The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street: Feb. 15

4. Research In Motion Sickness

In the digital communications age, news gets old quick, especially when you're the CEO of a leading mobile communications provider that just had a network breakdown in North America.

Research In Motion (RIMM Quote) admitted this week that it suffered a three-hour network disruption in its BlackBerry email service for about 8 million North American customers on Monday.

It was the second mass breakdown of its network in the span of 10 months, and unfortunately for the company, it came when the entire telecom industry was gathered in Barcelona, Spain, for the Mobile World Congress. Awkward?

Asked about the costs of the service interruption, RIM co-CEO James Balsillie told Bloomberg TV the "relevant issue'' of such incidents is the reputation of the company and its relationship with customers.

"It was an intermittent delay, a couple of hours," RIM co-CEO James Balsillie told CNet after delivering a key-note speech to the conference on Wednesday morning for a panel called "Over The Top Services."

"It's old news. It happened days ago," said Balsillie.

Dumb-o-meter score: 79.We've forgotten about it already, Jim.