- Reuters user-agent fuckwittage: "dynamo-internal/html"

PDA

View Full Version : Reuters user-agent fuckwittage: "dynamo-internal/html"


Karsten M. Self
07-24-2004, 11:21 PM
gpg: Invalid passphrase; please try again ...
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Not directly related to GNU/Linux, but vaguely apropos.

I've noted a problem being able to load any pages from
http://www.reuters.com/ in multiple browsers. Turns out the problem is
that Reuters is apparently specifically parsing user-agent strings, and
borks over the one I use.

Specifically, I surf behind a squid proxy, with the following directive:

header_replace User-Agent W3C standards are important. Stop fucking \
obsessing over user-agent already.

Toggling this setting (commenting/uncommenting) and reloading my Squid
config, I find I can surf the site with the header disabled, and cannot
when it's enabled.

There are reasons for my choosing this setting, largely exemplified by
the current example: changing webserver behavior on the basis of
arbitrary user-agent strings is broken behavior. For background, see:

http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/UserAgentString



I'd previously noted the problem here:

http://tinyurl.com/3ea2f


Peace.

- --
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Verio webhosting? Guaranteed downtime:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,57011,00.html
http://www.dowethics.com/r/environment/freedom.html
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFAMSatefG8443k044RAsamAJ4s2MWlsdGCjTCp71bHCiQ+0X1UJwCggZ/4
2Vznq4H6FJlh69iSZNdcVMI=
=3oHV
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----