Humans suck  Tags: other, randomthought, webdevelopment, real life.
Lately I've been working on two 'private' projects. Both failed due to human imprecision.

Firstly, I thought of something which might identify which song is playing in your head. You can't play it back (Shazam won't work), and most people don't want to sing it in front of the microphone on websites like Midomi. My system would recognise the tap pattern from a song. You'd drum your fingers on the desk or whereever, and it was supposed to search in all records for one that matches your drumming pattern.
Before I really got far with it, I discovered the drumming pattern was too variable to ever work.

Fastest SELECT query  Tags: databases, webdevelopment, programming.
Just a quick post about some speedtests I did. I couldn't quickly find which way was the fastest.

TABLE t: col1, col2, col3, col4, col5 (a mix of integers and varchars)

SELECT * FROM t
Run 1: 3.722 miliseconds

Define: The cloud  Tags: webdevelopment, computers, networking.
According to Wikipedia, this is the definition of "Cloud Computing". The new kid on the block, something overhyped that nobody understands.
"Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a metered service over a network (typically the Internet)."

(Note that SaaS is a known term among both IT people

Secure login systems  Tags: webdevelopment, security.
What a secure login system should be like:

1. The password field must hide the password;
2. The login processing script must be called via HTTPS, or if over HTTP the login must be hashed before transmission;
3. The password should be hashed via a secure hashing algorithm, I consider sha1 the minimum;
4. The hash should be salted;
5. The username or another static and user-specific should be included with the salt;
6. The hash should be run a lot of times, like 100
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XML  Tags: websites, webdevelopment.
For those who haven't seen XML before, this is what it looks like:

<?xml version and crap>

<users>

    <user>

        <name>lucb1e</name>

        <age>18</age>

        <computer>

            <gpu>nVidia GeForce 9800 GT</gpu>

            <cpu>Intel Core2Quad Q9400</cpu>

        </computer>

    </user>

    <user>

        <name>

et cetera

The first time you see this, it probably looks pretty neat. It is a very clear and usable format. You can easily store users and properties and everything!

Well, appearances are deceptive.