Which is precisely why "organic" has lost all its meaning.
But the same problem will arise with "natural" that arose with "organic" - people will begin making the claim, other people will shout about how they do something that's not "natural" to their crops, and so the people using "natural" will end up with a special snowflake word assigned to their practices as well, and people will still complain that the regulations have completely diluted the meaning of "natural," as well, and so adopt a new one - and the cycle continues.
In a grocery store, you can count on "organic" meaning "produced to the bare minimum cost and quality required by law to earn the 'organic' label." This is simply how it works, and how it will always work. It makes more sense to focus on the "local" part of the equation than the "organic" part, because of that. Get to know the guy who runs the farm. Go work on a local co-op and have a hand in growing your own food.
FWIW, full disclosure, etc., all things being equal I give priority to buying from my local organic farm, because I actually know the guy who runs it, and I actually trust that he's not doing something unhealthy to his food. I don't expect that it's more "nutritious," but I do generally expect that it's a little "safer" - knowing the producer, and a little about his methods, makes me feel a lot more comfortable buying his food.
Yes, "owning a car" is a right, though it is not phrased as such.
The right to property ownership covers "owning a car," and is another classic example of a negative right: other people may not take your property without your consent, and the government may not either, except in a few narrowly defined legal situations (e.g., eminent domain, or criminal/civil judgements that carry with them financial damages), though you are not *obligated* to own a car.
In much the same way, internet access is, or should be, a "right" - you should have the ability to access the internet and purchase this access from a provider under reasonable and mutually agreeable terms without interference from the government or other people - you shouldn't be able to restrict my access to hotbabes.com if I want to access it, and I shouldn't be able to restrict your access to kingjamesbible.org if you want to access it. But I would draw the line at trying to obligate people to have access if they do not want or need it, and I don't think it's the government's job to provide blanket access.
Having the right to own a car does not mean you have an obligation to own a car, or an entitlement to a free car paid for by your fellow citizens.
Depends on whether or not the right in question is a positive right or a negative right. Positive rights often equal funding, and often equal government (that is, tax-) sponsored.
Free speech & bearing arms are classic examples of negative rights: you have the right to do them because the government is explicitly forbidden from restricting your activities in these areas. This means you are also free NOT to exercise those rights, as well. You have them, and you can exercise them or not as you see fit.
A positive right suggests the opposite: you have an *obligation* to exercise the right - in some countries (Australia, for example), voting would be a positive right, because you can be fined for NOT voting. To pick a US-centric example, healthcare would be a positive right, as enacted by Pres. Obama's healthcare plan, because citizens will have an *obligation* to purchase health insurance, or face penalties and fines for not doing so.
As you might have guessed, those positive rights often come with subsidies, taxes, and other things to fund them because people do tend t realize that "things cost money," and "not everybody has money." So depending on how you structure the "right" in law, there very well can be an obligation for the government to pay for it.
Initially, they were thinking of ablating the surface of the junk with the laser, but turns out you need a hell of a lot of power to do that, so it wouldn't be very economical. More recent calculations suggest exposure to a ~5kW laser might be enough to decay the orbit enough to bring it back into the atmosphere where it'll burn up, and they estimate that a device such as this, big enough to handle 5-10 objects a day, could be put together for a few million dollars.
First, their demographic is aging, in other words moms are signing up to monitor their kids, socialize with their friends, and generally make facebook uncool.
in case it was not clear, most middle school kids have not funds, ability, nor do they care, about acquiring a domain name.
Do you see the problem with these two statements? And do you understand that this is exactly why the "free" social networks keep failing, but Facebook MAY have finally gotten it right, at least in such a way that they can build a sustainable business?
If you chase unemployed teenagers with your advertising, you're going to have an awful lot of trouble turning that into a successful business - because the buying habits and tastes of teens is notoriously fickle. All they can do is pressure their parents into buying things for them, and as soon as one teen decides "that's not cool anymore," the rest of them will soon follow.
How many kids dream of owning a GE refrigerator? How many homes have at least one refrigerator in it? How many kids dream of owning a sensible Honda Accord? How many homes have at least one sensible mid-size sedan parked in the driveway?
