Simple: Reality != All The Data In The World; All The Data In The World == !(Reality).

Seconded. There are plenty of good games out there that this once respectable company now turned evil do not own. Too bad as I was really looking forward to playing this one. The second I saw that EA globbered it I knew it was good bye. Now I hear the game runs in the cloud (sims on EA servers,) once again showing how wrong headed the whole cloud computing concept is, except for those who think they will cash in on total ownership and control of your digital world.

Wait. Supermarkets only buy food from good looking farmers?! That is a problem.

This statement sums up the most fantastic and surreal aspect of this debate. The same as the USDA's take on GM crops ("they are no different than ordinary crops".) If that were actually the case than why produce them? If these "foods" are no different than hybridized or heirloom stock why waste all that money and grief making and then defending them. Obviously they are different, and quite possibly in ways we are not fully aware of. That is the risk.

And as far as GM crops being created for good reasons (feed the starving, etc.) the vast majority of commercial GM crops are designed to withstand massive amounts of specific pesticides (Roundup Ready anyone?), or to produce their own bug toxins, not to bring goodness to people's plates. Monsanto is definitely not in it for humanitarian reasons, even if the scientists they hire might be.

Not when it impedes your bottom line.

Sorry, should have said "Same thing with Apple -recently-".

I am actually a big Apple fan. Have always found their OS to be superior to Microsoft's offerings and the *nix based systems I have used over the years for the reasons you site. The latest releases are slipping, though, in the design department; suffering from app/OS bloat with some really poor UI choices (for the desktop anyway.) They are going against their own Human Interface Guidelines and again it is about the surface (literally since they are moving the iOS paradigm into osX) appealing to the general consumer audience at the expense of a powerful system unburdened with fluff for the professional users. In other words, that great balance between quality design and effective marking is skewing in the wrong direction.

The lesson that both marketing and development should take away is that tablets and touch devices are different than desktops. That the people who create stuff on computers for a living have different needs than the people who use them primarily for entertainment. Don't cripple my workstation OS to make it more like my smart phone.