It certainly has nothing to do with democracy, and intended to solve exactly one problem: Microsoft's need to increase revenue through sweet gov't funded contracts. Let's not be fooled by opensourced code, once the idea is sold to politicians, and media, someone should be contracted to implement this useless staff. And who's this going to be? Not hard to guess.
While I appreciate the cynicism, I'm not seeing how an open schema for tamper-evident verifiable voting machines could be anything other than positive.
For starters, the whole voting machines concept is a essentially a ploy to exploit wide-spread respect for computer technologies in society to sell hardware, and software. It reduces observability compared to pieces of paper, and doesn't solve any real problems.
I don't think Gates words from 2004 can be seen as policy statement for today's Msft. Apparently, a lot has changed.
> Microsoft will not charge for using ElectionGuard and will not profit from partnering with election technology suppliers that incorporate it into their products.
I'm not sure how much stronger of a statement they can make than that. There's no money in voting machines for Microsoft.
There's a school of thought which considers complex data types to be more a part of problem then a solution. You may disagree with it, but nevertheless one certainly doesn't need complex data types to write GUI (or anything) effectively.
Also, in this universe Win32 API was released in 90s, not 80s.
The complexity should be the same no matter what language you use, but how you structure and organize that complexity changes drastically. Hence in Ruby it takes only 2-3 lines of code to accomplish what in Java requires a few ItemFactories.
Yeah, well, kinda... technically you are correct but Win32 is 99.998% backwards compatible (as an API, not ABI) with Win16 which was first released in the 80s.
In Eastern Europe it's often the case. Worth mentioning however that plumbing services are much cheaper then in States, and there are usually no legal/insurance nuances which reapairing may bring in the US. So it's simply easier to call a plumber and have trouble solved then include a landlord into equation. Broken washing machine, or expensive furniture in most cases are on landlord, though.
It depends what it is. The government is efficient at sending people checks and retail stores like Walmart are efficient places to buy things. It's hard to see how to do much better for supplying people with new stuff.
On the other hand, thrift stores also have an important role for getting used stuff like clothing to people who need it, and charities do some of that.
Then there are various services that charities do, which is a whole different thing and not easily replaced. But some of their funding comes from the government.
I agree that gov't is relatively good at sending checks (except in some economic circumstances, e.g. when the currency it prints is no more in demand - like in Venezuela, or late USSR). However it doesn't necessary make a particular welfare program efficient in general. Maybe recipients are poorly determined (which happens more often with larger programs), or sending checks is not the best idea at all.
I prefer my country’s social services delivered by professionals, inefficiencies and all, over church volunteers. Inefficiencies are okay, expected even, when operating at scale. Sometimes universal availability and coverage take priority (know what you’re optimizing for).
Also, when discriminated against by faith based services, you have no recourse. This is unacceptable, and can be monitored and governed more effectively when government provides services.
I really don't know why inefficiency is ok, sorry. If a system is less efficient at scale then engineering approach teaches us to modularize/split it into smaller chunks.
Btw, you used "professional" word as if it's something good in itself. That's far from truth. Professional bureaucrats, and state officials quite often are directly interested in growing inefficiency because it can be exploited to expand budgets, and staff.
Saying you prefer a welfare state provided by "professionals" does not necessary mean bureaucrats. It also includes things like social workers who have undergone rigorous training to better deal with the mentally ill, those suffering from addiction, and vulnerable minorities. A church or charity worker, no matter how well-meaning they might be, does not necessarily have those skills.
I agree it also includes some usefully prepared people, nevertheless no state welfare program exists without bureacrats.
Also, preparedness/trainings are not exclusive feature of gov't system. I know what I'm saying here because I volunteered in private charity (not in US, so American mileage may vary), and I dare to say people who worked there were more competent then relevant state officials, at least target group always preferred them.
You...”doubt it”? I guess the issue is settled, then. I’ll take it that the underlying argument is “government bad, private good”. It doesn’t really contribute anything, but at least we can guess at the reasoning.
"Doubt it" is pretty much a clear invitation to present arguments.
Present an argue against what? “Is not!” doesn’t give a lot to work with. “Doubt it” does a fine job of presenting one’s biases, but it is most certainly not an invitation to stimulating discussion, quite the opposite.
Because Dissenter was created by Gab, a far/alt-right online platform.
