licentious radio

Monday, March 11, 2002
[6:06:40 PM]

For a Sun Ultra 10 with Solaris 8: I once downloaded the MySQL package from Sun. I could install it, but it wouldn't run. I tried again... they had a new build. The daemon starts, but the mysql program doesn't run. Search Google for 'libncurses.so' and you'll hundreds or thousands of poor suckers who thought they could download a binary from Sun to save some time and attention. Instead, we waste time and flounder. I love the Ultra, but Sun is really, really not ready for primetime. I'm comparing Sun to your typical Linux distribution where you pick what software you want, and it works.

[10:45:56 AM]

We don't like linkrot. John S. Rhodes suggests fighting linkrot [webword.com] with web services: when a url changes, the server tells any computer that asked for the update. That's nice, and will add value.

But the right thing is to set up your web server so the urls don't change. Put your files someplace, and leave them there, maybe.

Second, make the url part of what you track in the database. If you change the url for a page in the database, automatically generate the redirection page. But better yet, just keep the same url. This works because urls are abstract, not an exact mapping to subdirectories and files.

For example, say your old publishing system used whacky urls, but your new publishing system uses a different scheme. Just map the old whacky urls to the matching page in the new scheme. It's not hard. You know the old url, and you know the new url. The mapping functionality is in your web server.

And for that matter, if you don't like whacky urls, you could come up with your own scheme, and map the urls you want your customers to see to whatever your publishing system generates and/or responds to.

The fundamental concept here is that the server *decides* which resource to deliver. Deciding which existing page to deliver is very cheap in terms of processing power -- compared to generating pages on the fly, for example.

I have extensive notes on URLs at my other website.

Proposed hack: if you move a page -- to a different domain, for example -- put the old url in the new page (this page formerly at: oldurl). Users could search Google for the old url, and find your new page.