Protecting users from Phorm

I’m jumping through the hoops required to stop “webwise”i.e. Phorm from “scanning”traffic going from the FeelItLive.com server to my users’computers and the other way.

I’ve always considered music personal,I mean we share our opinions and our tracks so it isn’t secret but it is private. For many people it is revealing,for some it reflects their interests in things that are illegal,it may reflect your politics,for others it’s just embarrassing (yes,that’s me) but in all cases no-one has a right to know if you don’t want them to.

So,I read the following with some confusion:

If at any time you wish to have one or more URLs removed from the exclusion
list,you may make your request at website-exclusion@webwise.com.

So,they expect that having specifically told them to Eph off,I’m likely to get back in touch with them to ask them if they would kindly please take it all back and start using my data to profile my users,violating them without adequate consent,and sending them to my competitors? for free?

If these people aren’t evil then they are certainly mad.

April 1st,2009 | Tags:, | Category:Feel It Live | Leave a comment

RDFa is smoking

In a bizarre twist that proves,if nothing else,that data is data for everybody,Paris Hilton has become RDFa enabled.

Stripping her down to her triples we find out how we can add her to our network,find photos,that her and I are already in the same extended network  (well maybe in my dreams) and that she’s feeling productive right now (is that the same as being hot?).

More usefully,her friend count (203,412) and last login date (Tuesday) are both published in the only de jure machine readable meta-data format that we know –for sure –can publish just about any fact.

March 27th,2009 | Tags:, | Category:Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Library code

I’m uploading snapshots of my own internal utility classes,you can use them under the LGPL.

Highlights include:

  • Static helper methods for boilerplate XML operations.
  • Straightforward implementations of NamespaceManagers for use with XPath operations –including one which scans the target document for namespace/prefix bindings.
  • A simple way to assign categories to items and extract simple frequency count stats (and a TableModel for the data)
  • Swing dialog implementations for displaying error messages and OK cancel prompts.
  • an isNullOrEmpty(String str) method as featured in .NET.

There is a binary JAR and a source JAR. I’m using the following dependency definition:

      <dependency>          <groupId>com.cantorva</groupId>          <artifactId>libraries</artifactId>          <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>      </dependency>

WordPress mangled the filenames slightly during upload,but the following command sequence addresses that and installs to your local repository:

mkdir cantorvaLibscd cantorvaLibs/curl http://cantorva.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/libraries-001-snapshot.jar >libraries-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jarmvn install:install-file -Dfile=libraries-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar -DgroupId=com.cantorva -DartifactId=libraries -Dversion=0.0.1-SNAPSHOT -Dpackaging=jarrm libraries-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jarcd ..rmdir cantorvaLibs/
March 9th,2009 | Category:Releases | 2 comments

Updates

Katy Perry

Katy Perry

Its been a long time since Cantorva needed or had a blog and readership was never the highest so  I don’t intend to provide an update on all topics  I’ll just get on and post about what’s going on now.

Speaking of which,I just uploaded feelitlive.com‘s first batch of ticket links to the live database. In the spirit of political in-correctness I thought I’d pick Katy Perry and Madonna as examples to justify the gratuitous photo.

Credit to ashley r for a great shot.

February 24th,2009 | Tags:, | Category:Feel It Live | Leave a comment
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