In this case, the States' Rights crowd will be hard pressed to prove how devolution of power is valid in this case

Why, is Google incapable of lobbying the folks @ Raleigh?

In Atlanta, I have Charter, and aside from that, a choice of AT&T UVerse and Comcast

Why not just say JEB - as in John Edward Bush?

This is correct. As a former NC resident, I don't agree w/ NC trying to block municipal broadband, but regardless of that, I don't support the feds getting in and telling them that they can't block it. It's the Tenth Amendment. If NC residents don't like this decision, they should replace the government they have in the next election they get, participating actively in the primaries as well to ensure that neither the GOP nor Dem nominees are people backed by TWC or AT&T (Comcast is not a player in that state)

And these billions are ill-gotten why, exactly? 'Cos Microsoft charged hundreds of $$$ for every copy of Windows, Office, et al instead of giving it away for free, like the Linux guys do? Well, even RMS is okay with people selling software - he just wants copyleft rights to be a part of the package.

Sez one AC to another.....

Given how specialized and difficult recruiting is these days, I wonder how long will recruiting be a low skill job? I have seen plenty of people from other disciplines get into recruiting. Far from being an HR drone job, it's now a very high stress job, given that recruiters have targets to fill, and they'd tend to lose their jobs if those ain't met. Also, given how specialized the searches are, recruitment is becoming as segmented an industry as engineering or other high skilled disciplines.

Not just that, where is the evidence that Windows 10 runs better than OS-X on Apple's hardware? I run it on my Winbook, right now, it's okay, but still has enough bugs to be ironed out

As a PC-BSD user, the version of KDE Plasma that I have is 4.x. However, I have switched over to Lumina.

You wouldn't! Since it comes w/ a FreeBSD OS on it, w/ the full backing and endorsement of Apple

That's fine - don't disclose anything, but do vendors like Oracle or HP sell custom boxes if you coughed up the cash? Would you get a modern SPARCstation of a Fujitsu chip in an Oracle box w/ either Linux or Solaris? Would you get an Itanium workstation from HP running HP/UX or FreeBSD? I was under the impression that the Mac Pro is the only UNIX workstation that you can get these days (even if you toss in Lintel boxes into the mix)

I don't consider the Mac Pro cheap. If it is equipped w/ the amount of memory that workstations typically require, it would be right up there w/ an equivalent UNIX workstation, assuming that any are still openly sold. And it wouldn't be a bad value for money - it would essentially be BSD, w/ Quartz on top of it.

Isn't cheating allowed? Write the original OS in C, then compile, and then work on the resultant assembly code, first on optimizing, and then on adding features?

So do they support the multiple cores of say, an i3? What sort of UI does the OS use - something like Windows?