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Rip Empson is a writer and rabble-rouser at TechCrunch. He covers startups, music, social, mobile, health, and education. You can reach him at rip[at]techcrunch[dot]com ? Learn More The fear and loathing of RIM has been well-documented by this point. At the end of June, the company released its Q1 2013 earnings, which were more than a little disappointing, with RIM reporting its first operating loss in eight years, that it would be cutting 5K+ employees and that the release of its new BlackBerry were again being delayed — this time until the beginning of 2013. The acquisition rumors had already been swirling around the BlackBerry maker, and since then, they’ve intensified, with some big names kicking the company’s tires. This morning, Chris wrote about Samsung’s confirmation that (again) it was neither considering a buy-out nor a licensing agreement, even though it’s been reported numerous times that it, in fact, it’s been considering both. And, today, Bloomberg has reported that IBM...

Sarah currently works as a writer for TechCrunch, after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to becoming a professional blogger, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software. ? Learn More Dropbox says it hasn’t found intrusions into its internal systems or any cases of unauthorized activity in user accounts. Earlier this week, the company appeared to be suffering from what looked like a security breach. Users, mainly those based in Europe, were being sent unsolicited spam emails related to European casino scams. It was unclear how they had been targeted, since many users claimed their email was a unique and private address they were only using on Dropbox itself. The situation seemed to be serious, as Dropbox announced on Wednesday it had hired outside experts to aid in the investigation. The company says it doesn’t have any news at this point as to what actually happened, as the investigation remains underway. H...