It is simple: people emotionally want the thing but can't justify the price. The 19.95 bit helps them to rationalize that it is "around $19.00". They don't round, they truncate, because that lets them get what they really want to get. Their emotions are in collusion with the retailer to undermine their rational mind.
the myth is, of course, that such examples scale. they don't. i wouldn't ever want to see half the artists i listen to in person and many of the others make it impractible because they're half a world away.
The model does not encompass every single artist and every single fan, but it does "scale". There are thousands of musicians in any medium sized city who make their living primarily through live music (from punk bands to jazz musicians to oboists). And, after all, there was a time when this was how most musicians made their living.
If you paid for Puma (10.1) "just in time" to see Jaguar (10.2) released, then you are a fool. The release date of Jaguar was announced at MWNY more than a month ahead of the actual release in late August. Unless you had some dire need that made it worth paying $129 for a month's use of Puma, you should have waited. Don't blame Apple for your failure to budget your money well.
Sure, blame the consumer. That's the way to win friends, new customers and repeat business.
I find it odd that so many people react violently to the idea that Linux could beat Apple on the desktop. Of course, Linux will not wipe out Apple on the desktop. But I see no reason to doubt that Linux could surpass Apple on the desktop for some of the same reasons that new versions of Windows do: a little cheaper, a little bit better economies of scale on the hardware side, easier migration path for pre-existing hardware, dual-boot opportunities, etc. Do you really think the price issue is irrelevant to an IT manager figuring out how to fit a thousand desktops with a Word-compatible word processor? He's not going to look to Apple to save money. He's going to look to Linux and he's not going to deploy Linux on the desktop unless he can get such huge volume to make the transition worth the effort. That's what happened in Munich? When is the last time Apple had a win like that? And more important: does it matter? Can't Apple and Linux both succeed?
I mean even if the article portrays the situation as "success for Linux means failure for Apple", we should be smart enough to realize that that isn't true. Success for Linux means more portable software like Mozilla and OpenOffice. Success for Linux means that products start to be judged on their ability to work on multiple platforms again (that's almost totally fallen away these days). Success for Linux means that grunts can have cheap Unix boxes running free office software and managers and hotshots can have lickable ones also running Unix.
I don't think that the Macintosh has in recent memory cracked 10% of the market and today I think that even 5% would be progress. It would be sad to think that people out there have such low expectations for Linux that they say "no way will Linux ever beat Apple." Guess what: price matters more than quality and IT managers today see either Linux or Mac on the desktop as more expensive because of the support costs. But Linux can gradually eat away at those support costs. The Macintosh is forever stuck with the license and hardware costs. But that's okay. I don't care if a secretary in Munich uses a Mac. I use one and that's good enough for me. If she can save some money using Linux then I'm happy for her too!
People often say "GPL" when they mean open source. Everything you say is true of open source in general. For instance, the BSD and Apache licenses also do not prevent forks and in fact we know about all of the forks of BSD!
With the exception of Monica Lewinsky and Anna Nicole and bob dole, all of the celebrities mentioned attained their celeb status through their art. Monica obtained it through a blowjob and not through intellectual property of any sort - basically the same deal for anna.
That's exactly my point. You can make money from fame no matter how you got famous. It therefore stands to reason that there will always be some muscians who make money from their fame whether or not there is copyright. There will also be other musicians (just as today) who make money from their live performances. Arguments about the "death of music" are way overblown. Selling music is only one way to make money from making music.
Poor Black Blues musicians - they were basically treated by their record labels as if they had no intellectual property rights. None of them got rich. Only a few of them made a living. There are exceptions, mostly those were the ones that survived until relatively recently, and were able to take advantage of intellectual property laws (B.B. King, for example).
I guarantee you that B.B.King makes a very comfortable living from his touring and television commersials. Record sales are helpful but not necessary. And I went to see a more or less unknown blues singer last night. He's not making any money from CD sales, except for the ones that take place at the gig, which are more like souveniers than IP. But he's surviving. Music is not dependendent on copyright.
