So – fingers crossed, and here’s hoping that sleeper hit is indeed where this is going. RIM is full of smart people with smart ideas who somehow end up turning out the same product over and over because the people at the very top of the company either can’t or won’t open their eyes and see what increasingly-sophisticated customers want in a mobile computer. The smart people need to start winning out over the top people, and soon, or the Blackberry platform is going to go from being “dated” to “irrelevant” in a very short time. And that – for everyone – would be a shame.

I can’t decide if they name is “yea” or “nay” yet. Still mulling on that one. But it sure beats the hell out of “Slate”.

UPDATE: Link to the updated Bloomberg story.

Percentage probability of precipitation.

Alright, enough. It’s a really simple concept. If the weather report comes on and the bingo caller says that there is a 60% chance of rain, it means that the last 100 times the weather was like this it rained the next day 60 times. It’s a historical reference, nothing more. The numbers, of course, are higher – it would be more like the last 2000 times it was like this, it rained the next day 1200 times – but the percentage would be the same.

Which, if you were wondering, does indeed mean if the weather droids say there is a 100% chance of rain tomorrow and it doesn’t rain … well, technically they weren’t wrong. It just means that it never happened before. It’s a pretty low bar as far as accuracy goes, but there you are.

And now you know. Feel free to correct morons around you who can’t figure this out.

The best of both worlds, right?

Er, no. Manually hauling the mouse around to do the basic cursor movements was still a drag. It just wasn’t as seamless and as fluid as doing everything with touches and flicks and squooges. It was an annoyingly incomplete experience … better than the retro-mouse alternative, but still not entirely sublime. Which means, as we stumble towards the point of this less-than-lucid post, that I am over the fucking moon at the release of the Magic Track Pad. Mouse be gone, this is what I have been waiting for. It probably helps that I am a trackball guy from way back – if you don’t have that same background then your mileage is definitely going to vary – but you should be giving this a try.

Tactile heaven.

For what it’s worth, I got two hits on H.P. Lovecraft and two on Cory Doctorow for random submissions from this blog and the other (less profane) one. So I guess I can’t complain. It certainly beats ringing up some talentless hack like Dan Brown.

Curious? Give it a shot.

If the final product here is anywhere as interesting as this demo it’s going to be a winner. No word yet on pricing or frequency, but if this sort of thing strikes your fancy you can sign up for email updates here. You’re welcome.

They hope – desperately hope – that the wheels will fall off. Spending time and money on innovation and a refined user experience is like some sort of financial small pox to these people.

The point of all of this is that we are getting close to the third quarter earnings report. Between now and then you will hear a lot of stuff from “the street” about revenue slowdown, stagnating sales, new competition from Microsoft, etc and so on. Remember the names of the people who say these things – they are to be mocked and reviled. To anyone capable of independent thought, it’s obvious that this quarter’s revenues will be scary huge – from the retail throughput, I would guess the biggest revenues ever for a non-Christmas quarter.

Don’t forget where you read that. And yes, the title of this thing is a Spaceballs reference. May the Schwartz be with you.