7-Nov-2001
Would you believe that there are still links to the long dead counter?
Oh well. I guess they deserve whatever randomness they get.
Looks to be about 25 hits a day.
18-Sep-98
You'd think that the explicit mentions that the counter here is down
and the lack of updates for more than a year would clue people in that
the counter is down, but nope, it doesn't.
No, you can't get a counter from me. If you want a counter on your
home page, get your webmaster to install a counter! The source code
for my counter is available here, and many others on the net exist.
25-Apr-97
Most of the people I sent mail to on the first round have removed my counter
from their pages. I just sent mail to the next top 10 hitters, and have
gotten polite responses back from a few. I should really be keeping track
of who I mailed so I can tell if they're ignoring me. The hits aren't so
bad as to kill my server, though, so why bother? Eventually they'll get
a clue, I hope. I made an automated script that looks for these pages and
tries to figure out who to send mail to; perhaps I should make the output
of this into a page and let my faitful [?] readers do the actual work of
figuring out who to send mail to to get the counters removed. (You wouldn't
mind doing a little work for me, would you? :)
27-Mar-97
Send me e-mail if you'd like a list of the pages that still contain
references to the now defunct counter at this site. I've finally gotten around to sending hate mail to
these morons. I will put out a general plea for mail bombing them (with short polite messages only) if
the remaining links are not removed soon.
20-Sept-96
I probably will not ever set the counter up again.
It's just too much work to maintain it. It's been almost a year since
I disabled the counter, and it still gets an incredible number of hits
per day. Sheeh, people must never look at their own pages or something lame.
Some day, maybe I'll post here excerpts from the random list of morons who
still have the URL for the counter that is no longer at this site, so that
you can mail them and their webmasters. Its the people who put the counter
in their page and then never ever look at it again that you can blame for
the counter not being put back up here.
28-Aug-96
Well, my network isn't fixed yet, but it is much better. If I
reinstall the counter, it will be after adding changes to only allow
UCF people to use it. The 'net is just too big these days for me to give
everyone a free ride. There's too many people out there to give a free ride
unless it is a distributed ride. If I have time, I might get around to
setting up a database of counter servers, and that might be enough to
distribute the counter use. (Don't hold your breath. I'm pretty busy
these days.)
13-Feb-96
It's been quite a few months since I have done anything with
the counter...I'm afraid I've moved on to other projects...I'll get
back to it eventually, I suppose. Meanwhile, the network upgrade my
server was supopse to get has not arrived either, so even if I did
work on the counter, I can't re-enable it anyway. :(
7-Jan-96
I'd like to thank Andy Shafran for putting this counter in the
book "Creating Your Own Netscape Web Pages" without consulting me.
Luckily, the book points people to www.forsmark.uu.se rather than here,
or I'd probably be madly contacting the publisher to print an errata.
I sure hope he contacted forsmark.
If you are writing a book, point people to
http://www-mae.engr.ucf.edu/~ssd/counter/,
not directly to a counter!
And PLEASE ASK THE OWNER OF PAGES before you publish things about them!!
*sigh* Anyway, I've been getting a trickle of e-mail from confused
people who read this book (which I have not seen).
And I still haven't had any time to work on the counter. Bla.
2-Dec-95
Well, I haven't had the time I wanted to work on the counter.
Exams week is coming up...perhaps after that. I could put
a pile of excuses here, or I could put the list of hardware
failures I've been trying to take care of, but I'm sure either
would bore you.
4-Nov-95
Alan Munter just sent me e-mail explaining why my scripts
don't work with perl 5. (Thanks!) Apparently there is a bug
in perl 5's dbm routines. He said there are patches out there
to fix it--but he didn't say where, and I haven't been keeping
up with perl 5. (Seems too beta for me Perl 4 works fine.)
18-Oct-95
Well, the counter has been down for almost two weeks, and I'm still
getting a lot of hits. I will NOT bring the counter back up
even on a different address as long as I'm still getting this many
hits. Shortly, I plan on posting a list of the top 10 sites that are
still have the counter in pages at their site. Remove the counter
from your page NOW so you don't get listed!
10-Oct-95
I just checked my httpd logs to see how many counter hits I'm still getting.
What's really sad is that it looks like the top 5 pages that were getting
hits when I took the counter down have STILL not removed it from their pages.
I have decided that I will NOT bring the counter back up until all existing references to the counter (or most, anyway) have been removed. When I'm ready to bring the counter up, I will post here the top 10 list of pages that still contain the old counter. The new counter will definately be on a different address anyway, so you may as well remove it now.
