"What's new" in web pages is not necessarily reliable

Mordechai T. Abzug (mabzug1@gl.umbc.edu)
Mon, 11 Mar 1996 22:24:27 -0500


I have a little web robot running to keep track of changes to web pages. This
came in very handy this semester, as I have an instructor who puts all
assignments on the web: instead of having to check manually when the
instructor put up the assignment, I just set up to monitor his "What's new"
page and get mailed within 25 hours of a change. This worked for a
while. . . then a homework assigment was added to a different page without
being mentioned in the what's new. Oops. He was very understanding, but this
class of problems is something robot users -- as well as people using netscape
2's update feature -- will want to keep in mind.

Mordechai T. Abzug
http://umbc.edu/~mabzug1 mabzug1@umbc.edu finger -l mabzug1@gl.umbc.edu
Stupidity got us into this mess, why can't it get us out?