Periodically, I go over my website logs. I'm getting something like a million hits a month and about 10 gigs of bandwidth traffic (which in itself is flabergasting as this is an I-love-me website). A lot of people link directly to the strips in the comic archive. Annoying, but I can live with that. Since I'm still below my bandwidth allocation, I don't mind, really, and I can't be assed to write an htaccess file to limit the referrers.
Sometimes though, I'm worried about the state of humanity. People hot linking comic strips? I can handle. People hot linking pictures from my portfolio and taking them *scarily* out of context? I get worried. Not as in, OMG they're going to steal my identity or start stalking me (and lets face it, most of the time it's from emo kids on myspace). More of the “what the fuck are they thinking” sort…
Case and point:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/nickcerta/
http://myspace.com/plusplusminus
http://myspace.com/risingsunmusicnet
The myspace accounts are typical of all that is wrong with myspace, but that's irrelevant. What is freaky is that they both link images completely out of context. The LJ one is sorta in context, but still, wrong.
bwahahaha!
I typed ''doritos'' in google image search. Seb's picture comes in the 2nd page. :)
(http://livejournal.com/users/la_tatie)
''feeling bad'': 1st page.
(http://livejournal.com/users/la_tatie)
if you type “eating doritos” it's in the first page…
(http://livejournal.com/users/talisker)
I believe it's traditional to use Apache re-write rules to make hot-linkers get the goatse image instead. They'll soon learn. ;-)
(http://livejournal.com/users/pw201)
bwahahahaha, that would be brilliant :D unfortunately, I don't know if I can use mod_rewrite on my webhost. Can you stick rewrite rules in a .htaccess file or must they be in the apache.conf file (to which I do not have access)?
(http://livejournal.com/users/talisker)
This page seems to think you can use .htaccess, but I suspect it also depends on whether the admin has allowed it. Still, you can but try.
(http://livejournal.com/users/pw201)
I'll look into it :)
(http://livejournal.com/users/talisker)
change the image url to a message like “fuck off” or to an image of tubgirl
(http://livejournal.com/users/ignis)
I tried something, but i'm not sure if it works properly. Google can index the images and LJ can link to them, but that's about it. People will now see this if it works:
(http://livejournal.com/users/talisker)
BLERGH!!! permanently scarred!!! never again do i ask for an education in geek internet/omputer terminology!!
EWWWWW!!!!
EWWWWWWW!
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(http://livejournal.com/users/petkatyyazzick)
not working yet…. still the original pictures except the one on myspace in french says broken link or something
(http://livejournal.com/users/ignis)
damn, I know. Bleh.
(http://livejournal.com/users/talisker)
sometimes it says broken link, sometimes it works. Maybe it's a local cache. I'll give it a few days.
(http://livejournal.com/users/talisker)
Seems like the French myspace one is working, but none of the others are (this was running with a clean cache). I still think it needs to be larger (more compression would do it, so your bandwidth wouldn't suffer) and flash very rapidly, though.
(http://livejournal.com/users/pw201)
Welcome to the Internet!
(http://livejournal.com/users/pw201)
Further to my previous comment, I have the answer: David Hasselhoff. Don't go hotlinking to it, though :-)
(http://livejournal.com/users/pw201)
This is really scary indeed.
I don't know much of programming (it as the same effect that exlax as on me), but can't you block the hotlinking somehow???
(http://livejournal.com/users/oraboras)
Never mind this, I just read all the comments…
Only one question, if you change the coding, or whatever, will I still be able to save the pic on my machine???
(http://livejournal.com/users/oraboras)
Just another example of how the internet is scary, here's a link to something on my friend's list (it's usually funny news from Japan): http://japundit.com/archives/2006/01/13/1864/
(http://livejournal.com/users/oraboras)
see? that's just wrong :)
(http://livejournal.com/users/talisker)
from my website or LJ, yes.
(http://livejournal.com/users/talisker)
hehe, goatse has that effect on most people for the first time :D
(http://livejournal.com/users/talisker)