to anyone that goes to the website. And they think by disallowing it to robots (which may or may not pay attention to the robots.txt file) they're going to hide that which is already public by following a few links?
In the worst case--that what you said is true--they're not even deleting it or making it inaccessible to crawlers (which they could do with cookies to prevent deep linking), it's still a non-issue.
I'm sorry... that dog just don't hunt.
No, definitely not. I looked at the robots.txt file quickly and saw it alternating between /text and /iraq and offered the above confusion. But upon closer inspection I saw the exact same thing you did.
The funniest thing now is to see directories such as /goodbye/iraq and /firstlady/recipes/iraq in the robots.txt file and see the liberals going bonkers because they think they've discovered the Administration trying to hide stuff from them. :)
I'll tell you... When there's not a good George Carlin show at least we still have liberals to keep the humor going. :)
Kind of like...
Or how about these highly classified directories that the White House doesn't want anyone to crawl...
You know... the liberals that are going bonkers looking for a conspiracy here are just plain comic relief. It is 100% obvious that someone made an error when building the robots.txt file. Or do you think there is a lot on the topic of Barney for Kids in Iraq? Or an Iraqi don't call list? Or the problem of illegal logging in Iraq? Or the history of African Americans in Iraq? Or how about Easter in Iraq?
Come on knee-jerk liberals... This time your knees jerked your feet right into your respective mouths. :)
Even better, logical explanation. All the directories listed in robots.txt probably used to exist and perhaps they don't now. So rather than having robots crawling pages that no longer exist and getting 404's, you just list them in robots.txt. A single hit to robots.txt and Google (and everyone else) has a list of obsolete directories it doesn't even have to crawl anymore.
Very logical. Of course, that goes against the general Slashdot mentality that everything that Bush (or his webmaster) does is evil. So we can't attribute to logic that which can be used to bash Bush.
So what? The White House has a robots.txt file. Check it out. It lists a ton of stuff, not just Iraq-related stuff.
But, hey, it's fun to give the liberals something to chew on to attack Bush on a slow news day.