Some of these artists were even quite famous, but they never really prospered.
So? Who says they have a right to get rich? The best computer programmer in the world doesn't get as rich as your average corrupt CEO. Tough shit. Excellent nurses can put their lives on the line and not get paid as much as second-tier basketball players. So what? The capitalist system isn't set up to give everybody the money they are worth in some moral sense but give everybody enough to survive and continue producing. I went to a jazz bar last night that proves that the system provides enough incentive for musicians to produce without copyright. And anyhow it should be common sense because musicians made money before there was recording and copyright.
The notion that much of our brain is therefore "unused" doesn't really make sense from an evolutionary standpoint.
It isn't that there are sections of the brain that are never used. It is that each individual has sections of their brain that they do not use. It sort of stands to reason that there are parts of the brain that mathematicians use more fully than musicians and vice versa, just as there are muscles that sprinters use that wrestlers don't and vice versa. Evolution doesn't know exactly what environment each individual will be born into so it keeps around many more capabilities than each individual uses.
Can you then explain how it is that RedHat, a distro that is the basis for many other distros, can continue to prosper?
Businesses don't just buy the software, they buy the support agreement and the longevity and viability of that software.
According to your own analysis, they are buying the support contract, not the software.
Let me give you a bit of a wake-up call: if she were an ethical human being then she wouldn't have allowed herself to serve as the RIAA's mouthpiece for any amount of money.
You know, it is possible to disagree with someone and still think that they are ethical. Some people have a strong ethical negative reaction to music swapping.
What kind of music will you be listening to when Radiohead has to work the day shift at the 7-11 just to make ends meat?
This is just BS. In human society it is always possible to turn musical (or literary) talent into fame and it is always possible to turn fame into money. Beethoven and Shakespeare did not make money from copyright. They had sponsors, they had live performances, they did commissioned works etc. Once in a while they probably even did art for its own sake without worrying about who would pay for it. Especially in America it is possible to turn any scrap of fame into money. Consider that Monica Lewinsky and Anna Nicole Smith are well-paid television actors. To say nothing of Ozzy Osbourne. Bob Dole does Pepsi commercials. Do you realy think that Radiohead is going to have a hard time making ends meet?
Are there artists who would have a tough time under alternate models? Yes. Sure. But you mentioned Radiohead explicitly and I'm talking about them. There will ALWAYS be a cream of the crop making tons of money just as there is in any other spectator sport.
Yahoo was by far the best search engine out there, and Netscape was way better than the competition. Both became complacent and then they started sucking.
They weren't complacent, they were out-competed. There are a variety of ways to be out-competed. Complacency is just one. Intelligence is another. Luck is another. Wisdom is yet another. etc.
Here is what will stop them - Google can and does keep up with the times, updating their engine. Even if MS had the competing technology today, they would have to get it integrated into the OS/Browser. It won't happen with the OS, people don't upgrade that often, and it takes MS a long time to come out with a new version. IE may be a better candidate, but everyone doesn't upgrade their browser very often. (mass majority)
It really doesn't matter. If Microsoft puts a decent search bar into IE and people upgrade as they upgrade their operating systems, everyone will be upgraded over a few years. They don't have to beat Google today. They just have to beat them eventually. Furthermore, the server side can get better and better (as Google does) without any change to the client. when people start to notice that MSN results are "basically as good as" Google results, they will stop going that extra mile to get to Google. I know that several machines I use have MSN as their start page just because I'm too lazy to configure something else and MSN is "good enough".
You've forgotten part of the GPL's requirements. Not only is the source included and available but the source and binary must be redistributable which means that someone else can take your code (even your build) repackage it and give it away. This happens often with Linux Distros. That's why you can't charge much money for GPL software. It only takes one altruist to put your software on a web site and you have "compeition". Given that, it's a little ridiculous to charge more than a nominal fee for GPL software. You have to charge for a support contract or something like that instead.
3) What's with the nmap guy? He h4x0r's some kid's computer and publically posts screenshots after hitting on him over a Slashdot post (yeah, models post here all the time) but all SCO rates is a Makefile change?
