Gone To Lunch

or

Who's Home When The Web Page Isn't

 

          In the seething randomness that is today's internet, web page servers and their content are here today and gone tomorrow, links break and throw up bizarre and often arcane Code 404 - type responses, and sometimes you may find the work of an anonymous wit hidden awaiting discovery.

          Beacon correspondents Norman De Forest and Joey Mitchell Comeau have found a few of the more noteworthy of these File Not Found messages.

          From an MIT server....

 

404 File Not Found

I ate your Web page.
Forgive me. It was juicy
And tart on my tongue.

Translation:

The URL you requested could not be found on this server.

 

 

          Then there's the more explanatory....

ERROR 404

sorry, we couldn't find your page on our server. not that we really looked, but it wasn't at the exact url you gave and i am a lazy dæmon. well, ok, i'm not a dæmon. i'm just an error message with incentive. (but i'm still not gonna look for that page for ya. i got better things to do.)

 

 

          Some days nothing goes right....

Error 44404

404 error message not found.

 

But it's out there, somewhere.
I know it is, it just HAS to be......
Doesn't it?

 

Maybe it's with the page you were looking for?

 

 

          ...And then there is the single moment of perfect beauty....

 

You step in the stream,

but the water has moved on.

This page is not here.

 

 

          Offbeat error messages, genuine or false, can be found all over the net as people strive to humanize the often cold and unfriendly facade of the web and give it a mischievous grin. A mistyped URL, a server down for maintenance or just a bored typist and you stop and smile for a moment before going on.

          If you have spotted one of these gems, then please feel free to pass the URL on to Andrew D. Wright at au141@chebucto.ns.ca and we'll put the best of them up!

 

You may direct comments or suggestions about this article to:

Andrew D. Wright,  au141@chebucto.ns.ca

 

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