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

[Lie Ryan]

On 09/20/10 19:59, Tim Harig wrote:
> On 2010-09-20, Steven D'Aprano <steve at REMOVE-THIS-cybersource.com.au> wrote:
>> On Mon, 20 Sep 2010 05:46:38 +0000, Tim Harig wrote:
>>
>>>> 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?
>>
>> I'm with Aahz... best practice is to post both the full and shortened 
>> URL, unless the URL is less that 78 characters, in which case just post 
>> the full version.
> 
> Posting two URLs rather defeats the purpose of using a URL shortening
> service in the first place; but, if that is what you feel is effective,
> then by all means, do so.  You are the master of your posts and you have
> the right to post them using whatever methods and formating that you
> feel is most effect; but, other people should have the same priviledge.
> 
> Many people find tinyurl and kin to be useful tools.  If you do not,
> then are free to rewrite them in your reader, ignore posts using these
> services, or even add a rule blocking them to your score/kill file so
> that you do not have to view their ugliness.

IMO, url-shortener are most (only?) useful in presentations or printed
materials. When you instead have a full-fledged computer, using which
you can just click on the link or copy paste; they're unnecessary and
counter-productive.