Kier Darby

In the modern, online world, it is common to find oneself slighted in many ways. The relative ease and anonymity with which comments may be posted can often lead to insults being levied that would make eyes water if expressed in face-to-face exchanges. In my time as lead developer of vBulletin, and previously at AP3D, I grew used to throw-away comments from people I didn't really know, summarily hurling abuse at me or the products of myself and my team. When dealing with a large customer or follower base, this sort of thing is to be expected. One can not expect to please everyone all of the time. However, while it's possible to learn to live with hurtful comments from relative strangers, there is another, far more subtle form of insult that has reared its head with the emergence of social networks, and Facebook in particular. The inter-user networking basis of Facebook is one of mutual friendship. John searches for or comes across Jane and requests that they be identified as fr...

I just finished watching the final episode of the BBC's Ashes to Ashes . How on earth did the writers manage to take the original Life on Mars concept and turn it into such self-absorbed tripe as was seen tonight? Throughout this third and final season of Ashes , there seems to have been a desperate, ill-conceived attempt to shoehorn a back-story onto the secondary characters (Chris, Ray, Shaz) while at the same time trying to get the audience to believe that Gene Hunt - who has consistently been a hero figure of sorts in the previous four series - might in fact be a villain. First, the 'character development' of the secondary cast. This was a ridiculous idea. It goes against the very reason for the success of the series' format. These characters were conceived as two-dimensional caricatures - eighties stereotypes that everyone who remembers the eighties would recognise instantly. The characters were (surely?) never intended to bring their own history and emotional bac...

I headed down to the polling station this morning with my wife and we both put our crosses on our ballot papers Let's hope it makes a difference. Unfortunately, I don't think any political party would be able to provide a way to avoid, or even deliver a comfortable or happy period through the financial armageddon that is beginning to take hold in southern Europe, and will inevitably ensue here in the UK when the monetary stimulus must necessarily end and the job of paying back our unprecedented debt begins. Newsnight's Paul Mason wrote an extremely sobering blog yesterday about the difficulties that lie in wait for us. What the country needs for the coming years is a Parliament of consensus and right-mindedness, where party political ties come second to building legislation that helps to prevent the disintegration of society when extreme austerity measures are in place. My vote is cast, now I can only wait for the results and see what tomorrow brings.

Lots of systems that employ user authentication obscure users' passwords using a hashing routine such as MD5 or SHA1, which produce hash strings of 32 or 40 characters respectively. These hashing algorithms are one-way only, so although the MD5 of 'My Password' is '14ddb8585ddfc6c4670b9c18aed1fe8b', there is no way to return 'My Password' by running code against '14ddb8585ddfc6c4670b9c18aed1fe8b'. However, most users do not use particularly secure passwords, so if a cookie containing a hashed password is stolen, the thief may be able to bombard the hash with the MD5 hashes of dictionary words in order to find one that matches. MD5 runs extremely quickly, and a modern computer can perform millions of these comparisons every second. Rainbow Tables Even if users use secure passwords, it is possible to work out what the original password may have been by using a rainbow table . This is look-up table that store the hashed values of vast numbers of plain-...

Having had a few hours to digest the Apple iPad announcement, I thought I'd share a few of my thoughts. These points are based solely on the material released by Apple so far, so specifications may change before the hardware is released to the public. Initial Feeling Watching the video on Apple.com, the most compelling things for me were the web browsing and email experience. I already know how good it is to browse the web on the iPhone and iPod Touch, and the ~10" screen of the iPad can only make this better, so I'm inclined to agree with Apple that iPad may well be 'the best' way to surf the net, especially from the couch in front of the TV, so my initial feeling was along the lines of 'if the price point is good, I'll have one of those...'. Apple's shiny hardware, slick presentation and well-integrated software suite certainly did the job of making the iPad a desirable item for me. Rationality Kicks In The vast majority of my computing time is...