The OverWeb marches on. Soon we’ll be rewriting history. You’ll open those old encyclopedias and see the old stuff marked out and new stuff inserted. Comments inserted in the margins of history books. Presidential speeches commented upon – Bush’s teleprompter hoodwink’d… “Yes, it’s true, as many of you my fellow Americans have suspected, I am an idio… What!? I’ve been hoodwink’d! Why!”

A lively Ruby discussion is going on also here: ask.metafilter.com/mefi/20005. Some more Ruby-related sites to check out or comment on: blog.x180.net; jots.com; jlaine.net; and www.luisdelarosa.com/blog. (BTW, could there some kind of ‘endall’ statement be implemented into Ruby?)

A lively Ruby discussion is going on also here: ask.metafilter.com/mefi/20005. Some more Ruby-related sites to check out or comment on: blog.x180.net; jots.com; jlaine.net; and www.luisdelarosa.com/blog. (BTW, could there some kind of ‘endall’ statement be implemented into Ruby?)

I guess I wasn’t paying attention. I don’t get this “Hoodwink’d” thing—what is it exactly?

Welcome Curt. hoodwink’d is about remaking the web to our liking. hoodwink’d is about allowing comments where none were allowed before. hoodwink’d is about overturning the status quo. hoodwink’d is what you make of it.

Eek! Vauge explanations again! I want to know what it actually is!

Jomdom: The less vauge we are the less that will be left up to your imagination. Please, you’ll be much too limited if we explain this to you in 12-megapixel detail. Explore the possibilities and then tell us what hoodwink’d is. You might see something we didn’t think of.

_why:Could you post the latest instructions for using hoodwink’d and MouseHole with FireFox? Things seem to have changed somewhat since your MouseHole post a few days back. I’m finding that those instructions don’t work anymore. Also , when I break on through to the other side I see something about a user.js script that I need to somehow load into FF (those instructions don’t seem to work for me as I don’t see a Tools->Load Javascript option) – do MouseHole users need to do this as well or just GreaseMonkeys?

Maybe you could setup a MouseHole page on the ‘regular’ side of the interent?

Jomdom: hoodwink.d is for doing to-do lists.

Color me confused as well. Granted, I’m a noob w/ Ruby (there should be a term for that), but I don’t see what this is offering over Greasemonkey. For example, the “commenting” thing…what’s the point? You can comment on an article and only you see the comment?

Am I right in saying that a webrick instance is acting as a proxy, through which the hacks are then applied?

Can someone show an example that has more practical benefits, like an Amazon.com aggregator? I guess I’m just trying to understand what the upshot is for novice Rubyists. It’s seriously hard to keep up with you guys. :)

Sciamachy: Not only you can see the comment, but also others who are winkers – an elite crew to be sure, but they are out there and their numbers are growing daily.

Also, the advantages over GreaseMonkey: 1) Written in Ruby 2) user scripts written in Ruby 3) [eventually] works with any browser

Sciamachy: Here’s the deal. Boing Boing used to have these really crappy comments (through a service called QuickTopic.) One of the most riotous in-browser moments I ever had was when I ran a blog in the comments of a guest blog on Boing Boing. Obscure. The best part was that this flimsy blog’s comments were stored in whatever forums and other quicktopics were lying around.

Anyway, Boing Boing disabled comments when people started impersonating the authors. So I’ve always wanted to add comments back to the site without the editors’ approval.

Now, what if someone wants to comment on a blog without the author’s knowing? Or if they want to start writing content which can’t be indexed by Google or linked to, but somehow reaches a wide audience? There is no practical, elegant solution for these people. So allow me to beleaguer you with this impractical and grotesque and red-striped solution. See how the perimeter of danger is clearly marked??

There’s also this awesome meta-irony that you’re confused about why “commenting” is important, yet you’re using comments as the vehicle for solving your confusion. But I mean, you’re right, I’m not doing anything useful or innovative here, I’m sure of it, too.

Impersonating authors!? Who would do such a thing?!

That last comment is outrageously funny.

“Now, what if someone wants to comment on a blog without the author’s knowing? “

Smething like Third Eye?

hoodwink.d does not work from behind the proxy. the dnshack.rb in particular. There needs to be a way to route the hoodwink.d traffic somehow over the http proxy.

BTW , I tried this from home and it is an awesome idea!