I've never observed anyone commenting on the cost of a man's clothes while giving a speech. Typically, I see media comments on women's clothes but not men's. This looks an awful lot like sexism to me; if you want to convince me otherwise, please let me know how much Bernie's and Donald's clothes cost - or for that matter Obama's or Bush's. Don't bother looking much deeper than you had for Hillary's.
And, yes, many of the people on Hillary's campaign are unpaid volunteers. Is this in any way out of the ordinary? Granted that I've never been part of a large campaign, I've only been an unpaid volunteer.
So, your first two paragraphs seem applicable to anyone, not just Hillary, and hence are not grounds to criticize her.
"This is the same party" - this is the Democratic Party, guy. It's very far from being a monolithic entity. Will Rogers once said, "I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat." A lot of things have changed, but I don't think the level of organization has varied much from there.
Assuming Donald raised in the neighborhood of $6M for veterans, that's laudable. How much did he personally donate? By your figures, Hillary donated just shy of $10K/year to veteran's groups, which seems like a good amount. You do realize that fundraising campaigns are entirely different things from individual donations, don't you? And that "for veteran's groups" looks like cherry-picking, since you pick a set of groups that Donald focused on? Can you give me overall charitable donations for both candidates (there are other worthy causes than veteran's groups; my biggest donations are to the local public library support group)?
Many nine-plus-figure fortunes were acquired in dubious fashion, although I haven't seen anything as bad as Trump University pinned on Hillary. What do you consider particularly dubious about Hillary's and Bill's money?
Re: "they are charging him for rape" -- No they aren't. No charges have been made.
The Swedish criminal justice system is different from ours. They have different terms, and they don't really line up. Sweden wants to bring Assange to Sweden to stand trial, which is pretty much equivalent.
Two women filed complaints of "sexual misconduct," which the UK doesn't recognise as a crime.
The UK does not extradite for offenses that are not crimes under UK law. Assange challenged the extraditions in UK courts, and they found that what he was accused of would be a serious crime in the UK. I think you're again working with mistranslations. (FWIW, my state doesn't have laws against rape. It has laws against criminal sexual conduct. That doesn't mean it's OK to hold a woman at gunpoint and rape her.)
The UK is also breaking international treaties by not allowing Assange safe passage to his country of asylum.
Nope. Assange is wanted to face normal criminal charges, nothing political about it. He's wanted for a trial on rape charges (or the equivalent) in Sweden, and he's a fugitive from justice in the UK. There's absolutely nothing in international law that says a wanted criminal gets to leave the country.
There's more than likely a sealed indictment against Assange in the US and Sweden would more than likely agree to extradite him to the US.
First, you're paranoid. There's no evidence for a sealed indictment, and I don't know what he could be charged with. Second, extradition from Sweden when extradited from the UK would require approvals from both the UK and Sweden, so it would have been easier to do it earlier. Third, Assange voluntarily went to Sweden, apparently thinking that he wasn't likely to be extradited to the US, and this specter of extradition or extraordinary rendition didn't seem to come up until after the incidents with the women.
Looking at recent history, there's a very real likelihood that Assange wouldn't get a fair trial in the US.
Of course not. He wouldn't get a trial. He wouldn't get punished or anything without a trial in the US. The US simply doesn't want him. He never entered the US, and is not a US citizen. He published leaked information, which is perfectly legal in the US. (The person who violated US law in this affair has been convicted and sentenced.) Now, if he were to enter the US (and we'd probably refuse him entry) and commit a crime, he would get a reasonably fair trial, unless he went for a plea bargain.
Assange's main crime is investigative journalism
Which is perfectly legal in the US, BTW. From my point of view, his main crime seems to have been certain sexual conduct with a couple of women.
The evidence is consistent with the theory that he went to Sweden voluntarily, committed sex crimes in Sweden, fled to the UK to avoid trial, and then made up crap about political persecution to avoid facing the consequences of his actions. It isn't very consistent with the theory that he was framed or falsely accused for political purposes.
Of course the police can't search your house without a warrant, no matter what. (Well, not legally.) The Bill of Rights does have provision for compelling witnesses to be in court, anyway (the Sixth says a defendant has a "compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor", among with other rights the accused has), so the idea that someone may be compelled to provide testimony is there. A subpoena requires someone to produce evidence if they have it, and that doesn't seem out of line. The Fifth means that you don't have to supply any that would incriminate you personally, unless granted immunity. The courts' interpretations are that a third party can be legally required to produce certain evidence about someone.
