It's an incredibly stupid story, and I'm not surprised it comes from university professors. Demand for movies comes from the public, and they're not applying political parables to these things. I think it's just a bunch of movie buffs finding some dumb way to celebrate a Democrat presidential victory.
Nobody accused Obama of "being a terrorist." Palin criticized his association with William Ayers, one of many eye-opening assocations Obama had that the press gave him a pass on. Obama did things like run a commercial mocking McCain for not using a computer, which was actually due to his war injuries that make it painful to type. Yet, these negative ads were glossed over by the press--only McCain got criticized for going negative with his campaigning. You'd think that Obama had never said anything bad about McCain or ran a negative ad. I even saw one claiming McCain was going to ban abortion.
Frankly, McCain was going negative because his campaign was desperately trying to get any kind of news attention. Obama dominated coverage all year long. I remember in the summer when Drudge Report breathlessly reported each leg of Obama's trip through Europe like he was already president. It was as though McCain didn't even exist. The Associated Press even ran articles defending Obama from McCain's attacks, and one of them cited a liberal thinktank group that praised Obama's tax plan (without mentioning the group's political affiliation, of course). The same author of that piece went onto write an op-ed claiming that bringing up Obama's affiliations, like Ayers, was an attempt to portray him as un-American, which was vaguely "racist" (huh?).
Basically, when McCain stayed positive, he was ignored by the press. When he went negative, he was bashed by the press. Couple that with media studies showing an emergent slant in journalist political beliefs, you can't help wonder just how many percentage points the press actually cost McCain. You might even be a Democrat and be glad that Obama won--but it's still something you should wonder about.
The most glaring example would be the mortgage crisis--Obama shot up in the polls, and McCain's campaign never recovered. However, if you go back through history, you actually find that many Democrat social programs (like the Community Reinvestment Act) pushed banks into making high-risk loans to poor people who couldn't pay them back, all in the name of "social justice." Several Democrats served at Fannie Mae, and the biggest recipient of donations from Fannie Mae was...Barack Obama. You even find out that both Bush and McCain warned about the coming crisis in 2003, but they were blocked and criticized by Democrat Barney Frank.
None of that was reported to any reasonable degree by the press. Republicans were blamed for something that Democrats were equally responsible for, if not moreso. I think this is the most frustrating aspect of the 2008 election--that the party which was mostly responsible for the economic crisis was rewarded for it with the presidency and a bigger majority in Congress. Now we have a one-party supermajority of people who voted for the government bailout when the public didn't want it.
Governments work best when they do little. Clinton and the GOP Congress kept each other busy through bickering, and that made them leave us alone. I wanted McCain because I didn't want another one-party government like we had under Bush. McCain also has a history of bipartisan legislation and working with Democrats. Obama has no such history, and he's already appointing people who are aggressively partisan. The Democrats are kicking out anyone who doesn't think like they do--Lieberman's committee position is under threat. I don't think it's going to be a very good presidency when the hype dies down and Obama has to actually do stuff.
It's not that people want to play 8-bit games. It's that they want games that don't require hours of investment to enjoy. Something you can pick up and play. The success of the Wii shows that people want simple fun, and games that are easy and quick to get into will only become more popular as mobile gaming takes over. Adding layers of complexity and hardware requirements only appeals to the super-hardcore who have nothing better to do in the world but play games.
In truth, neo-retro is really an excuse for developers to go back to more accessible gameplay under the guise of appealing to the nostalgia market without admitting that they've made things overly complicated and expensive.
My 10 year old sister obsesses over Zelda and insisted on getting every version available on the Virtual Console. She did this on her own, playing the original Legend of Zelda and also Super Mario Bros. Even though she's growing up in an era when 3D graphics are nothing special, the old games still appealed to her and will be part of her childhood memories. Now she's getting into Majora's Mask, and that came out almost a decade ago. It's new to her.
I think these games, rather than being relics of the past, are really just contributions to established culture that stick around. We'll still have pick-up-and-play, 2D-styled games in the future. It'll be an artistic choice, and that's what makes these neo-retro games important. Mega Man 9's producer said as much--that it was an excuse to return to the old style of gaming using the nostalgia of the current generation.
The surprise success of the Wii, of several of the XBLA games like Braid and Geometry Wars, and of games like Portal prove that gamers are aching for how gaming used to be, which was easier and quicker to get into without having to be a goddamn cinematic production with ridiculous graphics requirements and a time commitment.
