zedmelon's Journal: a question that might be less stupid

At least hopefully it's less stupid. I keep finding this in my web server log. It only happens when I'm browsing slashdot. There's definitely a cause and effect thing going on here, but what is it?

66.35.250.150 [timestamp] "GET http://slashdot.org/ok.txt HTTP/1.0" 404

It'll occur maybe once per /. session, but this second will happen frequently (~7 in 1d12 </BlastFromPast>) while I'm slashdotting:

10.6.9.(my internal addresses) [time] "GET /partner/js/ads.js HTTP/1.1" 404

When I dig slashdot.org:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
slashdot.org. 66.35.250.150

??
Browsers on my internal machines hit my web server any time they try to access a domain that doesn't exist. IIRC, it's my DNS doing this, trying to append my domain to what it already can't resolve. I'm wondering if there's an ad server that no longer has DNS or at least has a nameserver I can't find a route to. In any case, the first line has me baffled.

Proxy

[Oculus Habent]

Is the web server also a proxy?
Is the web server also your gateway?

I'm taking shots in the dark.

Re:Proxy

[zedmelon]

No and no. ;) Thanks tho.

Re:Proxy

[zedmelon]

I revamped the above JE after remembering a similar oddity I've also noticed.

And in a completely new development, I second-guessed my "no" answer to your proxy question when I saw this:

207.x.x.x [3am] "GET http://www.msn.com/ HTTP/1.1" 200 2891

All the Slashdot entries end in 404, but this request was honored; it's the only entry of its kind. Every line in my httpd.conf containing "roxy" was commented out except for the LoadModule directive. I commented that, so we'll see.

But the bytes sent isn't rig

Re:Proxy

[Oculus Habent]

Hrmm...

Any change after the httpd.conf change & httpd restart?

Re:Proxy

[zedmelon]

I haven't seen either one since. I'm still using the same browsing session I used three days ago to post this journal (can't believe this old '98 box hasn't crashed), so that might explain not seeing the entry that looks like slashdot hitting slashdot through my server. But the file exists, which is further confusion AFA why the request is always 404-ed; it's just as real as msn.com:
http://slashdot.org/ok.txt [slashdot.org]

However, I'm not seeing the hits to ads.js anymore either (though I touched the file, just so