[morganplus8]

Looking at the chart I see two penises. My technical analysis is rusty, but I think this is good.

I can't believe I'm saying this but, you don't want an erect ***** as an investor, you want a flaccid ***** because that means you can look forward to an erect one later. An erect *****, like the ones in the chart were created with MM Viagra and they don't last long. Fortunately, when they collapse as often MM strategies do, they are replaced with real and meaningful erections that last, the kind you get from rum and whiskey. I hope this helps.

[Corbu]

Can someone with a subscription (mine expired) to WSJ copy this info about patent. Thanks
Rockstar Consortium to Sell 4,000 Patents to RPX Corp. for $900 Million - WSJ

There you go, Soumaila!

In yet another sign that the smartphone-patent wars are starting to cool, Apple Inc. and a handful of other big technology companies have agreed to sell the bulk of a jointly owned portfolio of telecommunications patent assets for $900 million, less than a quarter of the $4.5 billion they paid for the full portfolio four years ago.

Rockstar Consortium Inc., has agreed to sell more than 4,000 patents to San Francisco-based RPX Corp. , a patent clearinghouse that helps companies protect themselves from patent lawsuits.

The deal will put an end to several high-profile lawsuits filed by Rockstar against companies that make phones powered by the Android operating system.

The companies that make up Rockstar—Apple, Microsoft Corp. , BlackBerry Ltd. , Ericsson Inc., and Sony Corp. —won a bidding war with Google Inc. to purchase the full portfolio of about 6,000 patents in 2011 from the bankrupt Nortel Networks Inc. The companies tucked 4,000 patents into Rockstar, and distributed the remaining 2,000 patents among each other.

RPX, meanwhile, will turn around and license the patents to a separate syndicate of about 30 other technology companies that include Google and Cisco Systems Inc. Funds from the syndicate made up much of the $900 million paid for the patents.

“This is the biggest syndicate of its kind and its formation proves that companies can actually collaborate in…cooperative licensing at scale,” said John Amster, RPX’s chief executive, in a statement.

Mark Chandler , Cisco’s general counsel, called the deal “constructive for the entire industry.”

Added Erich Andersen, deputy general counsel at Microsoft: “We joined Rockstar to ensure that both Microsoft and our industry would have broad access to the Nortel patent portfolio, and we’re pleased to have accomplished that goal through this sale.”

Spokespeople for Apple, Google, Sony and Ericsson didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for BlackBerry declined to comment.

Rockstar was created in 2011 as a vehicle for its owners to reach licensing deals with other players in the telecom world.

But Rockstar’s efforts to license the patents didn’t go as well as initially planned. “I figured that given the price that parties were willing to pay for these patents, talks to license them would be much easier,” Rockstar Chief Executive John Veschi told The Wall Street Journal in a 2013 interview.

So Rockstar turned to the courtroom. Starting late last year, Rockstar sued several companies for allegedly infringing their patents, including Google and Cisco. Last month, Rockstar settled its suits against Google and Cisco. Financial details weren’t disclosed, but Cisco told investors in early November that it had recorded a pretax charge of $188 million to settle the Rockstar litigation.

As part of the deal with RPX, Rockstar will drop the remainder of its suits, which include claims against Samsung Electronics Co. , LG Electronics Inc., HTC Corp. and Huawei Technologies Co.

The settlements follow others in the long-running smartphone patent wars.

For instance, in May, Apple and Google agreed to drop all lawsuits between the two companies, and in August, Apple and Samsung agreed to end all litigation between the two companies outside the U.S. Apple and Samsung are still battling in federal court in California, where Apple has won two jury verdicts finding that Samsung infringed its designs for the iPhone.

Whether the Rockstar companies recouped its $4.5 billion investment is an open question. In the minds of some experts, the $4.5 billion figure reflected the high point of a frothy market that developed for patents in the earlier days of the smartphone industry.

The Rockstar companies squeezed more than three years of use out of the 4,000 patents, and will keep licenses going forward. The 2,000 patents they held back from Rockstar—and aren’t part of the sale to RPX—were among some of the most valuable in the Nortel portfolio.

