For a 60fps game there's about 16ms per frame and with current gen consoles about 8ms is lost to API call overhead on the render thread. Of course current gen consoles are years behind and constrain rendering APIs to be called from a single thread but I'd still be very surprised if there was a console that could support a triple A game above 70fps in the next 10 years (for resolutions 720p and above).

You've barely scratched the surface of input to perception lag, here's an answer by Carmack to people questioning another one of his tweets:
http://superuser.com/questions/419070/transatlantic-ping-faster-than-sending-a-pixel-to-the-screen
Of course most engines come from a single threaded game mentality where they'd poll for input, apply input to game state, do some AI, do some animations, calculate physics, then render everything and repeat. Current gen consoles has freed that up some but most engines didn't go above 2 or 3 major threads because it's a difficult problem to re-architect an entire engine while it's being used to make a game at the same time. Sadly the better games gave user input it's own thread and polled input every 15ms or so, queued it up, and then passed it on to the game thread when the game thread asked for it. Input wasn't lost as often but it didn't get to the game any faster.

I own both types of devices (gen 1 kindle and iPad 2) and I vastly prefer my iPad. I realize that I'm comparing old tech to ancient tech but the feature set in the Kindle software on the iPad still beats the newer e-ink kindles. My problems with e-ink is the slow refresh rate and lack of color. With the original kindle I had to learn to press the next page button when I was a couple of lines before the end of the page as by the time I had read those remaining lines then the display would transition. The newer kindles have drastically cut this time down but it is still slower then a tablet's change of page and for myself being a passive observer of changing the page, I find that wait frustrating (when I change the page of an actual book I'm an active participant so the time spent isn't annoying).

I will freely admit that e-readers look gorgeous (though that could simply be nostalgia for actual paper) and the effective battery life is magnitudes above tablets (my iPad's battery is constantly being depleted by other activities like browsing the web, playing games, and other CPU intensive apps).

As an American I don't really understand how the blank media tax is calculated. Is the tax applied based upon the size of the media or is it a flat tax on media regardless of size that is writable?

If the tax is based upon media size does data duplication and redundancy factor in? If I make a mirrored drive could I get a tax rebate because I've cut the effective space of the drives in half? Or if someone comes up with a compression algorithm that increases the effective size of the drive am I liable for more tax because I can store more songs as mp3s then as wav files? Should the cloud host be taxed based upon the advertised storage or based upon the actual storage usage? I can see most cloud storage pass through compression or data deduplication that drastically reduces the on disk size of media but shifts some data to meta data instead. Does it matter if some of that storage isn't inside the country?

The way I see it is that the cloud company probably paid a tax on writable media. And they're in essence providing a mirroring service which effectively reduces the overall unique media storage size. And the amount of data that the cloud company is actually storing is going to be significantly smaller then what I'm being provided. And if the data is being stored outside the country then the tax is effectively being levied on the import/export of the data which could be an interesting legal battle with the current state of trade treaties.

However if the tax is a flat tax regardless of media size then I'd suggest the cloud company roll out a single exabyte drive that is shared between a customer and the customer's closest 7 billion friends (with a decent user permission model of course).

Now is probably the best time that Valve could release a console: get first mover status in North America against MS & Sony and probably Europe as well. But valve is a software company. Their experience with manufacturing, shipping, retailers, etc is limited at best. The boxed copies of Valve games are published by one of the traditional large publishers. I love valve as much as the next fan boy but the massive operational organization that is needed to support a console launch is slightly outside of their reach. Valve could partner with a distribution/manufacturing partner but the people that have experience in the entertainment space and who would be able to accomplish the undertaking is a pretty short list. EA could probably swing it and would scare both MS & Sony as their consoles would lose EA's games but with origin vs steam on the PC side of things I see this as slightly unlikely. I'd love Sega to make a Steam box, but that's simply nostalgia talking. Sony is the most likely partner as steam is already on PS3 (for some definition of steam) and ps3 runs a version of unix, but it would probably be another wedge between Sony & retail stores.

