Kev

As a portrait of power unfettered, The Simpsons' Monty Burns is as much cartoon villain as Rupert Murdoch, the show's owner

Rupert Murdoch has done one thing that enriches modern life – but it does not involve publishing a newspaper. Amid the boa constrictor of shame that has engulfed and engorged his British tabloid the News of the World, let's recognise the most wonderful – and totally incongruous – pearl of his global media empire: The Simpsons.

It makes no apparent sense that Murdoch ever allowed this left-of-centre cartoon to be made by Fox. The reason is presumably that it is popular and a good investment. The bottom line is that when the funniest American family's creator Matt Groening created his science-fiction parody Futurama for Fox, less astronomical ratings led Fox to cancel it, although cult status later won it a reprieve. So it is success and not charity that keeps The Simpsons as such an immortal fixture of Murdoch's TV stations.

There has never been any attempt by the makers to disguise their political views. In a compilation of early highlights, actor Troy McClure revealed that Groening plants hidden rightwing messages in the show. The joke, of course, was that he does the opposite and that its sceptical view of capitalist life is not hidden at all. Springfield, the town where the Simpsons live, is dominated by tycoon Monty Burns, owner of the local nuclear power station. Rapacious, heartless Mr Burns is a caricature tycoon right off a 1930s Monopoly board, yet his wealth constantly interferes with the well-being of Springfield. In his darkest hour he even blots out the town's sunlight.

Is Burns a portrait of Murdoch? Not as such. Rather he is a portrait of the power of money unfettered, which may amount to the same thing. Murdoch himself has appeared on the programme, introducing himself as follows: "I'm Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire tyrant." Groening said he performed the line enthusiastically. But does the fact that The Simpsons is part of his business undermine its radical spirit?

Some would say the radicalism really only belonged to the show's classic early years. In the 1990s, nothing in contemporary pop culture was so brilliant and hilarious. And it was – it is – a Murdoch property. We owe the most widely criticised business empire of the age this much gratitude: it gave us the finest and funniest piece of modern televisual pop art. Murdoch's current travails resemble one of the periodic disasters that hit Mr Burns, such as the time the nuclear power station owner ran for political office and was forced to eat Blinky, the three-eyed fish, live on television. "The old man's finished," say his spin doctors after he spits out the nuclear-mutated fish. "It was over when the fish hit the floor." And they leave as he cries out: "You can't do this to me – I'm Charles Montgomery Murdoch!" Sorry, that should read Burns.

Billboard adverts for elite housing complex at Sochi 2014 games uses 'neo-Hitlerite' imagery from infamous design agency, say critics

A promotional campaign linked to the 2014 Winter Olympics is stirring debate in Russia because of its use of allegedly "fascist" imagery.

The campaign employs images of blue-eyed, blond sportsmen and women which have been described by critics as "neo-Hitlerite" and "like something from a Leni Riefenstahl film".

Images of an Aryan-looking snowboarder and an ice-skater gazing into the middle distance dominate giant billboards in Moscow and feature on the cover of brochures to advertise Gorky Gorod, an elite housing complex being built at Krasnaya Polyana near Sochi on Russia's Black Sea coast. The complex is a private-public partnership which will be the Olympic media village at the 2014 Games.

"Without doubt the authors of this advertising were inspired by Nazi art," said Ekaterina Degot, a well-known art historian and former curator at the State Tretyakov Gallery.

When the billboards were put up, the Russian art collective Voina, itself known for its controversial painting of a 65-metre penis on a drawbridge in St Petersburg, tweeted: "On Pushkinskaya Square opposite Gap, there is a huge advertisement, openly fascist in style, for elite housing in Sochi."

Degot and others said the style and pose of the subjects in the images was heavily suggestive of Nazi art which stresses racial purity and superiority.

The Guardian has learned that the images of the sportsmen were produced by Doping-Pong, a St Petersburg-based design company which uses a swastika as one of its online "banners".

One of the company's recent projects is a series of erotic photographs of two young women, one called a "fa" (fascist), the other an "antifa" (anti-fascist activist), who grapple with each other in a wrestling ring and tear off each other's clothes. The "fa" appears to win the fight and triumphantly wraps herself in a Nazi flag.

Doping-Pong also works closely with Katya Zashtopik, a Russian artist in her 20s who is known for her sympathies with the ultra-right, and who uses the online avatar Dopingirl.

On 20 April, Adolf Hitler's birthday, she published a yellow "smiley" on her blog embellished with a toothbrush moustache and a slick of black hair. The caption read: "Happy Birthday."