My mom played Galaga when it was in arcades, and my dad played NES racing games with me when I was growing up. I can't imagine either of them picking up a videogame today and playing it with my little sister. There's just too much nonsense involved with most today's games that only appeals to smaller, devoted markets. Think of how huge Mario used to be during his original series of games. Everyone identified with it and had fun with it, even people who usually never played games. Today, who cares about Halo 3 outside of Halo fans?
It's not just the lack of risk-taking. It's the immense investment in graphics and other multimedia that sucks the accessibility out of the game. Once in a while, something like that is fun, but when it's every game, you shut out mainstream players from your demographic.
Think about it. If you had an NES, you grew up playing a game library where you could shove a game into the slot, press start at the title screen, and you were already playing in less than a minute. The gameplay was the gameplay that you would be experiencing for the rest of the game.
Today, it feels like it takes up to half an hour for a game to "get going." It's a huge production number that tries to feel like a movie. It's cool, but at the same time, it's so refreshing when you install MAME and play the original Pac-Man. You actually get into it because it's so quick and simple to play.
Look at how Capcom is making Street Fighter IV into a 3D Street Fighter II. People got burned out on fighting games because of the increasing complexity. Street Fighter II was a game you could just pick up and play. Neo-retro games are an excuse for game developers to return to that era of accessibility, which is really a return to gaming's roots.
Honestly, if the Wii hadn't come out and surprised everyone with simple fun, the PS3 and Xbox 360 would be competing with each other over who had the most hardcore games, and we'd eventually hit another market crash like the 80s. Now, we get neat games like Braid. Geometry Wars, Wii Sports, etc.
I even think games like Twilight Princess are a step in the wrong direction. Zelda 1 and Link to the Past were easy games to grasp and arguably some of the best in the series. These hardcore whiners ranting about Nintendo's lack of support for them are forgetting that the Nintendo franchises they love so much started out being much more accessible and fun.
I think he chose an incorrect term. Instead of simulation, he should have used "immersion." That's what today's games are obsessed with--trying to be some immersive studio production that feels like a movie.
Meanwhile, games like Portal and Mega Man 9 come out and wow people with good, challenging gameplay.
I call bullshit. I remember the 90s when PC Gamer would package shareware CDs with its magazines, and there were adventure games, flying sims, first-person shooters, RPGs, RTS games, and more. Now, it's all first-person shooters or sports games with an occasional mass-appeal title like The Sims or World of Warcraft. It's all looking and playing very similar now. Even Deus Ex 3 is getting a fucking regenerating health meter, for crying out loud.
While the nostalgia element of "neo-retro" games is fun, the real appeal is that they mimic the pick-up-and-play mentality of older games. Today, I have to sit through cut scenes, prologues, introductions, tutorials, and story progressions. However, when you press start in Super Mario Bros., you're plopped into level 1 and already playing. There's no ridiculous setup to get to the game. I like that because I'm an extremely impatient person.
Today's games require more time commitment, and that's why people say they're appealing to a more hardcore market--in other words, creepy nerds with a lot of time on their hands because they don't have real lives. I can play a quick game of Mega Man 9 without having to feel like I have to schedule a whole evening to get into it. Compare that to, say, Fallout 3.
Umm, how exactly does the GPL "cripple the movement"?
I explained that in my post. Many companies refuse to use GPL code because of its viral nature. That cripples adoption of GPL software.
See, this is where you demonstrate your astounding lack of comprehension on this issue.
I enjoy it when people respond with breathless hyperbole. It means I struck a nerve.
TCP/IP is a standardised protocol not a software product. There are closed source implementations of TCP/IP, GPL implementations and even completely free implementations today. The licence they are issued under makes no practical difference to anyone.
I know TCP/IP is a standardized protocol, which was my point. If it had been GPL software, it would have gone nowhere because companies wouldn't have adopted it in the early days of the Internet.
If it's not newsworthy, why did you stop scrolling through the Slashdot page, click on Read More for this article, and post to it? Slashdot posts stories for people to read and talk about. Maybe some folks would like to discuss game development on Android or other embedded devices.
I can access and browse my massive library of music in a jukebox interface in iTunes better than you ever will manually browsing your filesystem. I have over 100 GB of music.
This is 2008. Computers are supposed to do our work for us. I know you want to feel all gung-ho and independent, but it makes you look like a funny relic from the days of Winamp.
I see, now you're going to jump to a different topic and pretend that the burden of proof is on me when you were the one claiming OS X "exploits" a subset of hardware and only runs well on that subset.
You are the one who needs to provide benchmarks for your claim. Next.
