Robots.txt for the White House

[BASE813 0]

Just thought this was interesting reading, maybe thats just me though.........................

[justinb138 0]

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Just thought this was interesting reading, maybe thats just me though.........................

Eh, it was kind of interesting, but there's only so much you can get out of 10 words....

[IanHarrop 43]

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Just thought this was interesting reading, maybe thats just me though.........................

I certainly enjoyed it. Short but sweet! All those dots certainly make interesting reading!

"Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

[Sen.Blutarsky 0]

Influential but not profound like Bokononist teachings or even Bokononism in general.

[tcnelson 1]

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Just thought this was interesting reading, maybe thats just me though.........................

i sense pulitzer in your future.

"Don't talk to me like that assface...I don't work for you yet." - Fletch
NBFT, Deseoso Rodriguez RB#1329

[Sen.Blutarsky 0]

As a political text I interpret it as meaning "Let us start our Republic with a chain of drug stores, a chain of grocery stores, a chain of gas chambers, and a national game. After that we can write our Constitution." Interestingly, these thoughts closely track the Seventh Book of Bokonon.

[shropshire 0]

There's a hidden message here somewhere, isn't there?...... If only we could read between the line(s).....
Maybe it's in the micro dots.............

Or, we've signed up to the telepathy forum.
.

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[SudsyFist 0]

Short answer: web servers use Robots.txt files to advise search engines (and other automated crawlers) what areas of a web site not to crawl or index. Whitehouse.gov has a HUGE robots.txt file, which some speculate is meant to allow the White House to revise published documents (particularly those regarding 9/11 and Iraq) without the search engines' providing an archived audit trail; in other words, facilitating revisionist history. There are decent arguments both for and against the speculation, so it makes pretty interesting reading for both conspiracy theorists and blind followers alike.

More info:

• Wikipedia: Robots Exclusion Standard
  
• Wikipedia: White House, The Website
  
• Technorati (blog) Search For: whitehouse.gov robots.txt
  
• Google Search: whitehouse.gov robots.txt
  
• http://www.whitehouse.gov/robots.txt

[shropshire 0]

Hey, thanks for the explanation..... Wow, some people see conspiracys in every corner of your Oval Office.

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[JohnRich 4]

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Hey, thanks for the explanation..... Wow, some people see conspiracys in every corner of your Oval Office.

Yeah. That robots.txt file referenced above does indeed include some 9/11 files, it also includes tons of other stuff for which no one, no matter how goofy, would claim a conspiracy. For example, Barney, the Bush's pet dog. I wonder what kind of conspiracy would surround press releases about Barney the dog?

[vpozzoli 0]

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Hey, thanks for the explanation..... Wow, some people see conspiracys in every corner of your Oval Office.

Yeah. That robots.txt file referenced above does indeed include some 9/11 files, it also includes tons of other stuff for which no one, no matter how goofy, would claim a conspiracy. For example, Barney, the Bush's pet dog. I wonder what kind of conspiracy would surround press releases about Barney the dog?

Maybe because of hist role in the invasion of Iraq?

Disallow: /barney/iraq

Although I really would like to know what part the dog played. Incidentally, the file contains 2280 disallow directives, 885 contain the substring "iraq".
That's roughly 39% of them, enough to maybe be considered statistically significant.
Cheers,

Vale

Edited for spelling