Dima Mishenin, one of the designers at Doping-Pong, denied a report that Zashtopik was personally involved with producing the Gorky Gorod images. "It's our work, not hers," he said.

Mishenin claimed he had no sympathy with far-right ideas, but said he believed "the Olympic aesthetic starts in Berlin in 1936 and is created by Leni Riefenstahl".

He added: "For me this is about the aesthetics of beauty."

Asked about the use of Nazi iconography in his other work, he said: "When I use a symbol of culture of Nazi Germany like a swastika then, of course, I use it as a representative of the victor nation."

In an earlier interview with Russian media he said: "These symbols are trophies, like skulls on our Slavic fence."

Some observers said criticism of the Gorky Gorod images was overblown.

Artemy Lebedev, one of Russia's most famous young designers, wrote a blogpost calling the billboards "neo-Hitlerite, neo-Stalinist" but praised Mishenin for his creativity.

One 26-year-old web designer told the Guardian: "What's fascist and Aryan about it? Just because the snowboarder doesn't have a potato nose doesn't mean he couldn't be a Russian."

Mikhail Fedotov, Dmitry Medvedev's adviser on civil society and human rights, said he was troubled that a company which "played games with Nazi symbols" had been employed.

Gorky Gorod issued a statement from its creative director, Dmitry Leshchinsky, who hinted at a conspiracy to discredit the project.

"Any association with fascism is very unpleasant to us, and the opinions and methods of several 'critics' provoke exactly those kinds of associations," he said.

"The publishing of disgusting labels and the promotion of 'pasquinades' in the media; destroying and pouring dirt on everything that stands out, even by the smallest margin, from the grey mass of advertising: that is real fascism, in my opinion."

Degot said: "In itself, there is nothing forbidden about working with Nazi aesthetics if it is the basis of critical intellectual activity. However, I don't see that reflex in these compositions [on the billboards].

"This is a commercial project, openly exploring the seductive potential that the new rich see in Nazi style.

"I think that must be a reflection of the pretensions wealthy young people have to aristocracy and tradition."

A spokesman for Sochi 2014 declined to comment.

Over the last year and half, the DfT has been collecting cycling data for use in its TransportDirect portal.

We received today a letter from Norman Baker MP confirming that it is the DfT's intention to open this dataset, in line with the new government's principles on transparency. We think this is an excellent development. It confirms earlier discussions we held with members of the former Cycling England.

It is our understanding that the data is currently referenced from the Ordnance Survey's ITN dataset. This means it would, if kept in raw format, be useless to anyone without access to an expensive ITN license, and even then could be encumbered. However, Norman Baker sensibly writes:

"We recognise that the data in its current form is subject to licenses and so are working towards translating the data into a format that is more easily used by the developer and OpenStreetMap community."

This is good as it recognises that releasing a dataset without it being referenced against open (lat/lon) attributes would be open data only in name rather than in spirit. Using the Open Government License should ensure that it can be merged into OpenStreetMap, whose dataset has proven its worth for UK-wide cycle journey planning purposes.

The OpenStreetMap community is rightly wary of mass imports of data. In order to make use of this data, we have stressed that some tool development would be needed to enable it to be manually 'pulled across' via visual inspection if it is to be used, which we've been talking to Andy about.

We are extremely keen to help the DfT with this whole process, and discussions have been positive. We hope to report further on this soon. It would ensure the government can achieve greater taxpayer value for the data, and thereby enable us and others to give additional confidence to people considering starting cycling or wanting safer routes. Getting the data into OSM will also mean that the data is a living dataset that is kept updated.

As a sidenote, Norman Baker seems to be on a roll with sensible thinking. It is recently reported that he has refused to tow to the unquestioning view of helmet-wearing, but instead has weighed up the evidence himself and decided not to on a personal basis. This reflects best-practice cycle training: that risks should be assessed according to circumstances, and therefore the choice of whether to use a helmet is an individual one. He's also requested people to come forward with examples of unnecessary and annoying announcements on public transport – truly fresh thinking!

The opera singer behind those delightful Go Compare ads has lost his voice, reports the Daily Star. Wynne Evans blames it "on all the talking" he has done since his album went to No 1 in the classical charts. Oh well – every cloud.

US cable network AMC in financial dispute over Mad Men with producer Lionsgate and creator Matthew Weiner

It was billed as one of the star attractions of BSkyB's glitzy new TV channel, Sky Atlantic. But the fifth series of the critically acclaimed US drama Mad Men may be delayed until next year because of a financial dispute.

Production of the show is likely to be put back after AMC, the US cable network which broadcasts the show, has so far failed to strike a deal for the new season with producer Lionsgate or its creator Matthew Weiner.

