Hotlinking

Posted on by mrpikes

For those not in the know, hotlinking is the act of displaying an image located on another web site by referring to it directly, as opposed to linking to the page on which it appears.

The upshot is that every time the hotlinked image is displayed on site A, it costs site B (the site hosting the image) the bandwidth required to serve it up. This is considered rude. Site B incurs a cost without receiving any benefit. The accepted alternative is to save a copy of the desired image and host it on one’s own site, or on one of numerous image hosting services. Not only is this polite, but it’s smarter, because when you hotlink to an image on someone else’s web server you don’t have control over it.

When John McCain was running for president, his campaign set up a MySpace page (remember MySpace?) using a common template. The template’s creator made it available for anyone who wanted to use it, but requested attribution and asked those who used it to host the associated images themselves. The McCain staffers did neither. The template’s creator responded by modifying one of the images that was being leeched from his own web server such that the following occurred:

John McCain

The McCain staffers saw the light and quickly corrected their faux pas.

I bring up hotlinking because a lot of my blog posts contain images that a lot of people find via Google Image Search. Then they hotlink to them. The pages on which they are displayed are frequently in forums and, given the highbrow nature of the images I post, you can only imagine the levels of erudition present in the forums’ discourse. For example:

http://www.last.fm/group/I+Hate+Metal+Maiden+Hell/forum/124912/_/531272

There are methods to block hotlinking, and some of those who engage in hotlinking subscribe to the viewpoint of, “If a site lets me hotlink to its images, that’s tantamount to an invitation.” Well, fuckers, you are no longer invited.

One has choices when blocking hotlink requests. One can simply forbid the request, which usually results in a broken image icon appearing on the target site. One can also redirect the request so that an alternate image is served up. Given the potential humor value of the latter, which method do you think I chose?

Some people select an image like this:

Hotlinking is Bad

Practical but boring.

Some serve up a transparent image that is very, very wide, which is designed to break the target site’s layout such that the left and right borders get blown out. I consider this somewhat malicious in that it punishes bystanders along with the culprit.

Being true to my nature, I decided to go with something offensive. My initial choice was this:

Jesus Says, Go Fuck Yourself

Then I was briefly taken with this:

Ponch

Then I considered taking the scattergun approach and offending everyone imaginable:

Eat a Queer Fetus for Jesus

Then, after reading an informative essay by Ryan “pizza” Flynn on what to consider when coming up with an irritating, disturbing or offensive hotlink replacement image, I embraced one of Mr. Flynn’s offerings for my very own. I think it strikes a tasteful balance:

Gay Swastika

I am well aware that by serving up an alternate image, I am still incurring the bandwidth cost associated with that image. That’s okay. Ever since I set this up, several times each day I feel a little zing of pleasure out of nowhere that I can only imagine is my replacement image appearing somewhere unexpectedly. So either the tumor has grown beyond the point of “Are you sure you don’t smell burning plastic?” or my investment is paying dividends.

Eat Me

Posted on by mrpikes 1 Comment

Over the last few years several data points have come to my attention that, taken together, demonstrate conclusively and disturbingly that robots are testing the waters for an outright blood-drenched revolution fueled on human flesh.

The idea of robots as a menace predates actual robots. I, Robot, Forbidden Planet and The Day the Earth Stood Still (um, the good one) were published or released in the 1950s. The Unimate (acknowledged as the first digitally programmable robot) was created in 1961.

In 2006, doing a piece on NEC’s robot sommelier (designed to identify wine, cheeses, meats and hors d’oeuvres), the reporter stuck his arm in the robot’s sensing mechanism and was identified as bacon. The cameraman tried it and the robot came back with prosciutto. There you have it: long pig independently corroborated. And, guys, thanks all to hell. Now they have a taste for it.

In 2008, an Australian man was shot dead by his own robot creation. Suicide. Riiiiiight.

Last month, Robotic Technology Inc. issued a press release that was a bit of a non sequitur to most. On the subject of their Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR) (a U.S. Defense Department-funded robotic ground vehicle that obtains its own fuel), the press release stated:

We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission… Desecration of the dead is a war crime under Article 15 of the Geneva Conventions, and is certainly not something sanctioned by DARPA, Cyclone or RTI.

Trying to assess the imminence of the forthcoming electromechanical holocaust, I searched Google for “robot coup” and got 1.7M results. Most disturbing was the top result, Robot Coupe, “The inventor and world leader in food processors.”

WTF? Sweet Fancy Moses! Grab the kids and the shotgun Mildred, we’re heading for the hills.

I urge anyone still able to read this to buy or steal a copy of How to Survive a Robot Uprising immediately.

Courage.

Oh Hell!

Posted on by mrpikes 6 Comments

While doing a recent turn in stir owing to an unfortunate misunderstanding, I discovered a swell card game called “Oh Hell!” Played with 3 to 7 people, each player declares a bid per hand, immediately after the cards are dealt. A hand of 7 cards equates to 7 rounds, because only one card per player is put into play per round. The bid reflects the number of rounds each player thinks hu can win (referred to as “tricks”), with 2 through Ace values applying. For example, let’s say I am dealt 7 cards, 3 of which are Aces. I might declare in advance a bid of three tricks, because I am confident that each of those Aces will win a given round. There’s more to it, but that’s the essence. Details include things like the number of cards dealt per hand (ascending then descending) throughout play, and the presence of a trump suit per hand.

What really interests me is that scoring is based entirely on how accurately one bids (in Project Management parlance, estimates versus actuals). In other words, it doesn’t matter how many rounds I win in a given hand; I only win points for that hand if I estimated my bid accurately. For example, let’s say that I declared a bid of 3 tricks for the hand. If I win exactly 3 tricks, I get 3 points plus a 10-point bonus for estimating accurately. If instead I only won 2 tricks, I lose 10 points plus the difference between my estimate (3) and the number I actually won (2), for a total of -11. Therefore, as a hand evolves, one’s strategy sometimes involves playing to lose.

I had great fun when I played.

There are many variations to the rules and scoring of Oh Hell!, so I decided to create MrPikes’ House Rules, fundamentally based on Carter Hoerr’s rules (rulekeeper for the OH HELL! Club of America) with a couple of interesting differences, Rule 2 inspired by PJ O’Rourke’s Modern Manners:

  1. When all players are ready to BID, they put a fist on the table. When everyone’s fist is out, the group says “One, Two, Three” while bouncing their fists on the table. On “Three”, everyone must stick out some number of fingers (possibly zero) to indicate how many tricks they will try to take. Of course, with this method, there’s no restriction against the total number of bid tricks being equal to the number of cards dealt. Since players cannot adjust their bids based on the other players’ bids, the total tricks bid can be wildly different from the tricks available – for example it is not uncommon for three or four players to bid “one” when only one card was dealt.
  2. The PANTS rule: Any player who bids 5 tricks or higher and does not realize that bid precisely has to take off hus pants. For the especially shy or aesthetically repugnant, writing “Dumbass” in grease pencil or lipstick on the forehead is an acceptable substitute. The spirit of the rule is to add an element of risk (and corresponding thrill) to the game, similar to Russian Roulette but without the cleanup headaches. In addition, you can learn a lot about a person who willingly takes the gamble. The pants rule applies once per player.