A lesson in hotlinking (why you should not)

Smike said:
It's better than using tinyurl (http://tinyurl.com/yjaqhb).

At least you can see where you're going if you hover over the link.

I don't know why Randi uses tinyurl in his commentary...
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I really have no idea either. Tinyurl is great if you have to send a URL by carrier pigeon, but is pretty ugly for everything else. If have a nice HTML based format (like a web page), then you should use HTML links properly. If I want to link to Randi's commentary, then I will make a nice link to it.

Using tinyurl defeats part of the purpose of actually having a web page! I really don't understand the point of it.
 
shemp said:
Why? Because you just might get goatsed! (WARNING: Some text may be NSFW. Page links to, but does not display, NSFW image.)
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A friend of mine found out that someone was using one of his wedding pictures as a background for their blog. Rather than just stealing it, they decided to steal it and steal his bandwidth by hotlinking.

He did change it, but not to the goatse.cx guy as I recommended. He is far too nice for that! But he did change it to something silly, and very shortly, the blogger stopped hotlinking. Hotlinking is just so rude, not too mention dangerous. You really have no control over what shows up on your website when you do that...
 
Grimoire said:
I really have no idea either. Tinyurl is great if you have to send a URL by carrier pigeon, but is pretty ugly for everything else. If have a nice HTML based format (like a web page), then you should use HTML links properly. If I want to link to Randi's commentary, then I will make a nice link to it.

Using tinyurl defeats part of the purpose of actually having a web page! I really don't understand the point of it.
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This is something I have wondered about too. I can find absolutely no good reason for using a tiny URL link unless you are phishing and want people to not know the final destination. Isn't this why the anchor tag has an href attribute and the ability to apply it to any text? Wasn't this invented in like 1993.

I hate that when I hover over the links in the commentary, I never see the destination.

Has anybody brought the issue up with Randi, or is he ignorant of the issue? I understand that Randi is not as computer savvy as some of the rest of us, so if nobody has told him, he wouldn't neccesarily know that there was a problem.
 
opqdan said:
This is something I have wondered about too. I can find absolutely no good reason for using a tiny URL link unless you are phishing and want people to not know the final destination. Isn't this why the anchor tag has an href attribute and the ability to apply it to any text? Wasn't this invented in like 1993.

I hate that when I hover over the links in the commentary, I never see the destination.

Has anybody brought the issue up with Randi, or is he ignorant of the issue? I understand that Randi is not as computer savvy as some of the rest of us, so if nobody has told him, he wouldn't neccesarily know that there was a problem.
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Randi has stated the reason for using tiny urls is to accomodate those who prefer to read the commentary in print and don't want to have to type a mile long url to get to the webpage to which he is referring.
 
wasn't there also an issue about not contributing to woo sites' pagerank, and other measures of that ilk?
 
JamesM said:
wasn't there also an issue about not contributing to woo sites' pagerank, and other measures of that ilk?
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That would be the main reason to use tinyurl in the commentary, in my opinion.

However, it is not used consistently in that way, so I really have no idea either why Randi has the tinyurl thing is his commentaries. If it was meant to reduce pagerank, i.e. not directly linking to those pages, they could simply type the URL without the HREF tag (link).

I always wonder what will happen when some day tinyurl goes down the drain - so many linked URLs will be lost forever.
 
A friend of mine did this - she found someone had hotlinked an image of Tux on her website to use as his avatar on some german forum. So she changed the picture on her page and replaced the hotlinked file with one of those famous offensive ones (One with three old guys), over which she had written 'this is me' with an arrow.
 
vIQleS said:
and replaced the hotlinked file with one of those famous offensive ones (One with three old guys)
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Thanks! That image burned into my retina had finally settled down to no more than one sudden mindwracking rememberance a month. Now it's back fully in my mind again. :mad:
 
I wish I knew what famous picture you're talking about, no kidding. Or would that breach your membership agreement?
 
wahrheit said:
I wish I knew what famous picture you're talking about, no kidding. Or would that breach your membership agreement?
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I thought that too! :)

This has happened here too - not with avatars, but on a few occasions, hotlinked pictures have been replaced with something altogether less innocent.
 
I actually considered doing this deliberately a couple of years ago. It goes something like this:

Write a crap quiz meme, something to appeal to myspacers and livejournalers like, "what kind of puppy am I?" with a selection of cute pictures as the results.
Take the user's IP address and store it relating to that picture.
When a request comes in from that IP address, always display the puppy.
When a request comes in during the first day or two from another IP address, display the puppy.
When a request comes in later from another IP address, display porn.
That way the user doesn't usually become wise to it unless someone gives the game away, so the picture stays up.
 
wahrheit said:
Thanks for the info, geni. I guess, Arkan_Wolfshade was quite right and now I'll have to look at the Pet Pictures Thread to heal my eyes. :)
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Oh they are really not that bad compared to say the pain series or the average stuff on /b/ on 4chan (the things you learn as a wikipedia admin).
 
In Link there's a method to stop hotlinking that I'm contemplating in using on my sites. However, I've heard that it may cause trouble with certain firewalls. Anyone experienced problem with this?
 
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