article

tnt - 08-05

[subjects]

1. [00:00] US Department of Transportation may ban phone calls on airplanes
1. ] FCC was recently talking about allowing in flight calls, DOT rules trump the FCC rules
2. ] airlines will likely lobby for the calls because it would add another revenue stream
3. ] could be an annoyance for passengers when several people are all talking on the phone in the plane
2. [08:00] An internal memo from BlackBerry suggests layoffs are over and that the smartphone maker is actually looking to make some hires w/Roger Cheng
1. ] ready for a turnaround or maybe they have bottomed out
2. ] memo sent by CEO John Chen on Friday, said that "bb is done with restructuring, Chen hinted at adding new staff,
3. ] new hires would they be marketing or development?
4. ] a bit of both, product  + sales people
5. ] ramp up their efforts to sell, probably will take a bit of different tack then they did last year with the BB10 launch,
6. ] more focus on the enterprise, large corporate customers, governments
7. ] good news for BB, BB layed off 40% of their staff last years
8. ] Chen is a turnaround artist who has made a series of smart moves - the real estate deals, sale of other non core assets,  the foxconn partnership, the secusmart aquisition,
9. ] what is their direction going to be going forward, they cant go head to head with Samsung/Apple their overall strategy?
10. ] likely ... more enterprise, more government agencies, people who need secure phones
11. ] could play to 'any customer that's been hacked', or those 'paranoid about their data'
12. ] we have the technology, we have the track record
13. ] they are not going to go head to head with apple/samsung in the consumer market
14. ] said ... they will be launching their passport and classic with a fairly large campaign this fall
15. ] going after the C level executives, not the mass market like they did last year
16. ] BB 10 was going for a 'grand slam', now he is trying to string together a 'few small hits'
17. ] a string of small incremental 'base hits'
18. ] one of the biggest problems is 'perception and reputation', a wounded brand
19. ] a string of good news stories, that gives your sales team a better story, 'were not going anywhere, we're not going to die ' ...
20. ] tag line might be 'hey were canadian' in light of the NSA revelations, although not likely much different as their agency has been doing many of the same things.
3. [14:00] Samsung plans to continue doing business with a Chinese parts supplier that use children as workers
1. ] Samsung fired company Dongguang Shinyang Electronices, in July, after they found at least 5 child workers (under age 16) in 1 of their factories
2. ] company claims child labourers were hired by a subcontractor, 
3. ] Samsung says it will now do 30% less business with the company, has zero tolerance policy on child labour infractions
4. ] lots of problems with child labour in China, illegal overtime, unsafe working conditions, environmental problems
5. ] usually Apple is the one that gets the blame for it, b/c luxury brand, and makes lots of profit
6. ]  now Samsung is getting caught up in it also, (they make the rest of the profits in the industry)
7. "] ME - what not good, is 30% less business as a penalty, it's been going on for years, does the punishment fit the crime?
8. "] JP - good about the situation, is that Apple/Samsung are using third party companies to monitor the situation, they are not working directly with companies
9. ] also, because companies are pressured to use children, may indicate labour problems in China, it getting harder to hire
10. ] china's monopoly as the global world electronics mfg may be coming to a slow close, probably a good thing that 1 country doesnt do all of the worlds manufacturing
4. [16:45] How is Microsoft Surface performing financially? w/Gregg Keizer @computerworld
1. ] reporter says msft suffering financially because of the surface tablet line
2. ] he dug into the SEC filings for the company and did some math to find out that msft has lost 1.73 B on the surface tablets to date
3. ] surface line has been selling since 2012-10, over approx. 2 fiscal years,2013, 2014
4. ] some financial details have not been disclosed (aka hidden, made harder to find) by msft, the 1.7B loss figure is 'at a minimum'
5. ] arguement to made that msft needs to invest in Surface to be relevant, going forward, one can imagine 2 alternative futures for msft, one is where they are a dominant player as they have been in the past and one is where they are not (aka an also ran, has been, washed up, done for)
6. ] they need a successful touch operating system and platform, they need to get to the next level of tablet and mobile computing in general, if it gets them to the future where they are dominant again, its nothing
7. ] 1.7B losses is NOT that much money, in context of what they recorded as revenue, their operating margin, its only 3% of revenue for FY 2014, only 9% of surfaces group
8. ] interesting is that msft doesn't report the numbers(profit/loss situation) in plain english, you really have to dig to get any kind of picture of the situation, this is not something that just msft does,most companies do the same, they report what they want to report
9. ] apple financials reports numbers more directly, # of ipads, # of iphones,
10. ] leadership ? - msft lost over 11B in online services over past decade, will Satya show the same commitment to Surface if it continues to lose money?
11. ] No, comments indicate that he has less patience with money losing products,
12. ] the devices and services mantra, was from the Balmer regime,
13. ] nokia layoffs are a sign of whats to come for msft products ? (12,500 of the recent 18K msf layoffs, were from the recently aquired Nokia )
14. ] if the surface doesnt perform in the next 2 quarters, it could be in jeporday
15. ] perhaps hardware wise msft is alienating partners by mfg devices, competing directly with partners, you were either a hardware company or a platfrom company, google shattered that model and msft followed,
5. [25:30] A security researcher has figured out how to bypass Paypal's two factor authentication and hack into an account.
1. ] researcher has been talking to paypal about it and they have essentially ignored him
2. ] Joshua Rogers @ Just another security blog
3. ] Rogers found a security loophole when users going between ebay and paypal
6. [28:00] Target discloses the 148M+ cost of hack @wallStreetJournal
1. ] cost doesnt include other things like
2. ] brand has suffered, ] stock price, ] consumer confidence ] CEO was changed
3. ] maybe 'hacks' shouldnt be disclosed by companies
4. ] some laws are on the books about disclosing breaches
5. ] the question is what defines what a breach is
6. ] that question hasn't been defined yet
7. ] originally disclosed by a blogger, then Target had to admit to it 
7. [36:15] MIT technology
1. ] recovered sound by recording high speed video

 

[objects]

[systems]

[people]

[events]

[places]

 

Details

ID: 3805

NAME: tnt-08-05

DESCRIPTION: [30:00] VIDEO-SUMMARY-show-1064 - ] US DOT may ban cell calls on planes ] Blackberry memo - good news for employees ] Samsung supplier using child labour in china ] 1.7B in losses surface @ msft ] security researcher exposes paypal vulnerablity ] ..

AUTHOR: article.author/s

EDITOR: article.editor/s

PUBLISHER: article.publisher/s

STATUS: Write

PRIORITY: -5

OWNER ID: 75

photos

actions

Email Email-Owner SMS and