Lots of very profitable businesses are built through advertising to the "boring" demographic that is actually employed and has disposable income that they're willing to spend on Hondas, and refrigerators, and Ikea furniture for their houses, and Apple laptops for their home offices, and vacations in Florida with their families.
Teens can generate buzz, but that's about it. When it comes time to paying for something, they're stuck with, "MOM, DAD, PLEASE BUY ME THIS ALL THE KIDS LOVE IT." Facebook's embrace of older age groups may make it "suck" for teenagers, but it's sure not going to suck for all those companies who want to advertise to the suburban 30-50-years-old demographic that's actually spending its money on all those "boring" but practical things that we use every day.
Some new platform will certainly arise that the 13-20 year olds will flock to because it's the new hot thing. I think it's far from a foregone conclusion that that platform will substantially disrupt facebook's advertising revenues.
Click through to some of the references, these aren't "myantiorganicblog.org" links, they're links to the relevant safety and regulatory agencies who approve and control the use of the term "organic." If you want "organic" to mean something different, that's very nice... but "organic" has a specific meaning defined by law, and if you use it in association with your crops, there are specific guidelines that your practices and production must meet. "Not using pesticides at all" is emphatically, unequivocally NOT one of those guidelines.
Pointing to a guy whose livelihood is tied to people's warm associations of the word 'organic' and saying "he said nobody uses anything harmful in organic production!" certainly raises questions of conflicts of interest.
Actually, I read the article, and I don't understand why the study is flawed. The author of the linked editorial says, "they said the nutritive content of the foods were not substantially different." And then he proceeds to say, "but organic foods also may have less pesticide and other chemical residue, and that's why people eat them!"
Which is fine - perhaps they do, and perhaps that's a great reason to choose organic. But the study wasn't attempting to answer the question "what possible reasons would people use to buy organic?" The study attempted to answer the question, "is there, in terms of nutrition - i.e., the chemical composition of the food - a significant difference between organic and non-organic food?" And the answer there, no matter how you spin and dance around the point, is "no, there is no significant nutritional difference."
The study was not flawed; the editorial is simply complaining that "they didn't study what I think they should have, and made a scientific conclusion that was narrow and precisely worded, when "organic is the best, always!" would have been a much better conclusion for the furtherance of my own personal agenda and preferences." The study was not 'flawed.' At WORST, the study was 'narrower in focus than the author wished it would have been.'
Thanks for demonstrating the baselessness of your assertions.
Also, Mr. Assange has quite clearly been ACCUSED of something. You might want to go look up the meaning of the terms you use before you use them in so public a fashion.
Not to interrupt your rhapsodizing about the good old days when men like Assange could behave as badly as they want, but I'll ask again: what data are you basing these inane claims on?
Not clear what point you're calling "mostly a myth" - that it was a property crime? or that it was a crime at all?
If the latter, as far as I can see, the Visigothic Code you've cited comes down squarely against rape, and in favor of punishing the "ravisher." If the former, I'd say that the wording used supports the notion that it was considered less "a crime against the woman," and more a "crime against chastity / crime against her family," for which restitution, corporal punishment, and even enslavement of the "ravisher" were justifiable - the beneficiaries of the restitution were not (primarily) the woman.
An embassy, a sovereign foreign government responsible for millions of lives, has come out and said "Something smells fishy about this."
You sure you really wanna go with the appeal to authority there?
"It's a government, you guys - they wouldn't just make things like this up! Oh and by the way, let me tell you about all the horrendous, terrifying, awful, illegal things that the US, UK, and Swedish governments are doing. Because if there's one thing everybody can agree on, governments are corrupt - except for the government of Ecuador, which is, I think we can all agree, a shining beacon of light in the darkness."
Rape has been illegal from ancient Greek & Roman times, pretty much down to today. In historical times, it was considered less a sexual crime, and more a property crime against the father/husband of the woman, but it was still a crime, and there were still legal penalties for it in just about any civil society I can think of.
That covers a good chunk of your "last 5000 years or so of human history" - so I'm curious what data you're basing these inane claims on?