Interestingly, I note that you haven't attempted to counter my points. I'll take that as an admission that you consider them valid, despite your continued bitching.
The fact that you have to declare yourself "right" means you had no rational argument to begin with. You're flailing at this point.
I claimed that OSX does not have any need to deal with the vast number of use cases that Linux or Windows does, and that they can tweak the way their software runs to be more efficient on the small selection of hardware they do support.
You believe OS X exploits the capabilities of a subset of hardware, and the implication is that such exploitation is the reason for OS X's speed over Ubuntu. You even used the word "exploits" in your previous post about it.
The fact that you can run it if you hack it is irrelevant.
You're purposely being obtuse, so I'll spell it out for you. Your argument was about performance on a reduced set of hardware, and I pointed out that OS X runs outside that set of hardware. It runs fast on it, too. Apple isn't taking advantage of some mysterious set of hardware features only they are privy to--an Intel Mac is made of standard PC parts.
You're obsessing over the "hacks" part and ignoring that the hacks are for the copy protection.
I could probably run the XBox OS on a mainframe with the right virtual machine, but that doesn't change the fact that the XBox OS was tailored to perform optimally on the XBox hardware, and it doesn't change the fact that OSX was tailored to perform optimally on Apple hardware.
How many times do people have to point out that OS X runs well on generic non-Apple hardware? Are you just going to keep ignoring it in every post you make?
It's relevant because you claimed OS X relies on the capabilities of a subset of hardware dictated by Apple, and I pointed out that OS X happily runs on generic PC hardware through copy-protection hacks.
Really, it's bleedingly obvious that it's relevant, and you know that--you just don't have a counterargument for it
Then why did you bring up Slashdot comments? You said "Oh, you mean the benchmarks that some random Slashdotters concluded were skewed because of so-and-so reason?" Why would mention the comments if you weren't implying that the comments disproved the benchmarks?
'course, if you can't understand this basic, logical thinking, then perhaps you should refrain from participating in this discussion, as it's clear you're not sufficiently educated in the topic.
You're mad that I called you out for relying on random Slashdot comments.
You're like the third person to reference the previous Slashdot discussion as some sort of scientific debunking of the benchmarks. Slashdot comments are the most biased, unreliable sources of information on the internet.
Remember, folks, the iPod mini will fail! Nobody will buy one of those things!
You mean the benchmarks that were discussed a while back here on Slashdot, where most people concluded that things like aggressive power saving features were most likely the cause for the performance degradation, and *not*, in fact, bloat?
Wow, they were discussed on Slashdot! That means they were scientifically disproved because some people made up some conclusions that they thought were "likely" so that they could get modded up!
How is Apple trying to remove choice from anybody? You choose to buy Apple's hardware, or you don't. Your post is just uninformed anti-capitalism ranting on Slashdot.
Unless you can prove that OS X is taking advantage of hardware features that other operating systems are unable to, your point is baseless. OS X even runs on generic PCs with a few hacks.
What, so if you don't automatically believe the global warming premise, your analytical skills are out of whack? Crichton's point about global warming was that it's used by politicians to scare people into accepting government programs. It's become an urban religion--the untouched Eden that was sullied by the sins of mankind, and we must repent or face a future doomsday in which we'll all be judged for our actions. Sound familiar?
Ah, so you're going to be an asshole. Have you done any research on this at all? The similarities between VMS and NT have been discussed extensively and are commonly known:
Those similarities could fill a book. In fact, you can read sections of VAX/VMS Internals and Data Structures (Digital Press) as an accurate description of NT internals simply by translating VMS terms to NT terms. Table 1 lists a few VMS terms and their NT translations. Although I won't go into detail, I will discuss some of the major similarities and differences between Windows NT 3.1 and VMS 5.0, the last version of VMS Dave Cutler and his team might have influenced. This discussion assumes you have some familiarity with OS concepts (for background information about NT's architecture, see "Windows NT Architecture, Part 1" March 1998 and "Windows NT Architecture, Part 2" April 1998)."