Adobe and Corel are both huge SVG backers. This should not be a problem for long. SVG is not currently targetted at designers so it makes no sense to view it as a short-term Flash competitor. SVG dominates Flash in technical fields like cartography, census data visualization and technical documentation. Flash will never be able to touch SVG in those kinds of verticals. SVG is also being embedded in things like Linux desktops, printers, hand-held cell phones. Once SVG has matured in those fields it can circle back around to tackle Flash in its stronghold of design-heavy Web animations.
Now, I'm all for Open Source, but come on -- I'm not going to get on the "If it's proprietary, it's EVIL" bandwagon.
Open source has nothing to do with it. If Flash continues to expand its ownership of parts of the Web we will be back to the bad old days where significant volumes of important data are only available in a proprietary file format. Just as the dominance of the Word file format is a significant impedement to Linux and OpenOffice, the dominance of Flash could be a serious impedement to new platforms of the future. A benign dictator is still a dictator. Better not to have one at all. Macromedia could solve the problem (and secure Flash's future) by publishing the Flash file format (NOT behind a license) andsubmitting it to a standards body.
he fact of the matter is that as of today, SVG is an esoteric curiosity, nothing more...
SVG may be a curiousity to you but there are many people who cannot get their jobs done on a day-to-day basis without it.
SWF is an open file format; while the Flash application itself may not be open source, its ultimate product can be read and produced by open source applications.
If you read the license closely you will find that you have rights to the format for the purposes of writing applications that generate Flash. But not for apps that do not...like browsers. "Pursuant to the terms and conditions of this License, you are granted a nonexclusive license to use the Specification for the sole purposes of developing Products that output SWF." No other purpose than a Flash generator. So you cannot create a competitor for Macromedia's Flash player.
Technology has made it easier for us to be able to actually relax and release stress from us. To not have to worry about the lawn because you placed a chemical that causes it to grow stronger and less fast or to be able to not have to worry about the house because a new weatherproof paint won't fade peel or chip.
I think you've missed something important. The only reason you do worry about the lawn or the weatherproofing is because society expects perfect lawns and perfect weatherproofing and society only cares because it is within the realm of possibility. When mowing a lawn was an inordinate effort most people simply did not have lawns. They made do with dirt or weeds. But because we can maintain lawns we elevate it into a should maintain lawns. Now arguably this is an improvement because who wants a dirt lawn? But you haven't exchanged effort for relaxation. You've exchanged dirt for grass. That's a very different thing.
As an extreme example, consider this statement: "Thanks to airplanes I don't have to walk thousands of miles home for Christmas every year." Well, the only reason your parents expect you to go thousands of miles for Christmas and the only reason you even consider it is because of the airplane. And catching that airplane adds, not reduces stress versus the alternative which is just staying home and writing a letter.
Technology does not buy leisure time because we are not smart enough to keep our expectations of what we can accomplish fixed as the technology advances. We fill the time we are given.
I don't think that supports your argument. It looks like the best place to be born these days, if you want a programming job, is India.
First, you don't have to be born in India. You can move there without immigration complications. They would love to have rich westerners moving over, bringing their savings. The reverse is not true. Second, if you drop your wage demands to the American minimum wage you will find that you can get jobs too.
Wouldn't the "what they can do" argument support keeping the jobs in the US? I think there's a larger base of more experienced programmers in the US.
Yes, but they want more money. If/when programming is a minimum wage job here, Indian programmers will probably be driven out of business because when you put a low price together with proximity to the customer the American programmer wins. But the truth is that most American programmers would rather export their jobs than work at minimum wage (I would!). So be it. They are willing to do the same work for less, they win.
Why should Indians get those jobs just because of where they're born?
Indians get the job because they have lesser wage expectations which is partially a function of their lower cost of living and partially a function of their lower expectations in terms of big screen TVs and J2ME cell phones.
Most companies using BSD software don't contribute anything back - usually, it's just an extra layer of process that's not worth the hassle. I haven't seen Microsoft send patches to BSD even though they used to use the TCP/IP stack and other stuff in Windows.
