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Dogbert Letter Number 8
Diehard fans of the Dilbert comic strip know that all inane letters to author Scott Adams are answered by his razor-witted creation, Dogbert. Rick, Brad, and Mark thought it would be really cool if they could solicit Dogbert to do the same for them - and then realized that Dogbert is only a cartoon character. But if Dogbert were available to answer RTV email, we believe it would look something like the responses shown below:
Bandwidth Thieves
We switched our web site to a new server in May of 2005, and one of the new benefits was enhanced statistical data on how the web site is being viewed. We were shocked (SHOCKED!) to discover that there were pirates out there stealing our bandwidth!
HUH!?! What is that, you ask? Here's how it works; Some chick in Hungary wants to find a photo to use on her web site, so she does an internet search and finds what she is looking for on vatsaas.org. She could copy it, store it on her server, and display it on her page -- OR -- she can just write some code that refers to the photo on the RTV server. If she does the latter, every time someone views HER page, that photo displays from OUR server using bandwidth that WE pay for (Well, Mark pays for it. But don't remind him).
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Or some pimply-faced adolescent in Hong Kong likes to hang out in chat rooms. A common feature of these bulletin boards is an option where he can select an image that that will display next to his name with every post he writes. If the young Mr. Chat-room finds an image on our site that he thinks represents his persona, he points to the image on our site and quicker than you can say "Help me, Pikachu!" we register a thousand hits.
So what should we do? Should we have Dogbert write a letter? What Would Dogbert Do?
Mark devised a permanent solution that will display a broken link every time someone tries to pirate one of the images from our web site. It's a real easy way to make sure that no one will be absconding with our bandwidth again without our knowledge. We thought about having it display the image to the right, but decided against it.
But certainly there should be some way to deal with those silent offenders. A quick poke in the eye before the broken link symbol replaces their pirated image. Something swift and quiet. Something that would make Dogbert proud.
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Here's what we did: we changed the filename of the image that was being hijacked and replaced it with a new image. So a new image showed up in place of the old one. This didn't solve the bandwidth problem, but it was amusing just the same.
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First we found the Scottish soccer fan who posted regularly in a football chat room lamenting about the poor performances of his favorite team. He was using one of our images (from our
Dark Art of Composites Part 2 article) next to his posts. We replaced the image on the left with the one on the right. But he didn't care for this new persona, and changed the link after just a few days.
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We also found a way-out music forum that was hot-linked to a voodoo doll photo we had posted on our
Dark Art of Composites Part 1 article. I don't know what country the offending site originates from, or what language it's written in -- it's all Greek to me! Or perhaps Thai....
Anyway, we hope they enjoy the replacement photo.
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Then there was the web site from the Netherlands where the owner was complaining about Internet spam (or so we think -- it was written in Dutch). So we replaced the Spam can with one we thought was more appropriate. Ironic that he was complaining about abuse of the Internet when he hijacked our band width.
(The image was part of a construction article on making motor retention from various types of food tins.)
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I can't come up with an explanation for it, but someone in Korea was using a photgraph of shawarma (from the foam cutting fixture page) next to his or her chat room posts. What persona that was supposed to depict is beyond my imagination, but it used up a LOT of our bandwidth with a LOT of hits. The link came down quite promptly after we replaced it with this photo:
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Rick had this cartoon on display as part of his explanation for the rocket he named 'The Evil Grimace'. It was pilfered by some site that was running a banal survey about the Grimace and how he is used in McDonald's advertising.
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We replaced the cartoon image with this one.
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Perhaps the most disturbing illicit link was from the Hungarian
on-line forum devoted to trucks. There were a dozen pages of truck photos, and the only thing that would have made it more weird would be to have the trucks dressed in stilletto heels and negligees.
So it was a little creepy when this photo from our More Dangerous than Rocketry collection showed up there.
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That's why I thought that replacing the image with the photo on the right would serve to lower the levels of surging testosterone.
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This photo showed up on perhaps a dozen different personal websites authored by prepubescent European males. (The photo is part of our Bert Drag Race collection.)
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Will the replacement photo to the right stimulate angst-ridden neuroses through an ego-bruising derailment of the normative transition from childhood in these adolescent subjects? We can only hope.
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Click HERE to return to Dogbert Answers RTV Mail Index!
Click HERE to go to the next Dogbert Answers RTV Mail letter!
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