If you knew anything about our political system you'd know that US Senators have zero power to actually make good on those threats. They can't go after him judicially, that's the job of the Executive Branch (via the Justice Department) with checks and balances from the Judicial Branch. Nor can they go after him extra-judicially (*); intelligence agencies are also under the control of the Executive, with checks and balances from the Legislative Branch (that's the Senate). The Legislative can rein in the intelligence agencies if they so choose, via the oversight and funding process, but they can't issue them marching orders.

(*) They could actually go after him extra-judicially, in the same manner as any citizen could, i.e., walk up to him on the street and put a bullet in his head. I rather doubt any of them have the stomach for that, much less the time they'd get to spend behind bars for such an act....

Advertisers take this into account. There are researchers finding what percentage of people use adblock, record TV and skip commercials, etc. They use surveys as well as technical resources. A site showing ads hoping to recoup their costs may not have that research information handy (or bothered to look for it) and might blow their expectations of having their "Harp Lessons in G Minor" blog making them a small fortune. But I agree with the Anonymous Brave Guy. There's no law saying we need to watch ads; there's no crime against circumventing them. Are you not giving the site own money that they are expecting? Sure -- but there's no contract there the way a true sale has.

As for songs...musicians tour. Recording studios record. Depending on overhead (venue costs, stage effects, roadies) and fame (sometimes you pay to play, sometimes they pay you), touring can make musicians a good amount of money. Recording makes the studios a lot of money since they're doing most of the work (recording, advertising, contracts with radio stations, distribution, etc) and the artist just needs a couple days or weeks in the studio to make a decent record. Sure the label would have nothing without the talent of the artist, but the artist might have considerably less without the efforts of the label.

The problem here is you're using logic and they're using emotion. He's a hero to them, David standing up to Goliath. It's the techie version of the rabid sports fan who refuses to believe his team's star player might just be capable of rape.

I've tried to explain numerous times in these stories that the judicial precedent in the United States almost certainly precludes charges from being brought against him. The United States has no Official Secrets Act; a normal citizen (i.e., a reporter) who comes into possession of classified material can do whatever the hell they want with it. Only those that have a duty to protect said information (e.g., people with security clearances) can be held accountable for the leaking thereof. So long as Assange simply received the information he is in the clear, just as the New York Times reporters who published the Pentagon Papers were in the clear. If Assange actively encouraged Manning to break the law he could have a problem but I've seen no evidence of that. The chat logs with Manning and Lamo left me with the impression that Manning came up with the idea without any outside influence.

In one of these stories I had the privilege of reading a rather lengthy summary of the Swedish legal system. The author of this post did no editorializing for or against Assange, they simply explained the process of how charges are brought and disposed of in Sweden. In any other context it would have been +5 informative but because it was in an Assange story it was -1 troll. Emotion drives these discussions and facts no longer matter.

They were taking OTA signals and retransmitting them across the internet for profit without paying the broadcaster a dime. You don't see a problem with this?

Cut 'em some slack; it's not as though they're attending an Ivy League law school where they'd learn fancy schmancy legal concepts like standing.

You stopped eating over a decade ago?

Tough shit. That's how it works with at-will employment. I quit a hated job once upon a time via e-mail, on Monday morning, 15 minutes before my shift was due to begin.

Give your employees a contract if you don't want to deal with the possibility of them leaving unexpectedly. Of course a contract usually requires you to offer them something tangible in return, i.e., guaranteed employment for a specified amount of time, which is why employers generally prefer at-will even though it's a PITA to deal with people who leave.

If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.

You paid for WinZip? That bloated piece of crap? When there's only about three dozen different free compression applications? You don't even have to resort to classical freeware, there are FOSS programs that will do the job quite nicely, with a polished GUI for those who don't like CLIs.

I'm sorry but I think you've mistaken the United States for a Nordic Social Democracy or something. If a new parent (male or female) receives several months off with pay that's a benefit willingly provided their employer so it stands to reason they're not going to bellyache about it. The only benefit employers are mandated to offer in the United States is provided for by the Family Medical Leave Act. Mom is entitled to no more than 12 weeks off work, without pay, and that's only if she works for a company with >=50 employees. Kudos to her employer if they offer more than that but they're not required to do so.

I could contrast this experience with the foreign country I'm most familiar with (Finland) but it doesn't look very good for the United States. Different culture and country of course, I doubt we could ever match what they offer, but we certainly could do a lot better than we're doing right now....

Outlawed firearms? Washington has shall issue concealed carry and relatively liberal (by American standards) firearm laws. It's not exactly Utah but it ain't New York either....

That should have been six members. I guess I overlooked poor Estonia....

I said logistical support; I didn't claim that we flew more sorties than they did. They needed access to American force multiplers, i.e., air-to-air refueling assets, communications assets, underway replenishment ships, and so on. That was originally to be the extent of our intervention but it expanded beyond that and I believe we did in fact fly more sorties than the British or French. It's hard to find definitive numbers on this since the mission was flown under NATO auspices and the sorties aren't broken out by member in any of the information I've been able to find, they're just listed as "NATO sorties."

Ultimately I don't really care who flew more sorties; I was just pointing out the fact that even the British and French lack the ability to wage an extended campaign beyond their shores without support from the United States. I could tweak British pride further by pointing out that the operation to recover the Falklands would have likewise failed without American logistical support and the British military of 1980 had a lot more capability than the British military of 2014. If that were to happen again today the UK would be royally screwed, they've let their capabilities atrophy that badly.

With few exceptions European countries just don't see the value of investing in defense. NATO members commit to spending at least 2% of their GDP on defense but only five out of twenty eight members (the United States, the United Kingdom, Greece, France, Turkey, and Estonia) actually live up to this obligation. Most of the members of NATO can't even defend themselves, much less contribute to collective defense, and the situation is even worse if you look at the military capabilities of non-NATO EU members.

It's PBS dude. You're reaching even by your standards. I think we're done here. Have fun tilting at windmills.

You don't even have to say "fuck the children." How about "fuck the athletics program?" I wonder what kind of connectivity that new AstroTurf field could have paid for? Or the new stadium that surrounds it, complete with lighting system that would have been the envy of a minor league sports team just a few years ago. I remember playing in the mud with spectators that had to sit on portable bleachers and games being called because we ran out of daylight.

In reality there's more important things than uber high speed broadband, like student to teacher ratio, but I think most would agree both are more important than a bloody football field that primarily benefits a small percentage of the student population. PE is important -- look at the American obesity rate -- but one can teach healthy exercise habits without needing an eight digit venue for the occasion.