More then likely this is probably valve's experimentation into console space. They'll probably stream line it so that it's trivial to get your home linux machine to output to hdmi at the push of a controller button. Once the home experience is as simple as it can get then they'll make a business case for releasing their own console or not based upon revenue. Look at what valve has done with micro-transactions, free to play games, crowd sourcing, and non-game software: they dip a toe into the water and then once they're confident they move into that space.

Your argument is a few decades late. Instead of having a surrogate mother carry the child to term now a tank "carries" the child to term.

Specifically what powers should the states have that are currently exclusive to the federal government? The way I see it is that the federal government enforces the bare minimum of an individual's rights, controls interstate commerce, and runs other projects that would be inefficient for individual states to run. Some examples of these would be freedom of speech, outlawing slavery, running the military, setting a currency, etc. There is nothing preventing a state from granting it's citizens greater rights then what the federal government ensures or providing their own military. You may disagree with how the federal government chooses to protect individual liberty or even what those rights are; but that's a very different discussion.
Also the states can amend the Constitution without involving the federal government, all they'd need to do is call a convention and then later vote on the new amendment. That's the greatest balance against federal government that there is.

Who would enforce this? The federal government? I think we have single run off because of tradition more then anything else. There have even been state laws that split their electoral votes proportionately (I think they've all been abandoned now). As long as the federal government ensures that everyone can vote and that everyone's vote is equal I think it should be up to the states to determine what style of voting to use.

That would be true if we were electing parties to congress but we're not, we're electing people. Representative X from Party B is not at all equivalent to representative Q from Party B. I realize that the political rhetoric tends to slant towards Party A vs Party B but I'd much rather vote for someone who fairly represents their constituents instead of a generic interchangeable member of a Party.

This will probably never happen because it would involve states relinquishing power and they'd never give permission for it. In the current set up states with a low population have a greater electoral collage vote per capita then a state with a large population. This is a balance so that large states can't steam roll over smaller states.

I'm not saying that our republic couldn't use some improvement but I think it's important to realize why it has worked so well. Like Churchill said:
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

I have no idea if the figures in the article are true or not but I agree with it's point that better data gathering needs to be done.

My problem with the H1-B visa program is that it's a short term fix for a long term problem. I do dislike having to compete in the global marketplace for a job but its that exact same global marketplace that allows most of the tech jobs to exist in the first place, it's hypocritical to believe that benefits could be reaped without participating. And in all honesty I'd prefer to work with smart people regardless of where they're from instead of some mediocre guy who happened to be local. If the visas weren't temporary then I'd love them. As they are now the employee comes over, gains several years of experience and then takes it home with them. If that employee instead stayed in America and put that experience to use locally then there is a gain of work force and experience. Even if the employee leaves the original company they can continue to be productive in the national economy.

The last time that this happened Sony gave me two free games. Now that it appears to have happened again my initial thoughts are regarding more free games. Somehow I don't think that this response is intentional on Sony's part.

While fitting the game into the local and main memory is a pain it can usually be mitigated by proper planning. Developing your memory footprint for PS3 can immediately be translated to the 360's unified memory but going the other way is a special hell. While it's true that some engines are main memory intensive that you have to resort to crazy tricks (like streaming your audio from local memory to main) in general it's not too bad as there aren't two different implementations.

But going from 3 ppu cores to 2 ppu cores and 6 spus does cause a problem if you're anywhere near utilizing the CPUs. Generally it's easier to optimize the game until as much as possible runs on 2 ppu cores and specific tasks run on the spus (as the 360 gains the benefit from the optimizations too).

It sounds like you haven't worked on the PS3 in a while. Sony has actually stepped up the game and the ps3 sdk actually surpasses the xdk in some regards. Most of the complaints I hear about the ps3 sdk are more related to windows oriented people not understanding the unix mindset. And the ps3 dev kits are now tiny and sleek and not the 2U heater units of old.

I can practically hear game programmers everywhere cheering.