"TABLE 1: VMS and NT Terminology Translations VMS Term NT Translation Interrupt Priority Level (IPL) Interrupt Request Level (IRQL) Asynchronous System Trap (AST) Asynchronous Procedure Call (APC) Fork Procedure Deferred Procedure Call (DPC) I/O Request Packet (IRP) I/O Request Packet (IRP) Bug Check Bug Check System Service System Service sys.exe ntoskrnl.exe Paged Pool Paged Pool Nonpaged Pool Nonpaged Pool Look aside List Look aside List Section Section"
"TABLE 2: Significant VMS and NT Similarities VMS NT Process scheduler implements 32 priority levels split into halves Process scheduler implements 32 priority levels split into halves Process scheduler never lowers a process' priority below the priority level the application programmed Process scheduler never lowers a process' priority below the priority level the application programmed Uses boosting to handle CPU hogging Uses boosting to handle CPU hogging Supports SMP Supports SMP Digital introduces kernel threads in VMS 7.0 NT 3.1 uses kernel threads Relies heavily on memory-mapped files Relies heavily on memory-mapped files Uses demand-paged virtual memory for physical memory management Uses demand-paged virtual memory for physical memory management Uses working sets with a clock-based replacement algorithm Uses working sets with a clock-based replacement algorithm Balance Set Manager uses swapping to handle the system's memory demands Balance Set Manager doesn't use swapping Supports a layered-driver model throughout the device driver stacks Supports a layered-driver model throughout the device driver stacks Implements asynchronous packet-based I/O commands Implements asynchronous packet-based I/O commands Represents resources as objects managed by an Object Manager Represents resources as objects managed by an Object Manager Security subsystem based on objects with access control lists (ACLs) Security subsystem based on objects with ACLs MONITOR Performance Monitor BACKUP NT Backup
You also purposely didn't respond to the court settlement. Why not? Why would Microsoft settle with DEC? You don't have an answer, so you left it out of your cut-and-paste and tried to pretend it didn't happen.
Slashdot Mirror
It's an incredibly stupid story, and I'm not surprised it comes from university professors. Demand for movies comes from the public, and they're not applying political parables to these things. I think it's just a bunch of movie buffs finding some dumb way to celebrate a Democrat presidential victory.
You missed the point. How can you judge the quality of x versus y if the press doesn't fairly report x versus y?
Nobody accused Obama of "being a terrorist." Palin criticized his association with William Ayers, one of many eye-opening assocations Obama had that the press gave him a pass on. Obama did things like run a commercial mocking McCain for not using a computer, which was actually due to his war injuries that make it painful to type. Yet, these negative ads were glossed over by the press--only McCain got criticized for going negative with his campaigning. You'd think that Obama had never said anything bad about McCain or ran a negative ad. I even saw one claiming McCain was going to ban abortion.
Frankly, McCain was going negative because his campaign was desperately trying to get any kind of news attention. Obama dominated coverage all year long. I remember in the summer when Drudge Report breathlessly reported each leg of Obama's trip through Europe like he was already president. It was as though McCain didn't even exist. The Associated Press even ran articles defending Obama from McCain's attacks, and one of them cited a liberal thinktank group that praised Obama's tax plan (without mentioning the group's political affiliation, of course). The same author of that piece went onto write an op-ed claiming that bringing up Obama's affiliations, like Ayers, was an attempt to portray him as un-American, which was vaguely "racist" (huh?).
Basically, when McCain stayed positive, he was ignored by the press. When he went negative, he was bashed by the press. Couple that with media studies showing an emergent slant in journalist political beliefs, you can't help wonder just how many percentage points the press actually cost McCain. You might even be a Democrat and be glad that Obama won--but it's still something you should wonder about.
The most glaring example would be the mortgage crisis--Obama shot up in the polls, and McCain's campaign never recovered. However, if you go back through history, you actually find that many Democrat social programs (like the Community Reinvestment Act) pushed banks into making high-risk loans to poor people who couldn't pay them back, all in the name of "social justice." Several Democrats served at Fannie Mae, and the biggest recipient of donations from Fannie Mae was...Barack Obama. You even find out that both Bush and McCain warned about the coming crisis in 2003, but they were blocked and criticized by Democrat Barney Frank.
None of that was reported to any reasonable degree by the press. Republicans were blamed for something that Democrats were equally responsible for, if not moreso. I think this is the most frustrating aspect of the 2008 election--that the party which was mostly responsible for the economic crisis was rewarded for it with the presidency and a bigger majority in Congress. Now we have a one-party supermajority of people who voted for the government bailout when the public didn't want it.
Governments work best when they do little. Clinton and the GOP Congress kept each other busy through bickering, and that made them leave us alone. I wanted McCain because I didn't want another one-party government like we had under Bush. McCain also has a history of bipartisan legislation and working with Democrats. Obama has no such history, and he's already appointing people who are aggressively partisan. The Democrats are kicking out anyone who doesn't think like they do--Lieberman's committee position is under threat. I don't think it's going to be a very good presidency when the hype dies down and Obama has to actually do stuff.
