[aprssig] Screen Scraping of findU

[Steve Dimse]

On Jan 6, 2006, at 5:59 PM, Gregg Wonderly wrote:

> My intent is that this would allow a handful of stations to be  
> monitored using findu data.  Hopefully the users would know to  
> configure google with a reasonable poll rate based on the  
> importantance of their need.  I didn't establish a minimum update  
> interval at this point.
>

Hoping users will do the right thing is simply not enough. This usage  
of findU is not acceptable, it is exactly the thing I have always  
prohibited in the findU FAQ. findU is not the back end database for  
everyone else's code. Your program should only be used by connecting  
to the APRS IS, and I hope you will drop the screen-scraping part of  
your code.

Obviously, there is nothing I can do to prevent you from releasing  
programs that do this, but when I see someone using this feature of  
the code, I will be blocking the IP (which blocks all findU access  
from that IP, not just your code). I'm sorry to be playing hardball  
here, but it is very frustrating to have the weather data feed to the  
NWS interrupted because people are using findU in place of an APRS IS  
parser. In my opinion, the NWS work I do is top priority, the APRS/CW  
feed is the second largest mesonet and is depended upon by NWS  
forcast offices. When something causes a problem, I hear about it! I  
will take whatever steps I need to to assure the reliability of the  
NWS feed.

Steve K4HG