Last week's blog on why consumers might be confused by contradictory messages on computer security from banks drew a few objections from interested parties ones that I thought would be worth responding to this week.
New storage technology can be frankly pornographic: it's big, it's sexy and you want it slammed into your rack right now but is a long term relationship more satisfying?
Banks obviously have an interest in making consumers feel safe. They are there to protect the customers' money. They want customers to use their online services, too, because the channel offers a lower cost per transaction than a branch. But giving away free security software to make customers feel safe is probably doing more harm than good.
While there's not much that's more fun than stirring up Linux and Windows zealots into a frenzy of spite against each other, we thankfully finally seem to be approaching a more measured universe in which technology choices can be made based on suitability rather than preconception.
Mobile phone companies have seen the green bandwagon go by and are flinging themselves on it faster than you can say "lazy, greenwash-spewing me-too merchants" but in the pantheon of would-be eco-friendly mobile makers, Nokia is coming up with some of the best and worst ideas on the market.
You've only got to hang around a datacentre for about 30 seconds before someone starts raving on about virtualisation. While the cost benefits of virtualisation are obvious, the management challenges often get swept under the carpet.
There are lots of fiddly little rules surrounding backup and disaster recovery, but some of them are, to be frank, blindingly obvious. At the top of my personal list would be this one: don't check your notebook PC as hold luggage when you get on a plane.
Indexing a large chunk of data is a bit like joining Weight Watchers: it's a useful first step, but it doesn't immediately solve the problem of how you're going to deal with all that blubber.
What would you do if you ran an online backup service that offered unlimited storage, and a few dozen of your customers ended up storing more than a terabyte of data each?
Would you be happier that Google collects data about your Internet history if you knew their log data was used to fight some seriously nasty worms?
The Australian Tax Office CIO Bill Gibson claims that one of the reasons he hasn't deployed much open source software is due to security fears, with the code not subject to enough "technical scrutiny".
Synchronising data between multiple computers is difficult and dangerous, which is why we get software to do it these days rather than attempting to manage all the file movements ourselves. But making the assumption that the software knows what it's doing can in itself be dangerous.
In terms of applications, the mobile world still feels like a bit of a poor cousin where the Web giants are involved. How long til it shrugs off its rags like Cinderella and bursts into the daylight in all the finery it deserves?
At the CeBIT exhibition in Germany this week, Steve Ballmer got on stage and told the world that Microsoft takes "green" issues seriously.
Today, Symantec released Norton 360 Version 2.0, but I wonder whether the security giant has learned from its past mistakes?
Can Chrome give Internet Explorer a run for its money?
ZDNet correspondent Sumi Das talks with Senior Editor Sam Diaz about the perks and pitfalls of the newly relea… Watch it now
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