Initially, the purchase of the 6,000 Nortel patents caused anxiety at the Justice Department. A chief concern was that Apple and Microsoft, which took ownership of many patents related to wireless standards, rather than leave them with Rockstar, would use the patents to quash competition.

The Justice Department ultimately blessed the deal in 2012 after getting concessions from the companies that they would agree to license the patents on “fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory” terms.

The deal represents a significant move for RPX, which has, since its founding in 2008, offered companies a way to cut back on their exposure to patent lawsuits, especially those bought by companies that profit from creations they themselves had no hand in creating, called “patent-assertion entities” or, less flatteringly, “trolls.”

RPX’s nearly 200 clients pay memberships that allow them access to any of RPX’s patents to defend themselves. As a matter of policy, RPX doesn’t use its patents to bring lawsuits.

Before the Rockstar deal, the publicly traded RPX had invested $890 million to acquire more than 4,900 patents.

[BACK-2-BLACK]

Can someone with a subscription (mine expired) to WSJ copy this info about patent. Thanks
Rockstar Consortium to Sell 4,000 Patents to RPX Corp. for $900 Million - WSJ

Hi Soumaila,

All you have to do is just copy and paste the WSJ Title into google and you will see many other sites posting the article where you can read it in full or copy to post here
Don't need a WSJ subscription. Works most of the time.

There is also a WSJ link that shows it in full !

http://www.wsj.com/articles/rockstar...ion-1419345685

[Corbu]

BBM Bundles, BES12 and Boeing: BlackBerry?s Big Week for Enterprises | Inside BlackBerry

[Corbu]

Speaking of the WSJ, Joanna Stern who never misses an opportunity to bash all things BlackBerry does a half decent job here, considering that Apple blood flows in her veins...

BlackBerry Classic Video Review

BlackBerry Classic Review: The Best BlackBerry Ever Made

It Has a Fantastic Physical Keyboard, Great Productivity Apps and Even a Trackpad

Nostalgia is a wonderful thing, transporting us in an instant to times long gone by. But, as the old joke goes, nostalgia just isn’t what it used to be.

BlackBerry began shipping the Classic last week, a smartphone that the company hopes will send us all the way back to the early 21st century, when keyboards had keys and apps were what you ordered at TGI Fridays.

The Classic is a throwback to everything that made a BlackBerry a BlackBerry. Instead of a big and awkward square-shaped design like the recent BlackBerry Passport, the Classic has the fantastic physical keyboard, the pleasantly nagging red notification light—and even a trackpad. And forget “Tiny Wings,” this baby has “Brick Breaker”!

The Classic—which currently costs $450 unlocked on Amazon, and will arrive at Verizon and AT&T in the new year—harks back to when smartphones were used primarily for email and other work. That’s great if you just want to get more done with a physical keyboard and powerful productivity apps, but frustrating if you want more. For anything beyond basic Web surfing—like Netflix, Google Maps, Uber, even airline apps like JetBlue—you’re better off with a more modern phone.

Time for a Comeback

For former BlackBerry users, the Classic will feel like reuniting with a long-lost friend. As I hopped on the train and quickly pulled the phone out of my pocket to write down a quick thought for an article, I imagined Etta James’s “At Last” playing in the background.

Unlike the BlackBerry Passport, the Classic is perfect for one-hand use. With a stainless steel frame and a soft plastic back, the 6.3-ounce phone feels heavy, but in a good way. And it feels more substantial than those delicate big-screen smartphones, like it won’t shatter after an accidental drop.

I have been searching for just the right words to profess my love to BlackBerry’s perfected physical keyboard for a decade. It’s hard to describe how my thumbs dance on the fantastically sculpted keys without having to look down at them, or how the metal frets give the perfect amount of spacing to the rows.

But I’m not unreasonably nostalgic. No other smartphone makers sell phones with actual plastic keys anymore. Software keyboards with auto correct and predictive text can do nearly everything real keys can, then vanish when they aren’t needed. Still, I remain optimistic that a few outliers like the Classic will survive long enough to see, at least, the next president.