Sky last year snatched the rights to the show from the BBC, which broadcast its previous four series in the UK, and when Sky Atlantic launched earlier this year said it would return in August 2011.

However, speculation is now mounting in the US that the fifth season will not be ready for broadcast until late autumn or January next year.

The show's star Jon Hamm, who plays Don Draper, recently described the series as "still in limbo".

"Usually we start shooting in April or May, and it doesn't seem like it's happening now because the writers' room is not in place," said Hamm. "I don't know if it even exists."

AMC, which currently pays more than $2m an episode for the show, had not yet announced a new deal with either Lionsgate or Weiner, although an agreement may be imminent, the New York Times reported.

Weiner told Entertainment Weekly in January: "They are fighting over a very lucrative property, and who is going to pay for it to get made; it's one of the biggest perils of success – everyone wants a piece of it now, and they are fighting over who is gonna get the biggest chunk."

BSkyB said: "Mad Men is an outstanding show and we look forward to bringing its next season to Sky customers soon after it airs in the US."

AMC has the rights to the show until the end of the next season, although Weiner's contract expired after season four, according to the New York Times.

Weiner has previously said: "I want the show to go on and on and on until it has worn out its welcome with viewers, and we can't think of anything more for the characters to do."

Fans of the show – and those rather closer involved – could be forgiven a sense of déjà vu.

The triple Emmy-winning drama was held up in 2008 following protracted contract negotiations in the runup to its third season.

Mad Men usually returns for a new series on AMC in July, with the UK broadcast date of its fourth – and final – series on BBC4 brought forward to bring it closer to its US transmission.

Mad Men is one of the "marquee shows" of Sky Atlantic, which launched in February with other high-profile US imports including Martin Scorsese's Boardwalk Empire and David Simon's Treme.

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How many nuclear power plants have had accidents and incidents? Get the full list and find out how they're ranked
• Get the data

How often do nuclear power plants go wrong? How many accidents and incidents are there?

The explosions and nuclear fuel rods melting at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant, following the Sendai earthquake and tsunami last week, have caused fears of what will happen next. So far, the Japanese authorities say there is "no cause to fear a major nuclear accident."

We have identified 33 serious incidents and accidents at nuclear power stations since the first recorded one in 1952 at Chalk River in Ontario, Canada.

The information is partially from the International Atomic Energy Authority - which, astonishingly, fails to keep a complete historical database - and partially from reports. Of those we have identified, six happened in the US and five in Japan. The UK and Russia have had three apiece.

Using Google Fusion tables, we've put these on a map, so you can see how they're spread around the globe:

But how serious are they? The International Atomic Energy Authority ranks them using a special International Nuclear Events Scale (INES) - ranging from 'anomaly' to 'major accident', numbered from 1 to 7.

The events at Fukushima are level 4, so far and there has only been one 7 in history: Chernobyl in 1986. You can see the full ranking system below and on the attached spreadsheet

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This helpful translation of the Norwegian government’s announcement today shows that Norway is following the UK in digital radio switchover.

There are a set of criteria, not dissimilar from the UK’s: 50% of listening must be done digitally by 2015, and coverage should be equal to FM. (Unlike the UK, the amount of DAB transmitters to cover Norway is about half the amount of FM ones).

There are a few additional criteria. “Inexpensive and technically satisfactory solutions for radio reception in cars” must be available by early 2015, and if not, they’ll delay switchover. This is sensible. The good news is that, yesterday, the SMMT in the United Kingdom reaffirmed their commitment to have DAB in all new cars by the end of 2013, so one would hope that this won’t be an issue for the Norwegians.

And here’s the interesting criteria: “Digital radio must include additional value to the listeners [such as extra radio channels or additional services].”

That is a clear signal to broadcasters that they should be grasping the opportunity that digital radio offers them. And, while it’s true that some broadcasters here are doing great things with DAB (the BBC and Absolute Radio being the oft-quoted ones, but Bauer and GMG also have invested), there are also some broadcasters who bluntly have lost interest (hello, Global) and some that are miserably anti the whole thing (hey, UKRD).

The big difference here is that, by 2017, Norway’s FM dial will fall silent – joining their AM band which has been all but silent for many years. This won’t happen here; FM’ll be a hotchpotch of small commercial stations, community stations, and inevitably pirate radio. (I’m still unclear whether this is good news for the radio industry, but I know what my gut feels). (see comments below)

Finally, this interesting nugget: “All tunnels above 500 meters in length (there are more than 500 of these) will get DAB installed by the Norwegian Road Authority as the DAB system in the tunnels will double as an emergency warning system in case of accidents or fires.”

