This is one of the bad thing of consoles: When the machine dies the games are pretty much dead.
Exceptions:

• Next gen console compatible with last gen: Not always and not always perfect since sometimes it's software based emulation
• Some titles released on newer consoles: Only some of them, and usually you have to pay for the games again (even if at a reduced rate)
• Emulators: Best option, even then compatibility it's not perfect and for the newer consoles there will probably be workable emulators

The PC is not perfect either, but thanks to digital download services (Steam, gog.com, ...) not property of the console owner and programs like Dosbox you can run on a modern PC games very old, and in any case, much more not-this-gen games than on consoles. In any case, great software not being runnable anymore is a big shame.

Tablets and smartphones are getting good enough. It's the same process the PC underwent but much faster: Hardware progresses to a point that 90% of applications run plenty fast so the average person doesn't need to change them very often unless it breaks. Together with the maturity of the OS these devices use I think the exponential growth phase is gonna end soon.
Moreover, it seems the cheap tablets are getting good enough too so it looks that making expensive tablets it's not gonna be a great business plan.
Anyway, it looks that it'll affect expensive android tablet manufacturers more since Apple looks comfortable in the different and pricier-but-better market niche. This also mirrors the PC history.

OpenOffice and LibreOffice might be too slow for your taste but both are mostly written in C++. Not that it undermines your point but just wanted to clear that misconception

To smartphone making companies: Stop using the advancements in manufacturing to make the phones slimmer, they're slim enough (I'd say too much), instead use it to put larger batteries. They really need them.
I know some companies have gone that route (some Motorolas have large batteries) but we need more of these.

You can't force free software developers (being mostly unpaid volunteers) to work on whatever you want, and I'm pretty sure some KOffice (now Calligra Office) developers wouldn't be working in other KDE parts if KOffice/Calligra didn't exist.
Besides that, you can't predict what will come from someone's work. As an example, the Webkit browser engine originated as KHTML (the engine KDE guys did for they browser) and you can bet Google, Apple and others (It's the engine used in all their browser, including: Chrome, Android browser, Safari/iOS browser) are very happy someone started that beautiful piece of work
I also think Calligra it's important since it's very good to have several implementations of open standards (the Open Document file formats) and competition for OpenOffice/LibreOffice it's actually very positive.

...And that's why it's not going to be used in commercial video streaming services (Netflix and similars) until it can.

In some old CPUs (Z80 maybe?) some illegal opcodes were discovered to have interesting side effects. Thus, programmers started using them as regular instructions.
It goes without saying that they had to be implemented exactly the same way in later revisions (o compatible versions) of the CPUs.

"...as soon as Stephen Elop found out the researcher was thrown out of a window while Elop threw a chair and yelled "You don't disrespect Windows Phone like that!"."

Maybe they think this is a dealbreaker on phones since they are energy limited and thus any competitive browser can't afford not to have hardware accelerated media playing, but, I'd also like to see this on the desktop.
I certainly don't have any interest in H.264 but I'm just practical. Would it be difficult and/or put Mozilla in a legally complicated situation to use the OS facilities for playing H.264 on PCs?. If the tag is gonna replace Flash for playing videos it'd be very good to have this.

...And that's the main reason I have a separate (from my touchscreen smartphone) MP3 player with tactile controls. That and that I don't wont to drag down the smartphone's battery more by also using it as a MP3 player.

Or any other large e-ink based reades as the Onyx M92. 9'7 inches, so-so software but the hardware is very nice.

Yeah, I was going to suggest this. This man has to be greteatest experts ever on SNES details.

This.
IMHO Facebook is playing a very hard game of appearing to give you privacy controls and actually making it very hard to control who sees your information through confusing and cumbersome privacy controls. And, as the parent said, it's obviously to get people to feel confident and to post information the wouldn't post if they were aware how many people can see it.

I'd really like to hear opinions from blind people who have used the latest Android versions (4.0 and 4.1). AFAIK these have much improved accesibility.
I have ICS in my Galaxy S2 but I must admit I haven't really tested the accesibility features and a blind person would be a much better judge anyway.

Some time ago the .apk of the S Voice app was actually leaked and it worked perfectly on other Android phones, the problem is that, like Siri, it requires a server on the Internet to work so when Samsung detected it was being used on other phones they blocked it server-side.
So no, there appears to be no technical reason why it can't work on other phones just business ones.