What's more, a lot of users (myself included) by-pass the homepage completely, and go straight to a search using various nifty tools - from forms on 3rd-party websites to search toolbars to bookmarklets and other browser tricks. So adverts on the front page would probably get less hits than the ones on the searches.
Google never linked the site, google linked to a google search to which that site was the first result.
Well, yes, Google linked to Google which linked to the site - still Google linking. It's like if a Slashdot story is too long to fit on the Front Page, and a link is in the non-summary bit of the text; or like a slashdotted link that's just fallen off the Front Page - both are still linked from Slashdot.
This solution, so often used here, of copying text from overloaded servers, suggests to me a technology / technique to be developed. Indeed, people do it voluntarily for some/. stories - temporary mirrors when the load is known to be high.
Wouldn't it be nice if sites that knew they were going to get high click-throughs for a limited period could and would automatically provide mirrors for the excess traffic. Of course, you'd run into all sorts of legal problems, since you wouldn't have permission. But if it's publically available already, a mostly-transparent copy (with all link destinations intact, and no other changes made) wouldn't make much difference to anything would it?
It could be deleted after 24 hours, at the outside - possibly less for a lot of/.ings. It could be kept up-dated with, say, a check every 5 minutes - or even every 30 seconds, and you'd still avoid crippling the server. And a best effort could be made to inform the page owner of what was going on in advance. On the other side, anything getting that many clicks through *must* have about enough capacity to deal with that number of users, because they're already there.
Other than laziness, is there any reason not to do this?
Well, from what I've gathered, getting the drivers sorted for a USB input device (under, say, linux, or a bootloader) is one hell of a lot harder than just using PS/2. Of course, PS/2 ain't perfect - if it comes out the back, you're probably gonna need a reboot to get it back in sync - but having to set up a whole addressable, hot-pluggable, daisy-chainable bus before you can even type always seemed a bit much to me.
But maybe there is an easier way, and I'm just ignorant - how exactly do PS/2-USB adapters work? I mean, a PS/2 device never has to deal with addressing does it?
Just to clarify the h2g2 situation slightly: anyone can post an article, it appears immediately, and nobody has the right to delete it (unless it breaks the House Rules - e.g. is offensive - and is officially moderated) - unlike e2, or to a certain extent wikipedia. The author can then edit it as much as they like (and nobody else can, unlike a wiki).
However, the encyclopedic part of the Guide is Edited - that is, an existing article must go through a period of Peer Review, be polished up, and finally re-added by the official editors as an Edited Guide Entry. It is then put into a category system, and becomes the officially definitive article on that topic.
What stops people from clicking "revert" on a valid change?
Nothing, but there is also nothing to stop that revert being reverted in turn - both versions remain in the edit history for the page. When this gets out of hand, it is referred to as an "edit war" or "revert war", and somebody else may have to step in and arbitrate.
If one of the users is obviously just vandalising, they will simply be blocked. If it is an argument over which of two versions is "correct" they are encouraged to settle the dispute on a discussion page before editing the article. If the worst comes to the worst, a page can be "protected" by an admin, so that nobody can edit it until everyone's calmed down.
For completeness, Douglas Adams wrote to my knowledge three complete computer games: 1) an Infocom interactive version of "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (regarded, I believe, as one of the most challenging, but rewarding, works of interactive fiction); 2) another Infocom game, entitled "Bureaucracy", also highly regarded in the Interactive Fiction community; I believe both of these are available from the interactive fiction archive along with software to play them on just about anything.
and 3) Starship Titanic, which was a kind of exploration of what you could do with CD-ROMs: a mixture of interactive fiction, lush 3D graphics, and a lot of sound files of all the things talking to you...
I disagree entirely with the idea that "taxing everyone equally" is somehow a Good Thing, whereas taxing those who can actually afford it is going to kill them.
If you person A has £1000000 (or $, or , or equivalent), and person B has £10, through no fault of their own. Doesn't it make some kind of sense to make person A help out person B a bit if they need, say, a £15 life-saving operation?
And hey, we live in a capitalist world, remember, so person A's money was probably made by squeezing as much out of person B & friends as possible in the first place.
[Oh, and one more thing: we're not talking about 1 cent per person, we're talking about 1 cent per email. Big difference.]
