More assumptions :-)
Who said anything about searching?
The URLs were converting TeX into postscript and or PDF.
Got a primitive perl script to do that? :-)
>Go look up the term 'denial of service attack'. The admin at xxx.lanl.gov
>is playing a very stupid game that may result in *him* getting burned.
People get 1 email warning to stop what they are doing and check the
robot guidelines. That's perfectly reasonable and helpful.
People who refuse to react to the initial mail get sent extra reminders.
>find himself return mailbombed (ping stormed,tracerouted,...) in the ratio
>of a T3 to a T1.
LANL has 3 T3 lines :-)
>Or prosecuted criminally for a deliberate denial of
>service attack.
There is a law to prevent people from wasting the time of a federal
employee administrating a system. That one would take precidence in these
cases since it is a known offence. The reaction from xxx.lanl.gov
is a mail message (or series of them) asking people to stop wasting
this time before things get too serious.
>Government immunity won't protect him from breaking the
>law outside of official policy. I am sure that there is no authorized
>policy allowing him to mount denial of service attacks.
Mail is only sent in response to a denial of service attempt on the
attacked machine. The mail asks for the attack to cease.
>Don't mistake me - I think that robot owners *should* respect robots.txt.
me too. and that'd be the end of the story.
so far in this thread there have been way too many people trying to
justify foolish actions and then moaning because one site in particular
doesn't roll over and play dead like all the others.
>respect robots.txt. But the admin at xxx.lanl.gov is not behaving
>reasonably.
The behaviour is reasonable. People are pointed at the guidelines, told
to go away permanently and reminded of this if they chosse to ingnore
the first request.
>Rather than reason with robot owners or take precautions on
>his end to prevent the problem (lets see, no new searches from any IP
>address unless the previous search has already finished? Hmmm?) he chooses
an incorrect assumption about the problems on xxx.lanl.gov
>to throw the net equivalent of a juvenile temper tantrum by perpetrating
>his own net abuse in the form of mailbombing. One of these days he will
>get spanked for it (either legally or via 'I've got more resources to
>play the denial of service game than you do') and won't understand why.
belive me, the admin at xxx.lanl.gov is perfectly reasonable on this
issue and anyone who's dumb enough to try to sue him will end up
as toast.
>Being an asshole on the net rarely pays. You NEED other people's goodwill.
something that robot attackers show none of.
Dozens of robots index xxx.lanl.gov every day. Only a tiny minority
cause trouble.. they are the ones who cry 'not fair' when they have
their plug pulled.
rob