Note that I'm not describing the law as I would like it. (Frankly, I don't know what I'd like the law to say. It's complicated.) I'm giving my understanding of the law as it exists. I'd really like my stuff that is stored on other people's systems for good technical reasons to be considered my papers and effects.
Perhaps I should have made it more clear that the argument was idiotic, not necessarily you personally. I wasn't trying to insult you, and apologize if I was sufficiently unclear on that.
I don't have a choice of electricity providers, but I've heard of places that do. I'd imagine that works by having different companies owning different generators, and I believe this happens on a much larger scale (utility companies buy the power) normally. I don't see why the utility couldn't be an aggregator for private contracts.
There were Federal regulations also. About twelve years ago, I had a testing gig with the local power company, working with the new computer system for power distribution. Halfway through the gig, they put up card-entry doors in the elevator lobby, and put restrictions on what any of us could say to the guys on the fifth floor (who worked on the supply of electricity) The only reason I could give one the time of day is that the Internet has time servers. So, yes, there is separation.
I very much like the idea of infrastructure being split off, and this is what happens in quite a few places. If there's a natural monopoly, having a regulated monopoly or government agency running the natural monopoly part can be great. (I buy my internet access from the phone company, but their email systems aren't what I want. Since I've got internet access, I found an email provider that would do what I wanted for a reasonable price, and they (Fastmail) have plenty of competition. I like this system, when it exists.)
Who owns the last mile? If there's some sort of last-mile regulated monopoly or government department, like my phone, electrical, natural gas, water, and sewer connections, there's no problem with competition in the ISP market. If one or two companies control the last mile (the telephone and cable companies in my city, or I could use the municipal wireless, which has its own problems), there's little or no competition.
Sure they would buy in bulk, and they wouldn't have to do an audiology exam of every soldier and program the hearing devices specifically for them, and that would save money. On the other hand, my hearing aids aren't MIL-SPEC, and I don't know what the Army requirements are. They doubtless expect to use them in lots of situations where I'd expect mine to fail or be unmaintainable.
Rather than insults, why don't you try providing evidence that most adult humans can't tell reality from fantasy? Or that they aren't really people? Heck, if Appelbaum isn't really people, why not just shoot it and have done with it? There's very few laws against shooting something that isn't a person.
Juries, in US criminal trials, exist for the purpose of determining the facts of the case. They are not witnesses in any reasonable sense. They seem to tend to believe police officers overmuch, but other than that I haven't observed a tendency to follow authority. They are an attempt at objectivity. They aren't perfect, but I don't see how we're going to do better.
I don't see how technology is supposed to enable objectivity in cases like this. We have events that were unrecorded, so we have to rely on the memory of participants, and we don't have Asimov-style psychic probes.
The original words perhaps should be something like "most people never report even outright rape to the authorities", since if they report it to nobody it won't be counted.
The US has shown no interest in charging Assange with anything, or trying to get its hands on them. There were a few politicians yelling for his head, but that's just to be expected. The US has convicted the person responsible for the leak, and if Manning acted of his/her independent will, Assange did not break US law.
Assange apparently moved to Sweden with the intention of staying there. That's an odd thing to do if he thinks Sweden would hand him over to the CIA. He then went to the UK, which has a reputation as a US lapdog. He apparently had no fear of being sent to the US before it became a convenient excuse for dodging rape charges.
The UK courts determined that the rape Assange was accused of was rape by British standards, and that the extradition request was in order. At that point, he would have been sent to Sweden to stand trial, and extraditing him to the US would have required the permission of both the UK and Sweden.
IANAL, but I believe that, in the US, believing what you say is true is a defense against libel. If Appelbaum can show that the claimed incidents probably didn't happen, he can win. I believe the standard would be preponderance of the evidence.
So, what you're saying is that computer experts have a hard time understanding what non-computer-experts see in easy-to-use systems that combine numerous facilities into an integrated whole?
Facebook is considerably more than an email system. It has relatively easy friend location. I've found friends and relatives on Facebook that I wouldn't have found email addresses to. Heck, it allows me to get around without knowing people's email addresses at all. It allows wide broadcasts. It has persistence, which means that people can read what I've done, including people I wasn't connected with when I posted that status. It allows people to put up information in an easily accessible form. It has small apps, for people who want that sort of thing.
It's fine that you don't like Twitter, but that should show you that you don't understand the attraction at all, and that it's pointless for you to say why you think it shouldn't be popular.
Social media will never be replaced by sophisticated F/OSS alternatives, at least not until such software is easy for someone who's not particularly bright, knows little of computers, and is impatient with instructions to install and use. As a general rule, F/OSS doesn't do that, outside specific efforts (like Libreoffice).