It's not that people want to play 8-bit games. It's that they want games that don't require hours of investment to enjoy. Something you can pick up and play. The success of the Wii shows that people want simple fun, and games that are easy and quick to get into will only become more popular as mobile gaming takes over. Adding layers of complexity and hardware requirements only appeals to the super-hardcore who have nothing better to do in the world but play games.
In truth, neo-retro is really an excuse for developers to go back to more accessible gameplay under the guise of appealing to the nostalgia market without admitting that they've made things overly complicated and expensive.
My 10 year old sister obsesses over Zelda and insisted on getting every version available on the Virtual Console. She did this on her own, playing the original Legend of Zelda and also Super Mario Bros. Even though she's growing up in an era when 3D graphics are nothing special, the old games still appealed to her and will be part of her childhood memories. Now she's getting into Majora's Mask, and that came out almost a decade ago. It's new to her.
I think these games, rather than being relics of the past, are really just contributions to established culture that stick around. We'll still have pick-up-and-play, 2D-styled games in the future. It'll be an artistic choice, and that's what makes these neo-retro games important. Mega Man 9's producer said as much--that it was an excuse to return to the old style of gaming using the nostalgia of the current generation.
The surprise success of the Wii, of several of the XBLA games like Braid and Geometry Wars, and of games like Portal prove that gamers are aching for how gaming used to be, which was easier and quicker to get into without having to be a goddamn cinematic production with ridiculous graphics requirements and a time commitment.
My mom played Galaga when it was in arcades, and my dad played NES racing games with me when I was growing up. I can't imagine either of them picking up a videogame today and playing it with my little sister. There's just too much nonsense involved with most today's games that only appeals to smaller, devoted markets. Think of how huge Mario used to be during his original series of games. Everyone identified with it and had fun with it, even people who usually never played games. Today, who cares about Halo 3 outside of Halo fans?
It's not just the lack of risk-taking. It's the immense investment in graphics and other multimedia that sucks the accessibility out of the game. Once in a while, something like that is fun, but when it's every game, you shut out mainstream players from your demographic.
Think about it. If you had an NES, you grew up playing a game library where you could shove a game into the slot, press start at the title screen, and you were already playing in less than a minute. The gameplay was the gameplay that you would be experiencing for the rest of the game.
Today, it feels like it takes up to half an hour for a game to "get going." It's a huge production number that tries to feel like a movie. It's cool, but at the same time, it's so refreshing when you install MAME and play the original Pac-Man. You actually get into it because it's so quick and simple to play.
Look at how Capcom is making Street Fighter IV into a 3D Street Fighter II. People got burned out on fighting games because of the increasing complexity. Street Fighter II was a game you could just pick up and play. Neo-retro games are an excuse for game developers to return to that era of accessibility, which is really a return to gaming's roots.
Honestly, if the Wii hadn't come out and surprised everyone with simple fun, the PS3 and Xbox 360 would be competing with each other over who had the most hardcore games, and we'd eventually hit another market crash like the 80s. Now, we get neat games like Braid. Geometry Wars, Wii Sports, etc.
I even think games like Twilight Princess are a step in the wrong direction. Zelda 1 and Link to the Past were easy games to grasp and arguably some of the best in the series. These hardcore whiners ranting about Nintendo's lack of support for them are forgetting that the Nintendo franchises they love so much started out being much more accessible and fun.
I think he chose an incorrect term. Instead of simulation, he should have used "immersion." That's what today's games are obsessed with--trying to be some immersive studio production that feels like a movie.
Meanwhile, games like Portal and Mega Man 9 come out and wow people with good, challenging gameplay.
I call bullshit. I remember the 90s when PC Gamer would package shareware CDs with its magazines, and there were adventure games, flying sims, first-person shooters, RPGs, RTS games, and more. Now, it's all first-person shooters or sports games with an occasional mass-appeal title like The Sims or World of Warcraft. It's all looking and playing very similar now. Even Deus Ex 3 is getting a fucking regenerating health meter, for crying out loud.
While the nostalgia element of "neo-retro" games is fun, the real appeal is that they mimic the pick-up-and-play mentality of older games. Today, I have to sit through cut scenes, prologues, introductions, tutorials, and story progressions. However, when you press start in Super Mario Bros., you're plopped into level 1 and already playing. There's no ridiculous setup to get to the game. I like that because I'm an extremely impatient person.
