Plus, an update on the Bitcoin economy, and Apple iTunes Match – streaming or downloads?
A quick burst of 9 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team
Microsoft Windows 8 for tablets - detailed demonstration >> YouTube
Raises all sorts of questions about how the Windows 8 desktop/hybrid behaviour will be managed. Intriguing.
Generate long, easy-to-remember passwords >> Passphra.se
Inspired by this XKCD strip.
Bitcoin Watch
The total BitCoin economy has a value of £39m. At current exchange rates, anyway. Unless someone finds the lost wallet.dat that someone left on an Amazon web instance which got restarted.
Ex-Microsoftie Paul Maritz sees Windows PCs below 20% in era of cloud, devices >> GeekWire
Quote from a speech (much more at the post): "What we're seeing in the cloud era is not just hundreds of millions but billions of new users and devices now coming into play. Three years ago over 95% of the devices connected to the Internet were personal computers. Three years from now that number will probably be less than 20%. More than 80% of the devices connected to the Internet will not be Windows-based personal computers."
Obvious, really (think: smartphones) but intriguing to see it put that way. Maritz's real point though is about what becomes important when that is true.
Apple's iTunes Match service uses downloads, not streaming >> AllThingsD
Well, it isn't streaming, except that you can listen to it while it's downloading. And it's only sort of downloaded, as it might be in a cache. Anyhow.
Research in Motion's Best BlackBerry yet, the Bold 9900, is not enough >> NYTimes.com
From the conclusion: " the stellar 9900 shows that when its back is against the wall, RIM can produce winners. This phone is the best BlackBerry RIM has ever produced, but against the gigantic technological and marketing forces of iPhone and Android, it's a whisper in the wind. Let's hope that there are enough BlackBerry fans left to support their favorite phone and that the company completes its reboot in time to prevent the 2013 headline, 'RIM R.I.P.'"
Life after Anonymous - Interview with a former hacker >> Cisco Blog
Interview with @SparkyBlaze, who is in his 20s and from Manchester (but wants to keep the rest under his to-be-white hat).
"Q: What are some of the biggest challenges you see out there?
"SparkyBlaze: In my mind social engineering is the biggest issue today. We have the software/hardware to defend buffer overflows, malware, DDoS and code execution. But what good is that if you can get someone to give you their password or turn off the firewall because you say you are Greg from computer maintenance just doing testing. It all comes down to lies, everyone does it and some people get good at it."
The Bitcoin paradox: it's attracting speculators instead of traders >> Technology Review
James Surowiecki, the New Yorker's financial writer, dissects the problem around the virtual currency in typically astute fashion: "many--probably most--Bitcoin users are acquiring bitcoins not in order to buy goods and services but to speculate. That's a bad investment decision, and it also hurts Bitcoin's prospects.
"True believers in Bitcoin's usefulness prefer to deny that speculation is driving the action in bitcoins. But the evidence suggests otherwise.":
And if hoarding, instead of trading, takes over, then nobody uses it, so it becomes useless - trapped in a deflationary spiral where the velocity of the currency is zero.
Who killed the fake-antivirus business? >> ZDNet
Ed Bott finds the same thing that we pointed you to a while ago: a real-life crackdown by Russian police, rather than any fiendishly clever piece of technology, is what killed off Mac Defender and various Windows workalikes.
Trouble is, that could mean that more will be along soon, depending on when the next gang gets its act together.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2011/aug/31/technology-links-newsbucket
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