Yeah, well, you're talking about Microsoft. Obviously they are a special case. Compare to Apple/Darwin. Or Apple/KHTML. Or IBM/Apache. It only makes sense to let someone else maintain your patches for you rather than do it yourself!
Well this is somewhat of a generalization. Yes some errors can cause the whole system to crash in both Linux, Windows, and Unix. The difference is that it the way Unix and Linux are designed, it is far less likely.
Oh really, care to back that up with some explanation rather than just a blanket assertion?
Protected memory space for the kernel or microkernel: Even Windows has that.
Did you read the sentence you quoted? "all components of their OS were isolated from the microkernel and from one another." In Windows (or Linux, or BSD) components of the kernels (i.e. drivers, file systems, etc.) are not isolated from each other. The components are protected from user land applications, but not from each other.
Unlike Windows, Unix and Linux doesn't allow any ordinary application to write to the kernel.
What makes you think that any application can write to a Windows 2000 or 2003 kernel memory? Please provide evidence: not a security alert about a bug that's been exploited (even Linux/Unix can have those) but a description of something in the Windows APIs or architecture that allows applications to write to kernel memory _by design_.
Right -- and also avoid receiving any improvements to the software performed by other users. A bug in a BSD program can stay unfixed until the author finds it. In a GPL program, it gets fixed as soon as ANYONE finds it.
No, they have to find it, and fix it, and redistribute their software, and then somebody has to notice the fix in their redistributed source code and port that back to the mainline. In either Linux or BSD most fixes do not come through this path. Rather the person contributes the fix back because maintaining a fork is a pain in the ass.
Here is a good graph showing national debt as % of gdp. We are not any worse off then we were in the '90s or the '60s.
Debt is irrelevant. Debt is what you have AFTER you borrow. The point is that Dubya is putting the US in a position to borrow this year, and next year and the year after that. It's the same as in your household. The day you start spending more than you make, you have one day's debt. But after ten years of that you have a huge accumulated debt. If you look at your chart, Regan took over in the early eighties, a period of low debt. The debt was at its height during the Clinton years not because Clinton was spending a bunch, but because it had accumulated and could not be wished away overnight.
Slashdot Mirror
It is simple: people emotionally want the thing but can't justify the price. The 19.95 bit helps them to rationalize that it is "around $19.00". They don't round, they truncate, because that lets them get what they really want to get. Their emotions are in collusion with the retailer to undermine their rational mind.
the myth is, of course, that such examples scale. they don't. i wouldn't ever want to see half the artists i listen to in person and many of the others make it impractible because they're half a world away.
The model does not encompass every single artist and every single fan, but it does "scale". There are thousands of musicians in any medium sized city who make their living primarily through live music (from punk bands to jazz musicians to oboists). And, after all, there was a time when this was how most musicians made their living.
If you paid for Puma (10.1) "just in time" to see Jaguar (10.2) released, then you are a fool. The release date of Jaguar was announced at MWNY more than a month ahead of the actual release in late August. Unless you had some dire need that made it worth paying $129 for a month's use of Puma, you should have waited. Don't blame Apple for your failure to budget your money well.
Sure, blame the consumer. That's the way to win friends, new customers and repeat business.
I mean even if the article portrays the situation as "success for Linux means failure for Apple", we should be smart enough to realize that that isn't true. Success for Linux means more portable software like Mozilla and OpenOffice. Success for Linux means that products start to be judged on their ability to work on multiple platforms again (that's almost totally fallen away these days). Success for Linux means that grunts can have cheap Unix boxes running free office software and managers and hotshots can have lickable ones also running Unix.
I don't think that the Macintosh has in recent memory cracked 10% of the market and today I think that even 5% would be progress. It would be sad to think that people out there have such low expectations for Linux that they say "no way will Linux ever beat Apple." Guess what: price matters more than quality and IT managers today see either Linux or Mac on the desktop as more expensive because of the support costs. But Linux can gradually eat away at those support costs. The Macintosh is forever stuck with the license and hardware costs. But that's okay. I don't care if a secretary in Munich uses a Mac. I use one and that's good enough for me. If she can save some money using Linux then I'm happy for her too!