Depends on the allegations and charges. And since the US hasn't filed any charges, it's impossible to say. You might say there's "NO CASE," but legions of Assange supporters will hasten to tell me how I'm wrong. But we can speculate, and we can make informed conclusions, using the following information:
1) Mr. Assange is not a US citizen; nor was he (apparently) in the US when he allegedly misbehaved; 2) Mr. Assange found himself in the possession of classified US military information; 3) Mr. Assange published that classified data to the world via Wikileaks;
Now, best case scenario - he's a completely passive recipient of classified data, and published it in his informational role as a quasi-journalist. As such, he is protected, since he did not engage in a crime, he just published some data he happened to come across. This is, I think, the most reasonable argument.
But, let's imagine the worst case scenario - he contacted PFC Manning, and actively solicited PFC Manning to leak the classified data, with the overt intent of undermining and harming the US military's operations. This could easily be argued to be espionage.
There's really very little else they could charge him for - he's not a US citizen, and he's never done this inside the jurisdictional area of a US court... so the only real thing you could charge him with would be espionage (which is a capital crime), and file an extradition request hoping that the government on the receiving end will be sympathetic to your request and hand him over. No extradition request has been filed.
Now, let's further assume that the US were to go so far as to charge him in absentia with espionage, and file an extradition request with the UK or Sweden, or wherever he happens to be sitting at the time they finally file the charges. There would be two big obstacles to fulfillment of that request: 1) Espionage is a capital crime - you CAN be subjected to the death penalty for it; The US could make assurances about his treatment, if they wanted to work around this; 2) Espionage is also a political crime - i.e., a crime against "the state". If you read through the extradition treaties, you will notice that many extradition treaties specifically exclude the possibility of extradition for "political crimes," and so the US would have to further convince the court that not this was somehow NOT a political crime (when just about every treaty with this exclusion defines it as such).
So... the US case against Mr. Assange is, at worst, a capital case for a political crime, which would almost certainly cause a request for his extradition to be denied, or at best... the case is non-existent. Either way, there's not a lot for him to fear, provided US, Swedish, and British governments all abide by their treaty & legal obligations. Of course, if they decide that "getting Assange" is more important than the negative publicity, sanctions, penalties, and reputation damage they'd take by circumventing the law, none of this would apply... but realistically, if they were interested in doing that, he'd already be dead, or in Gitmo, and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
So your argument against the belief that he is only being extradited to Sweeden so that he can then be sent to the U.S. is to present evidence of how difficult is is to get someone extradited directly from the U.K to the U.S.?
Yes, and it works, if you're not completely ignorant of the law, and don't just believe Mr. Assange's press releases.
There is NO - I repeat, NO - way that Mr. Assange can (legally) be extradited from Sweden to the US without the consent of the UK. The authorities in the UK approving his extradition through Sweden would be the same authorities who would be asked to approve his extradition if the US requested extradition directly from the UK and Sweden wasn't involved. This "temporary surrender" canard is foolish, because nearly identical wording is included in the US/EU extradition framework treaty, as well - yet somehow only Sweden is able to use it?
So by extraditing him to Sweden, the US has to secure the agreement of both the UK and Sweden, when apparently, we were unable to even get the UK's agreement directly. And in return, the UK and Sweden take massive PR hits, and possibly even open themselves up to sanctions and penalties as EU members, for circumventing EU regulations. I don't know how foolish you need to be to believe this not only possible, but *likely,* but I do know it's pretty damn foolish.
So... this supports your assertion that "it's not just based on the genitals of the person applying," how, exactly?
Because I'm pretty sure you just demonstrated that that's *exactly* what's happening: "people with a vagina just don't do as good a job as people with a penis," is exactly the logic you've just described by which this magical process of gender-agnostic "variable assessments" are made.
I asked you for the data underpinning your conclusions - not rhetorical questions where I'm expected to provide the data to fill in the blanks of YOUR argument.
And incidentally, if the extent of your argument is, "we only discriminate against women in our hiring so we won't get so many expensive sexual harassment suits," then your argument fails to support the claim that it's not sexism causing the discrepancy, I'm sorry to say.
And how do you make this variable assessment, given that the only difference in input for evaluation is the name at the top of the resume?
