If this trailer is any indication, count me out.

Are McDonalds and Starbucks affiliated somehow? Why would something at Starbucks affect McDonalds?

Around when the 3GS came out I had some good app ideas and was really excited to make them real. Then I found out you had to have a Mac. Not to be dissuaded, I found a Mac Mini for $400 at Microcenter. Unfortunately, the thing was so underpowered it was practically useless. Having already wasted $400 and still unable to get started, coupled with having to learn Obj-C, the idea basically died out. I know Apple's in business to make money, but the Mac requirement is a pretty big hurdle.

There's no demand for what people don't know exists. Tivo was a great example - amazing product, people who have it love it, but Tivo couldn't explain why it was good so they had lots of problems. Now most people who have DVR can't imagine living without it. 5-10 years ago, there was no demand for it - Tivo had to create the market and the demand.

Another thing about XP - any computer purchased in the past ~3 years is going to come with Windows 7. You can get Core i5 Lenovo laptops with 8gb ram for ~$600-$700. Yes, it costs money, but if your org is running computers from 2005, it's probably worth upgrading anyway, unless you have a valid reason for sticking with XP (e.g. your users run software that requires XP and won't run on Win7).

At my last job, cost was one of the barriers to upgrading to Win7. But we pitched it as a hardware upgrade - moving from slow Core Duo 1.8 ghz desktops with 2 GB ram to the Lenovos I described above. It was a huge win for us all around - we migrated to Win7 and upgraded the hardware in one shot, while improving everyone's workflow by moving from desktops to laptops.

I had a professor - an Emacs fan - who had a saying, "all software will eventually expand until it can send and receive email." It seems that needs to be amended to "all software will expand until it becomes an operating system."

Only over wifi, so this isn't much of a feature. And it's only to other Blackberry users who also happen to be on wifi, making it even less useful. And in general, voice is on the decline which is why some carriers are moving to unlimited voice & tiered data. Personally I've had over 4,000 rollover minutes from AT&T for 3-4 years, and that's with many expiring each month and with my wife and I sharing their smallest plan (500 shared minutes/month).

So this is cool, but I can't imagine this will sway anyone's opinion about buying a Blackberry or not.

How is there opposition to this? Shouldn't "don't track me" be the default for all browsers? How is the FTC against this? Chamber of Commerce I could see... but the FTC is supposed to protect consumers, no? Personally, I think the setting should be inverted to a checkbox that says "Allow advertisers to track my online activities," with it unchecked by default, and inviting people to check it if they want. Let's see how far THAT gets. Stupid.

I guess it's like the logic that US food sellers use to prevent "country of origin" information from being included on meat and other food products. If a pack of chicken breasts was labeled "grown in China" Americans wouldn't eat it, so they leave that information out, even though it's pretty important.

In summary: profit.

This is a clear instance where the right course of action is simply to go ahead and set up what you need. You don't need to ask permission. Just do it. Once it's done and all code has been moved into git/svn/whatever, you can either tell the supervisor what you've done, or not. If the supervisor isn't technical then there's no need for them to be troubled.

The closest analogy I can think of is: you started your job and found spilled milk on the floor. The correct course of action would be to clean up the spill, not to ask for permission to clean up the spill, or ask your supervisor how best to clean up the spill. You know what needs to be done, so just do it.

The light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. And you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy.