The Catling Mindswipe

If you want a conventional website, you’ll need space on a web-server somewhere to run it. That usually costs money. The more space, better bandwidth, better facilities you want, the more it’s likely to cost you. But the Internet is also inundated with offers of free web hosting. And like ‘free lunches’, there are many definitions of ‘free hosting’. Someone has to pay for it in some way.

The current client produces publications, webinars, videos and other resources for use by authorised members under a set of Terms and Conditions and mediated by the principles of fair use. Klaxon number one: fair use doesn't have a legislated definition in UK Law, although it does in other territories, certainly the US. So we have an issue here. What does or doesn't qualify as "fair use" in the case of published materials supplied to a 'customer' or subscriber?

Web user: I hate ads. They're annoying, intrusive, distracting, they suck up bandwidth, delay my page loads, scam me with fake content and click-bait, and show me and my kids offensive and inappropriate content that is NSFW or home and bypass my privacy and parental rights. Advertiser: That's my revenue stream you're talking about. That's how I can afford to serve your content and pay my bills. Impasse.

We all know some ridiculous percentage of email is actually unwanted spam that clutters the world's mailservers. Normally you don't see most of it, don't give it a second thought; it's straight in the junk folder and deleted. The quarantine server at the current client, however, sends you a list of the junk mail in quarantine, just in case there's anything mis-diagnosed. Some of the subject lines are unintentionally hilarious...

We have PayPal as our payment processor for both our web shopping carts. It wasn't my choice, but the sites are not their own legal entity, therefore we use the PayPal account belonging to the parent organisation. Where we get calls from folks having trouble with PayPal processing debit and credit card transactions, there are some common causes. Un/fortunately these days, PayPal seldom gives the reason for the rejection (as that helps the fraudsters circumvent the anti-fraud measures)...

Every web browser presents a user-agent string, to identify the browser, version number and usually the platform it's on, whenever it connects to a web server. It's a shorthand route to match the versions of web pages to the device requesting them. For various reasons of compatibility, feature sets and bandwidth usage, you might prefer your browser to identify itself as something other than it's true identity, in which case you might want to change the user agent string.

You’ve one more thing to open this holiday season: Full Circle #104 . This holiday month: Command & Conquer How-To : Python in the Real World, LibreOffice, Install Mint on Raid 0 and Using The TOP Command Graphics : Inkscape Chrome Cult: Security Linux Labs: Building A 3D Printer Pt.1 Ubuntu Phones: OTA-8.5 Book Review: Spam Nation and Doing Math With Python  Ubuntu Games: Steam Link and Controller