Cyberspace

The Never Forget animated graphic first appeared in August of 2005 and ran for thirteen years until August 2018. The estimated final count aggregated by the hit counter over the years was 94,945,312 hits. The average statistics for the entire lifetime amounted to approximately 20,000 hits per day, 833 hits per hour and 14 hits per minute. It’s hard to know the exact numbers since I never kept much of a record, but the peak hit rate might have been upwards of 1400 hits per hour at the time the counter passed 50 million hits.

The animation was originally inspired by an anonymously-produced PowerPoint slideshow making the rounds on the Internet and via emails after 9/11/2001. I prepared the animation using a Flash® compatible tool and began distribution in 2005 using a Javascript embedded in PHP script. At the time, my Web Hosting Provider imposed limited bandwidth so I limited the distribution of the graphic until I was approached by a Canadian couple who offered to host the graphic citing its importance. Eventually, my Web Host went unlimited bandwidth and I began hosting the graphic locally. Thanks to those patriotic Canadians for their help in getting it going.

Every once in a while back in my pre-retirement days, I would notice a website displaying the graphic that rubbed me the wrong way, but I let it slide until in early 2007 we saw our graphic displayed on an Islamic terrorist sympathetic website. A Jihadi professor at Kent State embedded our graphic in with his terrorist bullsh*t. I was pissed. I eventually figured out a way to embed some creative JavaScript lines into the distribution script which redirected any visitors to the offending jihadi website to a pro-American military website (I bet his jihadi buddies were frustrated with that 😉 ). Shortly after the redirection tactic, the jihadi website disappeared.

You might wonder why I did not wait until the hit counter passed 95 million. It was so close – only 54.688 more hits to go.Well, doing some quick estimates at the last known hit rate, it would have taken another eight months and probably more given the diminishing hit rate. It was just time to phase out the tribute.

We continue to be grateful for those patriotic sites who displayed the tribute. We hope that all patriotic Americans may NEVER FORGET!

UPDATE 08/05/2018: As of today, the Never Forget Tribute distribution has been disabled. The final count appears in the right sidebar for the time being.

Last week, I ran a check to evaluate the increment rate of the Never Forget Tribute hit counter. The observed rate seemed to be much lower than the hit statistics displayed in the right sidebar column.

The hit counter itself is accurate in that each time the tribute is served up remotely, the count increments. The hits per hour and hits per day figures, however, are an estimate based on extrapolation from a given date in the past where the number of hits was known. I had a back-burner plan to write a script that would keep a running estimation of the hit rate, but that never came to fruition. And, now, it seems, that won’t be necessary.

I updated the estimating script to more accurately extrapolate the hit rate from a known count from a week ago, and, as you can see, the hit rate is quite a bit lower than what it had been in the past. There are probably several reasons for the decline in the hit rate:

• several browser platforms have discontinued or reduced support for Flash® animations (i.e. Firefox, Chrome)
• the shift from computers to smart phone platforms which have minimal or no support for Flash®
• a general decrease in bloggers displaying the tribute

At any rate, we have decided to discontinue distribution of the Never Forget Tribute. It’s not that we have forgotten the terrorist attacks on America on September 11, 2001, but that circumstances indicate that tribute hits are asymptotically approaching a zero hit rate.

We will NEVER FORGET 9/11!

The termination of support will be accomplished in a couple of stages:

1. Initially, we will attach a notice to the tribute stating our intentions and a link to this post.
2. Finally, we will disable the scripts that are activated with each remote link.

I expect the initial state to go into effect this week. Depending on responses in the comments here (if any), I will deactivate the distribution within a month.

OPTIONAL – For those displaying the tribute, you may remove the code from your website as follows:

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://capnbob.us/graphics/never.php"></script>

The ffile name may also be never118.php or never100.php.