Solipsism Gradient

Posted by Dave Sifry:
When you wrote, “they don’t necessarily conflate different URLs on the same site”, I’m not sure I understood your criticism. Technorati will list all of the people linking to URLs that are at or below the URL you provide. In other words, if you put in “http://www.sifry.com/”, it will show you everyone it its database who is linking to http://www.sifry.com/, http://www.sifry.com/alerts/, and http://www.sifry.com/alerts/foo.html.

The more specific the URL you put in, the more specific Technorati’s response will be. The major flaw is for sites that sometimes use the “www” prefix and sometimes do not – occasionally, Technorati sees that as two blogs. So it thinks that http://www.boingboing.net/ and http://boingboing.net are different, and you need to do two queries to get all the links. This is a tough problem, because there exist counterexamples of people who use different domain name prefixies to refer to different parts of their site, like http://alerts.sifry.com/, which simply redirect to http://www.sifry.com/alerts/

-Dave (david@sifry.com)

Boing Boing just posted a link to my disclaimer. Thanks, Cory!

Update: Manual::Override soon picked up the link – thanks Seek!

I was a little skeptical about TechnoRati, until I figured out that they don’t necessarily conflate different URLs on the same site. So I was typing in the wrong search string and getting nothing back.

Anyway, I’m now using them to check who’s linking to me. Let’s see how many other blogs pick this up, and what the effect on my site traffic will be. It’s been very stable for over a month.

I’m slowly weeding out some little bugs and making formatting more consistent. Today I finally made my weblog the default topic, so linking to it is now easier: /bb/viewtopic.

This required changing over a dozen files, so as soon as I find the time I’ll try to generate the header with php.

From Doc Searls’ weblog, a link to the Illegal Art Exhibit Contract.

NOTICE TO USER: BY METABOLIZING YOU ACCEPT ALL THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THIS AGREEMENT INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, USE OF YOUR HOME AND CAR BY THE AUTHORS OF THIS AGREEMENT.

If you like warning labels, don’t miss the Rinkworks Warning Labels Page.

“Warning: has been found to cause cancer in laboratory mice.” — On a box of rat poison.

Rinkworks, which can’t be praised enough IMHO, also contains the Absolutely Funniest Thing I’ve Ever Seen On The Internet. You have been warned. Do not click on this link while eating or drinking.

Let’s see… there’s Happy Fun Ball…

Happy Fun Ball Contains a liquid core, which, if exposed due to rupture, should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at.

And, of course, they continue to disclaim everything.

…An explanation of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle may be found at the bottom of this page. Then again, it may not.

They also pointed out to me Dave Barry’s Original sci.electronics FAQ, a classic in this genre.

PLUGGING IN THE DEVICE: The plug on this device represents the latest thinking of the electrical industry’s Plug Mutation Group, which, in a continuing effort to prevent consumers from causing hazardous electrical current to flow through their appliances, developed the Three-Pronged Plug, then the Plug Where One Prong is Bigger Than the Other. Your device is equiped with the revolutionary new Plug Whose Prongs Consist of Six Small Religious Figurines Made of Chocolate. DO NOT TRY TO PLUG IT IN! Lay it gently on the floor near an outlet, but out of direct sunlight, and clean it weekly with a damp handkerchief.

DISCLAIMER: This post, as well as the rest of this website, is covered by The World’s Most Powerful Meta-Disclaimer.

I’ve updated phpBB to version 2.0.3, which just came out. It fixed some security vulnerabilities.

I’ve also done incremental fixes to page formatting inconsistencies, changed to grey smilies (the default yellow ones were rather obtrusive), added a link to the site map to the 404 page, and did some minor things I can’t remember right now .

One problem with IE; posting and editing posts has some problems. I think the JavaScripts that handle cursor position and tag insertions aren’t IE-friendly. Sometimes, when I submit a message, the first dozen or so characters are mangled.

I’ve seen this before on other phpBB boards, so I suppose it’s an IE issue. I’ll look around on the phpBB support forums to see if there’s a fix out…

Meanwhile, be sure to preview, double-check (and edit, if necessary) your posts.

I decided to let guests post here, while I figure out a way to hide comments. I can always delete stuff if this gets out of hand … now I’m off to learn more PHP…

Also, guests can now post in the 4 product support forums.

I added a new topic about this site’s design, for whoever’s interested.