BBC Shuts Down Internal BlackBerry Service 123
sebFlyte writes "Silicon.com is running a story on a little problem the BBC is having with their email. Apparently, the BBC has suspended service to all its executives BlackBerrys, because the server software was randomly sending chunks of messages to arbitrary users, thus showing execs each others emails. Not what you want from your remote-working solution, really."
News Flash! (??) (Score:4, Funny)
SLASHDOT, FRONT PAGE! RUN IT!
What? The bug was fixed in a later version?
It's a slow news day. RUN IT!
Re:News Flash! (??) (Score:2, Funny)
AND, we didn't even charge you for it.
Re:News Flash! (??) (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe it's not the actual incident... (Score:2)
Personally I think that's a little slice of chaos I've been wondering how long it would take to happen.
Hey... be fair to the editors... (Score:2)
Re:News Flash! (??) (Score:2)
OT: The BlackBerry fragment send was a bug and IT people should have upgraded their servers when it came out, unless this is a new bug that sendsout fragments. In any case, I don't think any executive is worries as they never know how to use anything by PowerPoint and probably send presentations to each other instead of emails.
askdfj asdfj bork bork (Score:4, Funny)
skjf salkdfj skldfjkljsdnfjsndf
------------------------
Sent from my handheld Blackberry.
Re:askdfj asdfj bork bork (Score:5, Funny)
Sent from my Newton.
Re:askdfj asdfj bork bork (Score:1)
Re:askdfj asdfj bork bork (Score:2)
Re:askdfj asdfj bork bork (Score:1)
Re:askdfj asdfj bork bork (Score:2)
You don't? (Score:4, Funny)
Oh wait, you mean when the execs say something like, "Yeah, that Bob from Accouting. What a tightwad. I'm pretty sure if he bent over the board in his ass would snap."
Never mind. Now I understand.
Re:You don't? (Score:5, Funny)
I say the BBC should sit tight and let this progress on its own. It could totally reinvent they way they operate. Hell, just institute a email policy that randomly emails everyting to anyone in the organization. Google probably already has a patent on this.
Re:You don't? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You don't? (Score:2)
If this keeps up, the left hand will find out what the right hand has been up to.
Serves them right (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Serves them right (Score:4, Insightful)
Odd... my blackberry has a nice color screen and downloadable applications such as instant messaging and games. If you're gonna complain about a product, try not picking one from the past.
I'm waiting for your rants on Windows 95 not working with your DV cam in the next Windows Vista story.
Re:Serves them right (Score:2)
What a nutjob.
Re:Serves them right (Score:1)
-A
Re:Serves them right (Score:1)
Re:Serves them right (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Serves them right (Score:1, Interesting)
They've always had a funny "not invented here" approach which means that systems are often quite strange and non standard. I expect this email problem happened was because they insisted they do it their own way not how everyone else does it. That has been their downfall many times.
Nothing wrong with inventing new solutions, but BBC T (or certain parts of it) insists on re-inventing the wheel for every project!
Open source? (Score:1)
Methinks it would help jumpstart collaboration-ware
I guess that explains the message from my boss... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I guess that explains the message from my boss. (Score:5, Funny)
Kierthos
Re:I guess that explains the message from my boss. (Score:3, Funny)
You're posting on slashdot. Male is the default setting.
Re:I guess that explains the message from my boss. (Score:1)
Hmm... (Score:4, Funny)
Chunks? (Score:4, Funny)
A good little reminder (Score:5, Insightful)
Talking about confidential matters is what encryption and the telephone or face to face conversation is for. And if you have a "party-line" the telephone won't work either.
Re:A good little reminder (Score:1)
> you're talking about.
And if anyone suggests you use any sort of online service where your data lives on someone elses server try not to laugh as you turn them down.
Re:A good little reminder (Score:1)
Never commit to permanent record (such as email, blog, forum, possibly phone conversation) anything that you wouldn't want to have to explain to a judge in open court, have reported in the news media and have your mother watch/read.
Welcome to the real world. It sucks, and it's only paranoia if they aren't out to get you.
