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Rim/Blackberry tales – reply all

by cloudedcordial on 11/13/24, 3:18 AM with 79 comments

  • by 486sx33 on 11/14/24, 11:59 AM

    Some nice nostalgia for me

    -In high school we walked to that exact KFC for lunch and would discuss the previous nights antics playing StarCraft broodwar.

    -I used to fix computers (professionally) at a store on the same street as that gas station as an after high school job

    -In Dec/jan 2010 I worked 18 hours a day laying floors in the new RIM buildings at Philip/Colombia. A friend’s dad did a lot of the furniture moving. Both of us made over $4000 a week in our early 20s

    -Now out of those 4 buildings I think black berry only has two floors of one building

    -Waterloo has seen serious decline since the death of RIM

    -Not sure it will ever come back, most people including myself left years ago.

    -there has been a serious condo tower boom, but that sucks for “walkability” and it’s radically changed the area

    -if you attended university in Waterloo in the 2000s and lived off campus, wherever you lived is likely gone and there is a condo tower there now.

  • by easton on 11/19/24, 11:44 AM

    That random “J” at the end of the messages brings me back to mail circa 2010. As I recall, iOS also didn’t render Outlook’s smileys right, leaving a bunch of Js in mail from my Mom.

    (For the ones who ‘missed’ it: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060523-10/?p=31...)

  • by Lammy on 11/19/24, 7:30 PM

    > Blackberry at the time was kind of an “everything goes, whatever it takes” free for all. And this damn the torpedoes full steam ahead attitude was pervasive everywhere.

    > RIM Job

    I love that this was actually the URL for their careers page in this era: https://web.archive.org/web/20101122175558/http://rim.jobs/

  • by tgsovlerkhgsel on 11/19/24, 4:32 PM

    I don't know why these articles (and many comments here) always make it sound as if the people replying were idiots. For many, or I'd rather say most in this case, it's clear that they know exactly what they're doing - having some fun given the opportunity that presented itself.

  • by arjvik on 11/19/24, 12:30 PM

    Poor Sumit B. He never did anything - it was his manager!

  • by ano-ther on 11/19/24, 1:06 PM

    This happens often enough (even MS itself broke their internal Exchange servers).

    And every story seems to end with admins having to improvise. Am curious: (why) isn’t there a “kill reply-all chain” button as a feature?

    (The article explains that this didn’t work for RIM because of BB’s architecture, but for Exchange?)

  • by teddyh on 11/19/24, 1:01 PM

  • by lproven on 11/19/24, 11:00 AM

    The world needs a driving licence for email. It would mandatorily include use of plain-text and bottom-posting.

  • by chamanbuga on 11/19/24, 6:27 PM

    I vividly remember this incident and more like it. I was coached by my manager to never reply all to an email addressed to a larger distribution group because of this exact reason. Not only were you annoying people, but everyone's email ended up getting delayed for an hour or two.

    Can someone explain to me why the backlog would happen? Why they didn't have systems to protect from such a basic DOS attack?

  • by Daub on 11/20/24, 5:11 AM

    > Blackberry at the time was kindof of an “everything goes, whatever it takes” free for all. And this damn the torpedoes full steam ahead attitude was pervasive everywhere. Red tape and beuaracracy was loathed by everyone.

    Ironic as RIM became known for its cripplingly dense beuaracracy and red tape.

  • by setheron on 11/19/24, 7:18 PM

    Every company has lore like this; I remember when I joined Amazon hearing how someone would create SEV-1 tickets because their phone didn't work (Jeff B. would get personally paged for all SEV-1 at the time)

  • by shepting on 11/19/24, 8:39 PM

    I was working there that fall as one of my co-op work terms!

    I recall the onboarding tour around the testing rooms which were essentially giant Faraday cages. There was a print-out on the door exhorting employees to CLOSE THE DOOR! when you come or go. Apparently it was a semi-monthly occurrence where someone would accidentally leave the door propped open and the nightly tests on upcoming devices would make real 911 calls to the local dispatchers as the E2E tests on physical hardware were running.

  • by tverbeure on 11/19/24, 8:36 PM

    I love reply all events and have fond memories of the adventures of the Fluke Meter at GlobeSpan (long defunct.)

    It started when one good soul sent out a worldwide email asking "Who has the Fluke meter?" and after the first person replied "It's not here!", the rest of the world reacted in kind.

    It took about a day for the storm to die down.

  • by dmalik on 11/19/24, 2:17 PM

    Haha I was working there at the time. I don't remember how many emails came in but well over 100.

    Emails were so abused there though. I would get over 100 a day that were work related. Think Slack over email.

  • by brazzy on 11/20/24, 7:40 AM

    I once had that happen to me with spam. A spammer had set up full-fledged mailing list software to send spam. With the reply function active!

    I'm sure you can imagine the rest.

  • by minkeymaniac on 11/19/24, 1:26 PM

  • by hnthrowaway0328 on 11/19/24, 2:20 PM

    A few years ago we got the same thing: a guy sent a email to finance showing his bonuses and somehow sent it to everyone. Then everyone knows his bonus and salary.

  • by tbojanin on 11/19/24, 5:33 PM

    this is one of the funniest tech stories ive heard!