So what? I'm not trolling, I'm trying to understand. It's doesn't look like anybody was forced to use the extension, you don't like it - don't use it. If it's ok to use clear-cut ideological censorship for plugins/extensions, then it's ok to block websites. Personally, I find it hard to accept.
Does the removal of the extension from the extension gallery prevent people from using the extension or just limit its exposure? If the latter then there is not censorship but simply Mozilla deciding the cost is not worth the bother. No one has any particular right to be promoted by Mozilla.
So if Verizon would block certain websites for its customers it will not be censorship? Well, it will be. You seem to believe that censorship implies denying legal rights, and only is real when it's total. But censorship can be perfectly legal, and it's never total (albeit it requires either efforts, or money, you can reach forbidden websites in China). I'm not arguing about legality of Mozilla's decision at all. Nevertheless, it is censorship, and as long as it's motivated by ideological differences it's ideological censorship. And as Mozilla pretends to be just browser (not some party's browser) it looks weird, and no exactly smart. My question is why anybody who's not fanatically partisan would support it? Does it mean one feels a lot of pain using Mozilla just because political adversaries use it too? Consequently, do we need a separate fork of every browser for every faction nowadays (apparently, with separate sets of ideologically proven extensions)?
Mozilla are directly violating their own manifesto, where they claim "We are committed to an internet that promotes civil discourse"[0]. Have you even read the article?
When they were asked to clarify what exactly was violating their ToS, they replied with the most standard bureaucratic non-answer, the kind you might receive from an auto-response email service, full of corporate-speak.
EDIT: According to this[1], Mozilla supposedly cares enough about this free speech, free platform issue to donate $100,000 to "a coordination platform used by activists across the political spectrum, to improve the security of their email service". Do you still believe it's a stretch to hold them to a much higher standard than a for-profit corporation? Note the "activists across the political spectrum" part in their own words.
As far as i can see from the article, Mozilla is still agreeing to sign the addon, just not to list it in the AMO site.
The article lists an 8 step process and claims users would have to follow that on each restart of Firefox to enable the addon. I’m not sure if that’s true, as the guidelines I can see on other websites seem to suggest self hosting addons shouldn’t have that problem.
Here's what I posted in another response in this thread just now:
>Mozilla themselves has said that they didn't remove it for political reasons [or "ideological censorship" as you put it], rather it was the language and vitriol being used on the platform. As an example, it's one thing to use something like Dissenter to calmly and rationally discuss why you might think a nation should close its borders to all immigrants, it's another thing to use that same platform to say stuff like, "Fuck those worthless lazy piece of shit beaners coming to this country and stealing white jobs" (not my opinion, btw).
>I'm not going to pretend to know that stuff like that was posted to Dissenter, but you and I both know that language like that is commonplace on alt/far-right platforms. It's by no means a stretch to imagine that those kinds of posts are what got Dissenter banned.
Mozilla themselves has said that they didn't remove it for political reasons [or "ideological censorship" as you put it], rather it was the language and vitriol
If it's about politically incorrect speech - it's absolutely ideological.
If it's about obscene language - it's still not Mozilla's business to police someone's lexicon, and Mozilla doesn't do it generally, which means something ideological happens here.
Btw, it's interesting that you yourself agree that the whole thing is political by this stereotyping statement but you and I both know that language like that is commonplace on alt/far-right platforms. And at the same time you disagree.
Try to check your biases: every time Trump tweets, Twitter explodes with left activists using motherfcker, fck, and a lot of derogatory expressions addressed to him, and right-leaning voters which has zero value for any civil discourse. So ask yourself: would you say "we both know it's commonplace on the left to use disparaging, and obscene exoressions"? And would you be fine with Twitter punished for this? (It enables them, gives the platform).
Finally, you are calling dissenter.com alt-right which is not true unless they operate alt-right censorship there. It shows some bias too.
>>Mozilla themselves has said that they didn't remove it for political reasons [or "ideological censorship" as you put it], rather it was the language and vitriol being used on the platform.
Hegemony means never having to admit you have an agenda.
>Hegemony means never having to admit you have an agenda.
...and we're to conclude that, because Mozilla has "hegemony", and are denying a political agenda, they must actually have a political agenda they're not admitting to?
I mean, hegemony could just as well mean never having to deny you have an agenda, because what can anyone do? The US certainly doesn't hide its agenda regarding its military or nuclear hegemony.