The people described by the resumes were identical in every way on paper, except their names.
Sounds to me like the judgement of their "future potential value" is *strictly* limited to being a "judgement about genitals, per se." What other mechanism would be in play here?
I'm willing to grant you the benefit of the doubt, insofar as I have to assume that if you're making highly volatile claims like this, you no doubt have ironclad data to back them up, because otherwise you'd look like a sexist jerk.
So, care to provide some data to support my hope that you're not just a sexist jerk?
Because we don't have ~50% unemployment - even if you tried to hire only women, you would have positions unfilled, and those would have to either be filled by men, or remain empty.
Because men are perceived - rightly or wrongly or baselessly - to be "more valuable/capable," which is exactly why the same resume gets offered more money as a starting salary when the name "Mike" is at the top.
Because it'd be illegal and discriminatory - if you tried to hire only women, you would be fined out of existence.
Was "mass conspiracy of employers everywhere" really the only reason you could think of? Because there's three off the top of my head that require no conspiracy, and are completely logical and consistent with the way the world works. If you missed those three, I feel bad for you.
I'm sure there's employer-caused discrimination in the hiring process in many places, but I don't think that comes through in wages. There are of course counterexamples all over the place, but I'm referring to the overall trend.
Sorry, but the study suggests that the *suggested starting salary* was significantly lower for women than it was for men - for the exact same information packet about the candidate, with the only difference being whether you were hiring "Mike Smith" or "Michelle Smith."
If you are lowering your opening number by $5000 just because the applicant is a woman, that's not the fault of the woman. Even if the female candidate is a negotiator to shame Henry Kissinger, she has to somehow negotiate back that $5000 you took off the table on account of her having a vagina before she even reaches parity with what you were willing to offer a man as an opening figure. It's very facile to suggest "if you want more, just ask!" But when the expected opening number is $5k lower for a female, she has to be $5k worth of negotiations better than the male candidate just to be his equal in pay.
I agree, in principle. But the hard part with things like Siri and Maps are that you actually need the products in use "in the wild" to be able to analyze the data, correct problems, and refine the product. Google didn't release Maps as a "fully complete" service either - they released it as a beta, and refined it over... what - 7, 8 years now?
It would've been nice to see them work with Google to migrate the Google Maps app to a standalone app before making this so users would have an alternative, but there's only so much spit and polish you can put into a mapping app via traditional QA - at some point, it's got to actually get used by people on the ground.
And it's entirely possible that Apple approached Google about doing just this in parallel with their migration to a new mapping solution, and Google refused, sensing possible competitive advantage. Let's be honest - "Every Android phone comes preinstalled with the most accurate, up-to-date, blah blah mapping solution: Google Maps!" isn't a bad marketing bullet point.
Yep, it'll probably take them a couple years, and a whole lot of their cash (they DO have quite a bit of it). Until then, I expect that Google Maps will also be available on the iPhone, and I suspect that at some point within about 2 years, you'll see them reach rough parity in quality with GMaps, and at that point, they can really focus on competing on the merits of their product.
Remember how stagnant browsers were before IE suddenly got slapped in the nuts by Firefox? Competition is good for consumers. Sucks that Apple's initial offering isn't very competitive, but I expect that gap to close significantly in the next year, and more or less close within 2. This spate of hiring (and no doubt, the hiring they've been doing for a year or more now, as a result of this - this feature has surely been in dev for a while) will help that, so will dumping a huge amount of their cash reserves into improving the data sets.
This is really not debatable, or questionable, or a question of "if and why" - they banned him, for life. It is in the video, from Miller himself, who says, around 50 seconds into the linked video, "The good thing about Apple is, it's only a 1 year ban, where I'm banned from Google for... lifetime." Or, if you're really concerned that somebody somehow spliced in a convincing fake of his voice on that video, you can read it in his own words, from his twitter feed:
So... your thoughts on Google, Android, Andy Rubin et. al., in light of this? If Apple banning him for a year for exploiting a security hole (even for research) is moronic... how infinitely more stupid is Google for issuing a lifetime ban for simply being "associated" with someone who exploited a hole in the same manner?
