Someone's having a firework party just down the road. Not sure why -- I know it's the Fourth of July, but this isn't America! 23 hrs ago

January 2009

18
Jan

Commercial flights are twenty-five times safer than private jets

The recent dramatic events on US Airways Flight 1549 will no doubt be getting a few people wondering about what’s the safest way of flying.

It turns out that those of us whose budgets are limited to economy class can take heart from the knowledge that scheduled airlines come out top, and private jets come out bottom.

According to this statistics page, if you fly by private jet, you are up to twenty-five times more likely to be killed in an air accident than if you spend the same amount of time flying on scheduled airlines.

Apparently, airliners have 0.089 fatalities per 100,000 flight hours. General aviation has 2.305. Small commuter planes notch up 1.230. Granted, the “general aviation” figure no doubt includes flying schools and stunt planes, but one would expect private jets to fit in somewhere near the “commuter plane” category. So the difference is still an order of magnitude at least.

(Hat tip: Matt Hellyer.)

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Posted at 15:15 in Miscellany
14
Jan

The top 25 most dangerous programming errors

(Via BBC News and Coding Horror): The 2009 CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors is a list of the most significant programming errors that can lead to serious software vulnerabilities, published by the US National Security Agency. Everyone working with code in any capacity whatsoever, at any level, needs to know this stuff cold. Everyone who manages them needs to make sure that they do. And everyone who recruits them needs to ask about this stuff at interview time. There’s really no excuse for hiring people who think that it’s okay to construct SQL commands by smashing strings together willy-nilly with user input.

I was rather disappointed to see that it isn’t explicit enough on the issue of plain text passwords in your user database, nor is there any mention of the increasingly popular password anti-pattern of asking users for their Gmail passwords so you can import their contact list. Both of these are particularly insidious because in addition to being frighteningly dangerous from the point of view of identity theft and phishing, they are frequently demanded by bosses and clients who either don’t see why they should be a problem or are willing to take on the quite unacceptable risks that they introduce.

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Posted at 00:45 in Security
01
Jan

What did James McKay discover?

The answer: that someone reached my blog by typing that very question into Google. It’s been a while since I last went through my Google Analytics search results, but when I did recently, I also discovered that people arrived here by searching for curiosities such as “busker in kilt bath” or “cool stuff that ten year olds like to put on descktop” (sic) or “dentist torture” or “deliverance ministry in horsham uk”. And so, as another year has drawn to a close, here are some more particularly interesting searches from 2008, that I will take a moment or two to comment on:

“corporate dressing, corridors of power”

Does Google know too much about me?! When I came across this one, I had said almost nothing about my new job on my blog. But yes I am expected to wear a tie (except during recess and on non-sitting Fridays) — however, it doesn’t really bother me.

“curiosities of the number 23″

Wikipedia has a pretty comprehensive list. Including, as ever, “in popular culture.”

“how not to look a prat in a cycle helmet”

Simple: don’t wear one. Obviously, if you are concerned about safety, or live in a jurisdiction where the law demands it, this is not an option. You’ll just have to put up with looking a prat.

“how do you pronounce mckay”

It rhymes with “eye,” not with “day.” Even Stargate Atlantis and the folks on the History Channel who interview a well known exobiologist who shares his surname with me get it wrong. Sigh. But talking of Stargate Atlantis, someone asked:

“what programming language do they use on stargate atlantis for the machines”

Hmmm, I don’t know whether Stargate Command use .NET and C#, as whoever searched for “stargate c# dot net” must have been thinking, but apparently, it turns out that the Replicators are programmed in JavaScript. It also seems that one visitor to my blog thinks that there is a “stargate near m6 motorway”.

You really wonder sometimes…

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Posted at 00:00 in Miscellany