Splendours and Miseries of Hotlinking

"Hotlinking is bad", we are told. "Hotlinking is the bandwidth theft", we are told. Vices and evils of hotlinking are described in gory details at The Source.

But wait a second... What if I want to promote someone's work, and that someone is someone I've never met, have no commercial interest vested into, nor desire to communicate with, it's just I like their work and think they deserve their fifteen minutes of fame?

Should I copy the picture to avoid stealing their bandwidth? Well, but copying is stealing, we are told.

Should I provide a plain hyperlink? But with the information density of today's Internet a link will most probably just go unnoticed.

So I'm just going to settle with the assumption that the bandwidth "stolen" is not actually stolen, but is, in fact, a fair price paid for the exposure the author gets. Provided the link is not disemboweled (as, say, http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2605/3964180788_0627f1c922.jpg) and backlink is readily available - just like the image above.

Now go nudge this photographer and make him give you a chance to order his prints.

(Image Credit: Cullen :P)

Quote Of The Day: OOP

The problem with object-oriented languages is they’ve got all this implicit environment that they carry around with them. You wanted a banana but what you got was a gorilla holding the banana and the entire jungle.

-- Joe Armstrong

Quote Of The Day: Dancing

You may be a king or a little street sweeper, but sooner or later you dance with the reaper!

-- Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

Quote Of The Day: History

History is a constant race between the invention and catastrophe. Education helps but it's never enough. You also must run.

-- Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

Quote Of The Day: Cowardice

Most civilization is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.

-- Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

Little Big Annoyances

Everyone's got their idiosyncrasies.

Some people can't touch apricots and and peaches.

Some people don't tolerate a sound of scraping on the glass.

Some people can't drive stick.

My idiosyncrasy is the middle button in the browser. I want it to open a new tab, in the foreground.

And Google Chrome, otherwise a decent browser, can't seem to support this feature as of version 3.

Or is it just an advanced configuration option?

about:config doesn't work. OK.

Some research shows that it does support some others, though verification shows that it's a hit and miss (for some reason, not all keywords display anything other than an empty page - keep trying in new tabs). Other than that, nothing.

Moving on. More searching (details omitted as mundane). Nothing useful, except it seems that there are other people desperately trying to make Google add this option, to no avail.

Damn Google, is it that difficult? Every other browser has this option configurable, who died and gave you the right to decide that you know better how it is supposed to work? Yes, I know you can do it, but it requires two hands, and what if I don't have the other one?

Maybe if the head of usability testing team for Chrome had one arm, we'd get this feature faster?

PS: This is the only reason Chrome is not the default browser on my boxes.

UPDATE: Tried to get the Chrome Beta and what do you think? Lo and behold, time after time, browser, network proxy and fresh/upgrade tricks being used seemingly irrelevant, it downloads the Chrome (stable, v. 3.0.195.21) instead. And, as usual with Google, the hood is welded shut and it'll take significant effort to figure out where the problem is. Screw it, I don't have that much time.

Back to Firefox.

GIYF is not so F anymore

We old-timers used to think that GIYF stands for "Google is your friend".

Well, this started backfiring lately.

It used to be that a carefully crafted search criteria returned just the right result for the search.

But with advances in personalization this art has already become useless - whereas one person gets a completely relevant result set, the other gets absolute noise. And the more alien (out of pattern) the search is for the person conducting the search, the less useful it becomes.

Quote Of The Day: Expression

Ideas imbedded in a language require that particular language for expression.

-- Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

PS: Yes, "imbedded" is the word used in the book. Don't ask me why.

Quote Of The Day: Certification

I'm certifiable, not certified. It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

-- Internet lore

Afterthought: Nice play of words on the definition of "certifiable".

Quote Of The Day: Obscenity

What is the opposite of obscenity?

-- Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

Quote Of The Day: Reason

Never attempt to reason with people who know they are right.

-- Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

Quote Of The Day: Administration

The difference between a good administrator and a bad one is about five heartbeats. Good administrators make immediate choices.

-- Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune