Fun with URLs


Posted On: Saturday - August 12th 2023 5:56AM MST
In Topics: 
  Internets  Humor  Media Stupidity

Those are Univeral Resource Locaters. The term sounds kind of vague, but I'm sure it has a very specific meaning... if you're a geek... and it's 1995. Another name it a "web address". Like the Chinese way of Country, Province, Town, in that order, the URL goes from big to small. It starts with the internet protocol, hence "https" hyper text transfer protocol secure (They've mostly all gone to that "s" for "secure" over the last 5 years.* Peak Stupidity has had more than our share of drama on that score.), then has the server name as resolved by DNS (Domain Name Servers) - redundancy alert - servers that convert IP numbers to word addresses, then the directory ("folder", if you will) trees and file name.



While reading the New York Post for our recent post here Good things come to those who wait .... I noticed a slight difference between the URL and the article title. This is the "fast one" mentioned in the 2nd footnote of our previous post. The long ending of the address, which is the web page file name, goes by the common practice of putting lots of words in, separated by dashes, that pretty much describe the article.**

NY Post article title: Black, Hispanic NYers who failed teacher's test strike $1.8B in NYC settlement.

File name part of the URL: nyc-bias-suit-black-hispanic-teachers-and-ex-teachers-rich

Heh! They are slightly different. A little bit of resentment of the racial grievance money distribution, above and beyond that already in the article, got into the URL. Good.

Lots of people stick in the URL as is, into web sites like The Unz Review, that is, without making them the cleaner style links (for which the link tags surround the proper text). Readers see the URL as the working page title.

We feel your pain, article writers Rich Calder, Susan Edelman, and Deirdre Bardoff. Yes, I'm surprised, given the last 2 writer's names. You never know.



* Is that nothing but a money-making scam? I don't think so, but I'm no geek at this point.

** That's probably for search engine use, in current times and for archives. Peak Stupidity doesn't do it this way, which might very well be stupid. As with many other news sites, the directories are a year directory, a month one under that, and a date one under that.

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