Between the keyboard and screen, BlackBerry has resurrected the “belt” of navigation buttons—menu, back and call/hang-up, along with the mouselike trackpad.

BlackBerry could have used that space to make the screen bigger. The crisp 3.5-inch, 720 x 720-pixel touch screen is rather cramped. Yet I was surprisingly happy to see the return of the trackpad. It’s great for editing emails with more precision and selecting small links on Web pages.

BlackBerry may have fallen behind its competitors in mobile innovation over the past decade, but it still leads the pack in two mobile essentials: battery life and call quality.

Even on days of heavy use, I had 20% remaining before going to bed. I still do wish the Classic’s battery was removable (for swapping out or attempting the old-school reboot trick) and didn’t take so long to recharge.

And it’s the BlackBerry Classic—not my iPhone 6 or Moto X—that I reached for when I had to make an important phone call. Not only did the calls sound extremely clear, but people on the other end said I sounded like I was calling from a landline.

The Classic trumps the competition in software with its Hub feature, too. A quick gesture takes you to BlackBerry 10’s universal inbox from any screen, putting communications more readily front and center than other mobile operating systems.

Gone is the Web browser that caused misery to Bold and Curve users. It now loads full-size Web pages by default and does it extremely fast. The small screen means you have to do plenty of pinching and zooming, but at least it renders quickly.

The rest of this column could have been a list of reasons why the BlackBerry email and calendar still beat iOS and Android’s for me. In the interest of space, though, here are some favorites: There are far more email-formatting options, including font size and bulleted lists. You can view all the attachments in your inbox, and then easily edit them in Documents To Go. With one tap, you can turn an email chain into a calendar appointment.

BlackBerry is also quick to remind us that one of the Classic’s biggest advantages over the competition is enterprise security. The Classic has system-wide 256-bit AES encryption, and BlackBerry Messenger Protected and the BES email system have end-to-end encryption.

BlackBerry has updated its services to show it understands there’s a need among its users for certain popular features, like BBM video messaging (which includes a sticker store!) and a Siri-like personal assistant that can help send emails and look up popular restaurants. But the company also wants you to be able to keep that work and play separate: Balance puts a secure barrier between your work and personal content and apps.

Stuck in the Past

But while I’d love for all those great BlackBerry features to make a comeback, others simply feel out of date.

Calendar and email aside, other preloaded apps are slow and poorly designed. A Rand-McNally map from the gas station is likely more up-to-date—and speedier—than BlackBerry’s own maps app. Not only did it struggle to help me find the closest Starbucks in New York City, but it lacks typical features like transit directions and 3-D map options.

BlackBerry recommends dissatisfied users try third-party apps, like Waze or Navfree. But while BlackBerrys can run Android apps, the industry-leader Google Maps isn’t available for the platform.

That brings me to the terrible and confusing app situation. There are now two app stores preloaded on the Classic: Amazon’s App Store and BlackBerry World, which sounds like an amusement park I would have loved in 2008. While you can download Android apps from Amazon’s Store, many big ones are missing—not just the Google family of apps, but also Uber and Instagram.

You can ignore BlackBerry’s warnings and load other Android apps manually, but it takes work. Most apps lying around the Web are out of date or available on shady sites. And if you do find the most recent apps (or go through the annoying process of downloading them on another Android phone and then transferring them to the Classic), they may not resize well to fit the Classic’s square screen.

I did find and install a year-old version of Instagram. That meant no new filters. But filters can only help so much anyhow: The Classic’s 8-megapixel camera, while fine for basic outdoor or well-lit shots, can’t rival the newest Android and iPhones when it comes to picture quality and speed.

To top it off, I found many of those apps—and even the overall operating system—to be sluggish at times, taking too long to open an app or message.

Still, I believe the Classic is the best BlackBerry ever made. It lives up to every bit of the BlackBerry’s original purpose. This is the best phone to get if you need a real physical keyboard to plow through emails, manage your calendar, browse the Web…and not much else.

