Unless you don't hear or read any news at all, you've heard about the lawsuit between Research in Motion (RIM), better known as the maker of the Blackberry, and NTP (which you probably never heard of).

NTP is suing RIM for infringing its patents (an all-too frequent computer company situation it seems), but this time the suit has a very real effect.  Unless the companies can come to an agreement, non-government Blackberry use will be forced to shut down (unless RIM develops a work-around -- and pretty darn quick).

U.S. District Court Judge James Spender has stated that there is "no escaping that RIM has been found to be infringing NTP's patents," but he has yet to issue a decision in this case.  The net effect that Blackberry users are in a netherworld until then, and anyone considering the buying a Blackberry as a mobile phone/PDA, is in limbo.

Having been in that latter situation myself very recently, I was forced to make a tough decision. More on that sometime soon ...