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1) Personally, I've always found the minion rule to be a bit too gamist for my taste.  I much perfer this sort of scaling.  That said, I'm a bit concerned about the discussion of damage inflation, especially given that one of the items that most excites me about the upcoming edition being a flattening of the math but will withold judgement until I see the system in action.  Please, please don't use damage as just another means of level inflation.  I like the thought of tenth level characters being challenged by lower level creatures in larger numbers.

2) As a proponent of Editions of Dungeons and Dragons prior to 4th edition, I think that alignment is a central part of Dungeons and Dragons and definitely want to see it in game.  That said, I'd rather the mechanical aspects apply in a less pronounced fashion to beings not touched by some sort of cosmic good or evil in some fashion or another.  As an example, I dislike detect alignment spells a la 3.x detecting the alignment of a corrupt political official.  It's a disservice to the game and often difficult to handle from a DM standpoint. detracting from the game.  Allow those spells and effects to interact with devils, demons, angels, or servants of divine entities.  Leave the rest to whatever sense motive mechanic in the works.  

3)  Classes mechanics don't necessarily differentiate classes, so a repetition of mechanics isn't always a bad thing.  Combat maneuvers for martial characters (forgive my co-opt of the 4th ed term for a second) seems like an excellent direction to take the classes, especially given the concern that a large number of players have expressed in relation to boring and underpowered melee combat.  These sorts of maneuvers could be exactly the sort of flavor that would make combat more entertaining.

1. I think minions are an unusual edition to the game.  They help the game significantly, but they do give me immersion pause.  I like the idea that they are shooting for "effectively minions" as presented in that answer.

As for the "bounded accuracy," and attack/defenses not scaling with level, is that really much different effectively than having armor function as damage reduction?  I'd suggest looking at the massive poll at the top of this forum about where opinions are on that.  I'm hesistantly worried that will put a lot of onus on gaming the mechanics of the system to effectively become invulnerable.  There aren't enough specifics presented here to see.

2. I honestly don't think anyone was expecting the nine alignments to not be presented as the default alignment grid.  What's interesting, and will be unfortunate to some/many, is reading into the deeper meaning behind the post that DDN will be given a distinctly flavorful presentation (war between Law and Chaos, Rod of Seven Parts, fundamental forces of existence).  I won't lie and say that doesn't help me as a DM and player out tremendously, because it does.  And I am personally excited to play DDN.  For others though, while overriding a default assumption that there is a war between Law and Chaos may be acceptable (like overriding a default assumption about Dwarves getting bonuses against Giants, or some such), I can easily see understandable disapproval in needing to override default assumptions about mechanical alignment.

I hope at least that mechanical alignment effects as presented in core are much more associated with those planar concepts and fundamental forces than they are with personality.

3. Sounds intriguing, not enough detail to comment.

This article is extremely disappointing. The author clearly doesn't understand minions at all, and having alignment mechanics as a core assumption rather than as an optional module is a massive strike against the new edition.