“Red” And The DoD Language Competition

“Red” And The DoD Language Competition

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

While browsing around for Ada-related docs some years ago, I came across 
this site <https://iment.com/maida/computer/redref/index.htm> which 
collects info on the DoD’s “Strawman”, “Woodenman”, “Tinman”, “Ironman” 
and “Steelman” series of RFPs, and the specs for the “Red” language that 
didn’t become Ada.

Re: “Red” And The DoD Language Competition

[Luke A. Guest]

On 06/09/2024 02:55, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> While browsing around for Ada-related docs some years ago, I came across
> this site <https://iment.com/maida/computer/redref/index.htm> which
> collects info on the DoD’s “Strawman”, “Woodenman”, “Tinman”, “Ironman”
> and “Steelman” series of RFPs, and the specs for the “Red” language that
> didn’t become Ada.

We have all the colours now 
https://www.reddit.com/r/ada/comments/165f5zg/common_hol_phase_1_reports/

Re: “Red” And The DoD Language Competition

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Sat, 7 Sep 2024 17:43:26 +0100, Luke A. Guest wrote:

> We have all the colours now
> https://www.reddit.com/r/ada/comments/165f5zg/common_hol_phase_1_reports/

Hey, terrific. Don’t you wonder why people insist on returning “403
Forbidden” for those using a command-line tool like wget?

Re: “Red” And The DoD Language Competition

[Luke A. Guest]

On 08/09/2024 00:06, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Sat, 7 Sep 2024 17:43:26 +0100, Luke A. Guest wrote:
> 
>> We have all the colours now
>> https://www.reddit.com/r/ada/comments/165f5zg/common_hol_phase_1_reports/
> 
> Hey, terrific. Don’t you wonder why people insist on returning “403
> Forbidden” for those using a command-line tool like wget?

Because it's a massive doc?

Re: “Red” And The DoD Language Competition

[Keith Thompson]

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
> On Sat, 7 Sep 2024 17:43:26 +0100, Luke A. Guest wrote:
>
>> We have all the colours now
>> https://www.reddit.com/r/ada/comments/165f5zg/common_hol_phase_1_reports/
>
> Hey, terrific. Don’t you wonder why people insist on returning “403
> Forbidden” for those using a command-line tool like wget?

No idea, but I was able to download it using curl.

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */

Re: “Red” And The DoD Language Competition

[Nioclás Pól Caileán de Ghloucester]

Hello.

Webmasters often discriminate against Wget. E.g. . . .

wget Dict.cc
--2024-09-08 09:45:49--  http://dict.cc/
Resolving dict.cc (dict.cc)... 136.243.87.217
Connecting to dict.cc (dict.cc)|136.243.87.217|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://www.dict.cc/ [following]
--2024-09-08 09:45:50--  https://www.dict.cc/
Resolving www.dict.cc (www.dict.cc)... 138.201.1.33, 136.243.87.217, 
138.201.1.35
Connecting to www.dict.cc (www.dict.cc)|138.201.1.33|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 97 [text/html]
Saving to: 'index.html.1'

index.html.1        100%[===================>]      97  --.-KB/s    in 0s

2024-09-08 09:45:50 (249 MB/s) - 'index.html.1' saved [97/97]

 /home/gloucester/temp $ cat index.html.1
Please don't run crawlers against dict.cc and don't try to make the 
dictionary available offline.

Re: "Red" And The DoD Language Competition

[Randy Brukardt]

"Lawrence D'Oliveiro" <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote in message 
news:vbimad$1j26j$6@dont-email.me...
...
> Hey, terrific. Don't you wonder why people insist on returning "403
> Forbidden" for those using a command-line tool like wget?

No (as the operator of a web site). Most SEO tools and other 
useless/criminal scrapers like to fake their identification, and WGet is a 
favorite for that task. There are many owners that block that and many other 
abused user-agents. (The Ada-Auth.org blocks about 20 user-agents, but not 
WGet. See https://support.tigertech.net/error-blocked-user-agents for a 
better explanation than I can give as to why. I don't block all of these 
agents, but I do throttle some of them and block their access to parts of 
the site.)

Additionally, some sites want to provide access to their documents, but not 
really to allow people to copy them (in order to get advertising revenue 
from reading them). I know the owners of the Red specification are in this 
category, as I offered to host a copy in the AdaIC archives, and they turned 
that down.

             Randy.

