The same reason there are so few open-source games of a reasonable quality. Time and complexity. Unlike a book, it can take a large team of people years to produce a modern game. The average cost to produce a modern videogame is over $15m. And before you say it wasn't always that way, keep in mind it cost $100,000 to produce Pacman way back in 1982.

And to cut you off again, not many people are going to work on something for your enjoyment full time for years on end. It's a fantasy, nothing more, nothing less.

So what is your solution to this problem? You still want these same "oligarch's" to fund the creation of the content you want, right? Why would they do so if there was no possibility of a return on their investment? You are aware that a large percentage of projects fail, right? What would inspire people to take the risk if there was no reward? More government? Magic fairy dust? Bullshit fantasy land?

So fight to change it at the local level. We don't have tough franchise agreements, so we have three companies competing to provide cable television and internet access. The result is faster speeds and lower prices. It was kind of a hassle having the lawn dug up three times to install lines, but we probably save $500 a year because of the competition.

If cooling or changing weather patterns in certain areas doesn't disprove global warming, the opposite doesn't prove it either.

Hypocritical much?

How awful of them to use the name of San Fransisco's sister city, the "Silicon Valley" of India, as a product codename. Were you equally offended when Ibex Peak, Tylersburg, Alviso, Calistoga, Lakeport, Broadwater, Eaglelake, Crestline and Cantiga were used as codenames?

  You don't need to get your panties in a twist over this. Although it is worth mentioning that it makes you look like a racist when you assume that an innocuous naming decision is some form of racial bigotry or social commentary.

From the article:

The government didn't include network redundancy in the RFP. Poor planning on the part of the government.

Government can't properly spec a problem causing outages, and it's the fault of "free enterprise". You people sure have a vivid imagination. From the article:

Smells like government incompetence.

Incompetent government employees? Impossible.

Welcome to the world of uninformed slashdotters. This contract was likely best value, not low-bid. Low-bid procurements are pretty rare, especially for something like this. It's not the contractors job to overbid the contract to provide services the government decided it didn't need.

Then maybe the real issue is people using the school system to indoctrinate people. It's no secret that educators across America push liberal ideals. Just take a look at the list of Obama's top donors, http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638. It should be stopped all around.

How can you see it as not relevant, in a discussion of government taking over for the private sector.

I guess you missed the citation in my post. Again, number of papers does not equal dollars spent. The US supports 82% of biomedical R&D.

Talk about irrelevancies. Way to bring global warming into this. And that further discredits you, there is clear evidence they bs'd their evidence to support their agenda. That's why they "lost" their data.

Does every paper cost the same to produce? Here is a source on the data I provided, http://www.efpia.org/content/Default.asp?PageID=388.

When do you all plan to start supporting yourselves? Until then take your righteous indignation and shove it.

I'm actually aware of that, having gone to a Catholic school. Just to expand on this a bit, in Catholic school they teach religion and science in two separate classes. They teach the creation story as a parable, and evolution and the big bang as facts. They also teach the history and beliefs of every major religion, not just Christianity, so you get a balanced view. Personally, I always liked Buddhism and Hinduism.