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bio	website	resilien7.com
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	12,642 reputation	bio	website	resilien7.com	visits	member for	2 years, 8 months
1433 badges		location	California		seen	16 hours ago

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May 10	comment	Canonicals with differing content Unless being verified on one company's page is the same as being verified on another (as opposed to having to be verified for each company separately), then this probably isn't a good use of canonical, though it's good that you're thinking about not polluting the search index. If it doesn't matter which company's page the user gets verified with, perhaps you can just create an `example.com/verify/generic` which favors no company. Otherwise, let Google index the individual company pages or just an index page that lets users select which company they want to be verified for.
May 8	awarded	Nice Answer
Apr 9	revised	Is it ethical to use Google Analytics on a site crime victims use to make 'anonymous' reports? added 25 characters in body
Apr 9	comment	Is it ethical to use Google Analytics on a site crime victims use to make 'anonymous' reports? Google collects IP addresses mostly for the same reason all websites collect IP addresses. It's a security measure. But for GA, it's for geolocation. That's how they're able to tell webmasters what percentage of their users come from the UK, or the US or Canada, or France, etc. Your country's top policy makers need to consult with the IT community before they make impractical policies that are disconnected from reality. And Twitter and Facebook are not SaaS. They're not even business applications, and if they were, the client would be you, so they wouldn't be a third party.
Apr 9	comment	Is it ethical to use Google Analytics on a site crime victims use to make 'anonymous' reports? It's like the general public's reaction to browser cookies. Sure, they can be used unethically to (more easily) track surfing habits across sites, but cookies are also a critical technology for the modern web experience that most people are used to. Without cookies, you can't have cookie-based sessions, and you have to start relying on dangerously insecure alternatives like putting the SID in the URL parameter. People have the right to privacy on the web, but it needs to be implemented the right way by properly informing them without sensationalism and kneejerk reactions like outright bans.
Apr 9	comment	Is it ethical to use Google Analytics on a site crime victims use to make 'anonymous' reports? I downvoted it. Nothing personal against you, but I just think asking for "100%" anonymity to the extent that web server logs cannot even be kept is utterly unrealistic, and would be a really bad idea to practice in real-life. Web servers, web hosts and website operators don't just log traffic for the heck of it or to undermine privacy. It's a fundamental tool in network security and troubleshooting. By disabling all logging, you're actually making the user's PII more vulnerable by turning off your security cameras.
Apr 9	comment	Is it ethical to use Google Analytics on a site crime victims use to make 'anonymous' reports? @DKOATED: GA is technically a third-party, but they're a SaaS provider. IP data isn't being sent to Google for Google's consumption. It's like using a SaaS database provider or email provider. Sure, you're giving a "third-party" private information like name, customer records, even credit card information, etc. But essentially you're just using their app for your own purposes. Instead of purchasing a software license and running the software locally, you're just running it on their web servers. Also, GA lets you apply IP masks to all sent IPs, making it completely anonymous.
Apr 9	comment	Is it ethical to use Google Analytics on a site crime victims use to make 'anonymous' reports? @Tom Brossman: They are telling the whole truth. GA isn't used for user tracking or customer profiling. As I already wrote, it's doing the same thing as a log analyzer and simply taking readily available data and using it for aggregate analysis. Sites that are held to higher standards need to have analytics in order to track their site performance. And no personal information is being handed to GA or a CDN (which is even more irrelevant). Why not worry about the web host or the web host's ISP? They're in a far greater position of trust and equally undeclared to users.
Apr 9	comment	Is it ethical to use Google Analytics on a site crime victims use to make 'anonymous' reports? @DKOATED: That statement wasn't meant to relieve site owners of all responsibility. But using GA is hardly the same as using a million 3rd-party beacons to share your surfing data with others. GA does not impact anonymity in any way. It's the same as using a log analyzer or other analytics platform. Web site operators need analytics data in order to track the performance of their site and usage patterns that can identify problems or suggest potential improvements. You can't just expect sites to stop using cookies or logging, which is impractical and has negligible impact on anonymity.
