<SYSTEM_TASK:>
Solve the following problem using Python, implementing the functions described below, one line at a time
<END_TASK>
<USER_TASK:>
Description:
 def _load_certificate(location):
 """ Load a certificate from the given location. Args: location (str):
 The location to load. This can either be an HTTPS URL or an absolute file path. This is intended to be used with PEM-encoded certificates and therefore assumes ASCII encoding. Returns: str: The PEM-encoded certificate as a unicode string. Raises: requests.exception.RequestException: Any exception requests could raise. IOError: If the location provided could not be opened and read. """

    if location.startswith('https://'):
        _log.info('Downloading x509 certificate from %s', location)
        with requests.Session() as session:
            session.mount('https://', requests.adapters.HTTPAdapter(max_retries=3))
            response = session.get(location, timeout=30)
            response.raise_for_status()
            return response.text
    else:
        _log.info('Loading local x509 certificate from %s', location)
        with open(location, 'rb') as fd:
            return fd.read().decode('ascii')