I get this, or some variation of it, when I click on a link in a SDMB thread…most of the time. Almost always, the first click goes to this “Not Found” /sdmb address, and after I back my browser, the second time I click the link, it goes to the funny cat picture or political rant or what-have-you the poster intended.
I see the real url (/catpic.com or what-have-you) with mouseover, but the first click almost always seems to take me to “Not Found.”
Occasionally I see an apparently good link in the mouseover but repeated attempts take me to a “Not Found” page.
I am using the latest Firefox browser.
This behavior appears to be limited to the Straight Dope, and the “/sdmb” part of the error message reinforces my impression it’s specific to this message board.
Is this related to the Google ads? I do see the ads.
This started a while back, but I really can’t remember when. It’s been fairly consistently happening for a few months at least.
It’s usually just an annoyance, as I can work around it with a few clicks.
My impression is that is is associated with avilink. I started seeing the same thing right after the board started using avilink.
I actually find it a bit annoying. What annoys me most is I can see the actual address in the status bar, but if I try to paste it into the URL field I get the avilink code stuff that makes the actual link unintelligible. Which is fine when it works, but if someone has horked the link, I have no way to manually try to parse for missed slash mark/dual http/etc. And it’s nearly impossible to type in manually, as flipping between the tabs erases what you entered when you look back to see the next bit. So unless you can memorize http://www.thisfunnything.com/myfolder/reallyfunny/1475x/what.htm , it is a challenge to manually enter the link to follow it.
I don’t know what avilink is, and I get this sometimes as well, so it’s probably not related to it. It happens to me especially when my internet connection is slow. I’ve also seen it only on this board; I suppose it’s some sort of “time out” behaviour. What I usually do is explicitely open a new tab with the link, instead of just left-clicking on it.
I’m often on from a terrible wireless connection, and the worse the connection is the more frequently this happens to me.
It could be the avilink problem and you just don’t realize it. When you click a link from here to go somewhere else, you go to an intermediary site first that tracks statistics and clicks, etc. It is normally so fast it’s almost invisible, but on a really slow connection you can see it trying to contact the other site before it times out. That site has a low tolerance for timeouts apparently and if your connection takes more than a second or two you will get this error.
I see this occasionally, even when not on the Straight Dope site.
Invariably ol’ Magic Mr. Reboot clears it up.
I’m no expert but I always assumed this was some sort of memory leak/RAM accumulation, because it usually happens when I’ve had the system on for a day or two.
Well, I’ve never seen it on any site but the Straight Dope. I get it on both the work and home computers.
Not certain about this, but it might not be happening on links that go to SDMB posts themselves. It definitely happens on other (offsite) items, the first time I go there. It does not happen on subsequent visits to the site during the same session (I have not systematically isolated whether it can happen on subsequent visits in a later, separate session).
