Following last week's outage of RIM's BlackBerry service, many in business and government alike (that's Karl Rove and Company at right) are starting to wonder if their dependency on the device with such a soft underbelly (according to competitors) is such a good idea.

"The NOC-centric nature of RIM's solution has always been a target of its competitors in the past, but usually the competitive message has been FUD [fear, uncertainty, and doubt] around security ('Do you REALLY want your data flowing through someone else's system?')," explained Avi Greengart, principal analyst for mobile devices at Current Analysis. "NOC service outages are a huge gift to competitors' marketing departments, because service outages are real -- end users feel those."

Russell Shaw on the BlackBerry Beat gave a failing grade to carriers as well:

There were some bright points, but all in all I was not pleased with the information flow and presentation.

First, let us discuss how each major U.S.-based BlackBerry carrier conveyed this data when I called them.

T-Mobile and SprintNextel did best. As soon as I called the T-Mobile trouble line, I was greeted with a newly updated recording. Same when I called "611" from my Nextel BlackBerry.(read more)

Henry Blodget called out his nemesis-of-late, Jim Cramer, about Cramer's recent seeming endorsement of questionable (and potentially illegal) trading practices that hedge fund managers should be using to help their clients outperform the market, or at least, at the close of last year when he did the interview, make up for lost dough.

Widespread outrage at the video (which was recently pulled down from YouTube.com but is apparently still available at TheStreet.com) calls into question Cramer's brand reputation as trying to help the little guy - instead talking out of both sides of his mouth advocating the big hedge funds to manipulate share prices in order to cash in. If it's any indication of how most readers found the story, the comment below leads me to believe the investing public is pretty angry:

Perhaps Eliot Spitzer should have investigated this type of activity too while he was Atty General. Except that he's a good friend of Cramer, invested in his hedge fund, and thus profited from these activities. Oh well, nevermind, guess that's why he spent so much time picking on Dick Grasso instead - just hoping we would all forget about he and Mr. Cramer's relationship.

Interestingly, while looking at that NYTimes recap, I found the following video and, now that I can post YouTube videos here, thought I'd share it with you about another scandal brewing on Wall Street. Browse below.