I agree that the key issue is where the control lies. And from everything I've seen from google they've wanted to ensure that the user has as much control as possible. Want to modify the search history attached to your google account? you can do that. Want to migrate your emails out of gmail? you can do that. Want to download and then delete your google+? you can do that.

For every service google provides they also provide a mechanism for migrating the data and deleting it. If you want the separate services to remain separate export the data, delete it, and then import it into another account. It would probably have been a decent move by google to provide a way to automatically change the google account that a certain service is connected to for the people that prefer to keep their calendar, email, and social networks separate. But the ROI of that might have been too high when the user can manually do it themselves.

The fact that google treats my data as belonging to me means that it's my responsibility for managing it. That deal is a hell of a lot better then other online services.

First you should determine what kind of application you're making. Is it a native application on iOS & android? Or is it a web front end? How deeply do you want to integrate Facebook, twitter, google+, etc?

All the different platforms (hardware and software) have different licensing issues that need to be figured out. It may be that what you'd like to do isn't allowed by one platform or a combination of them. DRM is only a factor on the open platforms (PC & android). For iOS & game consoles DRM is a requirement of the platform license.

As far as users' rights goes, it shouldn't be a factor. Your servers should only keep the bare minimum of information (probably what matches the user is currently playing and the current state of that match). The analytics should be properly anonymized (huge legal quagmire if you don't do it right) and probably best done with a 3rd party analytics system.

From the sounds of it, you're just starting out. Good luck, it's a challenge but it can be rewarding. Get in touch with people that do this professionally, start reading the game design blogs, and depending upon where you live there could even be community meetings. Take a look at existing engines (unity3d being one of my favorites) and see if any are a good fit for prototyping or production. List out all your needs/goals and start making concrete plans for how to obtain them (persistent server side storage, user name & password handling, high scores, etc).

The article submitter doesn't provide any details but there is at least one legitimate business reason for requiring a social network account beyond marketing: Developing applications that interact with those social platforms. If I want to develop an app that communicates with Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Steam, etc. I generally need an account on that service to have access to APIs, documentation, testing tools, and sundry. This makes sense as these companies have been built around the concept of managing user accounts and providing features and content based upon that account. If you sign in with your blessed account and the service knows that you have access to AppID 1337 with test settings of Foo and Bar. If you sign in with an account that hasn't been blessed by the app managers then you don't get access to the unreleased AppID 1337.

Nor should you. However most people aren't educated about the market they're purchasing from. The digital distribution market doesn't seem to have fallen into that problem yet (iOS and Steam specifically). But the retail console market is what it is. Like you imply, it isn't in the game publishers' interest to change it.

It is surprisingly expensive to have multiple skus for the same product. You double all the physical work of selling games to customers and more then double your return rate (any copies of a game that aren't sold are "returned" to the publisher for a refund). Add on top of that the cost of educating the public on the differences between the two different skus and handling the complaints of people who accidentally got the wrong version. Now regarding the messaging in the package, that I agree with. The box should have an icon on it similar to the "required network" and such saying that there's a one-time use code in there. However unless MS, Sony, Nintendo require it then it's probably not going to show up. On the flip side the price of the used game should go down to reflect that it doesn't have the one-time use code.

To be clear, I don't agree with what EA is doing here but I am withholding judgement until I see what the actual content is. EA is reacting to the current state of the console market, this is the same strategy they've had for other titles (Mass Effect 2 leaps to mind).

How much do games cost in the store? How much did they cost 10 years ago? 20? 30? Games have gotten cheaper when inflation is taken into account. Here: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/10/an-inconvenient-truth-game-prices-have-come-down-with-time.ars

It's believed that consumers take the price of good as a reflection of quality. If you see a game that is $40 on a shelf that's filled with $60 games most people will assume that there is something wrong with that $40. I'm not saying that the American games retail market can't change but I doubt it.

I don't know what game you're complaining about but it isn't Amular. If you buy Amular new then you also receive a code to buy the dlc for free. If you buy Amular used and if it doesn't come with an unused code then you can purchase the dlc like normal. You seem to be arguing that the companies should be doing exactly what they are doing.