When you use it, you will feel like no time has passed at all. And that is, of course, its biggest shortcoming.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/blackber...6?mod=yahoo_hs

[BACK-2-BLACK]

Speaking of the WSJ, Joanna Stern who never misses an opportunity to bash all things BlackBerry does a half decent job here, considering that Apple blood flows in her veins...

BlackBerry Classic Video Review
BlackBerry Classic Review: The Best BlackBerry Ever Made - WSJ

Sorry, she still does a $hit job.

Can't believe WSJ publishes articles from a wannabe who writes an article full of sarcasm and irony.

I suppose the average WSJ reader wants comic relief the odd time... but ..... she is f'en annoying.

Next !

[morganplus8]

Sorry, she still does a $hit job.

Can't believe WSJ publishes articles from a wannabe who writes an article full of sarcasm and irony.

I suppose the average WSJ reader wants comic relief the odd time... but ..... she is f'en annoying.

Next !

The nostalgia is on her, I have been using Google Maps for a long time now. How do these people keep their jobs?

[bspence87]

Even with the low price that Rockstar sold their patents for, it should show well for BlackBerry. Sure, they might only receive $100million (hey, it doesn't hurt!), but that's for 4000 patents.

BlackBerry holds 44,000 patents (I think?). Some simple math values their patents at $11billion, or close to 22$ per share.

Posted via CB10

[jake simmons3]

Hey M-8 ,

Any thoughts on this Rockstar news

[FastLane228]

Good to see this thread still going strong, still long bbry

"Data" the new Greed

[kfh227]

Professionals will be on vacation till Jan 5. The markets won't move much.
Shorts will take bbry down on week of January 5th.
I'll be doing calls the first half of January when it gets below $10.



Posted via CB10

[3MIKE]

If it drops again I'll be much obliged to buy more ;-)

ZZ TOP10 Catch and release !!

[Soumaila Somtore]

So Professionals will go on vacation but not Shorts.

[morganplus8]

Hey M-8 ,

Any thoughts on this Rockstar news

Hi Jake!!!

To me the math is simple, they had $ 4.5 B in patents and they sold $ 900 M of them. What they'll do with the $ 3.6 B is yet to be decided. We know nothing more than some patents are worth billions (i.e. Sienna Wireless) and others not so much. My question is what is BlackBerry's own ECC encryption worth?

https://www.certicom.com/about

[randall2580]

The nostalgia is on her, I have been using Google Maps for a long time now. How do these people keep their jobs?

Those on BES servers managed by Admins are more than likely forbidden to use anything other than the preloaded app stores, even on the personal side of the phone - as I understand it. That would keep a fair amount of BlackBerry users away from apps like Snap etc.

We who own our own phones and manage them ourselves without BES, have a very different experience from those who are on BES.

[morganplus8]

Those on BES servers managed by Admins are more than likely forbidden to use anything other than the preloaded app stores, even on the personal side of the phone - as I understand it. That would keep a fair amount of BlackBerry users away from apps like Snap etc.

We who own our own phones and manage them ourselves without BES, have a very different experience from those who are on BES.

I'm suggesting she isn't on BES. I hate blanket statements like hers as they encompass casual/retail and business users alike and Google works extremely well on a BlackBerry. Point taken if she is on BES!!

[bspence87]

Hi Jake!!!

To me the math is simple, they had $ 4.5 B in patents and they sold $ 900 M of them. What they'll do with the $ 3.6 B is yet to be decided. We know nothing more than some patents are worth billions (i.e. Sienna Wireless) and others not so much. My question is what is BlackBerry's own ECC encryption worth?

https://www.certicom.com/about

I think I understand this differently than you. I read it as "Rockstar sold the entire patent portfolio, which they paid $4.5billion for, for $900million".

Posted via CB10

[morganplus8]

I think I understand this differently than you. I read it as "Rockstar sold the entire patent portfolio, which they paid $4.5billion for, for $900million".

