dog food

I got this from Super Colossal but I’m so blown away by it I had to re-post.

The robots.txt file for whitehouse.gov has changed.
Yesterday it was:

User-agent:     *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /query.html
Disallow: /omb/search
Disallow: /omb/query.html
Disallow: /expectmore/search
Disallow: /expectmore/query.html
Disallow: /results/search
Disallow: /results/query.html
Disallow: /earmarks/search
Disallow: /earmarks/query.html
Disallow: /help
Disallow: /360pics/text
Disallow: /911/911day/text
Disallow: /911/heroes/text
Disallow: /911/messages/text
Disallow: /911/patriotism/text
Disallow: /911/patriotism2/text
Disallow: /911/progress/text
Disallow: /911/remembrance/text
Disallow: /911/response/text
Disallow: /911/sept112002/text
Disallow: /911/text
Disallow: /ConferenceAmericas/text
Disallow: /GOVERNMENT/text
Disallow: /QA-test/text
Disallow: /aci/text
Disallow: /afac/text
Disallow: /africanamerican/text
Disallow: /africanamericanhistory/text
etc... for another 2000 lines.

Today it is:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /includes/

The robots.txt file tells search engines what to include and not include in their indexes. The previous administration either had a blanket policy to block indexing of content on the White House website or someone made a conscious decision that content within /africanamerican/text (and the other directories) should not be returned in a google search. I imagine this would be incredibly effective in restricting the dissemination of information, without actually blocking it.

Great to see change on such a fundamental level.

For those of you wondering, I just checked the robot.txt files for www.australia.gov.au and www.aph.gov.au – nothing nefarious to report.

Last time I looked Quartz Composer wouldn’t talk to anything, so I find this project from Jay pretty amazing. It’s using the open source Peggy LED board from Evil Mad Science and the Arduino (also open source). More videos here, and Jay is sharing his code here.

By all accounts it’s been another stunning MacWorld despite the absence of Steve Jobs. The highlight for me was the announcement of ‘variable pricing’ for songs on the iTunes music store – simply amazing, what will they think of next?

Still, not quite as amazing as last year:

or the year before:

thanks Rory

There is an absurd rumour floating around that Steve Jobs is going to be offered the soon-to-be-created position of Chief Technology Officer in Obama’s cabinet. As Dr. Macenstein points out, there are about 600,000 fat, Dorito-covered IT guys holed up in server closets across the country that are more qualified for the job. Clearly a stupid idea, will never happen. But not the dumbest thing I’ve heard this week: Schwarzenegger for President takes that cake.