Tag: computing

Security isn’t a dirty word, Blackadder

I’m often surprised at just how some websites treat their users when it comes to security.

As any decent website developer knows, one of the basic tenets of application security is that you should never store a user’s password in an unencrypted format – and you shouldn’t really be storing a password in an encrypted format, either. The correct way to deal with storing a password is to use a password hashing algorithm (note: “password hashing”, not just “hashing”)

I’m not going to pretend that I’m perfect at this. It took me an embarrassingly long time to stop using MD5 for hashing passwords in my code (although, in my defence, it was at least salted and not just a straight hash) but I caught up with the zeitgeist and all’s well again. Of course, it seems these days I do most of my work with existing frameworks and applications, so don’t really have to worry too much about that kind of thing any more.

The fact that there are so many frameworks and other tools out there to help devs with this kind of thing just makes it all the more upsetting when I see someone doing it so drastically wrong. Someone like whoever it was that developed KidsPass.co.uk

For those unfamiliar, Kids Pass is a website aimed at parents that offers many discounts and other offers on things to do with their little’uns. It’s not a website aimed at children, which is just as well because with password security as poor as theirs that would be absolutely terrifying.

“Let off some Steam, Bennett!”

Points to anyone who recognises the quote, which bears only a tangential relationship with the topic of today’s post.

So, what is it? Is the topic movies? Movie quotes? Arnold Schwarzenegger? The family featured most heavily in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice?

No – it’s Steam. And by that, I mean the digital software distribution platform, not the gaseous form of H2O.

Why would you write about that?

Well, truth be told, I’m running out of ideas a bit – it’s day 16 of Septemblog, I’ve written more posts on here so far this month than I have done for the past two years – I’m basically clutching at more straw than Worzel Gummidge in the throes of sexual ecstasy (with Mrs. Gummidge, obv.)

Still, someone mentioned Steam, and it made me think about how many games I have on my Steam account, and how many of them I’ve actually played. So, let’s get into statistics…

“Games, games! Everywhere I go – games! This is what my lifetime of achievement has been reduced to.”

Again, points to anyone who recognises the quote.

I joined Steam on November 20th, 2004, so I’m coming up to my 11th Steamiversary. Apparently I was a relatively early adopter, as Steam’s initial release was in September 2003.

The first game that I bought through the platform was most likely Half-Life 2, and this would tally up with my registration date, as the game was released on November 16th. According to mysteamgauge, where I’m getting these stats from, I’ve played 0.64 hours of Half-Life 2, which isn’t right as I’ve completed that game and it took me a damn sight longer than just over half an hour!

The last game that I bought was Shower With Your Dad Simulator 2015: Do You Still Shower With Your Dad? – a delightfully silly game written by one of the guys from the Making Games Megathread on the SomethingAwful forums. It’s also a game with a surprising amount of depth – and a not-entirely unsurprising amount of dong. I’ve played 0.1 hours of this, but I should really play a lot more as it’s quite enjoyable.

The game that I’ve played the most of is Far Cry 3, logging a total of 237.19 hours. I can definitely believe that, I spent far too long playing that game, completing every objective and raiding every outpost. Tremendously good fun.

Next up is XCOM: Enemy Unknown at a surprisingly-low 44.39 hours. I’m not sure that’s correct, as I feel like I’ve spent weeks playing that – but I could be getting it confused with the original UFO: Enemy Unknown (X-COM: UFO Defense for you Americans). The sequel to this, the imaginatively titled XCOM 2 (not sure if the subtitle is Enemy Known or not) comes out in February 2016, and I can’t bloody wait.

Totals

I have a total of 213 games on my Steam account, which – had I paid full price for all of them – would have been at least $3,500. However, Steam Summer/Christmas sales and Humble Bundles have meant I could acquire many of these on the cheap.

Of those 213 games, I have played approximately 85. That’s actually quite high, I wasn’t expecting it to be that much.

The total install size of all of my Steam games is a whopping 987.8 GB. But about 985 GB of that is Grand Theft Auto V.

Conclusions

I have too much money, and not enough time. A bit like Walter White.

Don’t panic, 123-reg aren’t phishing!

At work, we use 123-reg to handle our domain registrations. They’re not the cheapest domain registrar, but they’re not far off, and they don’t charge extra for things like changing IPS TAG or allowing access to DNS management.

Their automated renewal systems are generally pretty bullet-proof too, and apart from a couple of issues with their website over the years we’ve used them, we’ve had no complaints.

But what I can’t work out – for the life of me – is why they’ve changed their auto-invoice e-mails to ensure that everyone clued up on spam and phishing e-mails automatically assumes that it’s a fake e-mail.

Poor UX and Internet Explorer 9

I could wax lyrical here about how terrible Internet Explorer was (and is.)

However, in all honesty, Internet Explorer 9 (and the current release version, IE 10) is so far ahead of it’s predecessors that it would be a waste of bandwidth to criticise it extensively. The sooner that those who insist on using IE upgrade to 9/10, the better.

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