I use Kagi to sell my games. There are many other alternatives besides PayPal, Google, Worldpay, etc., and I'd recommend all small digital-distribution studios compare all of them and their reputations instead of just going with PayPal because they've heard of it.

In April last year, a robot made a scientific discovery by itself: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/robotscientist/

Haha... wait, you're serious?

• Roomba learns your room layout while it works
• Automated surveillance cameras in the UK, recognising number-plates and issuing speeding fines
• DARPA grand challenge
• In April last year, a robot made a scientific discovery by itself: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/robotscientist/
• Simulated brains already "exceed" those of a cat's cortex: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/111809-ibm-brain-simulations.html
• Computers are used to prove the accuracy of some advanced mathematics that are beyond the ability of a human to verify
• I'm already using AI to help me write music... and it's better at it than I am: http://www.youtube.com/KitsuneSoftware#p/u/2/pnQHRdWJWgU

On that last point... yes, my business model does include developing AI to the point that it's not necessary to employ other people. I doubt very much that I'll be the first to get there (especially as I have to do a lot of other stuff to keep the money coming in and only write the AIs as needed), but I'm sure going that way.

What is a 'change management process'? I may have heard of it under a different name, but those three words in that order make no sense to me.

Ozone layer depletion was never "going to freeze the earth", it was going to give us skin cancer. We stopped damaging it, now it's getting better.

Ubisoft are not the first company to do this. My previous employers, Jagex, launched a games portal about two years ago where all the games required a continuous internet connection... including the single player games.

I'm not going to compare and contrast the technical details, as I don't know Ubisoft's secrets and I'm still bound by a confidentiality clause from Jagex. The social effects, however, are discoverable from publicly available information from multiple online game providers, not just Jagex, and are therefore not something I have to keep silent about :)

• If you game to kill time while travelling, this product is a couple of years ahead of it's time (Free WiFi is rare in the UK, mobile broadband is spotty and can be expensive).
• Online saved games are good, provided they are not destroyed if your client crashes (happened to a friend with Braid).
• Free demos that ask you to create a free account in order to save your progress are a bad idea (my girlfriend saw this and assumed they wanted money, so went to a different game site).
• Cheating and hacking is still implementation specific, so piracy is probably still possible (I've seen YouTube videos of someone cheating so insanely that their score wrapped around the 2^31 mark and almost made it back to zero).

I can believe it. My dad has an anecdote from a friend (yes, it's that tenuous, I don't know any Americans :)) who was given a free ride in a helicopter in the US. He kept hearing this irregular 'ping', and commented that it was a strange noise for a navigation system, only to be told that was the sound of bullets ricocheting off the bottom of the helicopter. Now, I don't know when this was, so I can readily believe it's been stopped for all the technical reasons you just gave.

Lots of people are using jaywalking as an example non-crime in these comments. Just so you all know, jaywalking is not generally against UK law; the only places you can't do it are motorways (where anyone going less than 50mph will cause problems), railway crossings while the barrier is down, and small patches of road next to lit pedestrian crossings. Everywhere else, it's your judgement.

Now, for the technology itself, I think it will help catch a lot of minor criminals, rural fly-tippers, and an unexpectedly large number of farm-animal-fancying zoophiles, but it will have very little effect on organised crime. Why? Dazzle from small lasers. What's the cost of a CD/DVD burner?

I don't like perfect surveillance - this country has too many laws for any one person to know, so I have no idea if I'm breaking any or not.

One person taking charge? Sounds like management to me. Which came first, the gang or the manager?

You don't need to compete with a AAA to be successful. I know this because I am a one-person game developer, and my best estimate of my income is somewhere around $85k.