Being neither a Future Shop nor a BB employee, I just have to say - Best Buy is doing a MUCH better job of selling themselves as the store to visit, at least in the GTA. Their stores are newer, cleaner, and better organized, and the staff is friendlier and more knowledgeable (with a better command of the english language). Future Shops really do give off a "bargain bin" vibe now, it's kinda sad. I've never actually seen any confirmation that Best Buy Canada owns Future Shop - seems to me if they did, it would be a silly thing for them to be building all these fancy new Best Buy stores across the street from virtually every Future Shop here.

They've either already built, or in the process of building, one of these up in Ottawa as well:

http://www.zerowasteottawa.com/en/

This company is right here in Dublin... I should go by their offices to ask if I can see it in action! :)

Well, considering ShutDownDay themselves don't have anything on their page saying what it is (at the moment, any way), all we have is Engadget's take on it. And from what I recall from reading their site when it first hit the news, Engadget's take doesn't seem all that biased to me.

I was out of town on a stag weekend, but out of protest I left my machine up and running while I was gone (also, because I was doing some BitTorrent seeding :))

I just bought a laptop off Dell Ireland last week, and wasn't provided with this option. Not that I would have taken it, but just to verify that it ain't showing up here right now.

Maybe the problem is whoever is delivery your 360's from Amazon? That seems as likely a culprit as Microsoft's ineptitude (and slightly moreso, if you ask me).

A buddy of mine bought a 360 on ebay from a dude with several thousand feedback... picked it up in person, red ring of death. It had been opened by the seller already, so no MS warranty love. He brought it back to the guy, got another. Same problem. Decided not to deal with grey market resellers anymore, got one at Walmart. No problems since.

I voted that his brother should pay up, but it's really a matter of semantics. When I say "come out" I mean that the product exists. I don't mean "This is the day it's for sale". But if those details weren't confirmed at the time the bet was made, it's a wash, really.

Umm... I was working at a company *5 years ago* that was doing this. And they certainly weren't the first. What's the big deal here?

Umm, I don't think you can forfeit trademarks just because you have a common word in your trademark. Otherwise a lot of trademarks out there would be forfeited. If you claim it first, it's yours. Hello, Windows anybody? Considering that nobody has come up with the Black* product name for a competing mobile/smart phone before this, I'd say it's not all THAT common a term to be used, and Samsung is totally jumping on RIM's coattails with their Blackjack product name. Just because the term existed before doesn't mean squat. It didn't exist before in context of a smartphone, so RIM really does seem to have a case here.