Links for 08-17-2011

• Daring Fireball: Balls - "That’s not to say it wasn’t a bold, brash move, or even to say it wasn’t the right move for Google and for Android as a platform. But that’s all relative to the position Google was in — and that position was a weak one, and to pretend otherwise is to deny the obvious. And don’t forget that it leaves Google in a tenuous situation with the two leading Android handset makers, Samsung and HTC. I think Apple and Microsoft probably feel pretty good, competitively, about having forced Google into spending $12.5 billion for Motorola — a handset maker with rapidly declining sales, no recent profits, and misguided management."
• Welcome to the Cloud - "Your Apple ID has been disabled." - Scott Hanselman - "The most valuable companies have your valuable data in the cloud. We may think the cloud is decentralized, but it's not. It's totally centralized. All the valuable data is now in one place with one password that's connected to your one bank account. We've centralized and simplified fraud and the public pays for it."
• Performing Security Testing in the Cloud | RightScale Blog
• Direct and Indirect Causality « Wild Webmink - Nice discussion of philosophies underpinning GNU-ish vs. BSD-ish licensing.
• NIST Cloud Computing Standards roadmap
• Mark Hurd Descends Into Hell - Forbes - "Hurd’s job these days, managing the Sun hardware business at Oracle, is positively punk by comparison.  Being in charge of a waning hardware unit at a company run by software dude Larry Ellison can’t be a lot of fun. With revenues in the $10 billion range when it was acquired by Oracle, the Sun unit has continued to lose traction in the marketplace, ceding customers to rivals, particularly IBM, faster than trees here in New England lose their leaves in late October.  Revenues are practically in free fall.  The losses, already at the severed-aorta level at the time of purchase, have accelerated as the unit wastes away."
• SPECIAL REPORT: Hybrid transformation of the cloud - Minerals and Metals Group (MMG), hybrid cloud, HP, hitachi data systems, EMC, datacentre, cloud computing, Citrix, Cisco, CA Technologies, Brocade Communications - ARN - Good piece on hybrid clouds and tailoring for verticals.
• Caterina.net» Blog Archive » Anonymity and Pseudonyms in Social Software - "To my mind there are three categories of Pseudonymous behavior, and they should be treated differently."
• IDC White paper - "While 88% of IT consumers surveyed use a desktop PC to access the Internet for business or personal reasons and 91% use a laptop, fully 80% access the Internet using a smartphone, and 36% – over one-third – access it via a tablet (e.g., iPad)"
• Freakonomics » The Costco Effect: Why Does the Wholesaler Cause Inflation? - "They concluded that the proliferation of Walmart Supercenters may explain 10.5% of the rise in the obesity rate since the 1980s."
• The Chemistry Between Us - mlkshk - Amazing crossword puzzle.
• Borders bankruptcy: Done in by its own stupidity, not the Internet. - By Annie Lowrey - Slate Magazine - "Barnes & Noble may well not be around in five years. But at least it has built a business that recognizes the trends in bookselling—toward the Internet, toward e-readers, toward a more boutique retail experience, away from big-box stores. It is remarkably similar to the strategy Borders laid out in its bankruptcy filing."