4 ms·

I think THOMAS (http://thomas.loc.gov/ http://thomas.loc.gov/), the search engine provided by the US Library of Congress for searching federal legislation, has

I think THOMAS (http://thomas.loc.gov/ http://thomas.loc.gov/), the search engine provided by the US Library of Congress for searching federal legislation, has the worst URLs I've seen. Here's a random one: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d113:1:./temp/~bdGqLa:@@@T|/home/LegislativeData.php| And here's a link I got to the Patriot Act (HR 3162): http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c107:44:./temp/~c107DgA33R::

twistedpair 14y ago
Making sense of that in linear time would be a great interview question.
- networked 14y ago
  The ./temp/~c107DgA33R bit looks like a reference to a cached internal state of the system, so you can probably make about as much sense of it as you can of https://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=H1QJE8EOaO2OkA28owXZ4H https://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=H1QJE8EOaO2OkA28owXZ4H.
h-go 14y ago
Why? Surely you'd have to go out of your way to make it that unnecessarily complicated.
jnazario 14y ago
i have often thought that the THOMAS system was an overt attempt to obfuscating government activities. it's such a pain to use.
acdha 14y ago
While it's been reskinned, THOMAS dates back to 1995 and the core reflects a much earlier era of web development. It's slowly being replaced with congress.gov which has far more palatable URLs: http://beta.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/house-bill/3162 http://beta.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/house-bill/3162
smackfu 14y ago
Note that these are not even canonical URLs. Both of them now fail with a "Search Timed Out" error. US Trademark Office has the same issue, there is no way to link to a particular trademark, because the only access is via the search engine and queries time out, e.g.: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4802:xtjwoh.2.1 http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4802:xt...
mseebach 14y ago
It's clearly a set of arguments (separated by ':') to a function, i.e. it's a RPC invocation. The first seems to be the session of congress, 113th and 107th. The second, perhaps the nth item in that collections? The third, a temporary filename, probably where the search result is stored, so you don't have to re-run the search which you hit "back". The last bit, probably a later addition that manages breadcrumb navigation.

twistedpair 14y ago

Making sense of that in linear time would be a great interview question.

networked 14y ago
The ./temp/~c107DgA33R bit looks like a reference to a cached internal state of the system, so you can probably make about as much sense of it as you can of https://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=H1QJE8EOaO2OkA28owXZ4H https://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=H1QJE8EOaO2OkA28owXZ4H.

h-go 14y ago

Why? Surely you'd have to go out of your way to make it that unnecessarily complicated.

jnazario 14y ago

i have often thought that the THOMAS system was an overt attempt to obfuscating government activities. it's such a pain to use.

acdha 14y ago

While it's been reskinned, THOMAS dates back to 1995 and the core reflects a much earlier era of web development. It's slowly being replaced with congress.gov which has far more palatable URLs: http://beta.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/house-bill/3162 http://beta.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/house-bill/3162

smackfu 14y ago

Note that these are not even canonical URLs. Both of them now fail with a "Search Timed Out" error. US Trademark Office has the same issue, there is no way to link to a particular trademark, because the only access is via the search engine and queries time out, e.g.: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4802:xtjwoh.2.1 http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4802:xt...

mseebach 14y ago

It's clearly a set of arguments (separated by ':') to a function, i.e. it's a RPC invocation. The first seems to be the session of congress, 113th and 107th. The second, perhaps the nth item in that collections? The third, a temporary filename, probably where the search result is stored, so you don't have to re-run the search which you hit "back". The last bit, probably a later addition that manages breadcrumb navigation.