Nah - I think the URL is being added to a database, and the ?xxxxx was a lookup key.
Those DSE links contain 40+ alphanumeric combinations - a bit random for token-replacement compression. On Fri, 2002-11-22 at 12:15, Helmut Walle wrote: > On Fri, 22 Nov 2002, C Falconer wrote: > > > Cool idea - but the user doesn't know what site the link is to and can't > > judge the usefulness of the link. > > > > http://makeashorterlink.com/?O2AD32682 > > http://makeashorterlink.com/?P57D22682 > > http://makeashorterlink.com/?V2BD22682 > > > > Which of these is useful, which is strange, and which is just plain > > wrong? > ... > > Yes, the problem is obvious, it is a little bit like dialling a mobile > phone number without knowing to whom it belongs. However, they can > only create these short links by exploiting the hugely excessive > redundancy in "normal" URLs. By removing most of the redundancy, and > still coding it unambiguously, they get to the shorter links. The loss > of human intelligibility is almost unavoidable if you have a simple > piece of software do this. > > Certainly, a human theoretically could do this much nicer, like change > > www.canterbury.ac.nz/whateverunnecessarilylongfilenametheymightthinkof.html > > [Nothing against UC! I just chose it because someone from UC brought > it up] > > to www.canterbury.ac.nz/toolongname.html which is much > shorter, but has similar semantics of the filename. BUT, this would > require that you first check if that filename does not already exist, > and then, it would have to be the UC server itself who would have to > provide it, and not some external service. Of course, they could still > make > > shorturls.com/uc.ac.nz/toolongname.html from it at an external service > called shorturls.com . But the translation of filenames, maintaining > the semantics of the name, and this under the boundary condition that > ambiguities are strictly forbidden, is anything else than trivial and > would at least require some fancy AI thing. > > I do not say it is impossible, but it might cost a lot. The thing they > have done lacks beauty, but seems to be comparatively simple and > straightforward. > > Cheers, > > Helmut. > > +----------------+ > | Helmut Walle | > | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | > +----------------+
