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

[geremy condra]

On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 6:55 PM, Lie Ryan <lie.1296 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

I use them when I want to conceal the target of the link. Usually here
that just means its a letmegooglethatforyou.com link, which I find
more amusing than is probably healthy.

Geremy Condra