Slashdot Mirror
What's more, a lot of users (myself included) by-pass the homepage completely, and go straight to a search using various nifty tools - from forms on 3rd-party websites to search toolbars to bookmarklets and other browser tricks. So adverts on the front page would probably get less hits than the ones on the searches.
Google never linked the site, google linked to a google search to which that site was the first result.
Well, yes, Google linked to Google which linked to the site - still Google linking. It's like if a Slashdot story is too long to fit on the Front Page, and a link is in the non-summary bit of the text; or like a slashdotted link that's just fallen off the Front Page - both are still linked from Slashdot.
This solution, so often used here, of copying text from overloaded servers, suggests to me a technology / technique to be developed. Indeed, people do it voluntarily for some /. stories - temporary mirrors when the load is known to be high.
/.ings. It could be kept up-dated with, say, a check every 5 minutes - or even every 30 seconds, and you'd still avoid crippling the server. And a best effort could be made to inform the page owner of what was going on in advance. On the other side, anything getting that many clicks through *must* have about enough capacity to deal with that number of users, because they're already there.
Wouldn't it be nice if sites that knew they were going to get high click-throughs for a limited period could and would automatically provide mirrors for the excess traffic. Of course, you'd run into all sorts of legal problems, since you wouldn't have permission. But if it's publically available already, a mostly-transparent copy (with all link destinations intact, and no other changes made) wouldn't make much difference to anything would it?
It could be deleted after 24 hours, at the outside - possibly less for a lot of
Other than laziness, is there any reason not to do this?
Well, from what I've gathered, getting the drivers sorted for a USB input device (under, say, linux, or a bootloader) is one hell of a lot harder than just using PS/2. Of course, PS/2 ain't perfect - if it comes out the back, you're probably gonna need a reboot to get it back in sync - but having to set up a whole addressable, hot-pluggable, daisy-chainable bus before you can even type always seemed a bit much to me.
But maybe there is an easier way, and I'm just ignorant - how exactly do PS/2-USB adapters work? I mean, a PS/2 device never has to deal with addressing does it?
Just to clarify the h2g2 situation slightly: anyone can post an article, it appears immediately, and nobody has the right to delete it (unless it breaks the House Rules - e.g. is offensive - and is officially moderated) - unlike e2, or to a certain extent wikipedia. The author can then edit it as much as they like (and nobody else can, unlike a wiki).
However, the encyclopedic part of the Guide is Edited - that is, an existing article must go through a period of Peer Review, be polished up, and finally re-added by the official editors as an Edited Guide Entry. It is then put into a category system, and becomes the officially definitive article on that topic.
What stops people from clicking "revert" on a valid change?
Nothing, but there is also nothing to stop that revert being reverted in turn - both versions remain in the edit history for the page. When this gets out of hand, it is referred to as an "edit war" or "revert war", and somebody else may have to step in and arbitrate.
If one of the users is obviously just vandalising, they will simply be blocked. If it is an argument over which of two versions is "correct" they are encouraged to settle the dispute on a discussion page before editing the article. If the worst comes to the worst, a page can be "protected" by an admin, so that nobody can edit it until everyone's calmed down.
For completeness, Douglas Adams wrote to my knowledge three complete computer games:
1) an Infocom interactive version of "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (regarded, I believe, as one of the most challenging, but rewarding, works of interactive fiction);
2) another Infocom game, entitled "Bureaucracy", also highly regarded in the Interactive Fiction community;
I believe both of these are available from the interactive fiction archive along with software to play them on just about anything.
and 3) Starship Titanic, which was a kind of exploration of what you could do with CD-ROMs: a mixture of interactive fiction, lush 3D graphics, and a lot of sound files of all the things talking to you...
I disagree entirely with the idea that "taxing everyone equally" is somehow a Good Thing, whereas taxing those who can actually afford it is going to kill them.
If you person A has £1000000 (or $, or , or equivalent), and person B has £10, through no fault of their own. Doesn't it make some kind of sense to make person A help out person B a bit if they need, say, a £15 life-saving operation?
And hey, we live in a capitalist world, remember, so person A's money was probably made by squeezing as much out of person B & friends as possible in the first place.
[Oh, and one more thing: we're not talking about 1 cent per person, we're talking about 1 cent per email. Big difference.]