The rights of a government-mandated switchover aside, if I was Norwegian, I’d be pretty impressed at my government’s grasp of the technology and challenges; and once more, we in the UK may have much to learn.

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These are my personal views | Full disclosure

This is a list of free online tools for IT pros. It discusses ProcessLibrary.com, VirusTotal, Sysinternals online, Who.is, CentralOps network tools, My IP Address, Speedtest.net and Pingtest.net.

There are many useful, free online tools for IT pros. In this post, I listed a few tools I like. If you know of other good online tools that are helpful for Windows administrators, please post the link in a comment below. I will then add the tool to the list.

ProcessLibrary.com

Whenever I have a hunch that a PC is infected even though the antivirus tool is silent, I start Task Manager or Process Explorer to see if I notice anything suspicious. Of course, I don’t know all Windows processes, so if a process I’ve never seen before appears in the list, I search in ProcessLibrary.com for the corresponding EXE or DLL file.

VirusTotal

VirusTotal is the online tool I use most often. Since I am often testing free tools from publishers I don’t know, I like to have more than one opinion about whether the tool contains malware or not. VirusTotal has the scan engines of all well-known antivirus vendors and scans uploaded files quickly. I introduced VirusTotal a while back.

Sysinternals online

Microsoft’s Sysinternals tool suite is certainly one of the best free tool collections for IT pros. Sysinternals online allows you to launch these tools via HTTP.

Who.is

Who.is allows you to access the WHOIS database that stores information about Internet resources such as IP addresses, domain names, and their registered users or assignees. I usually use this to see who might be behind a suspicious IP address.

CentralOps free online network utilities

I discussed the CentralOps online nslookup tool some time ago. The site has a few other useful network tools such as an email validator, a graphical traceroute tool, and a utility that shows what kind of information your browser reveals.

My IP address

Sometimes when I test whether a VPN tool works properly, I use the My IP address service. This tool can also be useful if you need to know the IP address of a user’s PC and the user doesn’t know how to look it up. The tool also shows you the name of the service provider and the location of the IP on a map.

Speedtest.net

I travel a lot, and the first thing I do when I am in a new place is check if I have acceptable Internet access. Speedtest.net lets you easily test the speed of your Internet connection. Please check out my review of Speedtest.net

Pingtest.net

Pingtest.net is comparable to Speedtest.net. This tool gives you an idea of how reliable your Internet connection is. It measures the ping response time, jitter, and packet loss.

Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer Tool

A tool that helps Exchange admins troubleshoot connectivity issues Exchange.

Please post a comment below if you know of other good online tools for IT pros.

• Did Google just kill the web app? Part 3: The power of the app (0)
• Did Google just kill the web app? Part 2: Platform dependence (2)
• Did Google just kill the web app? Part 1: Form factors (4)
• Do browsers matter? (6)
• Internet Explorer 9 – 64-bit vs. 32-bit – Part 4: Speed (0)

The BBC could hold a Eurovision-style contest to decide the next unlikely Christmas No 1

There's a problem with social media. You can only use it to do a good thing once, and then everybody's at it, cheapening the original idea. A case in point is the plethora of online "let's get a really incongruous song to Christmas No 1 instead of that horrid X Factor stuff" campaigns, which seemed to be springing up hourly over the last few weeks. When everyone got behind Rage Against The Machine last year, it was an entirely pleasant bit of absurdist fun, sticking two fingers up at Simon Cowell's dreary pop-marionette monopoly.

This year, of course, everyone has had a crack at it and, by the time you read this, has almost certainly failed. We all heard of Cage Against The Machine's one-joke "cover version" of 4'33" Of Silence; there was a creditable crusade backing the Trashmen's deranged Surfin' Bird, given fresh popularity by its appearance in an episode of Family Guy; and Shaun Ryder and Stacey Solomon threatened to make a beauty-and-the-beast stab at Fairytale of New York. Other unlikely challengers included Metallica's somewhat unseasonal Enter Sandman, not one but two agreeably ghastly efforts from Electric Six, the brilliantly profane Irish comedy disco-funk of Horse Outside by Rubberbandits and Captain Ska's anti-government Liar Liar.

All these are supported by Facebook campaigns of varying heft, while poor wronged X Factor contestant Gamu Nhengu was able to surf a wave almost entirely consisting of public sympathy. Now we're counting the cuddly Cardle-shaped cost of this surfeit of choices. Who, in an age of austerity, is going to pay a dozen times over to ensure a silly Christmas No 1?

