"...Great programmers aren't satisfied until they understand each little nook of their core language, exactly what it means, does..."

I'll have to call you out on this. Great programmers understand algorithms. Mediocre programmers are obsessed with their tools, which is what a programming language is.

"...The project took another year to implode...300+ people, 3 years, half a billion dollars..."

Sounds like a typical government project.

"...Why would anyone choose that over Bittorrent..."

Unless something is extremely popular on Bittorrent and/or has a lot of seeders, it can take days to download. And in cases of lack of seeds, not downloadable at all.

You must not live in California. In California policemen, and firemen, make between $60K and $120K a year and have some of the best public service benefits anywhere in the U.S.

"A virus that can propagate through an entire enterprise's array of servers, and then wipe out all data?...Getting a program to run on all of them..."

Here's the code to wipe-out a database.
Generic SQL version:
drop database fanny_mae;

MSSQL2005 version:
alter database fanny_mae set single_user with rollback immediate;
go;
drop database fanny_mae;
go;

Any server level triggers to block or log this would also have to be disabled prior to issuing these commands, which is pretty trivial if you've got admin access which the guy did.

"Microsoft is building a $300 million dollar research campus in Beijing, with employment for 5,000."

LOL! Just think of all the trojans and backdoors that will be hidden in M$ software then. I recently read that members of the U.S. gov't are theorizing that the Chinese are putting backdoors and trojans in hardware being sold to the U.S.

You have a valid point on old hardware. I tried to install CentOS 4 on a Pentium I/120 with 32 megs of RAM. CentOS 4 croaked. However, Redhat 6.2 works perfectly fine on that box, and that box is used as a Samba file/print server with 4 printers attached. It seems that the 2.6.x kernels need at least 128mb of RAM to run reliably, while the 2.2.x kernels run happily 24x7x365 with 32mb of RAM.