BlackBerry Service Dies for Millions Around the World (Updated) [BlackBerry]

By Sam Biddle Oct 10, 2011 9:30 AM 15,319 36

If you're RIM, the best way to endear yourself with customers of your lousy phones is to screw up their service around the world. So it's done just that, nuking BBM, email, and web access throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Carriers are all blaming a glitch on RIM's side, The Telegraph reports, possibly a data center collapse in Slough, UK. One Kuwaiti telecom tweeted the following: "BlackBerry Fans, the BlackBerry Server is temporarily down. It'll be up & running soon. We apologize on behalf of RIM for any inconvenience." How will we check the BlackBerry App World now? [Telegraph]

Update: RIM UK has finally acknowledged the outage, tweeting that they're "investigating" the blackout.

Update 2: English Giz reader Govi just emailed in the following:

BB has been down since around 10:15 am on my side. This morning at 9am I sent a friend a message I'm switching to an iphone, to which he replied ‘why would you do that'. I think RIM just answered his question.

Update 3: South African Gizmodo pal Alexis chimes in: "Yep South Africa has been out since this morning. Email is still working strangely enough, but no IM, or browsing."

Update 4: From London:

Yes my business partner and I both have Blackberry phones.
We run a small plumbing and heating company in South East London and are definitely affected!
I've got screaming customers trying to get hold of us and urgent jobs to attend to but without the service of our blackberry we are unable to get hold of each other. This is really frustrating and a nuisance to our business.

Are you a BlackBerry user affected by the outage? Send me an email!

Photo: DESmith Photography/Shutterstock

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U.S. Forest Service, Science Save Baseball Spectators from Broken Bat Schrapnel [Science]

When MLB spectator Susan Rhodes was struck by a broken bat at a Dodgers game in 2008, it broke her jaw and set off an investigation into the alarming number of bats (750 in 3 months) that shattered that season.

The investigation was headed up by the U.S. Forest service and cost a relatively cheap $500,000 to complete. The results, nevertheless, were pretty profound.

Two things were to blame for the brittle bats used in the 2008 MLB season: Maple wood and the cut of the grain. In previous seasons, ash was the preferred wood, and 2008 represented the year the MLB switched over to more maple than ash. Ironically, maple was selected over ash because it was deemed to be more durable.

As for the grain, the lines are supposed run along the shaft in a straight top to bottom fashion. When they don't the mistake is easily spotted and addressed—so long as the wood is ash. With maple the discrepancy is extremely hard to spot.

In the wake of the report, the MLB has required all maple bats include a black dot on the handle. The ink allows the manufacturer to see any grain discrepancies with the angle of the grain. In the 2009, the year the mandate took effect, broken bat incidents were down 30 percent, and have decreased each season to the present.

Now all they have to do is partner with someone who can help investigate why the games are so long and boring. [Discover]

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Watch Live: Blockbuster Streaming Service Brings More Movies than Netflix [Blockbuster]

Watch out Netflix, big blue's coming for you. Dish Network subscriptions are getting bundled up with a new service called Blockbuster Movie Pass, which includes Blockbuster's DVD-by-Mail and a new media streaming service. The bottom line? More titles than Netflix.

The combination satellite, mail, and streaming service is pretty massive: 100,000 DVDs by mail, 4,000 movies streaming by web, and 3,000 to your TV. In keeping with the old Blockbuster plans, you'll be able to exchange your movies in store and get access to 3,000 games by mail.

Adding the new streaming service will start $10 a month for existing Dish Network subscribers—expect to pay more if you want more than one DVD a month. New subscribers will get one year free if they subscribe before the end of January. What about the rest of us? Too bad! Blockbuster Movie Pass wiil be available only to Dish Network subscribers—at least for now.

Should Netflix be shaking in its boots? The $10 plan would be a no-brainer if I subscribed to cable or satellite. Netflix's combination DVD and streaming costs $16 per month and doesn't offer games, or in-store exchange, which I always thought was a convenient feature. Blockbuster says it has more than anyone else, but Netflix's streaming library of 20,000 titles will probably keep a lot of people hanging on—no matter how disaffected they are with Netflix after the company's recent missteps. [Dish Network]

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Twitter Debate: Is the Service a Soap Box or a Direct Line of Communication? [Twitter]

An insecure loser who was rejected by a Buddhist society and then used Twitter to stalk and harass its leader with more than 8,000 tweets has inadvertently started one of the more interesting social media debates in recent memory.

Mainly, was what William Lawrence Cassidy did when he sent those thousands of hateful, violent messages to Alyce Zeoli, a Buddhist leader based in Maryland the direct harassment of an individual, or was it a broadcast of protected free speech to an audience of Twitter users? Cassidy's messages began the moment Zeoli's organization discovered he was faking lung cancer and his "reincarnation" status in the Buddhist community. They promptly kicked him out of the group.

How the courts answer that question could be critical, as it represents an unexplored area of "Twitter speech."

As the New York Times notes, defamation suits involving Twitter or Facebook are not new, but in regards to this case prosecutors considered it cyberstalking (i.e., the distinction here is the tweets were directed at Zeoli, and were not about her in a public forum).

The outspoken EFF, no stranger to online debate, has already weighed in with support for Cassidy's right to free speech:

"While not all speech is protected by the First Amendment, the idea that the courts must police every inflammatory word spoken online not only chills freedom of speech but is unsupported by decades of First Amendment jurisprudence."

Regardless of the outcome, we do know for certain that Cassidy has no idea what a haiku is. One of his 8,000 hateful, threatening tweets reads, "Ya like haiku? Here's one for ya. Long limb, sharp saw, hard drop."

Indeed. [New York Times via Boing Boing]

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