But can we learn from this, and overcome once more? Next year, I'm proposing that the BBC holds a Eurovision-style televised contest to decide which challenger we're all going to get behind. It would give it a worthier opponent to X Factor than clunky, desperate Strictly will ever be, and we, as a nation, could unite behind one common cause.

My suggestions? The 22-minute version of Autobahn by Kraftwerk, perhaps, or the Aphex Twin's Window Licker, possibly the most terrifyingly unfestive piece of music ever. Or how about something from Baltimore-based Hatebeak, a death metal band whose lead singer is a parrot?

The 2010 race is over; let's start whittling the 2011 shortlist now.

Young British Asians are changing the way they speak in formal contexts, according to new research

We all have to avoid putting our foot in it during an interview, but young British Asians also have to take care of precisely where their tongue is in their mouth.

A study at the University of Manchester has shown that they make subtle changes in their tongue position in contexts where an economic motivation may exist – such as a job interview.

Why? Well, just think of Apu from The Simpsons, and that very distinct pronunciation of each and every t, d, and r sound. The sound is made by curling the tip of the tongue and striking it against the back part of the roof of the mouth, a sound referred to by linguists as a retroflex. It is this sound that helps you locate that annoying telephone salesperson as one from India (and not, say, Newcastle).

Thus it is the sound that has come to be associated with comedy or annoyance. Let's face it: no one wants to be a comedian in a job interview. The sound used by British Asians is mostly subtle, and far from that used by Apu. Still, by simply switching the topic of conversation to career aspirations, my research showed that people's tongues struck closer to the front of the mouth.

A context was set up in which people were asked to leave a message for their schoolteacher discussing possible future careers. During this conversation, all those who participated exhibited a significant decline in the use of retroflex sounds, in an attempt to dilute their British Asian identity. The absence of a retroflex for the [t] sound, as in optician, occurred 52% of the time, 43% for [d] as in dentist, and 19% for [r], as in retail. The results also show that it is the [t] sound that British Asians are most aware of, as the sound that might "give them away".

Apu aside, there is another reason that young British Asians decrease their use of retroflex sounds in such contexts. Most of those interviewed were the children of migrant parents who experienced many challenges in gaining employment owing to their lack of competence in English. The parents stressed the importance of the language for economic attainment, and the children have seen at first hand the hardship that a lack of proficiency may cause.

Proficiency has different meanings for parents and children, however. The parents were expected to be able to communicate effectively to gain a job but their speech exhibited many non-native sounds, including the retroflex, and could be identified clearly as a foreign accent. The children were receptive of these foreign features in their parents' speech, and although they use these when chatting among friends, the sounds are used much less in formal contexts. For example, during her casual speech AA produced a strong retroflex sound for English [t] 9% of the time, and 2% of the sounds made were full retroflex sounds as heard in Panjabi or Urdu. Yet neither of these sounds was produced in the message she left for the teacher.

So does the sound come from the use of another language, such as Panjabi?

Well, the results suggest that the use of another language does play a role in the frequency of use for these features. Listen to the two soundclips. The first is of a 17-year-old male, MR, from Blackburn, Lancashire, who is highly proficient in Panjabi and the use of retroflex sounds for English [t], [d], and [r], are frequent in his speech. In contrast, the second soundclip has very few of these retroflex sounds, and is of a 17-year-old female, Z, also from Blackburn. The difference between the two is that Z, in comparison with MR, has very little competence in Panjabi. In total, Z's pronunciation of the English [r] did not have a retroflex sound 79% of the time, in contrast to just 7% for MR. So, yes, the level of competence in Panjabi, or Urdu, did correlate with the extent to which speech exhibited retroflex features, and all attempted to use fewer of these in the context of leaving a message for their teacher.

It seems the young people's perception of this sound as a marker of their identity is a reality.

A "guess the voice" test found that in an overwhelming majority of cases they were accurately identified as British Asians by fellow members of the British public, despite the fact that it was their formal speech style that was played. Interestingly, Z and her younger sister, RB, were accurately identified as British Asians despite having the fewest uses of retroflex sounds. There are two reasons for this. First, those participating in this test were all between 15 and 25, with much experience of interacting with other young British Asians, and are therefore aware that some sound "more Asian than others", as one person put it. Second, there is a different pronunciation of [t] and [r], between British Asians and British whites. The English sound [t] as in tea and toast is produced with aspiration – the release of strong air after the sound – and the English sound [r] is an approximant, which means the tongue comes closer to the roof of the mouth without restricting the vocal tract to the extent that the airstream is produced.