The issues surrounding IPv6 deployment have nothing to do with "Oh Joe won't understand these long IPs in his home device assignment plan" but most ISP's delaying rollouts.
The consumer-level routers I've been looking at, and every one supplied by my ISP, don't seem to know anything about IPv6. I can't tell if my ISP does handle it without being able to get IPv6 to them.
Not everyone is going to become wealthy, particularly in a country where medical costs can be crippling. Defined-benefit pensions, whether from public or private sources, are much more effective at keeping people off the streets.
Many countries have nationalized their banks, including Venezuela, Argentina, and Zimbabwe.
If I point out that the governments of North Korea, Myanmar, ISIS, and Iran all allow their people to breathe air, will you suffocate and stop making stupid arguments on Slashdot?
Bulk mail is a lot cheaper for the USPS to handle. If I were to send you a letter, it would go through several sorting operations before reaching you. Bulk mail is pre-sorted according to strict rules.
Is spamming a legitimate function of an ISP? If someone emails you something spammy, your ISP delivers it to you (unless it gets filtered out first). If someone mails you something spammy, the USPS delivers it to you. The differences are of detail. I find it easier to sort my snail mail than my email. Companies pay the USPS to distribute their snail mail spam, so it isn't a burden on the system (I believe the USPS makes money on it), and it doesn't arrive in the same quantity.
And pass legislation that makes it inherently cheap and easy to run some sort of wire to every home and business in the city? Or do we defer to reality, and live with something of a natural monopoly?
It's possible for a city to hire private companies to perform garbage collection on a schedule.
One big problem with private contracting for garbage collection is that people will try to avoid paying to get rid of their garbage, and will fill other people's bins and deposit garbage in various inappropriate places, such as parks and roadside.
We have had physical network companies for a long time. One example is electrical power. The physical system in my area is run by a regulated private corporation, and I get very reliable and clean electricity for a very reasonable price.
We're not using any notion of fairness here. We're saying that a market where one individual player can control the prices isn't free. In a free market, if some vendor raises prices too much, that vendor will be undercut, if necessary by new entrants into the market, and hence no individual actor can control prices in a free market.
Sherlock Holmes would reason backwards, eliminate the impossible, and find the truth in what's left. The Baker Street Irregulars would do some canvassing for him, which is the closest you're going to find here. Perry Mason was an attorney, and did not do his own investigations. Hercule Poirot would use his little gray cells. Miss Marple would use her insight into people's personalities developed in St. Mary's Mead. You're not only idiotically trying to make a real point using highly fictionalized characters, you're getting it wrong.
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I've never observed anyone commenting on the cost of a man's clothes while giving a speech. Typically, I see media comments on women's clothes but not men's. This looks an awful lot like sexism to me; if you want to convince me otherwise, please let me know how much Bernie's and Donald's clothes cost - or for that matter Obama's or Bush's. Don't bother looking much deeper than you had for Hillary's.
And, yes, many of the people on Hillary's campaign are unpaid volunteers. Is this in any way out of the ordinary? Granted that I've never been part of a large campaign, I've only been an unpaid volunteer.
So, your first two paragraphs seem applicable to anyone, not just Hillary, and hence are not grounds to criticize her.
"This is the same party" - this is the Democratic Party, guy. It's very far from being a monolithic entity. Will Rogers once said, "I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat." A lot of things have changed, but I don't think the level of organization has varied much from there.
Assuming Donald raised in the neighborhood of $6M for veterans, that's laudable. How much did he personally donate? By your figures, Hillary donated just shy of $10K/year to veteran's groups, which seems like a good amount. You do realize that fundraising campaigns are entirely different things from individual donations, don't you? And that "for veteran's groups" looks like cherry-picking, since you pick a set of groups that Donald focused on? Can you give me overall charitable donations for both candidates (there are other worthy causes than veteran's groups; my biggest donations are to the local public library support group)?
Many nine-plus-figure fortunes were acquired in dubious fashion, although I haven't seen anything as bad as Trump University pinned on Hillary. What do you consider particularly dubious about Hillary's and Bill's money?
The Swedish criminal justice system is different from ours. They have different terms, and they don't really line up. Sweden wants to bring Assange to Sweden to stand trial, which is pretty much equivalent.
The UK does not extradite for offenses that are not crimes under UK law. Assange challenged the extraditions in UK courts, and they found that what he was accused of would be a serious crime in the UK. I think you're again working with mistranslations. (FWIW, my state doesn't have laws against rape. It has laws against criminal sexual conduct. That doesn't mean it's OK to hold a woman at gunpoint and rape her.)