Today's games require more time commitment, and that's why people say they're appealing to a more hardcore market--in other words, creepy nerds with a lot of time on their hands because they don't have real lives. I can play a quick game of Mega Man 9 without having to feel like I have to schedule a whole evening to get into it. Compare that to, say, Fallout 3.
I explained that in my post. Many companies refuse to use GPL code because of its viral nature. That cripples adoption of GPL software.
I enjoy it when people respond with breathless hyperbole. It means I struck a nerve.
I know TCP/IP is a standardized protocol, which was my point. If it had been GPL software, it would have gone nowhere because companies wouldn't have adopted it in the early days of the Internet.
If it's not newsworthy, why did you stop scrolling through the Slashdot page, click on Read More for this article, and post to it? Slashdot posts stories for people to read and talk about. Maybe some folks would like to discuss game development on Android or other embedded devices.
Uh, they were right. The GPL is viral, and this prevents many commercial companies from adopting and using GPL code, crippling the movement.
If TCP/IP had been GPL, the Internet would be a different place today.
I can access and browse my massive library of music in a jukebox interface in iTunes better than you ever will manually browsing your filesystem. I have over 100 GB of music.
This is 2008. Computers are supposed to do our work for us. I know you want to feel all gung-ho and independent, but it makes you look like a funny relic from the days of Winamp.
I see, now you're going to jump to a different topic and pretend that the burden of proof is on me when you were the one claiming OS X "exploits" a subset of hardware and only runs well on that subset.
You are the one who needs to provide benchmarks for your claim. Next.
The fact that you have to declare yourself "right" means you had no rational argument to begin with. You're flailing at this point.
Next.
Yes, you did. Look, you're about to do it again:
You believe OS X exploits the capabilities of a subset of hardware, and the implication is that such exploitation is the reason for OS X's speed over Ubuntu. You even used the word "exploits" in your previous post about it.
You're purposely being obtuse, so I'll spell it out for you. Your argument was about performance on a reduced set of hardware, and I pointed out that OS X runs outside that set of hardware. It runs fast on it, too. Apple isn't taking advantage of some mysterious set of hardware features only they are privy to--an Intel Mac is made of standard PC parts.
You're obsessing over the "hacks" part and ignoring that the hacks are for the copy protection.
How many times do people have to point out that OS X runs well on generic non-Apple hardware? Are you just going to keep ignoring it in every post you make?
It's relevant because you claimed OS X relies on the capabilities of a subset of hardware dictated by Apple, and I pointed out that OS X happily runs on generic PC hardware through copy-protection hacks.
Really, it's bleedingly obvious that it's relevant, and you know that--you just don't have a counterargument for it
Then why did you bring up Slashdot comments? You said "Oh, you mean the benchmarks that some random Slashdotters concluded were skewed because of so-and-so reason?" Why would mention the comments if you weren't implying that the comments disproved the benchmarks?
You're mad that I called you out for relying on random Slashdot comments.
You're like the third person to reference the previous Slashdot discussion as some sort of scientific debunking of the benchmarks. Slashdot comments are the most biased, unreliable sources of information on the internet.
Remember, folks, the iPod mini will fail! Nobody will buy one of those things!
Wow, they were discussed on Slashdot! That means they were scientifically disproved because some people made up some conclusions that they thought were "likely" so that they could get modded up!
How is Apple trying to remove choice from anybody? You choose to buy Apple's hardware, or you don't. Your post is just uninformed anti-capitalism ranting on Slashdot.
Uh...what business practices? Or is this more generic, liberal, anti-capitalist ranting on Slashdot?
Capitalism made the computer you used to type your post. Get out of the dorm room and into the real world, kiddo.
Unless you can prove that OS X is taking advantage of hardware features that other operating systems are unable to, your point is baseless. OS X even runs on generic PCs with a few hacks.
What, so if you don't automatically believe the global warming premise, your analytical skills are out of whack? Crichton's point about global warming was that it's used by politicians to scare people into accepting government programs. It's become an urban religion--the untouched Eden that was sullied by the sins of mankind, and we must repent or face a future doomsday in which we'll all be judged for our actions. Sound familiar?
Ah, so you're going to be an asshole. Have you done any research on this at all? The similarities between VMS and NT have been discussed extensively and are commonly known:
You also purposely didn't respond to the court settlement. Why not? Why would Microsoft settle with DEC? You don't have an answer, so you left it out of your cut-and-paste and tried to pretend it didn't happen.
From what I can tell, it's not trying to replace the X11 standard. It's trying to replace X.org.