Posted via CB10

They held onto 2,000 patents that are crucial to them, it is safe to say they paid $ 3.6 B to obtain the important patents and are now dumping the others. That's how I read it:

Rockstar Consortium Inc., has agreed to sell more than 4,000 patents to San Francisco-based RPX Corp. , a patent clearinghouse that helps companies protect themselves from patent lawsuits.

The deal will put an end to several high-profile lawsuits filed by Rockstar against companies that make phones powered by the Android operating system.

The companies that make up Rockstar—Apple, Microsoft Corp. , BlackBerry Ltd. , Ericsson Inc., and Sony Corp. —won a bidding war with Google Inc. to purchase the full portfolio of about 6,000 patents in 2011 from the bankrupt Nortel Networks Inc. The companies tucked 4,000 patents into Rockstar, and distributed the remaining 2,000 patents among each other.

[randall2580]

I'm suggesting she isn't on BES. I hate blanket statements like hers as they encompass casual/retail and business users alike and Google works extremely well on a BlackBerry. Point taken if she is on BES!!

And I am assuming that for a WSJ report - the reporter would consider the most likely use case.

Now I know that isn't a good assumption and most of these folks don't do their homework and they've long ago lost the benefit of the doubt.

It occurred to me so I assumed it would occur to them but I know what happens when we assume...

[BACK-2-BLACK]

Those on BES servers managed by Admins are more than likely forbidden to use anything other than the preloaded app stores, even on the personal side of the phone - as I understand it. That would keep a fair amount of BlackBerry users away from apps like Snap etc.

We who own our own phones and manage them ourselves without BES, have a very different experience from those who are on BES.

I highly doubt her BB articles are from a BES perspective.

It is her delivery. No value add in all the fluff she fills her articles with.

You can list the positives and negatives in a device review and be a lot more effective.

She "tries" to draw to correlations between the past and BlackBerry (even with her Passport review) ..... but the only thing that seems dated is her writing style.

Someone needs to tell her to stop writing articles as if she was a character on Jerry Seinfeld...... we are in 2014.....cause we all know that style of humour/commentary is....well.... outdated.

[bbjdog]

I highly doubt her BB articles are from a BES perspective.

It is her delivery. No value add in all the fluff she fills her articles with.

You can list the positives and negatives in a device review and be a lot more effective.

She "tries" to draw to correlations between the past and BlackBerry (even with her Passport review) ..... but the only thing that seems dated is her writing style.

Someone needs to tell her to stop writing articles as if she was a character on Jerry Seinfeld...... we are in 2014.....cause we all know that style of humour/commentary is....well.... outdated.

You just made my day! Especially with the last paragraph.


Posted using my Z10 or BlackBerry passport.

[bbjdog]

OT:

BlackBerry needs to feed the Amazon channel better ( in reference to BlackBerry Classic) . Now I'm being a Armchair quarterback.

Posted using my Z10 or BlackBerry passport.

[kfh227]

So Professionals will go on vacation but not Shorts.

One in the same.

Market volumes always tank xmas-new years. And prices move less.

Wall street is largely on vacation and those are the market manipulating this, both long and short.


Posted via CB10

[dusdal]

Even with the low price that Rockstar sold their patents for, it should show well for BlackBerry. Sure, they might only receive $100million (hey, it doesn't hurt!), but that's for 4000 patents.

BlackBerry holds 44,000 patents (I think?). Some simple math values their patents at $11billion, or close to 22$ per share.

Posted via CB10

1.1 B

Posted via CB10

[Bacon Munchers]

BlackBerry Rio 'Z20' First Look | N4BB

Im a little confused at this smart phone ? is this not basically a z30?

No. Different radios (for different providers), less expensive parts, and most likely, the entrails of the previous flagship versions.

Example: This 'Rio' will most likely use surplus parts from the previous flagship (Z30), to mitigate inventory that requires fulfillment from licensed manufacturers like Winstron, Foxconn, etc.

All in all, a very clever maneuver from BlackBerry, although somewhat industry standard.