Apr 9	comment	Is it ethical to use Google Analytics on a site crime victims use to make 'anonymous' reports? Much more concise than my answer. I'd just add that US ISPs have gotten into the habit of using deep packet analysis to analyze encrypted data (a severe breach of customer privacy) because of the IP lobby. Given the IP lobby's influence in Canada, UK, and even other parts of Europe and Asia, I wouldn't be surprised if they started forcing other nations' ISPs to become internet copyright infringement watchdogs and snoop through customer data.
Apr 9	answered	Is it ethical to use Google Analytics on a site crime victims use to make 'anonymous' reports?
Apr 8	awarded	Nice Answer
Apr 7	comment	Swift Mailer SMTP Mailer for PHP Alternative ZF works just fine on shared hosting, as well as DH. Setup is pretty straight-forward as well: wiki.dreamhost.com/Zend_framework . It should be no different from using CakePHP or any other PHP framework. Whether you can use all classes, which may include extensions not supported by your web host is another matter, but that's true with any PHP app or library. But on DH, even a shared hosting account lets you recompile PHP on your own, so even that doesn't present any problems for those who know their way around linux/unix.
Apr 6	comment	Linking to Wikipedia. What’s the impact on SEO? Wikipedia nofollows their links in articles to prevent spam since they're a UGC site. And they do in fact have plenty of non-nofollow external links. If your link isn't from unvetted UGC content, isn't a paid/traded link, etc. then there's no reason to nofollow it. That does not promote an organic link structure which helps search engines rank content by usefulness to visitors.
Apr 6	comment	Linking to Wikipedia. What’s the impact on SEO? Also, established Wikipedia pages are unlikely to be removed, and even renamed articles are likely to have a redirect. You're more likely to have dead links to sites like YouTube or just normal non-wiki sites, as the vast majority of the sites on the web, whether it's run by a major corporation or a private individual, have no policy on maintaining a consistent link structure or content persistence.
Apr 5	comment	Why do we have to pay for a domain name? "Nothing is free" in the sense that you can't get something from nothing. But it should still be noted that a huge portion of what makes up the web/internet was provided free of charge by people who were never paid for their work. E.g. HTTP, HTML and the web browser--all invented by Tim Berners-Lee while working as a physicist at CERN. He and a co-worker Robert Cailliau made a formal request for funding, but the project was never adopted by CERN. BSD, Linux, Apache Web Server, PHP, Ruby, etc. are all not only fully open source, but they were created by people in their spare time.
Apr 5	comment	Why do we have to pay for a domain name? You're conflating the registrar with the registry. These are usually two different companies. A registry is in charge of an entire TLD (or multiple ones, as is the case with Network Solutions/Verisign, which controls .com, .net, and .org, as well as .gov, .mil, and .edu), while a registrar is more like a retailer, and they typically sell domains for multiple registries. Many registries are not actually involved in selling domains to the public. Verisign for example sold off its registrar business.
Apr 5	comment	Why do we have to pay for a domain name? Actually, it's your DNS provider that routes your domain to a server. And it's the registry that tells DNS clients (including DNS proxies) who the authoritative nameservers are. Your domain registrar is just another middleman. You need them because you don't have the money to become a registrar to be able to directly register domain names from the TLD registry. Also, they provide the web interface that lets you update your WHOIS record, set your nameservers, renew your domain, etc. Their hosting costs are probably minimal compared to their revenue. Basically, they get to print money.
Apr 5	comment	Can I sell a php website on a condition that the code is not resold by the client? And considering the trade-off you're accepting: making it impossible for customers to maintain or upgrade the site, you better have more than just a naive assumption to base your decision on. And given the vendors of these code obfuscators aren't gonna tell you how their product works (just as DRM vendors won't explain how their DRM mechanism works, as they rely on security through obscurity), you should at least trial the software, pitting it against the leading disassembler on the market to make sure it does more than just strip the comments and change your variable/function names.
Apr 5	comment	Can I sell a php website on a condition that the code is not resold by the client? "The more expensive the software, generally the more secure it is." -- That is a dangerously flawed way of thinking. Many see code obfuscating as a fool's errand, and it's a moderate deterrent at best since even the best code obfuscators still produce compiled bytecode that's trivial to disassemble into human-readable form.