Oooh i can imagine (Score:4, Funny)
Hilarity ensues
BOFH at large? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Oooh i can imagine (Score:1)
(That's all I got)
Memo (Score:5, Informative)
Service Pack 3 for BlackBerry Enterprise Server v4.0 for Microsoft Exchange is now available for download.
Please visit http://www.blackberry.com/support/downloads/index
Thank you,
BlackBerry Software Releases
Research In Motion Limited
Telephone: 1-877-255-2377 | (+1) 519-888-6181
Email: help@blackberry.net
Web: http://www.blackberry.com/ [blackberry.com]
Re:Memo (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Memo (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, they did, they applied the service pack.
*Now* they have the bug.
Nope. (Score:4, Informative)
The company said in a statement: "RIM has developed and tested a fix for an obscure bug identified in a specific service pack release for BlackBerry Enterprise Server. The bug was isolated to version 4.02 and does not exist in version 4.03 or other earlier versions. RIM is aware of a single reported incident of the bug and responded promptly with a fix."
Re:Nope. (Score:2)
indicators in the message, but I did it XML format,
and they apparently got stripped.
Re:Nope. (Score:1)
Seems someone didn't use the preview function.
</oops!>
The magic codes are & lt; and & gt;
Remove the spaces and all will be well.
Re:Nope. (Score:2)
And, yes, I did not preview.
Silly me.
Thanks
Re:Nope. (Score:2, Informative)
Each service pack install in the 3.6 server was hilarious. After you had the server up and running for awhile, you would notice tons
Ooops (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ooops (Score:4, Informative)
I worked on a wireless email system once upon a time. Used CDO to talk to Exchange.
Found out that sometimes the CDO object that represented a logged on user would
lose it's mind and start thinking it was a different logged on user. Had to add
in code to keep who that CDO object thought it was representing, and check it each
time we brought it out to use it. Retire it, create a new one if it was different.
Course, we caught it in testing, not in the field, lucky us.
RIM's stock halted...down $5 on TSX (Score:1)
Re:RIM's stock halted...down $5 on TSX (Score:2)
Considering that the problem here was already fixed with a patch and is only local to an older version 4.02 of the BES, I think they have good reason to halt trading until the BS clears.
Re:RIM's stock halted...down $5 on TSX (Score:4, Informative)
Re:RIM Is Done (Score:2)
I think they'll be able to handle it, though. We'll see how it plays out.
Re:RIM Is Done (Score:3, Informative)
I can see RIM filing for some kind of bankruptcy protection and the judge recognizing the installed base as a special class and ongoing operations being important, and fixing the situation financially such that NTP gets some of the money they're looking for and RIM continuing as an ongoing entity.
Worse for NTP could be a judge saying "OK, you win the company instead" and they're forced
Re:RIM Is Done (Score:2)
Once again I ask myself, "How did I not see that Microsoft is behind this?"
Re:RIM Is Done (Score:2)
I but I don't think NTP really wants to run RIM, even if they could, and they surely don't want to own RIM short of milking the cash out of it.
Which is maybe an option -- suck out the cash and then let it collapse.
Re:RIM Is Done (Score:1)
Good news for RIM, certainly not. But I wouldn't write them off yet especially since there is the question of a settlement that was reached months ago that could be enforced as well.
Leave it to the Beeb (Score:4, Interesting)
Follow the link in TFA that goes to the BBC's limiting employees to the use of PocketPC2002. Pretty funny stuff there:
"An internal email from the company's technology division stated all PDA platforms other than PocketPC are insecure - which will prevent anybody operating a Palm or Psion handheld device from using their PDA at work."
Which impies that the Beeb's tech division believes PocketPC to be secure. If we've learned anything over the decades, no system is secure.
The email said reasons of security and unusually, the "exposure to users of health and safety risks" left the company with no other choice but the PocketPC platform.
Health and safety risks for not using PocketPC? What, like Palm caused PDAs to emit toxins or explode in 2002?
Re:Leave it to the Beeb (Score:2)
The BBC run one of the most advanced networks in the world. It's been covered on Slashdot before. Granted they have different depts and I doubt this gaff was done by the same people.
Which impies that the Beeb's tech division believes PocketPC to be secure.
