GNU Terry Pratchett

http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com/

by JayOtter • 11 years ago

51 15 11 years ago

gnuterrypratchett.com

JayOtter2• 11 years ago

Some more context is available in this Reddit thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/2ysv26/sir_terry_...

porsupah• 11 years ago

Rather beautifully appropriate. I'd be delighted to see this adopted, and would myself, if I ran my own webserver these days.

TylerE• 11 years ago

Yes, let's waste 40 bytes on EVERY SINGLE HTTP REQUEST. That's a fitting tribute. What's with the pointless GNU shoe horned in as well?

ChrisClark• 11 years ago

Because that's the way it was in the books. The GNU code needed to be there to make sure the name is spoken forever.

wging• 11 years ago

It turns out stuff like that is already done.

I just found out, by viewing that thread, that reddit responds to GET requests with the X-Moose:majestic header.

pests• 11 years ago

GNU stands for something specific in one of his books this tribute is coming from.

jordigh• 11 years ago

Valid question, and not easily duckduckgoable. I found this explanation on tumblr, by blackboardmonitor. I wish I knew how to link to the damn thing, but I can't figure out the tumblr interface.

    In Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal, the operators of the clacks
    tower use “GNU” as a code to mean the message should be passed
    onto every tower. An article on wiki-Lspace says that “The G in
    the code means to send it on the U at the end means to turn the
    message around at the end of the line and the N means not logged.”

    When a clacks operator died while working, or was killed, their
    name was passed in the overhead with “GNU” in front of it, as a
    way of commemorating them, of not letting them die, because, “a
    man is not dead while his name is still spoken”. It’s a way of
    keeping them alive, you see.

    Terry Pratchett, may he rest in peace, wrote the clacks as a
    fantasy equivalent of social media, of emails, in particular, but
    general interweb communication as a whole. Therefore, people are
    posting “GNU TERRY PRATCHETT” because it’s the equivalent in our
    world of commemorating him on the clacks; we’re keeping him alive,
    in a way, in a way which I think he would have liked.

    Because no one is really dead until the ripples they caused die
    away. So, now & until I myself die: GNU Terry Pratchett.

oneeyedpigeon• 11 years ago

If you're caching your content properly and sending 304's when appropriate, this header won't get sent with every HTTP request. And if you're not using 304's properly, you're wasting a lot more than those 40 bytes.

asd00• 11 years ago

was the ad at the bottom of the page really necessary...?

JayOtter2• 11 years ago

Didn't even notice that, I've an an blocker on - the id of the element is "shamelessmoneygrab". Hmm.

bmalee• 11 years ago

Yes, as everybody knows, web hosting is free.

quiddity• 11 years ago

http://www.orangutan.org.uk/ and http://orangutan.org/ oblig. plug for Orangutan Foundation (UK) and Orangutan Foundation International (US), who try to protect them and their habitat.

drivingmenuts• 11 years ago

It's an interesting idea, but it should not be implemented.

We all lose people of value: Terry Pratchett, Aaron Schwartz, Robin Williams, etc. The worth of such individuals is rarely objective and is mostly subjective, but sometimes on a large scale.

Were we to memorialize everyone of value to someone somewhere in such a manner, the weight of the headers could easily outweigh the value of the information we're trying to access.

Yes, it is proposed for one person only. Next week, it might be one more. The week after, a few more. And so on. Turtles all the way down.

Just because we can do a thing, doesn't mean we should.

GNU Terry Pratchett

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