The next soundclip helps illustrate this, as E, a 15-year-old British white girl, reads aloud a list of words: the [r] in roast, ring and curry are all approximants, and the [t] in toast and tea are aspirated. Compare the word list read aloud by K, a 13-year-old British Asian boy: the [t] and [r] are retroflex sounds – the tongue curls further back in the mouth, although there are weaker and stronger variations of the sound. (The same is true for the English sound [d] as in den and door.) Thus, the retroflex variants of English t, d, and r, together with other distinct sounds, collectively form a British Asian accent.

The results and analysis shared here were part of my undergraduate dissertation for my BA (Hons) in English language, at the University of Manchester. As a British Asian myself, it has been a great opportunity to research this topic, with the advice and support of my professor, Yaron Matras.

The full dissertation is available on the website for the Manchester working group in language. And here is more information about me.

This weekend, the Gawker network was compromised.

This weekend we discovered that Gawker Media's servers were compromised, resulting in a security breach at Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Gawker, Jezebel, io9, Jalopnik, Kotaku, Deadspin, and Fleshbot. If you're a commenter on any of our sites, you probably have several questions.

It's no Black Sunday or iPod modem firmware hack, but it has release notes -- and the story it tells is as epic as Beowulf:

So, here we are again with a monster release of ownage and data droppage. Previous attacks against the target were mocked, so we came along and raised the bar a little. How's this for "script kids"? Your empire has been compromised, your servers, your databases, online accounts and source code have all been ripped to shreds!

You wanted attention, well guess what, You've got it now!

Read those release notes. It'll explain how the compromise unfolded, blow by blow, from the inside.

Gawker is operated by Nick Denton, notorious for the unapologetic and often unethical "publish whatever it takes to get traffic" methods endorsed on his network. Do you remember the iPhone 4 leak? That was Gawker. Do you remember the article about bloggers being treated as virtual sweatshop workers? That was Gawker. Do you remember hearing about a blog lawsuit? That was probably Gawker, too.

Some might say having every account on your network compromised is exactly the kind of unwanted publicity attention that Gawker was founded on.

Personally, I'm more interested in how we can learn from this hack. Where did Gawker go wrong, and how can we avoid making those mistakes on our projects?

1. Gawker saved passwords. You should never, ever store user passwords. If you do, you're storing passwords incorrectly. Always store the salted hash of the password -- never the password itself! It's so easy, even members of Mensa er .. can't .. figure it out.
   
   
2. Gawker used encryption incorrectly. The odd choice of archaic DES encryption meant that the passwords they saved were all truncated to 8 characters. No matter how long your password actually was, you only had to enter the first 8 characters for it to work. So much for choosing a secure pass phrase. Encryption is only as effective as the person using it. I'm not smart enough to use encryption, either, as you can see in Why Isn't My Encryption.. Encrypting?
   
   
3. Gawker asked users to create a username and password on their site. The FAQ they posted about the breach has two interesting clarifications:

   2) What if I logged in using Facebook Connect? Was my password compromised?
   No. We never stored passwords of users who logged in using Facebook Connect.
   
   3) What if I linked my Twitter account with my Gawker Media account? Was my Twitter password compromised?
   No. We never stored Twitter passwords from users who linked their Twitter accounts with their Gawker Media account.

   That's right, people who used their internet driver's license to authenticate on these sites had no security problems at all! Does the need to post a comment on Gizmodo really justify polluting the world with yet another username and password? It's only the poor users who decided to entrust Gawker with a unique username and 'secure' password who got compromised.

(Beyond that, "don't be a jerk" is good advice to follow in business as well as your personal life. I find that you generally get back what you give. When your corporate mission is to succeed by exploiting every quasi-legal trick in the book, surely you can't be surprised when you get the same treatment in return.)

But honestly, as much as we can point and laugh at Gawker and blame them for this debacle, there is absolutely nothing unique or surprising about any of this. Regular readers of my blog are probably bored out of their minds by now because I just trotted out a whole bunch of blog posts I wrote 3 years ago. Again.

Here's the dirty truth about website passwords: the internet is full of websites exactly like the Gawker network. Let's say you have good old traditional username and passwords on 50 different websites. That's 50 different programmers who all have different ideas of how your password should be stored. I hope for your sake you used a different (and extremely secure) password on every single one of those websites. Because statistically speaking, you're screwed.

In other words, the more web sites you visit, the more networks you touch and trust with a username and password combination -- the greater the odds that at least one of those networks will be compromised exactly like Gawker was, and give up your credentials for the world to see. At that point, unless you picked a strong, unique password on every single site you've ever visited, the situation gets ugly.

