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Blackberry Future Uncertain
Dave White writes "Research In Motion and NTP have failed to reach a settlement in the Blackberry case. It looks like the door has been opened for NTP to be granted an injunction blocking the sales of Blackberry wireless messaging devices in the US. The New York Times (free registration yadda yadda) has the scoop on this interesting development."
http://bugmenot.com/view.php?url=nytimes.com
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We need a hundred of these types of losses -- where patents directly affect the public. Let the public get comfortable using a very necessary and nice technology, and then let some crappy company come out of nowhere and extort their way into an injunction and removal of the widget from the marketplace. The company (RIM in this case) should then perform a recall on all devices that infringe on that patent - notifying the users of their equipment exactly WHY they are being forced to give up their Blackberries.
Then we'll see how long it takes to reform the patent system!
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
Doesn't matter -- the Treo 650 is killing the Blackberry anyway. Once I found I could manage my servers with PalmVNC on the Treo, that was it for me.
Because clearly, Blackberries only exist so that your bosses boss can send you an email with a sig at the bottom that says "sent from Mr. Big's Blackberry (while rolling down the hgwy in his Z4).
part of the problem is, RIM got the patent office to reexamine 8 of NTP's patents regarding the technology, and so far the PTO has come out with rejections on each proceeding they've done.
this adds a layer of complication to the infringement case, as no doubt some part of the deal rested on the outcome of those proceedings.
The company I work at recently yanked all blackberry devices and replaced them with Treo 600 and treo 650's.
the fact that you dont need any "special" software to access email and has the capability of viewing doc and excel attachments was the death spike for the blackberry here at this company.
and honestly, the treo's have much better sounding audio for phone calls than even the latest blackberry's did.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Well Tom, in the real world, you need to have the ability to work under pressure. You need to be a well rounded person that can admit that you don't know everything.
That's what the RIM interview is meant to test, along with technical knowledge, they want to know if you are actually capable of working in the real world. You could be a genius in your specific area, but if you don't listen to your supervisor simply because he's not as specialised as you are, then you would be a useless employee.
I used to work at RIM (back when they only owned 2 buildings). They are not a bunch of smartass punks, they're a bunch of intelligent people looking to hire other people who are intelligent and not smartasses such as yourself (I'm basing this on your own admission to your behaviour in the interview, if you say that to the interviewer, what will you say to your boss?). A few words of advice, if you think you're all that, and RIM's interview process upset you, I wouldn't recommend applying to Microsoft or Google, or any big tech company... they make everyone do puzzles... and not every interviewer is as specialised as you are, that's why they're looking for someone with those skills. But I guess that would have required some sort of thought process outside of crypto-math to figure out... my bad...
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
How is this insightful? I'm a Ph.D. computer scientist with more than 20 years computing experience in a variety of areas. I have a long list of employers who will talk glowingly about my problem-solving skills. If RIM or Google or Microsoft or whoever tried to give me a puzzle-solving test in a job interview at this point in my career, I'd walk out.
One of my closest friends walked out of Sequent on this basis some years ago. He's now one of the most successful (and employable) computer people in the industry. As for Sequent...dead dead dead. Speaking of which, how is RIM doing these days?
Puzzle-solving tests in interviews may be appropriate for folks who haven't already solidly demonstrated their problem-solving skills in their application domain in some other way. For the rest of us, IMHO it's really a bit insulting; on the order of a hazing exercise. A certain class of manager will predictably reject folks who are unwilling to be hazed. I don't have much interest in working for those folks.