People often say "GPL" when they mean open source. Everything you say is true of open source in general. For instance, the BSD and Apache licenses also do not prevent forks and in fact we know about all of the forks of BSD!
With the exception of Monica Lewinsky and Anna Nicole and bob dole, all of the celebrities mentioned attained their celeb status through their art. Monica obtained it through a blowjob and not through intellectual property of any sort - basically the same deal for anna.
That's exactly my point. You can make money from fame no matter how you got famous. It therefore stands to reason that there will always be some muscians who make money from their fame whether or not there is copyright. There will also be other musicians (just as today) who make money from their live performances. Arguments about the "death of music" are way overblown. Selling music is only one way to make money from making music.
Poor Black Blues musicians - they were basically treated by their record labels as if they had no intellectual property rights. None of them got rich. Only a few of them made a living. There are exceptions, mostly those were the ones that survived until relatively recently, and were able to take advantage of intellectual property laws (B.B. King, for example).
I guarantee you that B.B.King makes a very comfortable living from his touring and television commersials. Record sales are helpful but not necessary. And I went to see a more or less unknown blues singer last night. He's not making any money from CD sales, except for the ones that take place at the gig, which are more like souveniers than IP. But he's surviving. Music is not dependendent on copyright.
Some of these artists were even quite famous, but they never really prospered.
So? Who says they have a right to get rich? The best computer programmer in the world doesn't get as rich as your average corrupt CEO. Tough shit. Excellent nurses can put their lives on the line and not get paid as much as second-tier basketball players. So what? The capitalist system isn't set up to give everybody the money they are worth in some moral sense but give everybody enough to survive and continue producing. I went to a jazz bar last night that proves that the system provides enough incentive for musicians to produce without copyright. And anyhow it should be common sense because musicians made money before there was recording and copyright.
The notion that much of our brain is therefore "unused" doesn't really make sense from an evolutionary standpoint.
It isn't that there are sections of the brain that are never used. It is that each individual has sections of their brain that they do not use. It sort of stands to reason that there are parts of the brain that mathematicians use more fully than musicians and vice versa, just as there are muscles that sprinters use that wrestlers don't and vice versa. Evolution doesn't know exactly what environment each individual will be born into so it keeps around many more capabilities than each individual uses.
Can you then explain how it is that RedHat, a distro that is the basis for many other distros, can continue to prosper? Businesses don't just buy the software, they buy the support agreement and the longevity and viability of that software.
According to your own analysis, they are buying the support contract, not the software.
Let me give you a bit of a wake-up call: if she were an ethical human being then she wouldn't have allowed herself to serve as the RIAA's mouthpiece for any amount of money.
You know, it is possible to disagree with someone and still think that they are ethical. Some people have a strong ethical negative reaction to music swapping.
What kind of music will you be listening to when Radiohead has to work the day shift at the 7-11 just to make ends meat?
This is just BS. In human society it is always possible to turn musical (or literary) talent into fame and it is always possible to turn fame into money. Beethoven and Shakespeare did not make money from copyright. They had sponsors, they had live performances, they did commissioned works etc. Once in a while they probably even did art for its own sake without worrying about who would pay for it. Especially in America it is possible to turn any scrap of fame into money. Consider that Monica Lewinsky and Anna Nicole Smith are well-paid television actors. To say nothing of Ozzy Osbourne. Bob Dole does Pepsi commercials. Do you realy think that Radiohead is going to have a hard time making ends meet?
Are there artists who would have a tough time under alternate models? Yes. Sure. But you mentioned Radiohead explicitly and I'm talking about them. There will ALWAYS be a cream of the crop making tons of money just as there is in any other spectator sport.
Yahoo was by far the best search engine out there, and Netscape was way better than the competition. Both became complacent and then they started sucking.