The bad news is that most users don't pick strong passwords. This has been proven time and time again, and the Gawker data is no different. Even worse, most users re-use these bad passwords across multiple websites. That's how this ugly Twitter worm suddenly appeared on the back of a bunch of compromised Gawker accounts.

Now do you understand why I've been so aggressive about promoting the concept of the internet driver's license? That is, logging on to a web site using a set of third party credentials from a company you can actually trust to not be utterly incompetent at security? Sure, we're centralizing risk here to, say, Google, or Facebook -- but I trust Google a heck of a lot more than I trust J. Random Website, and this really is no different in practice than having password recovery emails sent to your GMail account.

I'm not here to criticize Gawker. On the contrary, I'd like to thank them for illustrating in broad, bold relief the dirty truth about website passwords: we're all better off without them. If you'd like to see a future web free of Gawker style password compromises -- stop trusting every random internet site with a unique username and password! Demand that they allow you to use your internet driver's license -- that is, your existing Twitter, Facebook, Google, or OpenID credentials -- to log into their website.

It's fortunate that McDonald's is there to ease mankind through the early morning trauma

As we all know, breakfast (after dinner, tea and occasionally supper) is the single most important meal of the day. It sets you up for the challenges that lie ahead. Gets the body going. But what if you passed on breakfast one day? Can you imagine the unfathomable chaos that could ensue? You could find yourself, let's say, squirting shaving foam into your armpit instead of deodorant. Or, perish the thought, falling asleep on the bus and banging your head on the bell. You might even mistakenly put the milk carton in the washing machine. Oh, the humanity. It's fortunate, then, that McDonald's is here to help ease mankind through the trauma of those early morning mishaps, now opening its doors at 6am so sleepy sorts the nation over can stop off on their way to work or, more likely given recent events, to a short-staffed JobCentre.

The question, of course, is why would anybody in their right mind really wants to go to McDonald's just as dawn breaks. OK, there may be a few exceptions: wide-eyed youngsters fresh from the local nightspot, shift workers on their way home, idiots, perhaps – but are sausage and egg McMuffins really that nice? Moreover, at what point in one's life does one feel the need to venture into McDonald's at such a shocking hour? At what point do you leave home early just so that you can take your breakfast with Ronald instead of enjoying it in the comfort of your own home? At what point does sitting on a plastic chair at a plastic table in some soulless, sludge-green fast-fooderie suddenly become preferable to watching Christine Bleakley on Daybreak? Actually, those sausage and egg McMuffins are pretty good …

Paying to use London’s roads is not a new idea. I have just come across a map showing turnpike gates (tolls) which were like the 18th Century equivalent of congestion charging. Instead of a single zone there appear to have been 16, each demanding a fee. It is unclear whether cyclists and taxis were exempt from paying, or whether the tolls had any effect on reducing congestion! An interactive version can be found here. I have also included a map of the current zone for comparison.

Courtesy David Rumsey Maps

Courtesy TFL

It's the stuff of a paranoid thriller: secret government info gets into the public domain. Stuart Heritage explains why WikiLeaks: The Movie is unlikely to happen just yet

It's a scene familiar from countless conspiracy thrillers: in a starkly lit underground bunker full of blinking monitors and whirring cold war-era machinery, a high-ranking military official yanks the cigar from his mouth and barks: "But if this information gets into the wrong hands, there's gonna be a revolution! Get me the president!"

At least, it used to be a familiar scene. Because the events of this week have largely rendered it redundant. You see, that information really did get out – in the form of the leaked US embassy cables – and the reaction has generally been less of a revolution and more of an absent-minded tutting. This might be a wild generalisation, but the public at large seems to have been totally underwhelmed by the contents of the cables, responding by either writing "LOL Prince Andrew" on Twitter or getting distracted by the snow and hopping up and down in front of their windows like a bunch of giddy schoolchildren.

This will be an enormous headache for Hollywood. Conspiracy thrillers tend to pivot around the assumption that the public – those seething militants trapped in their low-boiling stew of civil unrest – will rise up and expose the fragility of international diplomacy for what it is once a dangerous state secret gets out in the open. But if WikiLeaks has taught us anything, it's that the bulk of the population already has enough on its plate, without having to care about whether or not America is spying on Ban Ki-Moon as well. Earlier this week, Interpol put WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on something called "red notice" for an alleged sex offence. Politicians are calling for him to be executed as a terrorist. It's real Enemy of the State stuff, but nobody is batting an eyelid. The central myth of all these films – that people care – has just been exploded forever.

