RIM Crippling BlackBerry Bluetooth Speed? 96
Alex King writes " I organized a bounty for the creation of a 'BlackBerry as a modem' solution for Mac OS X earlier this year. The resulting product — Pulse, from Brain Murmurs — allows you to use your BlackBerry as a standard Bluetooth modem. It works great on both Windows and Mac. Current problem: The Pulse solution doesn't run as fast as it used to. Brain Murmurs did a bunch of testing and working with their users and found the problem: RIM has crippled the Bluetooth speeds in recent OS upgrades. Is this a 'mistake' on RIM's side that will be fixed? Or did they do this on purpose for some reason?"
Perhaps ask RIM what the problem is? (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess the point of the blog (and the trollish
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Maybe the author of the blog should have considered asking RIM what the problem is?
I agree.
I don't see how anyone here on Slashdot, short of being an employee of RIM, will be able to answer your question without pulling wild speculation out of their ass.
Re:Perhaps ask RIM what the problem is? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Perhaps ask RIM what the problem is? (Score:4, Funny)
Goatse is how the wild speculation gets in our asses to begin with.
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I don't work at RIM but I can tell you from the vast depths of my own experience as a coder -- if some code has changed, it was probably intentional. Coders are lazy (therefore opposed to making unplanned deliberate changes) and we also have the cushiest jobs in the universe (apart from Wil Wheaton's sideline gig at SG [suicidegirls.com] -- the lucky bastard!!!). Al
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I bet some of the Japan Slashdot stuff, if translated to eigo-wa, would be esoteric, but interesting. Hey, Slash, how's about it? I'm a Japanophile with very inferior Nihongo skills. But, I'd LOVE to read the local J-Slash pages. That might be more fruitful for som
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Re:Perhaps ask RIM what the problem is? (Score:5, Funny)
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Too easy (Score:2)
obligatory (Score:2)
Why not open source the software? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Sounds to me like these people were gullible and/or stupid and are blaming someone else for being so utterly naive as to automatically assume that any project with volunteer contributors is open-source.
Re:Why not open source the software? (Score:4, Informative)
It was a pretty small bounty -- $675 -- and I think he lays out his reasoning quite cogently in this blog post [alexking.org].
If you dont want the ArrogantMurmur... (Score:1)
Script for the 8100 [fibble.org]
If you're stuck with an 8700 and in legal reach of this guy, read on.
It might be more than just a pppd that is aware to bluetooth connections, but that'd be the general direction to look when cutting this guy at the pass. Dont worry, he'll be humbled when there's someone that does it without the Ivory Tower mindset. There was some talk about porting existing stuff from some linux app to OS X, IIRC.
As for the other posts before me in this thread, Alexki
Having worked on a BT product I agree (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Having worked on a BT product I agree (Score:5, Interesting)
So, I would not be surprised if the operators demanded the feature and the feature got rolled out quietly. In other words, I would not be surprised if there is a communist hidden in the Bush.
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Can't we have a single discussion on
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Why? So they can get a form response telling them to reinstall their drivers and upgrade to the latest firmware (even though that caused the problem).
Have you ever tried to get through a support channel to tell a vendor about an actual flaw in their product? Most of the time, the first tier support guys don't listen to you at all and try to get rid of you as quickly as possible. If you do get someone who has any skill or k
This is a problem for... (Score:5, Funny)
Other Bluetooth speed anomalies. (Score:3, Interesting)
Yet over Bluetooth network access profile, I can only get around 300kbit/sec. Both devices are Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, and I'm using the Widcomm Bluetooth stack that came with the laptop. The network devices claims a connection at 700kbit/sec, and the theoretical maximum of 2.0+EDR is 2.1MBit/sec IIRC.
Any ideas?
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"Back off buddy! This bandwidth ain't big enough for the both of us!"
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What BT speeds can you get with other devices similarly situated?
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His laptop has Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, but his phone does not have EDR (just Bluetooth 2.0). Seems like my devices don't want to use EDR for some reason.
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How should I know? (Score:2)
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Why on earth would RIM want you to do this? (Score:2, Insightful)
You get what you pay for. Usually.
Re:Why on earth would RIM want you to do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
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GSM is derived somewhat from TDMA - Time Division Multiple Access
Even *I* know this.
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Wow.. this is so wrong:
As other replies have ment
No, fact check. (Score:5, Interesting)
If the cellular company didn't want you doing that, they could certainly ratelimit you, but generally most people using smartphones have an unlimited-data plan, which would let them use a PC Card-style GSM modem or other type of phone to push as many packets as they wanted. The cellular infrastructure is designed to give data service a lower priority than voice calls, and it's all designed with QoS in mind -- this isn't like your neighborhood cable modem setup. I know that T-Mobile doesn't mind if you use full-speed Internet access on your EDGE device; that's included in the $30/mo extra you pay for data access. (I assume if you were really abusive in some way, they might cut you off, but that's not the issue here.)