Re: "Red" And The DoD Language Competition

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Wed, 11 Sep 2024 23:57:33 -0500, Randy Brukardt wrote:

> "Lawrence D'Oliveiro" <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote in message
> news:vbimad$1j26j$6@dont-email.me...
>>
>> Don't you wonder why people insist on returning "403
>> Forbidden" for those using a command-line tool like wget?
> 
> Most SEO tools and other
> useless/criminal scrapers like to fake their identification, and WGet is
> a favorite for that task. There are many owners that block that and many
> other abused user-agents.

That doesn’t make any sense, because anybody who knows how to use wget 
would know about its “--user-agent” option. So if they really were using 
wget to conduct their site abuse, you wouldn’t know, and blocking wget’s 
default user-agent setting wouldn’t help.

> (The Ada-Auth.org blocks about 20 user-agents, but not WGet.

Which kind of proves my point.

Re: "Red" And The DoD Language Competition

[Bill Findlay]

On 13 Sep 2024, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote
(in article <vbvpta$esm6$8@dont-email.me>):

> On Wed, 11 Sep 2024 23:57:33 -0500, Randy Brukardt wrote:
>
> > "Lawrence D'Oliveiro"<ldo@nz.invalid> wrote in message
> > news:vbimad$1j26j$6@dont-email.me...
> > >
> > > Don't you wonder why people insist on returning "403
> > > Forbidden" for those using a command-line tool like wget?
> >
> > Most SEO tools and other
> > useless/criminal scrapers like to fake their identification, and WGet is
> > a favorite for that task. There are many owners that block that and many
> > other abused user-agents.
>
> That doesn´t make any sense, because anybody who knows how to use wget
> would know about its "--user-agent" option. So if they really were using
> wget to conduct their site abuse, you wouldn´t know, and blocking wget´s
> default user-agent setting wouldn´t help.

Wrong.
-- 
Bill Findlay

Re: "Red" And The DoD Language Competition

[geodandw]

On 9/12/24 19:17, Bill Findlay wrote:

---

> Wrong.

Why is this wrong?

Re: "Red" And The DoD Language Competition

[Paul Rubin]

geodandw <geodandw@gmail.com> writes:
> Why is this wrong?

I run into sites all the time that block the wget user agent, but that I
can retrieve with curl.

Re: "Red" And The DoD Language Competition

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Thu, 12 Sep 2024 19:16:50 -0700, Paul Rubin wrote:

> I run into sites all the time that block the wget user agent, but that I
> can retrieve with curl.

And I run into sites all the time that block the default wget user agent, 
but that I can retrieve with wget.

Re: "Red" And The DoD Language Competition

[Randy Brukardt]

"Lawrence D'Oliveiro" <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote in message 
news:vc091i$ljiq$2@dont-email.me...
> On Thu, 12 Sep 2024 19:16:50 -0700, Paul Rubin wrote:
>
>> I run into sites all the time that block the wget user agent, but that I
>> can retrieve with curl.
>
> And I run into sites all the time that block the default wget user agent,
> but that I can retrieve with wget.

You're confused. The attackers aren't using Wget, but they are *claiming* to 
be WGet. As you point out, real WGet users tend to claim to be other things. 
So blocking WGet would be more likely to block the attackers than real 
users. (As you state, real users know how to get around the blocks, so the 
inconvinience for them is minor. Usually, the attackers don't change their 
attacks often, there's plenty of sites that don't protect themselves at all. 
So they are more effective against attackers.)

And anyone that thinks that ad revenue is important is probably blocking all 
grabbers, and probably throttling everything else so that grabbing multiple 
pages is very slow (at human reading speeds). (At least 90% of the browser 
hits I see are obviously fake, and if I cared enough I would block all of 
them - it would just take a bit of programming to check if the behavior is 
similar to that of a live human. But I only block when something is causing 
performance problems, and generally by IP.)

                     Randy.


                               Randy.

Re: "Red" And The DoD Language Competition

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Sat, 14 Sep 2024 01:27:22 -0500, Randy Brukardt wrote:

> "Lawrence D'Oliveiro" <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote in message
> news:vc091i$ljiq$2@dont-email.me...
>>
>> On Thu, 12 Sep 2024 19:16:50 -0700, Paul Rubin wrote:
>>
>>> I run into sites all the time that block the wget user agent, but that
>>> I can retrieve with curl.
>>
>> And I run into sites all the time that block the default wget user
>> agent, but that I can retrieve with wget.
> 
> You're confused. The attackers aren't using Wget, but they are
> *claiming* to be WGet.

But that long list of user agents being blocked that you previously 
mentioned did not include wget.