Slashdot Mirror
But the same problem will arise with "natural" that arose with "organic" - people will begin making the claim, other people will shout about how they do something that's not "natural" to their crops, and so the people using "natural" will end up with a special snowflake word assigned to their practices as well, and people will still complain that the regulations have completely diluted the meaning of "natural," as well, and so adopt a new one - and the cycle continues.
In a grocery store, you can count on "organic" meaning "produced to the bare minimum cost and quality required by law to earn the 'organic' label." This is simply how it works, and how it will always work. It makes more sense to focus on the "local" part of the equation than the "organic" part, because of that. Get to know the guy who runs the farm. Go work on a local co-op and have a hand in growing your own food.
FWIW, full disclosure, etc., all things being equal I give priority to buying from my local organic farm, because I actually know the guy who runs it, and I actually trust that he's not doing something unhealthy to his food. I don't expect that it's more "nutritious," but I do generally expect that it's a little "safer" - knowing the producer, and a little about his methods, makes me feel a lot more comfortable buying his food.
Yes, "owning a car" is a right, though it is not phrased as such.
The right to property ownership covers "owning a car," and is another classic example of a negative right: other people may not take your property without your consent, and the government may not either, except in a few narrowly defined legal situations (e.g., eminent domain, or criminal/civil judgements that carry with them financial damages), though you are not *obligated* to own a car.
In much the same way, internet access is, or should be, a "right" - you should have the ability to access the internet and purchase this access from a provider under reasonable and mutually agreeable terms without interference from the government or other people - you shouldn't be able to restrict my access to hotbabes.com if I want to access it, and I shouldn't be able to restrict your access to kingjamesbible.org if you want to access it. But I would draw the line at trying to obligate people to have access if they do not want or need it, and I don't think it's the government's job to provide blanket access.
Having the right to own a car does not mean you have an obligation to own a car, or an entitlement to a free car paid for by your fellow citizens.
Depends on whether or not the right in question is a positive right or a negative right. Positive rights often equal funding, and often equal government (that is, tax-) sponsored.
Free speech & bearing arms are classic examples of negative rights: you have the right to do them because the government is explicitly forbidden from restricting your activities in these areas. This means you are also free NOT to exercise those rights, as well. You have them, and you can exercise them or not as you see fit.
A positive right suggests the opposite: you have an *obligation* to exercise the right - in some countries (Australia, for example), voting would be a positive right, because you can be fined for NOT voting. To pick a US-centric example, healthcare would be a positive right, as enacted by Pres. Obama's healthcare plan, because citizens will have an *obligation* to purchase health insurance, or face penalties and fines for not doing so.
As you might have guessed, those positive rights often come with subsidies, taxes, and other things to fund them because people do tend t realize that "things cost money," and "not everybody has money." So depending on how you structure the "right" in law, there very well can be an obligation for the government to pay for it.
Here's a quick summary of the procedure you're talking about: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/423302/nasa-studies-laser-for-removing-space-junk/
Initially, they were thinking of ablating the surface of the junk with the laser, but turns out you need a hell of a lot of power to do that, so it wouldn't be very economical. More recent calculations suggest exposure to a ~5kW laser might be enough to decay the orbit enough to bring it back into the atmosphere where it'll burn up, and they estimate that a device such as this, big enough to handle 5-10 objects a day, could be put together for a few million dollars.
Do you see the problem with these two statements? And do you understand that this is exactly why the "free" social networks keep failing, but Facebook MAY have finally gotten it right, at least in such a way that they can build a sustainable business?
If you chase unemployed teenagers with your advertising, you're going to have an awful lot of trouble turning that into a successful business - because the buying habits and tastes of teens is notoriously fickle. All they can do is pressure their parents into buying things for them, and as soon as one teen decides "that's not cool anymore," the rest of them will soon follow.
How many kids dream of owning a GE refrigerator? How many homes have at least one refrigerator in it?
How many kids dream of owning a sensible Honda Accord? How many homes have at least one sensible mid-size sedan parked in the driveway?
Lots of very profitable businesses are built through advertising to the "boring" demographic that is actually employed and has disposable income that they're willing to spend on Hondas, and refrigerators, and Ikea furniture for their houses, and Apple laptops for their home offices, and vacations in Florida with their families.
