You could always try the RICO Act.

Net neutrality is what ought to prevent racketeering in the digital age. In the old days the Mafia turned up on your doorstep and said "nice warehouse you have here, it would be a shame if it 'burned down', give us some money and we can make sure that doesn't happen." Without net neutrality, Comcast can turn up on your doorstep and say "Nice website you've got here, it would be a shame if it 'slowed down', give us some money and we can make sure that doesn't happen."

Microsoft only does well in areas where it has a monopoly. What it's doing here is not buying an asset, it's buying retrospective market share and killing a competitor. Mojang sold a lot of games before Notch left just like Nokia sold a lot of phones before the Elop disaster. It doesn't matter to Microsoft that Nokia imploded or that Mojang's main asset (Notch) left, the point isn't to have their assets or to actually do anything with the brands, that's just a bonus if it happens. The point is simply for them not to be competitors any more.

For a start, Ubuntu is a high-memory distro, because it tries to be everything to everybody, simple to install and use, and as automated as possible.
Blow it away, install Debian 7 with lxde, and you'll run the entire thing in nicely in your 512MB with room to spare.

Plus, that stupid "PC Settings" screen, with a bunch of toggle switches for options, instead of a real control panel....oh, wait...it DOES have an actual control panel, but the organization of it is completely different than XP, Vista, or 7. And what settings do you find in the Control Panel, and what ones are in PC Settings?
Then there's turning it off. Where the heck is the Shut Down option? Oh...it's over here at the opposite side of the screen, completely hidden by the desktop equivalent of "mystery meat navigation."
Then there's the whole hideousness of the UI itself, and its flat, Windows-2-esque window chrome. When the graphical elements of your quarter century old OS are more appealing than your latest and greatest, you know you've screwed the pooch. Royally.

Errr....you've never actually installed Windows, have you?

In all your examples, the part that you're suggesting should be left out is made by the same company that makes the rest of the item.

In the Microsoft/hardware manufacturer case, they're two different companies.
In the obligatory car analogy, rather than the paint removed, it would be more like every car manufacturer (except for some niche ones like TVR, Saleen, Koenigsegg, and Caterham, none of which you can afford) sold you a car, but required you to buy a Nokia cellphone along with it. You already have a perfectly functional Samsung cellphone and plan, but you can't buy a car without this extra Nokia phone and plan being forced on you.
The thing they're removing is the Nokia, not the paint on the car.

The thing is, in this case, product A doesn't require product B to function. It can use product B, but it can also use product C, product D, product E, or product F. It only requires one of them, but when it's sold to you, even if you want to use it with product C, D, E, or F, you are required to buy product B.

Apple doesn't develop their own supporting chipsets, CPU or GPU hardware, or any other such thing. At most, there may be some proprietary "System Protection Chip" that isn't needed at all for the system to work.

In fact, Apple themselves have instructions on their website for how to install Windows on Mac hardware. I guess you need to catch up to what the world has known for a while.

Maybe the municipal government of Turin?

the btrfs project was started in 2007, before Oracle purchased SUN.

CMEs usually lead to an enhanced chance of aurora, so if I'm in a suitable location it's more a case of getting the camera gear out and heading off to somewhere scenic and away from any major source of light pollution. Keep watching the skies, we could be in for something spectacular if it hits us head on.

I would say the same thing. The user can currently either choose a different "sub-distro" based on their primary flavour of choice, opt for a desktop/server specific spin, or just accept the current one distro to rule them all but just install the necessary packages for what they want approach. There really shouldn't be any need to split a Linux distro (or BSD distro for that matter) in two for this (and why stop there, why not a phone/tablet optimised version, or one for embedded devices...?) - just provide a specific spin for desktop that includes a selection of GUIs and another for servers that includes a broader selection of alternative server daemons and maybe a simple GUI for those that really need it. Apply some task specific optimizations to the default configuration files for bonus points and off we go.

Where, exactly, do I state that I am putting a GUI on a server? Perhaps you got confused when I mentioned Gnome requiring SystemD as an example of how applications making SystemD a dependency was forcing distros into a Hobson's Choice of either adopting SystemD whether they want to or not, or going through a lot of pain to replace it with an alternative when it breaks major dependencies like Gnome? RHEL, like many distros, includes Gnome - but how many of those distros have adopted SystemD mostly as a result of this, not because it is better or worse than the alternatives?

Note also that I point out that the dependencies work in *both* directions; as antientropic points out Gnome requiring SystemD is absolutely an issue with the Gnome team and nothing to do with SystemD, but it does have implications in that it helps build a mess of inter-dependencies that is making it increasingly hard to strip systems down to the minimum. RHEL's insistance on NetworkManager by default, with all the baggage that brings, doesn't inspire confidence either, as this is apparently one of the next daemon in SystemD's sights - maybe SystemD can improve it, but I'm not holding my breath.

Anyway, regardless of that, we've made our choice and moved to BSD; SystemD played a significant part in that, but it definitely wasn't the only factor, as I noted in my OP. ?

Improving the qualities of robusta or the hardiness of arabica, either works for me. I love the smell and taste of a well prepared coffee, but the increasing use of robusta has started to mess with my digestive system for some reason (I suspect the part that makes robusta taste bitter) making me feel like I've drunk acid. Adding sugar or salt (depending on the chain) helps a bit, but the result has been to pretty much stop me from buying coffee to drink from the usual high-street chains that are all we available here, and my attempts to offer feedback in the form of suggesting a "premium" high-arabica based brew don't seem to be getting very far.