31 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981 Add this Digest to your personal   or   The Telecom Digest for February 2, 2013 Volume 32 : Issue 29 : "text" Format Messages in this Issue: BlackBerry, Rebuilt, Lives to Fight Another Day (Monty Solomon) Your employer may share your salary, and Equifax might sell that data (Monty Solomon) ====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======

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Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2013 09:10:28 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: BlackBerry, Rebuilt, Lives to Fight Another Day
Message-ID: <p06240831cd317d2b9bb9@[10.0.1.10]>

BlackBerry, Rebuilt, Lives to Fight Another Day

By DAVID POGUE
January 30, 2013

I'm sorry. I was wrong.

This apology is for the bespectacled student at my talk in Cleveland, 
and the lady in the red dress in Florida, and anyone else who's 
recently asked me about the future of the BlackBerry. I told all of 
them the same thing: that it's doomed.

That wasn't an outrageous opinion. Once dominant, the BlackBerry has 
slipped to a single-digit percentage of the smartphone market. The 
company's stock has crashed almost 90 percent from its 2008 peak. In 
the last two years, the BlackBerry's maker, Research in Motion, 
released a disastrous tablet, laid off thousands of employees and 
fired its C.E.O.'s. The whole operation seemed to be one gnat-sneeze 
away from total collapse.

The company - which changed its name on Wednesday to simply 
BlackBerry - kept saying that it had a miraculous new BlackBerry in 
the wings with a new operating system called BlackBerry 10. But it 
was delayed and delayed and delayed. Nobody believed anything the 
company said anymore. Besides - even if there were some great phone, 
what prayer did BlackBerry have of catching up to the iPhone and 
Android phones now? Even Microsoft, with its slick, quick Windows 
Phone, hasn't managed that trick.

Well, BlackBerry's Hail Mary pass, its bet-the-farm phone, is finally 
here. It's the BlackBerry Z10, and guess what? It's lovely, fast and 
efficient, bristling with fresh, useful ideas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/technology/the-blackberry-refreshed-lives-to-fight-another-day.html

-or-

http://tinyurl.com/9wp6nwc



Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2013 23:48:06 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Your employer may share your salary, and Equifax might sell that  data
Message-ID: <p06240801cd30f8b89071@[10.0.1.10]>

EXCLUSIVE: Your employer may share your salary, and Equifax might 
sell that data

The Equifax credit reporting agency, with the aid of thousands of 
human resource departments around the country, has assembled what may 
be the most powerful and thorough private database of Americans' 
personal information ever created, containing 190 million employment 
and salary records covering more than one-third of U.S. adults.

Some of the information in the little-known database, created through
an Equifax-owned company called The Work Number, is sold to debt
collectors, financial service companies and other entities.

...

http://redtape.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/30/16762661-exclusive-your-employer-may-share-your-salary-and-equifax-might-sell-that-data?lite

-or-

http://goo.gl/MY6b3

Equifax Sells Private Information To Debt Collectors In 'Biggest 
Privacy Breach In Our Time': Report

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/30/equifax-sells-private-information_n_2584518.html

-or-

http://goo.gl/4cjK3

***** Moderator's Note *****

My household income has never been a secret: it has been available for
over thirty years, to anyone with access to the Registry of Motor
Vehicles database, a Zipcode directory, and some rudimentary
statistical training.

I guess these reports have some value to those who think there's a
difference between knowing my income bracket within about $5,000, or
in knowing my income to the exact penny, but mostly, I think these
sorts of stories are put out on slow news days in order to hype the
stats for a particular paper or web page. 

What I'd really like to see is a database that shows the incomes of
every consultant, lobbyist, lawyer, and political advisor who deals
with the local, state, and national governments of my country. THAT
information would make me a better-prepared citizen when I go to the
polls. 

Bill Horne
Moderator





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