Teens can generate buzz, but that's about it. When it comes time to paying for something, they're stuck with, "MOM, DAD, PLEASE BUY ME THIS ALL THE KIDS LOVE IT." Facebook's embrace of older age groups may make it "suck" for teenagers, but it's sure not going to suck for all those companies who want to advertise to the suburban 30-50-years-old demographic that's actually spending its money on all those "boring" but practical things that we use every day.
Some new platform will certainly arise that the 13-20 year olds will flock to because it's the new hot thing. I think it's far from a foregone conclusion that that platform will substantially disrupt facebook's advertising revenues.
You can start here, where they'll tell you the organic farmer you consulted with is, at best mistaken, at worst lying through his teeth:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/2011/07/18/mythbusting-101-organic-farming-conventional-agriculture/ (See especially, the section labeled "Myth #1," and its footnotes.)
Click through to some of the references, these aren't "myantiorganicblog.org" links, they're links to the relevant safety and regulatory agencies who approve and control the use of the term "organic." If you want "organic" to mean something different, that's very nice... but "organic" has a specific meaning defined by law, and if you use it in association with your crops, there are specific guidelines that your practices and production must meet. "Not using pesticides at all" is emphatically, unequivocally NOT one of those guidelines.
Pointing to a guy whose livelihood is tied to people's warm associations of the word 'organic' and saying "he said nobody uses anything harmful in organic production!" certainly raises questions of conflicts of interest.
Actually, I read the article, and I don't understand why the study is flawed. The author of the linked editorial says, "they said the nutritive content of the foods were not substantially different." And then he proceeds to say, "but organic foods also may have less pesticide and other chemical residue, and that's why people eat them!"
Which is fine - perhaps they do, and perhaps that's a great reason to choose organic. But the study wasn't attempting to answer the question "what possible reasons would people use to buy organic?" The study attempted to answer the question, "is there, in terms of nutrition - i.e., the chemical composition of the food - a significant difference between organic and non-organic food?" And the answer there, no matter how you spin and dance around the point, is "no, there is no significant nutritional difference."
The study was not flawed; the editorial is simply complaining that "they didn't study what I think they should have, and made a scientific conclusion that was narrow and precisely worded, when "organic is the best, always!" would have been a much better conclusion for the furtherance of my own personal agenda and preferences." The study was not 'flawed.' At WORST, the study was 'narrower in focus than the author wished it would have been.'
Uh... do YOU know what "organic" is "supposed to mean"? (Hint: It doesn't mean 'grown without any pesticides whatsoever.')
Organic farmers routinely use "organic" pesticides on their organic crops.
Read more: http://web.pppmb.cals.cornell.edu/resourceguide/index.php
*yawn*
Thanks for playing.
Thanks for demonstrating the baselessness of your assertions.
Also, Mr. Assange has quite clearly been ACCUSED of something. You might want to go look up the meaning of the terms you use before you use them in so public a fashion.
Not to interrupt your rhapsodizing about the good old days when men like Assange could behave as badly as they want, but I'll ask again: what data are you basing these inane claims on?
Not clear what point you're calling "mostly a myth" - that it was a property crime? or that it was a crime at all?
If the latter, as far as I can see, the Visigothic Code you've cited comes down squarely against rape, and in favor of punishing the "ravisher." If the former, I'd say that the wording used supports the notion that it was considered less "a crime against the woman," and more a "crime against chastity / crime against her family," for which restitution, corporal punishment, and even enslavement of the "ravisher" were justifiable - the beneficiaries of the restitution were not (primarily) the woman.
http://libro.uca.edu/vcode/vg3-3.pdf
You sure you really wanna go with the appeal to authority there?
"It's a government, you guys - they wouldn't just make things like this up! Oh and by the way, let me tell you about all the horrendous, terrifying, awful, illegal things that the US, UK, and Swedish governments are doing. Because if there's one thing everybody can agree on, governments are corrupt - except for the government of Ecuador, which is, I think we can all agree, a shining beacon of light in the darkness."