They weren't complacent, they were out-competed. There are a variety of ways to be out-competed. Complacency is just one. Intelligence is another. Luck is another. Wisdom is yet another. etc.
Here is what will stop them - Google can and does keep up with the times, updating their engine. Even if MS had the competing technology today, they would have to get it integrated into the OS/Browser. It won't happen with the OS, people don't upgrade that often, and it takes MS a long time to come out with a new version. IE may be a better candidate, but everyone doesn't upgrade their browser very often. (mass majority)
It really doesn't matter. If Microsoft puts a decent search bar into IE and people upgrade as they upgrade their operating systems, everyone will be upgraded over a few years. They don't have to beat Google today. They just have to beat them eventually. Furthermore, the server side can get better and better (as Google does) without any change to the client. when people start to notice that MSN results are "basically as good as" Google results, they will stop going that extra mile to get to Google. I know that several machines I use have MSN as their start page just because I'm too lazy to configure something else and MSN is "good enough".
You've forgotten part of the GPL's requirements. Not only is the source included and available but the source and binary must be redistributable which means that someone else can take your code (even your build) repackage it and give it away. This happens often with Linux Distros. That's why you can't charge much money for GPL software. It only takes one altruist to put your software on a web site and you have "compeition". Given that, it's a little ridiculous to charge more than a nominal fee for GPL software. You have to charge for a support contract or something like that instead.
3) What's with the nmap guy? He h4x0r's some kid's computer and publically posts screenshots after hitting on him over a Slashdot post (yeah, models post here all the time) but all SCO rates is a Makefile change?
What? Link to this story please!
Ouch. That's harsh. I think everyone is doing the best they can!
No authoring environment.
Adobe and Corel are both huge SVG backers. This should not be a problem for long. SVG is not currently targetted at designers so it makes no sense to view it as a short-term Flash competitor. SVG dominates Flash in technical fields like cartography, census data visualization and technical documentation. Flash will never be able to touch SVG in those kinds of verticals. SVG is also being embedded in things like Linux desktops, printers, hand-held cell phones. Once SVG has matured in those fields it can circle back around to tackle Flash in its stronghold of design-heavy Web animations.
Now, I'm all for Open Source, but come on -- I'm not going to get on the "If it's proprietary, it's EVIL" bandwagon.
Open source has nothing to do with it. If Flash continues to expand its ownership of parts of the Web we will be back to the bad old days where significant volumes of important data are only available in a proprietary file format. Just as the dominance of the Word file format is a significant impedement to Linux and OpenOffice, the dominance of Flash could be a serious impedement to new platforms of the future. A benign dictator is still a dictator. Better not to have one at all. Macromedia could solve the problem (and secure Flash's future) by publishing the Flash file format (NOT behind a license) andsubmitting it to a standards body.
he fact of the matter is that as of today, SVG is an esoteric curiosity, nothing more...
SVG may be a curiousity to you but there are many people who cannot get their jobs done on a day-to-day basis without it.
It looks to me like that site documents Flash 4, not Flash 5.
SWF is an open file format; while the Flash application itself may not be open source, its ultimate product can be read and produced by open source applications.
If you read the license closely you will find that you have rights to the format for the purposes of writing applications that generate Flash. But not for apps that do not...like browsers. "Pursuant to the terms and conditions of this License, you are granted a nonexclusive license to use the Specification for the sole purposes of developing Products that output SWF." No other purpose than a Flash generator. So you cannot create a competitor for Macromedia's Flash player.
Open file formats do not have licenses. They have web pages with URLs. Like this one for PDF. The Flash file format is not open and unencumbered.
You'd have a hard time strretching that demo out for a month!
Technology has made it easier for us to be able to actually relax and release stress from us. To not have to worry about the lawn because you placed a chemical that causes it to grow stronger and less fast or to be able to not have to worry about the house because a new weatherproof paint won't fade peel or chip.