No, they probably believe that it's the most secure. And as it works with SSL out of the box and there are no known viruses on the platform. Those two things are right at the top on m
Re:Leave it to the Beeb (Score:2)
"Mind you, my tinfoil hat is whispering in my ear that they were likely all PR stunts anyway!
That's not a tinfoil hat... that's just well-founded cynicism. And if you think your TFH is whispering in your ear, obviously it has holes in it and is letting the m
Might could use it as an excuse (Score:1)
It was just the email system malfunctioning!
I swear!
An example (Score:2, Funny)
It has come to my attention th
hould have seen the size of her knoc
uments have been shredded ahead of the auditor's vis
s the biggest assh
unch on Friday?
Sincerely,
Dave
Slashdot - Recent Intelligence Solutions for Nerds (Score:3, Funny)
It's sad to see marketing -speak cross over from the boardroom to Slashdot articles and posts. Seriously, there's more marketing jargon in some threads than a stack of press releases from a soon-to-be-bankrupt 1999 dot-com.
If you'll excuse me, I have to use the solid biological waste transport solution for something that's robust, scalable and end-to-end.
Re:Slashdot - Recent Intelligence Solutions for Ne (Score:1)
Office politics primer (Score:1)
be careful your e-mail (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know about today, but I can relate my experience.
I once was part of an e-mail group and was assigned the task of writing a pseudo-mime interface into our smtp allowing transfer of binary information. (This was pre-mime.)
I would amass large test streams of e-mails and data for testing. And while I did strive for discretion, invariably I got a peek here and there of the e-mail messages. I had to assert complete conversion in and out of binary form with no changes to the originals. I did do this mostly with diff scripting, but for sanity checks would read text to ensure that the starting point of my work looked reasonable and uncorrupted.
I wasn't surprised to see very personal messages exchanged, but what surprised me most was the blatant conducting of what were clearly illicit affairs via e-mail! And, how many times I saw those kinds of messages!
I never associated message text with address info, so it was anonymous voyeurism, but I must say I was shocked.
Word to the wise, never conduct any transactions or conversations via e-mail you wouldn't mind showing up in some blog, or bulletin, etc. I suspect the level of monitoring of e-mail is even more prevalent today than the day I was doing that work.
That 'll learn 'm (Score:2)
Re:That 'll learn 'm (Score:2)
Hate to break it to ya, sunshine, but the BES, which I'm assuming BBC to have been using, is a big, bloated, memory hog, daily recycle requiring, Java application.
Re:That 'll learn 'm (Score:2)
BES is absolute crap (as opposed to the handhelds, which are excellent), but I finally got ours in a state where the server doesn't need to be restarted every day:
- Make sure Outlook is not installed on the server.
- Make sure the Exchange 2003 System Manager *is* installed, patched to SP1.
- Patch or upgrade to the latest version of BES (4.0.2 hotfix 2 before I went on vacation - the h
Re:That 'll learn 'm (Score:1)
Re:That 'll learn 'm (Score:2)
"Neither the original message or the appended partial message were ever exposed outside the company's firewall and the bug did not generate any external risk. Customers using v4.02 may obtain this fix from RIM or install v4.03."
Source:
http://www.vnunet [vnunet.com]
(no subject) (Score:3, Funny)
rimshot (Score:2)
Re:(no subject) (Score:2)
The whole industry is perverted!
I'll sue their asses (Score:2)
Serves them right (Score:5, Insightful)
The BBC IT seem to have a very peculiar notion of security, anyway. Witness the quote from TFA: The issue of risk has figured large in [the BBC's] PDA strategy. In 2002, the BBC banned any of its staff from using devices not based on a Microsoft operating system.. So they enforce use of MS to reduce risk? Errr...
This quote points to another Silicon.com article from 2002 saying, "We believe PocketPC includes all functionality and is one the most secure platforms available."
Which, to say the least, is a strong statement in light of the multiple vulnerabilities affecting MS products. The functionality issue is certainly defensible, but as for security, I have a doubt.
Re:Serves them right (Score:2)
Earlier this year a fellow in our local linux/unix users group told a funny story of how MS Word docs had just been banned in email where he worked.