Rape has been illegal from ancient Greek & Roman times, pretty much down to today. In historical times, it was considered less a sexual crime, and more a property crime against the father/husband of the woman, but it was still a crime, and there were still legal penalties for it in just about any civil society I can think of.
That covers a good chunk of your "last 5000 years or so of human history" - so I'm curious what data you're basing these inane claims on?
Depends on the allegations and charges. And since the US hasn't filed any charges, it's impossible to say. You might say there's "NO CASE," but legions of Assange supporters will hasten to tell me how I'm wrong. But we can speculate, and we can make informed conclusions, using the following information:
1) Mr. Assange is not a US citizen; nor was he (apparently) in the US when he allegedly misbehaved;
2) Mr. Assange found himself in the possession of classified US military information;
3) Mr. Assange published that classified data to the world via Wikileaks;
Now, best case scenario - he's a completely passive recipient of classified data, and published it in his informational role as a quasi-journalist. As such, he is protected, since he did not engage in a crime, he just published some data he happened to come across. This is, I think, the most reasonable argument.
But, let's imagine the worst case scenario - he contacted PFC Manning, and actively solicited PFC Manning to leak the classified data, with the overt intent of undermining and harming the US military's operations. This could easily be argued to be espionage.
There's really very little else they could charge him for - he's not a US citizen, and he's never done this inside the jurisdictional area of a US court... so the only real thing you could charge him with would be espionage (which is a capital crime), and file an extradition request hoping that the government on the receiving end will be sympathetic to your request and hand him over. No extradition request has been filed.
Now, let's further assume that the US were to go so far as to charge him in absentia with espionage, and file an extradition request with the UK or Sweden, or wherever he happens to be sitting at the time they finally file the charges. There would be two big obstacles to fulfillment of that request:
1) Espionage is a capital crime - you CAN be subjected to the death penalty for it; The US could make assurances about his treatment, if they wanted to work around this;
2) Espionage is also a political crime - i.e., a crime against "the state". If you read through the extradition treaties, you will notice that many extradition treaties specifically exclude the possibility of extradition for "political crimes," and so the US would have to further convince the court that not this was somehow NOT a political crime (when just about every treaty with this exclusion defines it as such).
So... the US case against Mr. Assange is, at worst, a capital case for a political crime, which would almost certainly cause a request for his extradition to be denied, or at best... the case is non-existent. Either way, there's not a lot for him to fear, provided US, Swedish, and British governments all abide by their treaty & legal obligations. Of course, if they decide that "getting Assange" is more important than the negative publicity, sanctions, penalties, and reputation damage they'd take by circumventing the law, none of this would apply... but realistically, if they were interested in doing that, he'd already be dead, or in Gitmo, and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Yes, and it works, if you're not completely ignorant of the law, and don't just believe Mr. Assange's press releases.
There is NO - I repeat, NO - way that Mr. Assange can (legally) be extradited from Sweden to the US without the consent of the UK. The authorities in the UK approving his extradition through Sweden would be the same authorities who would be asked to approve his extradition if the US requested extradition directly from the UK and Sweden wasn't involved. This "temporary surrender" canard is foolish, because nearly identical wording is included in the US/EU extradition framework treaty, as well - yet somehow only Sweden is able to use it?
So by extraditing him to Sweden, the US has to secure the agreement of both the UK and Sweden, when apparently, we were unable to even get the UK's agreement directly. And in return, the UK and Sweden take massive PR hits, and possibly even open themselves up to sanctions and penalties as EU members, for circumventing EU regulations. I don't know how foolish you need to be to believe this not only possible, but *likely,* but I do know it's pretty damn foolish.
So... this supports your assertion that "it's not just based on the genitals of the person applying," how, exactly?
Because I'm pretty sure you just demonstrated that that's *exactly* what's happening: "people with a vagina just don't do as good a job as people with a penis," is exactly the logic you've just described by which this magical process of gender-agnostic "variable assessments" are made.
I asked you for the data underpinning your conclusions - not rhetorical questions where I'm expected to provide the data to fill in the blanks of YOUR argument.
And incidentally, if the extent of your argument is, "we only discriminate against women in our hiring so we won't get so many expensive sexual harassment suits," then your argument fails to support the claim that it's not sexism causing the discrepancy, I'm sorry to say.
