BlackBerry Ltd. has created a new business unit that will combine some of its most innovative technology and patent portfolio as the company focuses away from handheld devices[....]

Independent technology analyst Carmi Levy said the new unit reinforces the fact that Blackberry's days primarily as a handset vendor are behind it as it moves "very aggressively" toward a different business. "This is probably the most tangible evidence yet of the company's transition into something very different than it was even a year or two ago," Levy said.

Over the years, there's been several articles on Slashdot about the problems involved with transitioning to Linux, which is like FOX news talking about problems with unregulated assault rifles. There's been constant cost overrruns, the transition has been far behind schedule, and I'd say a better take is "possible, but not a good idea." As a model, it hasn't been widely copied by other municipalities around the world, despite Linux becoming a much better, well-known, and practical system over the past 11 years.

Uhhm, OK, uhhh...I'm sorry, why is this on Slashdot?

I had a friend who was a lawyer working at Cisco, him and the other lawyers had essentially no work to do and spent their time playing card games. After half a year they lost their jobs. Good. That is how the system is supposed to work. Eventually my friend found a job where he did use his skills, training. It wouldn't have made sense for Cisco to teach him how to install routers, and he wouldn't have been interested in that anyway. He didn't get a job with Cisco expecting lifetime employment.

Sucks to get layed off, but companies don't owe us jobs, and we don't owe the company our lifetime dedication, and it's pretty well understood in the Silicon Valley and really all of the US.

It's even easier than that- just think, one four millionth of an inaccurate estimate of the circumference of the Earth!

And when people say they are hungry enough to eat a horse, they actually would not eat a horse.

I suppose I meant "self-reported IQ." I was making fun of how common it is for people on the internet to claim to have an extraordinarily high IQ, when an IQ of 163 would put you in the top .0013%.

If you are so smart perhaps you can explain why 98% of the internet has an IQ in the 150-170 range.

Minidisc and ATRAC pre-date MP3 as a format (1992 v 1995), so of course they didn't use the MP3 standard. Sony released MP3 players in the 90s, and while the software did indeed suck, it wasn't because of DRM. It didn't allow you to copy from MP3 player to computer, but that's not really a thing people want to do.

Anyway, the idea that they could leverage their movie holdings counters the idea that using an established standard as a format would have helped them. If they have large holdings, the only way to leverage that would be to restrict these large holdings to a Sony-only format. Similarly, Sony owns the company that makes Uncharted, they makes games in a Sony-exclusive format. If they owned the company that made Uncharted, and then had them design games in some open gaming format that would work on any gaming system, that would not help Sony's hardware division.

It's de facto exactly the same. In the case of a war, any sort of informal treaty with Russia would have been forgotten and we would have taken out the other's space based assets. Of course. It's not like "they're raining death down on us from above...but we're powerless to stop them! We have an informal treaty!"

And certainly China doesn't believe it could "win" a conflict with the US. And the US military procedures and military systems are designed with the idea that GPS may become unavailable (anyway, GPS signal can simply be jammed).

Well of course people already don't take Windows Phone seriously.

Well if programming for OpenGL is more difficult and requires elite skills just to be passably decent, that's a huge knock against OpenGL.

You're approaching this like a college student rather than like an engineer.

Maybe you ran into a guy who did that, but TMobile promotes it pretty well on their stores and their web page, and before they had iphones they had radio ads encouraging people to just use an unlocked iphone.

I looked into prices for my wife and I, and even without the subsidized phone (and using expensive phones paid off per the month) TMobile was substantially cheaper than AT&T or Verizon. For a family of four, AT&T becomes cheapest, with its family plans.

You could say that all the different prices and contracts and deals makes comparison between companies more difficult than it should be, but that doesn't make TMobile more expensive.

It's de facto been the same in the US...you just ask your company for a code and they give it to you for free (even if the phone has previously been under contract). Additionally, you've always been able to buy unlocked phones.

From RT:
http://rt.com/politics/177248-...

Such authors will now have to register with the state watchdog Roskomnadzor, disclose their real identity and follow the same rules as journalists working in conventional state-registered mass media.

  The restrictions include the demand to verify information before publishing it and abstain from releasing reports containing slander, hate speech, extremist calls or other banned information such as, for example, advice on suicide. Also, the law bans popular bloggers from using obscene language, drawing heavy criticism and mockery from the online crowd.

So.., now you're not legally allowed to lie to a large number of people or incite violence based on those lies. Gee. That's bad how? Might be nice to have something like that in the West, because right now it's perfectly legal for FOX News to outright lie to their viewers.

Russia, like any large nation the US hates, (see Venezuela) must defend against the standard CIA tactics used to de-stabilize governments and population bases through grass roots propaganda tactics. Forcing creeps and liars out of the game seems like a pretty good way to do this. You don't want to be forced out? Then follow the law and back up your claims with fact checking verification of what you are writing, don't use hate speech and don't incite violence. How hard is that?

There's a reason you're not allowed to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater, and this falls neatly beneath the same rubric.

Honestly, think of the gossips and cruel kids in school spreading lies in deliberate attempts to undermine healthy energies. Putin has the guts to whip the carpet out from under such types.

So now, once you reach 3000 readers, the Russian government says you are a news source with real pull and must start acting in a manner befitting such responsibility. Is 3000 the right magic number to have picked? I don't know, but it makes perfect sense to draw a line somewhere.

Of course, any law can be abused, but right now I don't see this as an abuse. I see it as a sensible measure as Russia is under increasing media attack by a truly psychopathic nation whose leadership is completely disconnected from objective reality, has a tail-spinning economy and seemingly bottomless war lust. Of course you have to take measures to protect your populace from that kind of sickness.

But naturally, this proactive move is being spun with wicked and/or childish glee in the West (depending on whether you are CIA or just ignorant and easily led).