I think you've missed something important. The only reason you do worry about the lawn or the weatherproofing is because society expects perfect lawns and perfect weatherproofing and society only cares because it is within the realm of possibility. When mowing a lawn was an inordinate effort most people simply did not have lawns. They made do with dirt or weeds. But because we can maintain lawns we elevate it into a should maintain lawns. Now arguably this is an improvement because who wants a dirt lawn? But you haven't exchanged effort for relaxation. You've exchanged dirt for grass. That's a very different thing.
As an extreme example, consider this statement: "Thanks to airplanes I don't have to walk thousands of miles home for Christmas every year." Well, the only reason your parents expect you to go thousands of miles for Christmas and the only reason you even consider it is because of the airplane. And catching that airplane adds, not reduces stress versus the alternative which is just staying home and writing a letter.
Technology does not buy leisure time because we are not smart enough to keep our expectations of what we can accomplish fixed as the technology advances. We fill the time we are given.
I don't think that supports your argument. It looks like the best place to be born these days, if you want a programming job, is India.
First, you don't have to be born in India. You can move there without immigration complications. They would love to have rich westerners moving over, bringing their savings. The reverse is not true. Second, if you drop your wage demands to the American minimum wage you will find that you can get jobs too.
Wouldn't the "what they can do" argument support keeping the jobs in the US? I think there's a larger base of more experienced programmers in the US.
Yes, but they want more money. If/when programming is a minimum wage job here, Indian programmers will probably be driven out of business because when you put a low price together with proximity to the customer the American programmer wins. But the truth is that most American programmers would rather export their jobs than work at minimum wage (I would!). So be it. They are willing to do the same work for less, they win.
Why should Indians get those jobs just because of where they're born?
Indians get the job because they have lesser wage expectations which is partially a function of their lower cost of living and partially a function of their lower expectations in terms of big screen TVs and J2ME cell phones.
Most companies using BSD software don't contribute anything back - usually, it's just an extra layer of process that's not worth the hassle. I haven't seen Microsoft send patches to BSD even though they used to use the TCP/IP stack and other stuff in Windows.
Yeah, well, you're talking about Microsoft. Obviously they are a special case. Compare to Apple/Darwin. Or Apple/KHTML. Or IBM/Apache. It only makes sense to let someone else maintain your patches for you rather than do it yourself!
Well this is somewhat of a generalization. Yes some errors can cause the whole system to crash in both Linux, Windows, and Unix. The difference is that it the way Unix and Linux are designed, it is far less likely.
Oh really, care to back that up with some explanation rather than just a blanket assertion?
Protected memory space for the kernel or microkernel: Even Windows has that.
Did you read the sentence you quoted? "all components of their OS were isolated from the microkernel and from one another." In Windows (or Linux, or BSD) components of the kernels (i.e. drivers, file systems, etc.) are not isolated from each other. The components are protected from user land applications, but not from each other.
Unlike Windows, Unix and Linux doesn't allow any ordinary application to write to the kernel.
What makes you think that any application can write to a Windows 2000 or 2003 kernel memory? Please provide evidence: not a security alert about a bug that's been exploited (even Linux/Unix can have those) but a description of something in the Windows APIs or architecture that allows applications to write to kernel memory _by design_.
Right -- and also avoid receiving any improvements to the software performed by other users. A bug in a BSD program can stay unfixed until the author finds it. In a GPL program, it gets fixed as soon as ANYONE finds it.
No, they have to find it, and fix it, and redistribute their software, and then somebody has to notice the fix in their redistributed source code and port that back to the mainline. In either Linux or BSD most fixes do not come through this path. Rather the person contributes the fix back because maintaining a fork is a pain in the ass.
Here is a good graph showing national debt as % of gdp. We are not any worse off then we were in the '90s or the '60s.
Debt is irrelevant. Debt is what you have AFTER you borrow. The point is that Dubya is putting the US in a position to borrow this year, and next year and the year after that. It's the same as in your household. The day you start spending more than you make, you have one day's debt. But after ten years of that you have a huge accumulated debt. If you look at your chart, Regan took over in the early eighties, a period of low debt. The debt was at its height during the Clinton years not because Clinton was spending a bunch, but because it had accumulated and could not be wished away overnight.