Down with tinyurl! (was Re: importing excel data into a python matrix?)

[Tim Harig]

On 2010-09-20, Seebs <usenet-nospam at seebs.net> wrote:
> On 2010-09-20, Tim Harig <usernet at ilthio.net> wrote:
>> On 2010-09-20, Seebs <usenet-nospam at seebs.net> wrote:
>>> * No hint as to what site you'll be getting redirected to.
>
>> Tinyurl, in particular, allows you to preview the url if you choose to do
>> so.  Other URL shortning services have a similar feature.
>
> I have no idea how.  If I see a "tinyurl" URL, and I paste it into
> a browser, last I tried it, I ended up on whatever page it redirected
> to.

1. Don't bother to manually paste when you can use something like urlview
	to lauch directly.

2. tinyurl addresses can be previewed by adding the "preview" subdomain to
	the tinyurl.  For example, the address that started this subthread
	would become:

		http://preview.tinyurl.com/2eqqjxv

	If you want this behavior by default, you can easily wrap urlview
	to automatically add the prefix.

>>> * If the service ever goes away, the links become pure noise.
>
>> This happens a lot on the web anyway.
>
> True.
>
>> Do you have any idea how many
>> pieces of free software are first hosted on university servers to
>> disappear when the author graduates/moves to another school or free
>> shared host servers that have to be moved due to lack of scalability?
>> Sourceforge solved much of this problem; but, then if sourceforge should
>> ever disappear, all of its links will be pure noise as well.
>
> This is true.
>
> But two points of failure strikes me as worse than one.  :)

I question first whether most tinyurl links are really of such an
intransient  nature that they need to be long lasting.  I personally use
them most when writing paper notes.  They only need to last long enough
for me, or whoever I made the note for, to get back to them.

In theory, something like this adds the possibilty of adding another level
of indirection; which could make the system more robust if used properly.
Just think of how much resiliency is gained by using DNS, which can be
redirected, as opposed to IP addresses which you cannot take with you if
you move.  This is academic as tinyurl addresses cannot be changed; but, it
does point out that simple logic such as two points of failure must be
worse then one isn't always correct.

>> The simple fact is that the Internet changes.  It changed before URL
>> shortening services came into the mainstream and it will be true long
>> after they have left.
>
> I'm not particularly convinced that these are *significant* complaints
> about URL-shorteners.  But I will say, of the last couple hundred links
> I've followed from Usenet posts, precisely zero of them were through
> URL redirectors.  If I can't at least look at the URL to get some
> initial impression of what it's a link to, I'm not going to the trouble
> of swapping to a web browser to find out.

But why should the rest of us be penalized because you make the choice
not to use (or not take full advantage of) all of the tools that are
available to you?