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Blackberry Network is Down
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Apr 18, 2007 07:34 AM
from the hate-when-that-happens dept.
from the hate-when-that-happens dept.
Brian writes "According to CNET and others, "A system failure at Research In Motion has affected BlackBerry users in the Western Hemisphere, a news channel reported on its Web site late on Tuesday. The infrastructure failed on Tuesday night, and e-mails were not being delivered to the handheld devices.""
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Better headline needed (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.newsique.com/)
"Blackberry Blackout"
Black Berry Down (Score:4, Funny)
Leave No Email Behind
Re:Better headline needed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Better headline needed (Score:5, Funny)
OH NO! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/ | Last Journal: Tuesday February 20 2007, @02:45PM)
Re:OH NO! (Score:5, Funny)
------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld
Crap! (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Wednesday October 30 2002, @09:20AM)
I feel a disturbance in the net... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Re:I feel a disturbance in the net... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.thundersplace.com/)
Much you have to learn, young PDAwan.
Re:I feel a disturbance in the net... (Score:5, Funny)
- 1: New Coffee
- 1: New Monitor
to: 123 Fake street, Fakeville, NY, 12345. Thank you.Man, this isn't good for RIM... (Score:1)
Re:Man, this isn't good for RIM... (Score:4, Interesting)
They're already down close to $3.60 in pre-market alone. Ouch.
A hundred thousand angry users plus thousands of angry investors? Someone's got a case of the, uh.. Wednesdays.
There's some other coverage on this.... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGA
http://www.wnbc.com/news/12339359/detail.html [wnbc.com]
But I can verify that their network is up (sort of) and Engaget.com confirms this:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/cellphones/blackberry-
So YMMV.
must resist Great Disturbance In The Force joke... (Score:5, Insightful)
It IS a house of cards (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, that's what's gonna break our neck sooner or later. We strip systems of their redundancies to make them cost less, we use cheaper components and the lowest bidder, we downgrade specs to the bare minimum because price makes right.
Technology already starts learning from nature, copying structures and models from millenia proven concepts. I think business could learn a thing from them too. Because nature has down what business wants to achive: Maximum output for minimum input. There is no such thing as waste and surplus in nature's makeup, if there was, it would be used for more output instead. So why do we have 2 kidneys, why is our brain able to adapt to damage, if it wasn't for the simple fact that this proved to be the more successful way in the long run.
But as long as companies are run by managers who care more about their next quarter report than the company itself, this won't fly.
Re:It IS a house of cards (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.lostrange.com/index.htm)
You must be new here. (To life that is...)
You will realize the fallacy of your statement soon after your 50th birthday. Nature isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Those bouncy little disks in your back will start taking on the appearance and flexibility of cardboard. Your prostate (assuming you are male) will enlarge and back your bladder up into your nostrils. Your uterus (assuming your female) will simultaneously enlarge, flop over and quit working. Your eyes will go bad. Various other bits will quit working while parts of your body that you didn't know existed will start creating problems.
While modern medicine can approach some of the problems, any repairs will be more like soldering a few new capacitors on to a Pentium II motherboard (and charging for an eight way Opteron system) than anything really useful. Oh, and you want a warranty?
Death and taxes to you sir!
Re:It IS a house of cards (Score:4, Insightful)
You do have a good point about things going out when you get older, but that's not nature's fault. Because if it were not for all our complicated medicines, we'd still have about a 45 year lifespan, and we'd be dead before a lot of those things started to happen. So Nature does have it worked out to the extent that it thinks we should be living... all the other things that happen stem from our ability to extend life through knowledge.
Re:It IS a house of cards (Score:5, Funny)
BES users potentially not affected? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:BES users potentially not affected? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:BES users potentially not affected? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.chemicalwonderland.net/ | Last Journal: Monday September 03, @10:34PM)
I'll LOL if RIM is FOOBAR and can't GBTW but my PHB won't ROFL that the BOFH at RIM is AFK. LBC, 213.
Re:BES users potentially not affected? (Score:5, Informative)
RIM = Research In Motion
BES = Blackberry Enterprise Server
SRP = Server Routing Protocol
GPRS = General Packet Radio Service
EDGE = Enhanced Data GSM Environment
IHBT, HAND
Not very reassuring. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://dexplor.com/)
Dan East
Re:Not very reassuring. (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Wednesday March 21 2007, @11:19AM)
Contrary to popular belief. E-mail is NOT a critical business tool. You don't believe me? Then compare e-mail with the following:
Supply Chain Systems? Critical.
