So I'm putting around the ol' Internet, looking at various robots.txt files. It's a noble pastime, one that has jump-started careers for thousands of data sifters. My good friend Bethany Brightbolts got a job doing handwriting analysis on robots.txt files last summer, and now she's the vice president of some nation's house of pancakes.
Never one to turn down a nonpaying job, I studiously burned through hundreds of those accursed files in the hopes of finding something shocking -- could some large company or government agency be discriminating against some poor spambot? My sense of social justice is already outraged!
Surprisingly, the breadcrumbs led right to the birthplace of American bureaucracy, the IRS. Take a look at their robots.txt file; notice anything? All search engines are denied access to certain directories. I can understand that, they've got private data that they don't want web crawlers getting their sticky fingers into.
But one engine in particular is singled out, denied access to the entire site. And that web crawler's name... is Discobot.
Discobot is a component of the Discovery Search Engine, a joint venture between Google, Stanford, God, the Illuminati, Big Tobacco, Big Cardboard, Big Boy Restaurants, and Zombie Elvis to create a next generation search engine that breathes methane and sees in color.
Why are my hard-earned tax dollars being used to fight disco? Does the IRS know something I don't about Google and its (potentially) shady business practices? Or is this a prelude to an all-out war on bubblegum pop?
And why isn't the media pressing the presidential candidates on this?
Never one to turn down a nonpaying job, I studiously burned through hundreds of those accursed files in the hopes of finding something shocking -- could some large company or government agency be discriminating against some poor spambot? My sense of social justice is already outraged!
Surprisingly, the breadcrumbs led right to the birthplace of American bureaucracy, the IRS. Take a look at their robots.txt file; notice anything? All search engines are denied access to certain directories. I can understand that, they've got private data that they don't want web crawlers getting their sticky fingers into.
But one engine in particular is singled out, denied access to the entire site. And that web crawler's name... is Discobot.
Discobot is a component of the Discovery Search Engine, a joint venture between Google, Stanford, God, the Illuminati, Big Tobacco, Big Cardboard, Big Boy Restaurants, and Zombie Elvis to create a next generation search engine that breathes methane and sees in color.
Why are my hard-earned tax dollars being used to fight disco? Does the IRS know something I don't about Google and its (potentially) shady business practices? Or is this a prelude to an all-out war on bubblegum pop?
And why isn't the media pressing the presidential candidates on this?
Obama and McCain are secretly on the payroll of Big Cardboard.
Expect to see less trees if they're elected.
Not Big Cardboard!
We all hate disco. Mind you, there's no need for the Irate Robot Squad to take that sort of action against it.
And to think I came here hoping to see Robot Lincoln kick some ass on the 4th of July...
Ask and ye shall receive somewhat!