Nope. Assange is wanted to face normal criminal charges, nothing political about it. He's wanted for a trial on rape charges (or the equivalent) in Sweden, and he's a fugitive from justice in the UK. There's absolutely nothing in international law that says a wanted criminal gets to leave the country.
First, you're paranoid. There's no evidence for a sealed indictment, and I don't know what he could be charged with. Second, extradition from Sweden when extradited from the UK would require approvals from both the UK and Sweden, so it would have been easier to do it earlier. Third, Assange voluntarily went to Sweden, apparently thinking that he wasn't likely to be extradited to the US, and this specter of extradition or extraordinary rendition didn't seem to come up until after the incidents with the women.
Of course not. He wouldn't get a trial. He wouldn't get punished or anything without a trial in the US. The US simply doesn't want him. He never entered the US, and is not a US citizen. He published leaked information, which is perfectly legal in the US. (The person who violated US law in this affair has been convicted and sentenced.) Now, if he were to enter the US (and we'd probably refuse him entry) and commit a crime, he would get a reasonably fair trial, unless he went for a plea bargain.
Which is perfectly legal in the US, BTW. From my point of view, his main crime seems to have been certain sexual conduct with a couple of women.
The evidence is consistent with the theory that he went to Sweden voluntarily, committed sex crimes in Sweden, fled to the UK to avoid trial, and then made up crap about political persecution to avoid facing the consequences of his actions. It isn't very consistent with the theory that he was framed or falsely accused for political purposes.
Of course the police can't search your house without a warrant, no matter what. (Well, not legally.) The Bill of Rights does have provision for compelling witnesses to be in court, anyway (the Sixth says a defendant has a "compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor", among with other rights the accused has), so the idea that someone may be compelled to provide testimony is there. A subpoena requires someone to produce evidence if they have it, and that doesn't seem out of line. The Fifth means that you don't have to supply any that would incriminate you personally, unless granted immunity. The courts' interpretations are that a third party can be legally required to produce certain evidence about someone.
Note that I'm not describing the law as I would like it. (Frankly, I don't know what I'd like the law to say. It's complicated.) I'm giving my understanding of the law as it exists. I'd really like my stuff that is stored on other people's systems for good technical reasons to be considered my papers and effects.
Perhaps I should have made it more clear that the argument was idiotic, not necessarily you personally. I wasn't trying to insult you, and apologize if I was sufficiently unclear on that.
I don't have a choice of electricity providers, but I've heard of places that do. I'd imagine that works by having different companies owning different generators, and I believe this happens on a much larger scale (utility companies buy the power) normally. I don't see why the utility couldn't be an aggregator for private contracts.
There were Federal regulations also. About twelve years ago, I had a testing gig with the local power company, working with the new computer system for power distribution. Halfway through the gig, they put up card-entry doors in the elevator lobby, and put restrictions on what any of us could say to the guys on the fifth floor (who worked on the supply of electricity) The only reason I could give one the time of day is that the Internet has time servers. So, yes, there is separation.
I very much like the idea of infrastructure being split off, and this is what happens in quite a few places. If there's a natural monopoly, having a regulated monopoly or government agency running the natural monopoly part can be great. (I buy my internet access from the phone company, but their email systems aren't what I want. Since I've got internet access, I found an email provider that would do what I wanted for a reasonable price, and they (Fastmail) have plenty of competition. I like this system, when it exists.)
Who owns the last mile? If there's some sort of last-mile regulated monopoly or government department, like my phone, electrical, natural gas, water, and sewer connections, there's no problem with competition in the ISP market. If one or two companies control the last mile (the telephone and cable companies in my city, or I could use the municipal wireless, which has its own problems), there's little or no competition.
Sure they would buy in bulk, and they wouldn't have to do an audiology exam of every soldier and program the hearing devices specifically for them, and that would save money. On the other hand, my hearing aids aren't MIL-SPEC, and I don't know what the Army requirements are. They doubtless expect to use them in lots of situations where I'd expect mine to fail or be unmaintainable.
Rather than insults, why don't you try providing evidence that most adult humans can't tell reality from fantasy? Or that they aren't really people? Heck, if Appelbaum isn't really people, why not just shoot it and have done with it? There's very few laws against shooting something that isn't a person.
Juries, in US criminal trials, exist for the purpose of determining the facts of the case. They are not witnesses in any reasonable sense. They seem to tend to believe police officers overmuch, but other than that I haven't observed a tendency to follow authority. They are an attempt at objectivity. They aren't perfect, but I don't see how we're going to do better.
I don't see how technology is supposed to enable objectivity in cases like this. We have events that were unrecorded, so we have to rely on the memory of participants, and we don't have Asimov-style psychic probes.