> It's by no means a stretch to imagine that those kinds of posts are what got Dissenter banned.
Probably a good idea to provide evidence on a case-by-case basis first, otherwise how is this position different from right-wingers that want to play the numbers game too, and preemptively claim that since blacks commit a disproportionately large amount of crimes per capita, any black person should be kept away?
Disabled CSS would leave such form still usable. It wouldn't look, and behave exactly as intended, for sure, but I suppose these days no one expects unchanged user experience while disabling CSS. Meanwhile, disabled JS on JS-based forms usually kills them.
HTML/CSS as in the example would indeed be usable, though a similar version of this (with inline labels and checkboxes used for "aside" notes) gets rather messy when used in a textual browser or converted into another format. JS-based expansion doesn't have to get unusable either (it can merely hide bits of a document after loading, with those present in HTML), but perhaps could become unusable more easily.
I'm not arguing for use of JS, by the way (not sure if it was clear), but rather for proper use of HTML.
Enforced monogamy in western societies is part of a broader history of social control that came to exist because it was good at perpetuating itself
It's one interpretation, good for those who accepts the faith tenets of post-structuralism. The other is that it came to exist because of its viability in particular economic conditions.
Also, if acceptance of promiscuity as a social norm really benefits exactly women is a really big question.
I don't know what "post-structuralism" means and I don't know the supposed tenets you're referring to. But I agree you can also make an economic argument for why marriage has been an enduring institution in society throughout history.
"Acceptance of promiscuity" is a bit of a contradiction in terms since "promiscuous" is inherently pejorative. I will say this: "promiscuity" has always been far more socially acceptable for men than it has been for women. Despite "enforced monogamy" prostitution is called the "oldest profession" for a reason and extramarital affairs have been happening for a long, long time. If you want to get nuanced, "enforced monogamy" doesn't really mean "enforced monogamy" because affairs were accepted in certain sociocultral contexts in England and France far before the sexual revolution.
I'm not a native speaker, and may miss some nuances, but promiscuous is defined as "having multiple sexual partners" by my dictionary which I think is as neutral as possible.
Promiscuity is at first, and foremost was (and still is, in spite of contraception availability) practically more acceptable for men. And monogomy among other things is a constraint on men's behavior - forcing to accept social, and economic responsibilities before fulfilling sexual urges. You are right noting that it rarely worked in any absolute way, but I don't think any law, whether written, or not can be 100% effectively implemented. People steal all the time, but I suppose you wouldn't say it's because related norms are not enforced, right? Monogomy's real application varied over times, cultures, and spaces, but it was certainly enforced by societal pressure, and legally too. Actually, in my father's youth years (and it's not that deep in history) it was hard to have sex before marriage. It was for sure possible, but dangerous for reputation of both participants (probably more damaging for a women, but damaging for both nevertheless). It wasn't US, and "sexual revolution" came to us much later, so that's probably why you may have no living witnesses for it.
Also, prostitution was until quite recent times seen as a moral compromise acceptable only because of long serving soldiers, and sailors. In most societies it wasn't ok for a family man to visit a house of prostitution, and in some cases it was even criminalized.
I am a native speaker, and "promiscuous" is definitely a negative, pejorative term. (Dictionary definitions are good at capturing the denotation of a word, but are sometimes less good at explaining its connotations. If your dictionary lists additional/alternate definitions of this one that apply in non-sexual contexts, look at those to see if they appear to carry positive or negative implications.)
It's clear what is being discussed here, because "promiscuity" has a simple understandable meaning. In certain contexts the word has a negative connotation, but only because those contexts morally disapprove of the condition the word describes. One would have hoped that "native speakers" could have offered a different, more suitable word to employ in this discussion, rather than just ruling the discussion out of bounds because they don't like this particular word.
Promiscuous is a pejorative term because the act itself is socially seen as negative. There is no way of describing promiscuous behaviour positively, so the choice of word is irrelevant.
HC factically started her campaign right after the first Obama's term, had support of party leadership, and therefore major party donors, and having sympathies of the press. DT started his campaign a year before elections, was rudiculed by mainstream Republican opinion-makers until May 2016, was (and is) in a conflict with major donors (like Koch brothers), and had/has generally unfriendly relations with press. So unless you imply some very big conspiracy theory I don't see how he could have even a chance to outspent HC.