I think that this guy should send a polite letter to RIM asking what the deal is. I don't get if it's an all-over Blackberry issue, or a PC/Mac one, where PC users can do this modem thing at full speed, and Mac users get a reduced rate. If that's the case, then it's fairly odd. But more likely, I tend to wonder if they didn't just drop the rate on the BT connection because they never figured that anybody would be doing anything with it other than using BT headsets and syncing data with their desktop computer from time to time. Maybe the lower connection prevents packet loss in other circumstances. At any rate, it seems odd for them to crap so obviously over a feature, particularly one that some of their competitors' products offer.
IP over RF always limits bandwidth (Score:5, Insightful)
The crux of the problem is that no RF system that has been deployed has enough bandwidth to supply 'broadbad' like connectivity to very many people at the same time. So the early adopters get it good, tell their friends and watch it all turn to crap. Unless we see microcells on every lamppost we aren't likely to ever solve the problem either. And no amount of marketing promises can change it, you can't repeal the laws of physics.
Cable modems had exactly the same problem of a shared resource quickly becoming overused. The cable industry could solve it by breaking up their originally simplistic network into lots of small segments because they could string FIBER to backhaul all of the neighborhood networks. Unless the wireless companies want to do likewise they are never going to be a player in the broadband game as anything other than a niche product priced high (billed by the bit) enough to limit usage to the available spectrum.
Re:IP over RF always limits bandwidth (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sitting here with my computer 20 feet from my 802.11g hub, getting an alleged 80% signal and 54mbps connection. Yet lo and behold, when I actually transfer data to my server (hooked to the hub over 100m ethernet), I get more like 10 megabits per second instead of 50. Unless there's some malicious program on the hub (!), wireless sucks compared to wired for speed.
Huh? (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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The solution here is to not let your 10 year old son play with your Blackberry. You don't leave your double-edged razor blades out too, do you?
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A phone is not a razor blade, grenade or flame thrower. I let my kids play with my phone (when locked), the remote, the mouse and keyboard on the computer (with Toddlerkeys [ms11.net] enabled). They see their parents hitting buttons and doing things and they want to emulate us to some extent and see what the big deal is about and their curiosity sho
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If you yourself find it hard to avoid calling 911, your 2 or 10 year old will do better? If your kidd is calling 911 5 and 10 times fiddling with your phone, they should give you a big fat ticket for letting him / her. I mean, come on.
Re:Oh stop it. (Score:4, Funny)
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How is having a phone, unlocked or otherwise, going to prevent an assault? Do police respond instantly in your neighborhood? They don't in mine. Five to ten minutes is about average.
The woman in the parking lot would be better served by pulling out her .38 revolver than her cell phone.
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As a slashdotter you should understand, its a common trait among geeks, that they retain some of the innate curiorisity that defines a 2 years old's life.
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Asking for permission first isn't exactly what I would call a common trait amongst the hackers I know (nascent or wizened).
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So stick it to the lousy parent! How dare he wish he could just leave his Blackberry on the coffee table without worrying about his two year old (they still explore the world with their mouths, btw) trying to get his hands on that nifty toy Daddy always plays with and accidentally calling 911. Daddy needs to wire that Blackberry with high voltag
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I have a three year old and a one year old. My wife and I solve the problem of them dialing random numbers or misusing the phone by...not letting them play with them.
This isn't rocket science, and casting it as some sort of inevitable that kids will play with cell phones is the worst sort of lame me-no-blame cop out (and it's truly scary -- ther
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Serious answer: Put it in Standby (Score:2)
The BlackBerry 8100 "Pearl" has a standby mode. Instead of holding down "*" to look the keyboard, like you did with earlier BlackBerry models, hold down the mute button, which is a small silver button on the top of the phone. This will put the phone into Standby, which is a low-power mode where the screen is black and no buttons function o
Customers will have no say in this (Score:2)
Which is why I decided to forego the blackberry and get a Treo.
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Blame not on malice... (Score:2)
I don;t think the company delibrately did it. What do they have to gain from it?
Must have been a f*ck up somewhere in developing the stuff.
Thats just silly (Score:2, Interesting)
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Your crap about modulation modes is irrelevant; after an 'upgrade' to the blackberry software suddenly the throughput through the stack is a lot less. The fact that there are a limited quanta of symbol rates over the air does not preclude limiting application layer performance through a variety of means, intenti
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It would be incredibly trivial to rate-limit Bluetooth 2.0, just as you can rate-limit any other networking stack - you just feed the packets to it more slowly.
In other news, Nextel acquitted... (Score:3, Funny)
Nextel was over more than happy with this ruling and stated they will continue to not offer many other services.
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...or use for example Nokia E61 that works OOTB? (Score:1)
Beaten Black and Blue (Score:2, Funny)
RIM cripples blog (Score:2)
Bluetooth (Score:1)
I doubt it (Score:2)
The Pearl, however (and most likely the not-yet-released 8800) *does* support this, and it does it with the standard Bluetooth profile for doing this sort of thing - no hack required. I regularly connect my laptop through my Pearl over Bluetooth, and it works beautifully in both OS X and Windows. It's not very speedy, but I do get 10-15k/