Read the BlackBerry blog and you will see some of the specific use-cases they considered. Would it be my choice? No, but I do see the point.

I learnt to program on an Prime 750. My Polytechnic bought it in 1982 to replace their old Univac.

Not as I understand it, it makes it more of a priority,

I just want Slashdot summaries to be at least vaguely accurate.

This one is about as accurate as an NSA report to Congress.

Miranda's property was seized not destroyed. And he wants it back.

All phone manufacturers and ISPs have to follow the laws of their host country. For that reason BlackBerry was required to hand over access to BIS encrypted traffic.

However, BlackBerry's BES (business) security was not affected. Each enterprise keeps its own keys, not BlackBerry. There was nothing to hand over to the government. The government would have to go to each business individually and demand the keys.

Actually, no you probably can't, at least not to the level and granularity of BB.

And side-loading is a serious issue for some businesses.

I fear that BlackBerrry's problem is that the size of the market for their USPs is pretty narrow.
They are still way best in class, but that class is small.

If you're managing large numbers of mobile devices then you also want to manage app versions, manage upgrades, and as far as possible protect you business info from user installed apps.

For all of it's faults, BlackBerry does all of that very well.

Is it enough? Only time will tell, but I wouldn't write them off yet.

Get the Facts guys...

Yes it is important that the candidate can program and can problem solve, but its not often that individuals analyze, design, code, and test an application, you work as part of a big team.

Further, a team of egotistical coding superstars is never going to be an effective team. Dull plodders who have an attention to detail are as important as the superstar programmer. You have to have a mix.

So yes, there may be a place for coding challenges, but a good coder is not necessarily a good analyst, a good tester, or a good integration guy.

And given the above, the only tests I'd want to see are those conducted at the company where you can ask "Why that way? Why not this way? What if I needed these changes now? How would you scale that idea? How could you best document that for the testers? How could you make that easier to integrate with this?". It would be difficult to get any of that out of a coding challenge.

BlackBerry support QT4.8, and 5.0 can be compiled. Digia (who now own QT) have ported it to Android and IOS, with Win8 on the horizon.

Finally, portable C++ apps.

And if you prefer something standards-compliant, you can code in HTML5 and embed that as an app.

Btw if you you do create web apps, BlackBerry own and develop the Ripple emulator.

What's not to like?

It's undoubtedly true that there are niche markets for tablets, and I suspect that's what he was trying to say.

Five years is a very long time in computing, and clunky tablets look to have the shelf-life of DVD players (if not Blue-Ray).

If wearable development continues as it is, big gray bricks don't have much of a future at all, they are a transition technology. Specific niche markets: health-care, and some forms of education, yes. General purpose devices? Probably not.

Since they were/are prepared to do business in other dictatorships, I wonder what the real reason is?

Don't make the mistake that VR has to be wholly immersive to work.

Add horns to the tops of people's heads.

Analyze body shape based on the clothes and then re-draw without them.

Color the sky polkadot.

Play Where's Wally? in VR,

Have an animated Mitt Romney stalk women in your line of sight.

No end to the apps once you have fast/live pattern recognition.
There may even be really useful things to do with Glass, you never know.