I've been a major fan of Proxomitron for five years, but Web 2.0 apps are making it ever less useful. I just had to add http://spotback.com to an already quite long proxy bypass list for my own Firefox/Flock profiles. Yes, I do like Spotback a lot and I suspect that the reason the Aussie librarian from http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/ went on about Findory instead is that he's getting paid to promote them. Already his site is one of the most egregiously ad-crappified "monetized" blogs on the web.
[An addendum: I just looked what others write about Spotback, and David Gorman, whose greater love is Newsvine, is accused of getting "positioning" money. In fact, my father -- a retired Reuters diplomatic correspondent -- quickly took a fancy to Newsvine. But, having just a few days ago seen Thank You for Smoking I have to imagine that there must be tremendous opportunities for public attitude shaping merely by planting a few paid-for thumbs-up plugs. And I recall Orson Scott Card suggesting how politics could be directed by the two genius kids in Ender's Game.]
I greatly admire the efforts of the Proxo filterset designer "Grypen" who has shifted the focus of the local proxy filtering program to making it a security tool. A few times it has offered cryptic but alarming warnings of attachment spoffing exploits or such, generally something that could have nailed me if I'd been using Internet Explorer. Truth told, I suspect that AJAX can be used to create some nasty new threats. For my Dad's PC, I've had to give up on Proxo except for when using IE (I've hidden icons so he has yet to learn of IE's existence).
I did more RSS exploring today after noticing mention in NewGator blogs that they're running a nifty Newsweek site at
Natch, first thing I discovered was that one of my ad-blocking filters in the Flock setup for Dad blocked it; turned out that culprit was a "style" for the Stylish extension intended to clean up MSNBC. But an MSNBC-specific Greasemonkey script does the same work without interfering. The crap filtering that used to be Proxo's raison d'etre now is neatly handled by Greasemonkey and Stylish with "Remove It Permanently" ever less needed.
No dammit, you're not gunna use me for your monetization!
Did everyone spot that Philips Gloeilampen patent for a digital sytem to ensure people cannot fast-forward or otherwise avoid ads in digital programming? I was reminded of The Ipcress File and torture -- peel back the victim's eyelids and bind his hands so he has to see endless commercials.
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fluxam) wrote,