People whose e-mail address I already have will be notified a week before I start posting the page addresses.
When I'm ready to bring the counter up, people who registered using the existing registration forms will get a notice in the mail indicating one of:
8-Oct-95
I broke up the original counter page into smaller more manageable pieces.
Most of the original text is still here, but I've added a few things
(only at the top of the news section of course), and deleted some
obsolete things, and rewritten some things, etc... :)
I'd appreciate feedback on the new format. Did you like it better before? Do you still jump to the top counter page, or come here first? :)
6-Oct-95 night
I've gotten about a dozen supportive e-mail messages, several of which
asked when the counter would be back. I guess I owe people some more info.
Here are my plans for future features of the counter, to be implemented
as I have time:
6-Oct-95 morning
Due to the enormous increase in traffic to the counter, partly because
of the news messages posted below, I have had to take the counter down.
If I have time (which is rather unlikely unfortunately), I'll see if I
can come up with a long term solution for this. (Something I've been
putting off for a while now...) I have a few ideas...
Hey, here's an idea...if some commercial provider would like to provide this service to the world for a fee, please contact me. I can't legally do it here, but lots of people have offered to pay.
Also, I have gotten a few messages from someone who seems to think he's special and doesn't need to follow any of my rules of use. He's mailed all his friends who are sending me harmless but inane messages. If you'd like details or would like to reciprocate (not that I'd ever advocate such), let me know, and I'll send you a list of e-mail addresses so you can give them a piece of your mind.
4-Oct-95
Help!! Someone is advertising my counter in comp.infosystems.*!
If these advertisements do not stop, I will have to take the counter down.
If you have any clue who might be doing this, please send me mail!
Also, if you could forward me copies of the articles, I would appreciate it.
The message id's of the offending articles are:
30-Sep-95
I just reset the weekly counters.
I also decided the URL database was too big, so I just deleted all of it.
The database will slowly rebuild as counters are used.
Also, I noticed that there are a handful of people that are trying to circumvent my accounting procedures...YOU WILL BE CAUGHT AND EMBARRASSED! If I violently disable your counter, and you attempt to circumvent things a second time, your postmaster will be getting nasty mail from me.
BTW--please register your counter. If I have to disable it because someone else is abusing it, you're much more likely to get mail from me if you register it.
15-Sep-95
I've gotten mail from someone who has implemented a site restriction
clause in the counter that I find acceptable. I haven't had time to
merge in his patches, but if you send me mail asking for 'em, I'll
make time. Possibly, after I merge these in, I might modify the
counter here to require registration.
15-Sep-95
I have gotten several threatening messages from stupid people about
my counter. One threatened legal action, because I had disabled his
counter. Another threatened to mail all the faculty at this site
because someone at another site was sending him hate mail about my
counter.
Let me make myself clear. Any legal action against my counter is stupid and useless. Don't even threaten it. Any actual attempt at such action will result in this counter being totally and permanently disabled for everyone, and your name being put in this page. Any mail sent to *any* faculty member complaining about this counter will result in this counter being permanently disabled and your name put in this page. Just don't do it. It is stupid, unnecessary, and will only make everyone else using the counter hate you.
Really! I'm quite an agreeable person. Try sending me friendly mail first. If I don't respond, it's probably because I'm busy or something. (Either that, or I found your message to be nonsensical, and couldn't figure out what you were talking about. blek.) This is a free service, don't expect it to be reliable. Don't expect it to support your business. Please don't abuse it, and please please please don't abuse me, especially if the cause of YOUR problems is someone else!!
Sheeh! go get a life or something. :)
8-Sep-95
There are enough people that have exceeded the 500/week limit
that it is now too time consuming for me to manually go through
them all and send each one e-mail. I've been sending e-mail to only those
who have registered when I disable their counter.
29-Aug-95
I permanently installed the C version of the counter some time ago,
but I just now realized that I never got around to updating this page.
Eventually, it'll happen.
22-Jul-95 (evening)
I believe that I have the query page working again.
I added another entry to allow querying the old database until
I actually delete it.
12-Jul-95, C counter
I have decided to permanently disable the old format url of the counter.
The counter is NOT disabled--if it isn't working
on your page, you are still using the old style URL and need to change it.
The old style counter URL is no longer accepted at all, as there are just
too many people using it who have never read this counter page.
The perl counter documentation gives a pretty
good overview of what needs to be changed.
I intend to re-enable the old counter some time in the future and send
all of its users hate mail, and then replace the counter with an ugly
picture that will make them wish they had converted
or removed the counter sooner.