I wish they wouldn’t do this

Googlebot hits each page twice, presumably to work around dynamic content: I understand the reasoning, but it would be useful if that “feature” were disabled when the ‘bot realizes the content-length is identical on the repeated requests.

Surely, we expect robots.txt to be static?
216.239.46.226 – – [25/May/2002:21:20:45 -0700] “GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0” 200 0 “-” “Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)”
216.239.46.226 – – [25/May/2002:21:20:45 -0700] “GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0” 200 0 “-” “Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)”
216.239.46.226 – – [25/May/2002:21:20:45 -0700] “GET /movabletype/archives/000057.html HTTP/1.0” 200 6115 “-” “Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)”
216.239.46.226 – – [25/May/2002:21:20:45 -0700] “GET /movabletype/archives/000057.html HTTP/1.0” 200 6115 “-” “Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)”
216.239.46.220 – – [25/May/2002:21:23:41 -0700] “GET /movabletype/archives/000004.html HTTP/1.0” 200 5388 “-” “Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)”
216.239.46.220 – – [25/May/2002:21:23:41 -0700] “GET /movabletype/archives/000004.html HTTP/1.0” 200 5388 “-” “Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)”
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cast a broad enough net, catch a sucker every time

The Register

You’d think no-one would fall for the scam – known as a 419, after the relevant section of Nigeria’s criminal code. But you’d be wrong: a few years ago, the Nigerian government placed ads in the FT, warning people not to be greedy and not to be suckers. If you got trapped, it was your own fault, so don’t go running to the Nigerian government for your money back.

If you have never gotten one of these little gems, you’re lucky. You’d think people would realize it’s a scam. The most recent one I read claimed the money — tens of millions — was the result of overbilled contracts: in other words, fraud. Any sensible person would immediately press “delete.” Not if your greed impairs your judgment, apparently.

on learning computer programming

Comments on CSE142 at the UW

But graphics don’t need to be used in a low-level computer science class. We’re supposed to be learning programming fundamentals, not how to use a particular graphics widget library. The equivalent class at Berkeley is taught in Lisp, and from what I can tell focuses way more on building understanding of programming principles and less on “how to program in language X”. I don’t really want to take a java programming class, or a C programming class, or an Ada programming class. Individual languages are just syntax, and I can pick that up as I go along. But understanding of how to think about programming is language-independent. Or it should be, anyway.

The assignments which require that you make a simple animation or reproduce an image given to you by the instructor seem to be exercising your ability to use the graphics toolkit more than anything else. That bugs me. I’m not particularly looking forward to this class. Bah.
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