You make a good point about current standards assuming each controlled device is an intelligent endpoint. In stage lighting, where you may control over a hundred lights, it's typical to have a few intelligent end devices and several relay or dimmer packs that control many "dumb" lights. Typically, one smart pack control power to eight lights. Most lights are dumb and cheap - just bulbs in sockets. Only a few lights, the moving, color changing spot lights, have any electronics in the end device.

The war on poverty began over 50 years ago and we've spent trillions of dollars, your dollars. The poverty rate is higher today than it was when the federal government started spending money on it 50 years ago.

So the answer is "no". The government should leave your money with you. You'll spend it, and the stores where you spend it will hire people. More jobs = less poverty.

> "[He] doesn't know how to do that task nor understand the technical issues but doesn't think it should take or cost that much!"

So you just pay whatever someone asks for? We should talk. I have some wonderful solutions to sell you. I don't know exactly how to make toilet paper, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't cost $84 million per roll and I'm not going to pay $84 million per roll.

Beyond that, he was probably right - accomplishing the business goal should not cost that much, as you somewhat admitted ...

> I wish I had told him that he needs to buy a copy of MS Word and his problem is solved.

If that would have solved the problem for 90% lower cost, you should have, and he was right to reject your proposal.

Then you say you think people who are successful are just lucky. Let's think this through. Did you successfully make breakfast this morning? Are you consistently successful when you attempt to pour cereal? Can a two-year-old say the same? Why are you successful at making breakfast and the two-year-old isn't? Because you're lucky, every single time? Or because YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING?

Trump keeps being successful at putting together $xxx million real estate deals because he knows what the heck he's doing. He's annoying as a TV personality, yes. That has almost nothing to do with the fact that he keeps building successful hotel / casinos because he knows how to build a friggin casino. He knows how, and he works 60+ hours a week doing it. That's why successful people keep on being successful while lottery winners are normally broke within a few years.

Successful people know how to do something that works and they keep doing it. Unsuccessful people keep doing things that don't work and keep being unsuccessful, EVEN IF YOU HAND THEM $50 MILLION.

For you, you can choose to be jealous and angry, or you can pick up any of many books in which Trump and others lay out exactly the principles they follow for success, then apply those principles to whatever you want to do. I'm a programmer. I have no interest in big real estate deals, my interest is in computer systems and business. I built and sold a web hosting company, then built a software company which sold over a million dollars of the software I wrote and I sold off that company. I'm now running my THIRD successful company. Do I get lucky every single time? No, I apply the principles that work, including the ones Trump laid out in Art of the Deal. That and I sometimes work until 2AM.

You're thinking of a different sale, confusing Nortel and Novell.

Also, even if Google could have signed on (they couldn't ), that wouldn't have protected them because Microsoft, Apple et al are suing anyone who makes Android devices (Samsung etc.). It's little use for Google to not be sued directly if nobody can build Android devices.

The report said the contestants did in fact spoof the caller ID. Though some people know it can be spoofed, most people trust it anyway. We're accustomed to fake links in e-mail, we look for that, but we generally assume caller ID is accurate.

This can be very useful for encouraging bad guys to reveal information.

On a societal level that makes sense. If a software bug crashes your car and you're paralyzed, it's little comfor to be told you might have crashed yourself.

If you're a good driver, a firmware bug that crashes your car is a BIG problem. The fact that other people avoided accidents because the software is better than a human isn't exactly relevant.

> The suit is about maintaining a free market in labor.
> Union membership is one way that individuals participate in that free market.

Lol. Did you just say that collusion, enforced by the government, is "free market"? Unions, organized, enforceable collusion, are exactly the opposite of free market.

A free market means I can hire your teenage son at $20 / hour to change lightbulbs, if you want to do that job at that price. Unions mean I better contract that job out, because I'm only allowed to hire electricians at $65 + $40 in benefits for anything related to anything electrical.

The illegal behavior these companies for busted for, the collusion, is PRECISELY what unions do. Anti-competive collusion is the PURPOSE of a union.

While we're at it, let's make it illegal to murder someone in_the_morning. Oh wait, California already did that I bet.

Half of the companies involved have already paid up. With the most recent ruling, the judge is saying the others will probably be held liable too. As the Palm CEO said, this is already illegal and has been for along time. We don't need more laws, a few million pages is enough.

Oddly, it's the opposite going the other way in some states. Employees are REQUIRED to collude and stick by that union collusion even if they don't want to.

Most captchas were cracked 17 months ago.
It's time for something that's easier for humans and harder for computers. For example, these images have been tweaked such that the standard routines don't work:

https://bettercgi.com/sb5/

Whether you make up a new "right" or not, you can't pay someone for paternity leave if the money is already spent on government mandated BS.

You seem to be confused about the definition of the word "right" is, though. When you talk about giving people new "rights", you've made the word virtually meaningless, turning it into a synonym for "entitlement" or "privilege". This is important, very important

The right to free speech means I can voice my opinion EVEN IF THE MAJORITY OR GOVERNMENT DOESN'TLIKE IT. You have the right to a fair trial even if the government would rather ramrod you. The Bill of Rights is a list of freedoms the government "shall not infringe". Note it doesn't say "should give you", it says "shall not infringe". Rights are not at the government's discretion. They can not take your rights away because your rights don't come from the government. Your right to think your own thoughts is intrinsic to your humaness; government can only infringe your rights or not. They can not take them because they did not give them.

Your natural rights as a person include your right to have your own thoughts, and your right to your own production - to eat what you grow in your own garden, to live in the house you built.

If you build your house for your family, I do not have the "right" to kick you out and take it for my family. I do not have any right to take your food you grew in your garden. My wife is pregnant at the moment. That has zero bearing on your rights to your own food. You may choose to share some tasty vegetables with me, but knocking up my wife doesn't give me the right to take your stuff.

You want to create a new government mandate? Fine. Do not lie and call it a "right", though, because as soon as you pretend that government creates rights, government is justified in taking away your rights that "they gave you".

> Amazon will abuse its power once it has attained monopoly status as
a supplier.

So you predict that Amazon will have a monopoly , ignoring the fact it isn't possible (some customers prefer a bookstore, so they will always have customers).
You then predict that after Amazon achieves this impossible feat, they could abuse their position.
Based on those two predictions, you wish a horrible death on your fellow man.

You're a vile, twisted person aren't you.

They are using their accumulated wealth to start selling books at discount prices? How, pray tell, do you imagine Amazon got that wealth? They've been selling books at low prices since day one, that's their original business.

That's funny. Obama's the lead editor on the new Constitution, I understand.

The most free market of all markets is the internet, where anyone can readily access any site, anywhere in the world. (Save a very few totalitarian countries with national firewalls.)

You claim free markets lead to monopoly. Therefore, the most free market system, the internet, has only one web page, correct?

Choice leads to differentiation, my friend. In a free market, I can choose Walmart pants and you can choose Abercrombie. Both serve a section of the market and both thrive. A government controlled market is the market for a driver's license. Government control is monopoly (and the DMV serves it's customers SO well).

In some areas of the US, the government enforces a monopoly on internet access, and you get 5-10 Mbps for $55. In Texas, it's mostly free market and we get Google's gigabit fiber, two cable providers, DSL, wireless, satellite, all kinds of choices.

Obama was right about one thing and the French missed it. "If you want people to stop doing something as much, make it more expensive."

More expensive books = fewer people can buy fewer books.
I realize you liberals aren't that smart, but this isn't complicated principles that actually require thought, this is basic shit any third grader should understand.