And how do you make this variable assessment, given that the only difference in input for evaluation is the name at the top of the resume?
The people described by the resumes were identical in every way on paper, except their names.
Sounds to me like the judgement of their "future potential value" is *strictly* limited to being a "judgement about genitals, per se." What other mechanism would be in play here?
I'm willing to grant you the benefit of the doubt, insofar as I have to assume that if you're making highly volatile claims like this, you no doubt have ironclad data to back them up, because otherwise you'd look like a sexist jerk.
So, care to provide some data to support my hope that you're not just a sexist jerk?
Because we don't have ~50% unemployment - even if you tried to hire only women, you would have positions unfilled, and those would have to either be filled by men, or remain empty.
Because men are perceived - rightly or wrongly or baselessly - to be "more valuable/capable," which is exactly why the same resume gets offered more money as a starting salary when the name "Mike" is at the top.
Because it'd be illegal and discriminatory - if you tried to hire only women, you would be fined out of existence.
Was "mass conspiracy of employers everywhere" really the only reason you could think of? Because there's three off the top of my head that require no conspiracy, and are completely logical and consistent with the way the world works. If you missed those three, I feel bad for you.
Sorry, but the study suggests that the *suggested starting salary* was significantly lower for women than it was for men - for the exact same information packet about the candidate, with the only difference being whether you were hiring "Mike Smith" or "Michelle Smith."
If you are lowering your opening number by $5000 just because the applicant is a woman, that's not the fault of the woman. Even if the female candidate is a negotiator to shame Henry Kissinger, she has to somehow negotiate back that $5000 you took off the table on account of her having a vagina before she even reaches parity with what you were willing to offer a man as an opening figure. It's very facile to suggest "if you want more, just ask!" But when the expected opening number is $5k lower for a female, she has to be $5k worth of negotiations better than the male candidate just to be his equal in pay.
I agree, in principle. But the hard part with things like Siri and Maps are that you actually need the products in use "in the wild" to be able to analyze the data, correct problems, and refine the product. Google didn't release Maps as a "fully complete" service either - they released it as a beta, and refined it over... what - 7, 8 years now?
It would've been nice to see them work with Google to migrate the Google Maps app to a standalone app before making this so users would have an alternative, but there's only so much spit and polish you can put into a mapping app via traditional QA - at some point, it's got to actually get used by people on the ground.
And it's entirely possible that Apple approached Google about doing just this in parallel with their migration to a new mapping solution, and Google refused, sensing possible competitive advantage. Let's be honest - "Every Android phone comes preinstalled with the most accurate, up-to-date, blah blah mapping solution: Google Maps!" isn't a bad marketing bullet point.
Yep, it'll probably take them a couple years, and a whole lot of their cash (they DO have quite a bit of it). Until then, I expect that Google Maps will also be available on the iPhone, and I suspect that at some point within about 2 years, you'll see them reach rough parity in quality with GMaps, and at that point, they can really focus on competing on the merits of their product.
Remember how stagnant browsers were before IE suddenly got slapped in the nuts by Firefox? Competition is good for consumers. Sucks that Apple's initial offering isn't very competitive, but I expect that gap to close significantly in the next year, and more or less close within 2. This spate of hiring (and no doubt, the hiring they've been doing for a year or more now, as a result of this - this feature has surely been in dev for a while) will help that, so will dumping a huge amount of their cash reserves into improving the data sets.
This is really not debatable, or questionable, or a question of "if and why" - they banned him, for life. It is in the video, from Miller himself, who says, around 50 seconds into the linked video, "The good thing about Apple is, it's only a 1 year ban, where I'm banned from Google for... lifetime." Or, if you're really concerned that somebody somehow spliced in a convincing fake of his voice on that video, you can read it in his own words, from his twitter feed:
http://twitter.com/0xcharlie/statuses/231200006038761472
So... your thoughts on Google, Android, Andy Rubin et. al., in light of this? If Apple banning him for a year for exploiting a security hole (even for research) is moronic... how infinitely more stupid is Google for issuing a lifetime ban for simply being "associated" with someone who exploited a hole in the same manner?