Will the internet collapse on the 23rd at 15:00?

[Churchill]

Here's one for you Ginjey:

You don't need Paris or Manhattan
When you can have a good night out in
Congresbury or Yatton

Of course, it's The Wurzels but those lines made me laufg.

There's no effin' laughter!

[Gibbon]

There's no effin' laughter!

I'd give you a rep+ but clients browser won't let me.

[doodab]

I do recall being on the receiving end of a "route leak" that caused a fair chunk of the internet to become unreachable from our network when I worked for a large ISP many years ago.

These sort of misconfigurations are surprisingly common. Interesting paper here:

http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigco...pmisconfig.pdf

[NickFitz]

The second result is now This from 2002.

That's first for me. Blooming personalised search results just confuse the issue

Still, I thought it was pretty good that this thread was coming back as a top result within five minutes of being started. The Caffeine must have kicked in

[gingerjedi]

How is is Ian Smith's fault?

Telephone cables are normally made of copper. But when, in the 1960s, Ian Smith declared UDI in Northern Rhodesia (the main world source of copper ore) the price of copper went through the roof. So BT (they were then part of The Post Office) decided to lay their telephone cables in aluminium instead.

BT action group -Have you got BT Broadband aluminium cable problems?

[Sysman]

That's first for me. Blooming personalised search results just confuse the issue

A bit of history here. Circa 2006/7 Google started redirecting me to google.ch and wouldn't let me go to any other country, or the .com version either. I found a way around that, but it was a pain. They then started insisting that I view the German version. This was totally useless for providing support in English for "How do I do this in Google?" questions.

Some time later I discovered a Google setting for language, but this means they can track me for certain. The first evidence I saw of this personal search malarkey was the other week when an ad for some specialised software which is right up my street appeared in the middle of a financial article.

How do SEO merchants cope with this stuff when trying to assess changes they have done? (without using Google's own services of course)

Still, I thought it was pretty good that this thread was coming back as a top result within five minutes of being started. The Caffeine must have kicked in

It wasn't that much of a slouch for CUK before Caffeine was announced.

[Sysman]

BT action group -Have you got BT Broadband aluminium cable problems?

Telephone cables are normally made of copper. But when, in the 1960s, Ian Smith declared UDI in Northern Rhodesia (the main world source of copper ore) the price of copper went through the roof. So BT (they were then part of The Post Office) decided to lay their telephone cables in aluminium instead.

That's incorrect. Ian Smith declared UDI in Southern Rhodesia. Northern Rhodesia (Zambia from 1964) was indeed the main source of copper, and Southern Rhodesia was the route out to the rest of the world (via South Africa). It is arguable that sanctions on (Southern) Rhodesia and later ones on South Africa hurt Zambia more than either of the other countries.

[NickFitz]

How do SEO merchants cope with this stuff when trying to assess changes they have done? (without using Google's own services of course)

One of two ways:

1. They use confirmation bias to delude themselves into thinking that their secret SEO sauce really works;
   
   
2. They realise that they've been snake-oil salesman and charlatans all along, and find a way to earn a living providing an actual service instead.

As 1. is what they've been doing all along, not many of them manage to make it to 2.

[gingerjedi]

That's incorrect. Ian Smith declared UDI in Southern Rhodesia. Northern Rhodesia (Zambia from 1964) was indeed the main source of copper, and Southern Rhodesia was the route out to the rest of the world (via South Africa). It is arguable that sanctions on (Southern) Rhodesia and later ones on South Africa hurt Zambia more than either of the other countries.

Either way I've got aluminium cables because copper was too expensive. Aluminium is a good conductor but it corrodes at the joints making it unsuitable for ADSL.

[Sysman]

One of two ways:

1. They use confirmation bias to delude themselves into thinking that their secret SEO sauce really works;
   
2. They realise that they've been snake-oil salesman and charlatans all along, and find a way to earn a living providing an actual service instead.

Chuckle. I noticed this in the Global Warming debate. Both sides would on occasion use the same "evidence" to support their claims.

As 1. is what they've been doing all along, not many of them manage to make it to 2.