Re: lynx-dev Now I got the error from idmb trying to...

[mattack]

On Wed, 21 Jul 1999, Heather Stern wrote:
>Clients like you, and the authors of certain rude crawler programs, abuse
>it by setting it to something they're not.  Site authors abuse it when they

I only set it so that I can actually access various sites, like my bank
account and stock account.  Otherwise I wouldn't be able to access them
from home AT ALL.  I am a big stickler for honesty, but I don't consider
this being dishonest, since all I am trying to do is get _some_ access.
Heck, I'm not even trying to get the sites to _make_ a "separate but equal"
version..  I'm simply changing the setting so that they think I'm one
of the "big two" browsers... and if something doesn't work on the site when
I access it via Lynx, I wait until I can check it with a "big two" browser
before complaining to the site (in case the problem has to do with my hackery).

>Your problem isn't the user agent string, very likely.  It's much more likely
>that their logfile analysis (see    
>   Linkname: IMDb: Terms and Conditions of Use
>        URL: http://us.imdb.com/terms          )
>detected your cron job and has excommunicated you.
>
>I went and looked at their policies page.  "web accelerating" is against
>their policy.  So fast fetching via your commandline string is nearly
>certainly against their policy.  But doing it on a timed basis, definitely
>is, unless you follow robot policies, for which there are better tools to 
>use than lynx.

I'm doing it _once a day_.  Are you saying that they're analyzing the logs
over a time period and matching up all requests to previous ones on other
days?  Kind of hard to believe..

Especially since this has been a sporadic problem.

>of lynx users everywhere!  But I suspect that you know perfectly well that
>you're not - and so slinking about, you want us to help you get around 
>what they want to do.  We have better fish to fry.

No, I'm not doing anything wrong!  I'm just trying to get the site so I
don't have to manually go to it.

>Of course all this isn't US helping YOU, today, with THEIR page.  But I think 
>that at this point it has to be a problem between you and them.  You know how 
>to go in the front door, and you say it works.  (You'd better try again the
>normal way though, because if they blacklisted you for cron-jobbing, it
>probably doesn't matter anymore what you browse with.)  Stop trying to go 

Nope, it does matter.  I just tried again.  I can get there fine manually
(I just did it), and I even just did my crontab command pasted at a UNIX
prompt and successfully got the mail.

It's only been when running it as a cron job, that I have sporadically gotten
the failed message.