Customer Order/Customer Relationship Systems? Critical.
Manufacturing systems? Critical.
Payroll? Absolutely the single MOST critical application at most enterprises (especially during pay runs).
But, e-mail is not critical. When I've been involved in storage meetings, e-mail is always a Tier Three [wikipedia.org] application. In other words, while it is a useful tool, there are other ways of contacting people in an emergency. You know, like by telephone.
Re:Not very reassuring. (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Wednesday March 21 2007, @11:19AM)
Wow, you must be one of the users that is freaking out over Blackberry today.
Supply chain is worthless if crm can't communicate with them, ditto for manufacturing, payroll is worthless if they can't communicate with accounting or HR.Most of the systems I describe have a DR and/or failover capability because they are considered critical to the operations of the business. Personally, I have NEVER seen an e-mail system that has had DR or Failover. Beyond DR, ask an even more important question: In the event of disaster, how quickly does e-mail come back up on-line? Is it the first system recovered? Or are there 35 other systems that are recovered before e-mail? That should tell you how important e-mail is in comparison to your company's other systems.
Now, let's talk about using e-mail as an interface: Does the communication you describe have to occur via e-mail? I have been working in IT for 15 years and I have never seen a place that depends upon an e-mail to interface between any of the systems I described. For example, if I am running a Supply Chain system, I can keep the supply chain moving for hours without worrying about ANY e-mail communication with external systems. Well-designed Supply Chain systems use EDI (not e-mail) for communication. And, EDI is usually built with redundancy and DR capability If they don't use EDI, they depend upon someone manually entering the information into a screen, or even a flat file. If I absolutely MUST contact someone, I just call their phone. As for Payroll, payroll runs at even small companies are not dependent upon e-mail. The timekeeping systems interact with the Payroll systems via EDI or some sort of file transfer that is NOT dependent upon Exchange/Domino.
Hell, even if I am in hardware support and my e-mail server crashes, I should be smart enough to log directly into my messaging console to keep an eye on the status of my other servers. Most monitoring tools use e-mail to send messages to Operations. My operations department had better be able to log into their consoles to check the systems real-time and not be waiting for the e-mail system to recover.
Also note, for those things the phone is not an option, it must be in writing.There are a few options here: If you are running a normal PO approval process, then there is always an expected time-lag in approvals. My manager cannot be expected to drop everything to approve my new business-card order system. And, if there is an emergency, well-designed systems have an override that allows for exceptions.
Try to keep in mind that many, many businesses do not reside in one office, or one building, or one postcode, or one country, before you make a silly comment like "e-mail is not critical".Firstly, I work for a Fortune 500 company. We are spread all over the world.
Secondly, There is nothing silly about my statement. E-mail is NOT critical. People THINK it's critical because it is the system they have the most 'face-time' with. But, face-time is not equal to criticality. If your organization has built interfaces or business processes that depend upon someone approving something via e-mail, then you have a very poorly designed system. You can easily have interfaces move directly between systems without ANY human interaction. You can build custom web-pages to allow approvers the ability to make their approval directly in the purchasing system.
Cold-turkey for Crackberry-heads (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://pages.sbcglobal.net/redelm)
More interesting will be the addicts reaction. Some people really hang on the devices and get addicted to their Crackberries. I wonder how they will adjust (most people will do just fine) and what lawsuits will result. Or if the plantiffs are too worred about simply having their service cancelled!
Re:Cold-turkey for Crackberry-heads (Score:4, Insightful)
Can't be true.. (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
more like all day tuesday (Score:2)
Just count it like a Snow Day... (Score:3, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/~Moby%20Cock)
Two Reactions (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Wednesday March 07 2007, @05:30PM)
First: jumping out of a building due to the terror and pain of sudden withdrawal. It happens to heroin addicts, it can happen here too, folks.
Second: people wandering the streets of major cities bright-eyed and staring in open wonder, as though they were waking up from a long dream. Joining hand in hand, they frolic in the parks or whatever greenspace they can find chanting "Free at Last, Free at Last..." The clouds part, and an auspicious rainbow graces the sky. Oh, and I suppose there are other reactions: incoherent rage at no one in particular (ever chat with a cold-turkey smoking quitter?), unjustified rage at corporate IT for letting this happen, curling up in a fetal position in the corner, uncontrollable thumb twitching (almost like phantom limb pain).