And it's not as if much can be done about it, either. What choices do producers of these thrillers have? Rewrite the bunker scene so the official barks: "But if this information gets into the wrong hands, Krishnan Guru-Murthy from Channel 4 news is gonna get his knickers in a twist for about 20 minutes! Get me a sandwich!"? Change the state secret to something that would genuinely cause civil unrest, such as a file containing proof that One Direction really were miming on Saturday's X Factor? Either way, the outcome is bound to be rubbish.

Not that any of this should be a surprise. Real life can never hope to live up to cinema's dramatic perfection. For example, look at The Hunt for Red October – a nail-biting thriller about a commanding officer who takes an undetectable, state-of-the-art nuclear submarine rogue, with potentially catastrophic global consequences. Something fairly similar to this happened recently, except the commanding officer didn't take his undetectable, state-of-the-art nuclear submarine rogue. He got it stuck in some silt just off the coast of Scotland. And, rather than a potential global catastrophe, the only real consequence was mild national humiliation and about four jokes on Have I Got News for You.

Conspiracy thrillers aren't the only films that can be spoiled by real-life events. Any planned Raoul Moat biopic is doomed to failure. In theory, it could be a classic story – a battle of wits between one man and the rest of the world; part Dog Day Afternoon, part First Blood. But it simply wouldn't work.

It doesn't matter how much creeping atmosphere or tightly woven backstory it contains, or whether it asks questions about the extent to which Moat was the product of a broken system. This is because if a Raoul Moat movie wanted to be true to real-life events, then at some point near the end of the second act – right at the moment when the police have Moat cornered and the tension ramps up to such an unbearable degree that viewers don't know if they can take the suspense – Gazza would have to pop up, looking all bleary and dishevelled, clutching four cans of lager, some chicken, a fishing rod and a couple of dressing gowns. He'd half-heartedly shout "Moaty! It's Gazza!" a few times and then wander off. It'd kill the drama in an instant.

It doesn't end there. Prince William's upcoming wedding to Kate Middleton might seem perfect to transform into a Hollywood fairytale. However, to accurately capture the mood of the public, all the glitz and pomp of the occasion would inevitably have to be punctured by the scene where the vast majority of the prince's loyal subjects refuse to care until they're assured that they'll definitely get a day off work out of it. And anybody planning to turn the recent tuition-fee protests into an epic, Braveheart-style battle movie must face up to the uncomfortable truth that everyone on the Braveheart side of the battle will a) fight to the sound of genuinely bad dance music, b) uniformly have haircuts that everyone will be slightly ashamed of in 15 years and c) won't actually do much in the way of fighting in case their mobile phone ends up getting smashed during a skirmish with a community support officer.

That said, sometimes real life can intervene and improve films. As soon as the story broke that 33 Chilean miners had been trapped deep beneath the ground earlier this year, and that they'd stay there for months until geological engineers had formulated a method to retrieve them all safely, you can guarantee that dozens of writers all had precisely the same hokey script idea. A tense, claustrophobic – possibly cannibalistic – psychological thriller in which grown men begin to lose their minds and turn on each other inside a painfully enclosed space. But then, just as the first drafts were being completed, out popped Edison Pena, the charming, casually inspirational marathon-running miner who kept turning up on chatshows to do his hilarious Elvis impersonation. Suddenly, ripping off Buried started to look like entirely the wrong approach, because the real story was a cross between Forrest Gump and Roberto Benigni's 1998 "I use up all my English!" Oscar speech, which, admit it, you'd actually prefer to watch.

But in the end, though, none of this should matter. Movies have always put entertainment over historical accuracy. That's why, when filming Titanic, James Cameron transformed First Officer William McMaster Murdoch into a bribe-taking heel despite the memorial in tribute to his bravery that had been erected in his hometown. And it's why 2000's U-571 famously rode roughshod over any sense of reality in favour of simply telling an entertaining story. The fact that it failed to even tell a vaguely mediocre story – and then cast Jon Bon Jovi to rub salt into everyone's wounds – is neither here nor there.

So perhaps that's why, when WikiLeaks: The Motion Picture eventually goes into production, the official really will stand in his bunker, cigar in his hand, roaring to anyone who'll listen that the leaked US embassy cables will kickstart a revolution. And perhaps, in the film, he'll be right – instead of being met with deafening apathy, the leaks will cause diplomatic tensions to explode around the world, leading to a spontaneous citizen uprising on the streets that tears apart everyone's preconceived ideas of power and authority.

And when that day comes, and the film – containing a scene where an outraged member of the public throws a metal dustbin through a KFC window out of blind fury that someone once dared to secretly tell an ambassador that George Osborne has a moderately high-pitched speaking voice – is released,  I'll be first in the queue.