Plus ephemeral hacker Oxblood Ruffin on LulzSec and Anonymous, and ZDNet asks where all the Mac malware has gone
A quick burst of 9 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team
Google acquires Dealmap, the missing link between Offers & Maps >> VentureBeat
Question is: what took it so long?
CIA >> xkcd
Plus the title text, of course.
The two existential threats to Nokia: why Nokia is on the endangered species list and will not survive 12 months >> Tomi Ahonen
Tomi Ahonen, ex-Nokia exec, always with the happy: "Nokia's handset unit generated 8.5 Billion Euros (11B US dollars) of revenues in Q4 with about 1 Billion Euros of profit. So if we ignore Nokia's networking unit NokiaSiemens Networks - a division that Nokia has been trying to sell for half a year now but is finding nobody willing to pay the price for the loss-making unit - the handsets business of Nokia, Smartphones and 'Featurephones' was the size of 44 Billion dollars on an annual level, just six months ago.
Now where are they? The handsets unit reported total revenues down to 5.5 Billion Euros (7.5 Billion US dollars) and a loss of a 247 million Euros (321 million USD). ..So under Stephen Elop's so-called 'leadership' and his foot-in-mouth disease,.. Nokia has already shrunk - 32% ! In five months ! If the malaise was only in one unit of the three big divisions of a corporation, the other two could sustain the company. But right now, Nokia is disappearing before our eyes!"
Old-school hacker Oxblood Ruffin discusses Anonymous and the future of hacktivism >> Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
"[RFL] spoke by email with Oxblood Ruffin, a Canadian hacker who is a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc), a hackers' group that coined the word "hacktivist." He is also the founder and director of Hacktivismo. I asked him about Anonymous's recent operations and the ethics and rules of engagement of hacktivism.
RFE/RL: How would you define "hacktivism"?
Ruffin: "Hacktivism uses technology to improve human rights. It also employs nonviolent tactics and is aligned with the original intent of the Internet, which is to keep things up and running.
"With regard to tactics, things like DDoS attacks, Web defacements, malware, and network breaches are off limits. These generally limit speech and are a violation of the First Amendment and contradict Articles 19 of the UNDHR [Universal Declaration of Human Rights] and ICCPR [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights]."
Oxblood Ruffin. Make room, Game Of Thrones.
Farewell Flash? Adobe launches HTML5 web animations tool "Adobe Edge" >> ReadWriteWeb
"Today, Adobe is launching a new tool called Adobe Edge which will allow creative professionals to design animated Web content using Web standards like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. Not Flash.
"Aimed to coexist with Adobe Flash, not replace it, the Web design software is Adobe's big bet on how it will continue to solidify its position as a top player in the infrastructure of the modern Web, especially as the Web goes increasingly mobile. In this new mobile context, the Web has become a more hostile environment for Flash, which has no place on Apple mobile devices, and likely never will."
It Just Doesn't Work: why new tech products are increasingly unsatisfying >> Time
"I've been reviewing technology products for 20 years now. I've seen it all, from products that were amazing from the get-go (the first PalmPilot comes to mind) to ones that were downright hazardous (a mouse that caught on fire). But there's never been a time when so much of the new stuff I look at is so very far from being ready for mass consumption. Sometimes it's a tad quirky; sometimes I can't get it to work at all. And when I call the manufacturers for help, they're often well aware of the problems I encountered."
Can you think of any recently released products for which this might be true?
Apple seeks to block Samsung Electronics from selling tablet in Australia >> Bloomberg
"Apple Inc. won an agreement from Samsung Electronics Co. that the South Korean company won't sell the newest version of its tablet computer in Australia until a patent lawsuit in the country is resolved.
"The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 infringes 10 Apple patents, including the "look and feel," and touchscreen technology of the iPad, Steven Burley, a lawyer for Apple, told Federal Court Justice Annabelle Bennett in Sydney yesterday. The Cupertino, California-based company sought an Australian injunction and also wants to stop Samsung from selling the tablet in other countries, Burley said without specifying where."
It's an interesting way to keep the market share up. Apple will pay Samsung damages if its patent infringement claim fails.
A Billion Dollars Isn't Cool. You Know What's Cool? Basic Human Decency >> TechCrunch
Paul Carr skewers the problem with the promise. "And therein lies the real problem of web 2.0 -- whether it takes the form of SEO-driven "news" or crowd-sourced accommodation. To make money -- real money -- at this game you have to attract millions, or tens of millions, of users. And when you're dealing with those kinds of numbers, it's literally impossible not to treat your users as pieces of data. It's ironic, but depressingly unsurprising, that web 2.0 is using faux socialization and democratization to create a world where everyone is reduced to a number on a spreadsheet."
Where did all the Mac malware go? >> ZDNet
Ed Bott sees bad times ahead: "Even if Apple does add a definition for that piece of malware, I suspect that the next iteration of the Mac malware authoring kit will include a feature to bring it up to parity with its Windows counterparts. These days, malware attacks on the Windows side typically use polymorphic code that makes every sample unique. The technique makes signature-based malware detection systems, like Apple's XProtect, essentially useless.
"The bad guys have lots of ways to distribute malware: booby-trapped porn sites, bogus audio and video codecs, pirated copies of software that come with "a little something extra," even fake security updates. The increasing success of the Mac platform and its relatively weak security ecosystem means easy pickings for enterprising crooks."
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2011/aug/02/technology-links-newsbucket
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