It seems a VP had sent around a message that naturally everyone wanted to read, and it was a Word doc. The recipients on unix-like systems often didn't have anything that could decode it, and a lot of them just
Re:Serves them right (Score:2)
BOFH? (Score:2)
Re:BOFH? (Score:2)
Re:BOFH? (Score:1)
BBC (Score:1)
Having it's technological backbone whipped out (outsourced to Siemens I think) may have left the animal nothing more than a jelly.
The BBC generally runs pro big business and pro establishment these days and has a slight touch of 'community pamphlet' about it.
Still it's early days for its new management, and I'm hopeful but nevertheless s
Outlook has its quirks too (Score:2)
Solution involved rebooting every desktop in the enterprise. Not a joke, sadly.
What is the big appeal of blackberry? (Score:2)
Re:What is the big appeal of blackberry? (Score:3, Informative)
The major advantage of Blackberry and other "push" mail solutions is the email will appear on the Blackberry as soon as it is pushed to the unit, as opposed to the unit checking the mailbox every X minutes.
The Blackberry server software is designed to work with Exchange. There are simpler solutions if you only have POP3 mail.
When Exchange recieves a mail, it pas
slightly off topic, but scary (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:slightly off topic, but scary (Score:2)
This is rather disturbing, and I can't really see any reason for it. Sure I can always just give myself access to their Exchange Mailbox, but still... disturbing.
I suppose the presumption is that if you have the necessary admin privileges to install the service pack, you could do whatever you damn well pleased with the machine (and the data passing through it) anyway.
Re:slightly off topic, but scary (Score:2)
Anyway, I understood the server does automatic backups as well, browsing through their rather nice but sparse information sources.
Re:slightly off topic, but scary (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:slightly off topic, but scary (Score:2)
Re:slightly off topic, but scary (Score:1)
Re:slightly off topic, but scary (Score:2)
The sooner RIM collapses, the better (Score:4, Interesting)
The I.T. world would be a better place if RIM were to collapse, taking their ugly BES with them. What we need is a BlackBerry-like device, with its own TCP stack, a very simple gateway server, using only open protocols (web services would be a really realy good thing, for example). This will not happen as long as RIM is runnign things. The BES is a cash cow for them... a single BES user licenses costs almost as much as the blackberry device itself (with the profit margin on a license being 99%).
Re:The sooner RIM collapses, the better (Score:2)
Re:The sooner RIM collapses, the better (Score:3, Informative)
The includded VersaMail is usable but SnapperMail is somewhat more robust ($60) if uglier.
Re:The sooner RIM collapses, the better (Score:2)
My problems with the BES have nothing to do with admining, although I am deeply unimpressed by the BES admin system, which I unfortunately have a lot of experience with. I'm a developer. My problem is that the BES is a fundamentally flawed piece of technology. Built on a shaky foundation (it's basically a messaging system, with the network routing for J2ME applications patched on top)... and it's so deeply interwoven with
...sent from my blackberry (Score:2, Funny)
In soviet russia
4. Profit!
welcome our new blackberry overlords
------------
This message sent from my wireless blackberry
Does not play dice with, but may fuck with (Score:2)
Random is a state of mind: "God does not play dice with the universe."
One simply doesn't have the necessary information, that's all. Understandably -- many things, to know how they work, you have to read the quantum states of so many elementary particles, it'd make your head spin (and not in a good w
Re:Does not play dice with, but may fuck with (Score:2)
I would remind you of Stephen Hawking's rejoinder to that famous quip by Einstein:
God not only plays dice with the universe; he throws them where they can't be seen.
This is quite germane to the topic at hand: The blackberries' BES server is proprietary software on top of a proprietary MS system. Lots of dice being thrown there every second, and you have no way of seeing a lot of them. The behavior probably isn't random, but as a mere user, that's the sort of beha
life in a dicey universe (Score:2)
This is quite germane to the topic at hand: The blackberries' BES server is proprietary software on top of a proprietary MS system. Lots of dice being thrown there every second, and you have no way of seeing a lot of them.
Right on, this is what I'm talking about. There's usually more going on, about which we have few if any details, but maybe one or two good reasons to be concerned that the