When will web sites start to be careful with people’s passwords? Oh, I know that a few sites get it right, but it seems to me that the vast majority still don’t have a clue what they are doing. Here is today’s example. I got an email this morning from a company called RAM (that’s… Continue reading More Password Idiocy
Category: tech
Drizzle
When I first read about Drizzle last week I assumed it was some kind of joke. It turns out that it isn’t, so it just makes me a little depressed. Drizzle is[1] a cut-down version of MySQL. MySQL is the database server than has been known to make grown database designers cry because of its… Continue reading Drizzle
Twitter Hierarchy
For most of the last year, I’ve been working behind a corporate firewall which blocks most social networking sites. It’s therefore only in the last month or so that I’ve been able to use Twitter all day every day. It seems to me that many of Twitter’s users have slightly distorted the sites original purpose.… Continue reading Twitter Hierarchy
Password Antipattern
I’ve come across the “password antipattern” twice today. And I had different reactions to it each time. I thought it was worth trying to work out why that was. Let’s start by explaining what I mean by the “password antipattern”. There are many bad ways to handle users’ passwords which I’ve discussed at length before,… Continue reading Password Antipattern
(Not) Buying NT Tickets
I just saw that Russell T Davies is speaking at the National Theatre. I’m a big fan of his work, so I decided to buy tickets. I wandered over to the NT web site and found the event I was looking for. I added a couple of tickets to my shopping basket and went to… Continue reading (Not) Buying NT Tickets
RSS Failure
Oops. Busted. Earlier this year, I wrote a mild rant about web sites who change their RSS feeds without redirecting them and thereby losing a number of readers. Last night mou commented on that entry pointing out that I’d done something very much like that myself. For the last two months, I haven’t been publishing… Continue reading RSS Failure
Opentech 2008
I spent yesterday at Opentech. I had a great time there. Here are my thoughts on the talks that I saw. Rembrandt, Pr0n and Robot Monkeys: Lessons From the Present About Flesh and Technology – Kim PlowrightThis could have been interesting, but I think it was somewhat constrained by the short time allocated. It seemed… Continue reading Opentech 2008
What I Did At Mashed 08
I was at Mashed 08 at Alexandra Palace yesterday. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to go back today, but I’ve made some progress on my project from home. It was a successful day all in all though. Here’s what I did. Watched Jonathan Tweed talk about the BBC /programmes api. If I hadn’t already had… Continue reading What I Did At Mashed 08
Political Web Sites
It’s the BBC Mashed hack session this coming weekend, so I suppose lots of people are trying to think of a project to work on. I have an idea that involves UK political web sites. I expect that most MPs have a web site. A far smaller number of them have a blog. Some of… Continue reading Political Web Sites
Temptation
For probably the first time ever, I’m almost getting tempted by an Apple product. I mean, it’s still a lot of money to pay for a phone. And who would be happy with a music player that a) only has 16Gb of storage and b) won’t play sensible formats. But they do look nice.