The former CEO of USWest was sent to prison based on secret NSA data that could not be independently confirmed - or even discussed. That this happened shortly after he refused to cooperate with illegal NSA data collection is completely coincidental.

You can already buy an HP laptop with Windows at this price from Walmart.

Where did they find them?

Although this is nodded flamebait, there is a certain amount of truth to it.

Obviously that process has been under way for over a year. I would be surprised if they didn't launch it with crash test dummies and also real cargo sometime this summer. Going to ISS and back to rocket landing.

It takes a company the size of Google. Smaller companies the incumbents will pull out all the stops - door to door canvassers, wall to wall TV and radio ads, billboards, sports sponsorships and whatnot. The goal being to tie down so much of the population that the startup can't get traction and folds. That is how they got their monopolies in the first place. They can milk their other markets for the cost. As soon as the challenger is dead they can buy the assets for pennies on the dollar and go back to raping the local area to pay for the assimilation of another.

TWC, AT&T and Comcast are all so bad that Google doesn't seem to mind running their fiber network right alongside their 'natural monopoly' and busting their exclusives with better service at lower rates. Maybe they are on to something.

Figuring out who is the wizard to build and buy your infrastructure or acquiring the best working deal from the vendor is the same skillset. They can either do both or neither.

Even at the highest levels Oregon's government is remarkably innocent of current technology, process management, best practices, effective purchase evaluations and so on. They seem to be organizationally well insulated against an injection of good sense as well. It is a wonder every IT story from there doesn't have this ending.

They can license the radio modulation technologies to others for implementation.

Google is working on 10Gbps fiber to the home, with a 3 year timeline. When asked why they should do such a crazy thing the project manager replied: "We can, so why not?"

iTunes doesn't work perfectly on OS-X.

If you are buying Android 2.x devices today you are confused. And yes, I know you can still buy them on Amazon and eBay.

If you would like to submit a few articles, Timothy wouldn't have to be working overtime filling up Slashdot.