"For every used game sold, the game editor gets ZERO."

They already got their money, on the original sale. They have no right to any other money because they no longer own the item in question. Don't like that? Then don't deal in tangible/tradable goods. This of course is why game companies love downloadable sales. They can cut out used games when everything is virtualized.

I'm in no way a supporter of Flash, but how is this any different than anything else in the browser with a :hover state? With the advent of HTML5 and the Canvas element, which does work on the iPad et al, you're going to run into the same issues if you program them the same way. Now I get his concern that Flash devs would have to rewrite a lot of their already written stuff to work on the iPad if it allowed Flash, but I fail to see how this is any different from the multitude of websites that use hover drop downs for navigation and the like.

The point that we shouldn't be relying on hover states because of the push towards touch devices is a good one but it's not an exclusive problem to Flash. The reason Flash shouldn't be on the iPad, etc, is because it's a horrible bloated and proprietary plugin, and Canvas, HTML5 video, etc can do the same thing. Flash is now a dead end technology. It's only a matter of time before it's phased out altogether.

Actually, I'm not sure I mind the term "pre-owned" as it implies previous ownership, something Sony seems to want to ignore. If I "own" something, it's within my rights to sell it as I see fit. Sony no longer has a claim on it, and yet they still seem to want to claim it as theirs.

There's been talk about trying to open up the silos represented by these applications.

This is exactly the long range plan of Buzz. They are trying to open it up so that someday in the future, it won't matter where your social profile is stored, if things are open enough, everything can interconnect. People who think that Buzz is just another Facebook or Twitter are missing the bigger picture they're trying to build here. See:

http://www.google.com/buzz/dclinton/XxER6oP4WGe/The-best-way-to-get-a-sense-of-where-the-Buzz-API

You can make Buzz a billion times better than twitter and implement new features, but if the iPhone holds a reasonable market share, and the iPhone doesn't let you update it, it's not likely to take off.

I'm not sure what you're talking about, iPhone integration was built into Buzz from day 1. In fact it's better than normal Buzz because if you let it use your geolocation you can see other buzzes near your current vicinity on Google maps.

I can see people having fun with board games on the iPad but I'm not sure it really trumps a real board game. Most board games aren't overly expensive as it is.

But what I do think the iPad could be really good at is custom audio controller interfaces. More and more of these interfaces are starting to show up on computers, but much of the mouse/keyboard input doesn't really match the real life use of tweaking knobs and levers. Multi-touch on a larger screen is a much better translation of this, and given how much physical audio controllers can cost, a few software reproductions of them could end up being a cost benefit for users.

"Is it really worth it to spend 6% of your total yearly revenue on the licensing fee for one video codec?"

I dunno, is it worth it to potentially lose a vast amount of your user base in the future if you don't?

"And you can't write videogames in HTML5. Flash will be around for a while."

HTML5 is not just the video tag (as much as people seem to think it is). It also includes things like the canvas element, that, when combined with JS, can certainly make games possible. There really is little reason to use Flash at all anymore.

First, any math class can be useful to programmers. I went full double major CS and Mathematics and found all my classes useful. Set Theory perhaps is the most closely related to CS, but all of them can have value depending on what you get into after your studies. Also, whether one is "harder" should not make a difference. If anything it should make you want to take it more. Exercise your brain in all different ways, it will benefit you in the end regardless.

"That was the excuse they used for going after the bloggers; the intent was to discourage anyone else from leaking anything like this again."

Then they're doing it wrong. One thing all bloggers crave is publicity. I'm not sure you can get much more publicity for your blog than this.

"idiot driver should be prosecuted since everyone knows the third light from the top is regular green and not a turn signal"

What happens if the stop light is horizontal? The summary mentions WI, which allows horizontal traffic lights. Someone coming from a state like MN (which only has vertical lights) could easily be confused by this.

"I have a five digit UID and am nihilistic enough to awaken eldritch horrors purely out of curiosity to see what would happen."

Oh great, now I bet Jon Katz will start posting stories again. :/

"I liked the site better when it didn't rely on Javascript at all: back when all the comment boxes worked without a hitch, and there weren't so many clever little popups that don't work half the time."

Given your UID you've been around almost as long as I have. There is the option of using the Classic Discussion System in your preferences. I find it does a decent job of being old school enough for us "get off my lawn" types. In fact, this is the one thing I like about /. and why I continue to read it. It hasn't changed a ton in the last 11 years I've been reading it. Yes they've added things like moderation (good) and tags (ugh), but with the Classic layout settings it feels mostly the same as it ever did, which I like.

I agree though, when I look at the site with the new bells and whistles I cringe. It's absolutely unusable for me.

If you're running on OS X, you don't need adblock for any browser. GlimmerBlocker will do the same thing and is usable by any browser you want since it's just a proxy.

"My guess is, they want broad statistics like the most popular domains visited, maybe even traffic patterns of which domains people tend to go to after which other domains."

I'd go further. Given the announcement of Chrome OS, I wouldn't doubt they want to test a huge number of DNS requests and tweak the system to be as fast as possible to speed up Chrome. Google knows latency is an issue with web apps, and is trying to do all they can to reduce this. I think this is just another step in that direction.