Then there's another reaction: simply shrugging and going back to computer-based email and cellphones.
Not quite 'Western Hemisphere' (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.ianferguson.me.uk/)
Uh, system reset... (Score:2, Insightful)
When in doubt, reboot!
Oh, nbw it makes sense! (Score:3, Funny)
(http://web.irtnog.org/~xenophon/)
Western Hemisphere (Score:1)
You don't see anything on the server (Score:2, Funny)
(Last Journal: Wednesday August 15, @02:45PM)
They could at least tell a time they plan on having it working again...
Quote much? (Score:2)
(http://web.irtnog.org/~xenophon/)
There were so many double-quotes in that write up that I thought it was a """paean to VMS""" [compaq.com]. It's nice to see that Python continues the practice [python.org].
Its funny (Score:1)
'cuz mine still works like a champ. Damn near everyone else in the office is calling and whining that they can't send or receive any emails. I tried rebooting the server a few times, rebooting other servers, rebooting the blackberries, and then I find this.
I gotta start checking teh internets before I start working...
More Info On Outage and Status (Score:5, Informative)
one word response to this tragedy (Score:3, Funny)
(http://www.ssinow.com/ | Last Journal: Monday October 01, @02:25PM)
The DoD emailed our Blackberries to tell us..... (Score:2, Funny)
just like imus (Score:1)
Eedundancies and dependencies (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a lack of redundancies. Redundancies cost money, and we want everything as cheaply as possible. So no redundancy. But hey, it "works". Usually. The question is, though, can we afford the blackout?
Imagine communication breaking down. No cell, no net, no data transfer, nothing. You could hear commerce grind to a halt. Nothing could be scheduled, nothing could be delivered on time, we'd simply break down. And that scenario isn't as impossible as it seems, because telcos don't have a lot of redundancies in their networks anymore either.
But we're depending on them. Often enough with our very lives. Yet we're not willing to pay the price.
But even if we did, would it be invested? I mean, afaik it's not like RIM made some kind of promise that the service would work. And as long as you can't hold them responsible for the loss, of money and maybe even life, they certainly won't add anything that costs more than it has to.
Damnit man, I need details! (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, it's not like the power supply failed on an NT 4 server (you know, the one with the post-it taped in place that says "East Coast B-berry server, DO NOT POWER OFF!!!"), it's not like somebody accidentally drove a nail trough some coax in the wall at RIM's HQ, it's not like somebody accidentally typed "rm -r *" at the wrong prompt. There has to be some serious "Thank God I'm not the one stuck cleaning up that mess" stuff going on here.
Funny unrelated story. We had an exec looking at one of the blackberry's. He put in back in the hard case and was fumbling around with it and saw the "RIM" on the back. Then he asked, in the innocence that only an exec can have, "So, how does one go about getting one of these 'RIM' jobs anyway?" When I am canonized as a saint, one of my miracles will be "not laughing at the VP who asked how to get a rim job."
For a communications company (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday August 19 2005, @06:40PM)
RIM: Get better at communicating with your client base or they will go elsewhere.
philo
Single points of failure (Score:2)
(http://robots.org.uk/)
But then again I can't see what Blackberry gives you that you can't get with an IMAP server anyway.
Oh, no (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.foodry.com/)
What about users with Blackberry Servers (Score:1)
Remember POP over TCP/IP ? (Score:2)
Yes, my TCP/IP is provided over GPRS, but I hope that my next Treo (linux-based?) will offer a Wi-Fi connection as well.
Pascal
It's back up... (Score:2, Informative)
mine has been working for the past 24 hours.... (Score:1)
(http://utropicmedia.net/)
Mobile outlook 1, crackburry 0.
New service outage updates at ZDNet (Score:3, Informative)
RIM says service back for "most" customers (Score:2)
(http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=buzzblog)
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/141
Good. May it be permanent. (Score:1)
This just in! (Score:3, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Wait, am I awake now? Damn.
I'm already tired of hearing about this (Score:2)
(http://mirrorshades.org/wc)
Grow up, Blackberry users, and find something to do.
Exchange Activesync is better (Score:1)
(http://thinkabdul.com/)
BlackBerry vs BCSS (Score:1)
RIM Outage Mail List. (Score:1)