The original words perhaps should be something like "most people never report even outright rape to the authorities", since if they report it to nobody it won't be counted.
The US has shown no interest in charging Assange with anything, or trying to get its hands on them. There were a few politicians yelling for his head, but that's just to be expected. The US has convicted the person responsible for the leak, and if Manning acted of his/her independent will, Assange did not break US law.
Assange apparently moved to Sweden with the intention of staying there. That's an odd thing to do if he thinks Sweden would hand him over to the CIA. He then went to the UK, which has a reputation as a US lapdog. He apparently had no fear of being sent to the US before it became a convenient excuse for dodging rape charges.
The UK courts determined that the rape Assange was accused of was rape by British standards, and that the extradition request was in order. At that point, he would have been sent to Sweden to stand trial, and extraditing him to the US would have required the permission of both the UK and Sweden.
IANAL, but I believe that, in the US, believing what you say is true is a defense against libel. If Appelbaum can show that the claimed incidents probably didn't happen, he can win. I believe the standard would be preponderance of the evidence.
So, what you're saying is that computer experts have a hard time understanding what non-computer-experts see in easy-to-use systems that combine numerous facilities into an integrated whole?
Facebook is considerably more than an email system. It has relatively easy friend location. I've found friends and relatives on Facebook that I wouldn't have found email addresses to. Heck, it allows me to get around without knowing people's email addresses at all. It allows wide broadcasts. It has persistence, which means that people can read what I've done, including people I wasn't connected with when I posted that status. It allows people to put up information in an easily accessible form. It has small apps, for people who want that sort of thing.
It's fine that you don't like Twitter, but that should show you that you don't understand the attraction at all, and that it's pointless for you to say why you think it shouldn't be popular.
Social media will never be replaced by sophisticated F/OSS alternatives, at least not until such software is easy for someone who's not particularly bright, knows little of computers, and is impatient with instructions to install and use. As a general rule, F/OSS doesn't do that, outside specific efforts (like Libreoffice).
The consumer-level routers I've been looking at, and every one supplied by my ISP, don't seem to know anything about IPv6. I can't tell if my ISP does handle it without being able to get IPv6 to them.
Ever priced hearing aids? $2K/pair for something with similar features is quite reasonable.
Not everyone is going to become wealthy, particularly in a country where medical costs can be crippling. Defined-benefit pensions, whether from public or private sources, are much more effective at keeping people off the streets.
If I point out that the governments of North Korea, Myanmar, ISIS, and Iran all allow their people to breathe air, will you suffocate and stop making stupid arguments on Slashdot?
Bulk mail is a lot cheaper for the USPS to handle. If I were to send you a letter, it would go through several sorting operations before reaching you. Bulk mail is pre-sorted according to strict rules.
Is spamming a legitimate function of an ISP? If someone emails you something spammy, your ISP delivers it to you (unless it gets filtered out first). If someone mails you something spammy, the USPS delivers it to you. The differences are of detail. I find it easier to sort my snail mail than my email. Companies pay the USPS to distribute their snail mail spam, so it isn't a burden on the system (I believe the USPS makes money on it), and it doesn't arrive in the same quantity.
And pass legislation that makes it inherently cheap and easy to run some sort of wire to every home and business in the city? Or do we defer to reality, and live with something of a natural monopoly?
It's possible for a city to hire private companies to perform garbage collection on a schedule.
One big problem with private contracting for garbage collection is that people will try to avoid paying to get rid of their garbage, and will fill other people's bins and deposit garbage in various inappropriate places, such as parks and roadside.
We have had physical network companies for a long time. One example is electrical power. The physical system in my area is run by a regulated private corporation, and I get very reliable and clean electricity for a very reasonable price.
Could you point me to the theorem? It seems very unlikely to me.
Broadband is similar to roads in that it requires expensive infrastructure that can't be deployed indefinitely. The last mile is a natural monopoly.
We're not using any notion of fairness here. We're saying that a market where one individual player can control the prices isn't free. In a free market, if some vendor raises prices too much, that vendor will be undercut, if necessary by new entrants into the market, and hence no individual actor can control prices in a free market.
Sherlock Holmes would reason backwards, eliminate the impossible, and find the truth in what's left. The Baker Street Irregulars would do some canvassing for him, which is the closest you're going to find here. Perry Mason was an attorney, and did not do his own investigations. Hercule Poirot would use his little gray cells. Miss Marple would use her insight into people's personalities developed in St. Mary's Mead. You're not only idiotically trying to make a real point using highly fictionalized characters, you're getting it wrong.